First of all, credit where it's due: this thread is inspired by Cobalt Kid's wonderful The All Spider-Man Thread .

I have more issues of Avengers than any other comic in my collection. That's because I believe that, for its first 30 years at least, no comic succeeded like Avengers in re-inventing itself into something more exciting and innovative each time. Which isn't to say that there weren't long stretches of mediocre stories in between the brilliant runs, but that only makes the brilliant runs shine even brighter (although there are certain issues I refuse to read on principle). There's also the way in which the book was blessed by one excellent artist after another, from John Buscema to Dave Cockrum to George Perez to John Byrne to Steve Epting; often the art kept the book (barely) afloat when the writing wasn't good -- and opinons differ considerably about when the writing was good and when it wasn't. Avengers may not be the most successful or the most well-known team book of all time, but in terms of a rich creative legacy and epic scope of mythos, Avengers is IMO untouchable.

But here is where I must admit that I'm not particularly pleased with the past 12 years of Avengers permutations. Avengers Volume One ended badly thanks to Marvel's catering to the speculator's market; Volume Two, the year-long Heroes Reborn phase, I've never even read and never intend to; Volume Three either revitalized the book or turned it into a sad oldies revue, depending on who you ask, and I'm of the latter opinion; Ultimates is wildly popular, but not to my taste; New Avengers is a travesty that would be pitiful rather than frustrating, if only it wasn't so commerically successful. Ironically, I do see some hope in the recent announcement that there will be a second Avengers comic by the same writer; this seems to me like it's all of a piece with the hubris that Marvel has been showing lately with their Civil War delays, etc. I think critical mass is fast approaching, and when the smoke clears, the current editor-in-chief and his pet writers will be nothing more than a bad memory. Then Avengers will evolve yet again, hopefully into something better.

No matter what happens from here, I'm still proud to say that I love Avengers, because it's greatest moments transcend the inevitable peaks and valleys of a comic that has run, in one form or another, for over forty years.

In this thread, I'll be posting reviews of each Avengers phase whose issues I own, but more than anything, I want to hear from other Avengers fans.

So the only thing left to say is -- Avengers fans assemble!!

Great, great idea for a thread Stealth! I've often thought of a similar thread for the Avengers because of our past conversations and am thrilled that you'll be doing reviews of Avenger's periods!

Can't wait to read them and I will definately be participating! Avengers is one of those rare comic book runs where I actually have read every single issue of the Avengers ever published--in the exact order from #1 - onwards.

Avengers fans assemble indeed! Can't wait to see more of your posts and other Avenger's fans participating.

I've been an Avengers fan for 30 years, and am greatly hoping that one day Marvel will start printing Avengers comics again

As with almost everything else in the Marvel Universe, my first glimpse of The Avengers in comics was in FF ANNUAL #3. Quicksilver took out The Human Top, Captain America took on The Cobra, Mr. Hyde and The Enchantress, Iron Man tackled The Mad Thinker's Android. If memory serves, my NEXT exposure to the group was in NOT BRAND ECCH #11, the story "King Konk '68". The most memorable moment was the full-page action shot where Konk has reached the top of the Empire State Building. Elsewhere, in the background, we see Giant-Man, who says... "And some nut told me Konk was climbin' the CHRYSLER Building! Ever since I lost my own series, I get nothing but bum steers."

The 1st issue of THE AVENGERS I actually got ahold of was #79-- "Lo! The Lethal Legion!" I finally got to see a "real" story featuring some of that characters from NBE, like The Vision. This issue was a mind-blower-- it was my 1st exposure to John Buscema AND Tom Palmer! WHOA!!! Recently, while buying the ESSENTIAL books to fill the huge, gaping holes in my collection, I was finally able to read thru this entire era. What a surprise to find that John MISSED so many issues (apparently, because Stan kept yanking him away to do other things). This particular issue struck me as somehow MUCH better than those that surrounded it-- or could that just be familiarity and "nostalgia" coloring my views? Anyway, what a place to drop in (if only for one issue). 5 super-villains I'd never laid eyes on, several Avengers, and everything played so DEADLY "straight" and serious (let's face it, Roy's better off when he's not trying to have a sense of humor).

But the comic that really made me an Avengers fan was AVENGERS ANNUAL #3-- which reprinted "Captain America Joins The Avengers!" If the Thomas-Buscema issue seemed like it almost took place in an alternate universe from the other Marvels I'd read, this looked like the real thing. And what a GREAT place to drop in! I still barely had any inkling of who Captain America was, so this story was perhaps the BEST-possible intro. I think I've read it at least a dozen times over the years. Looking back, it seems to me the inks tried to MURDER the artwork (George Roussos doing Stan a favor by inking an entire book over the weekend for half-rates), but Jack Kirby must have been REALLY inspired. EVERY panel feels like a pin-up! This story really introduced me to Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man, Wasp, Cap, and was my 1st view of Rick Jones. I'd seen Sub-Mariner before, but he was much more a villain here than in the reprint of FF #6.

The "back-up" reprints consisted of 3 consecutive Captain America episodes from TALES OF SUSPENSE #66-68, starting off with what these days I consider one of the GREATEST of all Cap stories from TOS-- "The Fantastic Origin Of The Red Skull!" Kirby & Chic Stone remain in my eyes one of the greatest art teams ever, and perhaps never better than here. (When I re-read the story recently, I loved it so much I wound up scanning EVERY PAGE of it into my computer for easy future reference!) The other 2 episodes were not quite as good, if only because of different inks (Frank Giacoia got the credit, but I suspect, based on a recent interview, that Joe Giella did a LOT of the work on those. They don't really look the same as a lot of other Giacoia ink jobs.)

It took quite a while for me to get into buying THE AVENGERS regularly, and the quality of the book was seriously up and down (often down and down) but these earliest encounters will always have a special place in my comics-loving heart.

Yeah Stealth the New Avengers line up and the constant air of conspiracy isn't doing it for me either and I generally like BMB's writing.

Here's hoping that Mighty Avengers will be more what I'm looking for. I'm a little wary though because it looks sort of like the two Avengers books' line ups are divided by their stand in Civil War.

At least it'll have Frank Cho drawing Ms. Marvel.

Avengers is one of those titles I always keep an eye on to see if the current incarnation is something I want to pick up. I loved the team back in the day when Buscema and Perez was on the book. I've popped in and out since then (especially Busiek's run) and while I like the "New Avengers", I'm eagerly awaiting the new New Avengers and "the Mighty Avengers"

Avengers is my first love. Legion is a close second.

I've been a huge fan since about age 6 of the Avengers.

Stealth is right I can't think of any other book that has had so many good runs. Lee/Kirby, Lee/Ditko (and now the really good stuff) Thomas/Buscema, Thomas/Adams, Engleheart/Perez, Stern/Buscema, Harras/Eptig, Busiek/Perez.

Heck even in the medicore periods we got good stuff it just wasn't consistent. Guys like Shooter, Michelene, Steven Grant, Byrne, etc.

My fave run is Stern/Buscema. As for Busiek/Perez? I loved it but it did seem too old school.

I was waiting for them to reinvent themselves yet again. New Avengers wasn't it!

Love the Avengers-- though perhaps not as much as others here. It's definitely up to who is on the team. That's true of other team books, too-- LSH, JLA, JSA, Titans, X-Men-- but *those* teams have never had a period when there wasn't at least one character that I really liked/was curious about/saw great potential in. The Avengers have had such periods, as I'm not a huge fan of Cap or Iron Man (though I'm liking the former more and more as I get older, for some reason-- and the latter less and less).

I began reading AVENGERS during the Mantis/Vision/Scarlet Witch/Swordsman period, which was a great time to get hooked. Marvel printed quite a few reprints during the 70's (as did DC) and I really think that that cemented my interest in this title, as well as FANTASTIC FOUR and X-MEN. (LSH, JUSTICE LEAGUE, SUPERMAN and BATMAN families for DC).

That's Lee/DON HECK (not Ditko)!!! (Some guys get no respect...)

Sad story about Don Heck-- Don took time off from the regular book to do the 1st ANNUAL. While he was at it, Roy got John Buscema to "fill in". But then, Roy liked Buscema so much, he made him the regular artist, pushing Heck aside, at which point Don kept moving from series to series to series without a steady home. In recent years, Roy admitted that HE was part of a problem he himself has lamented about editors in the years since-- shoving aside the older artists in favor of the "hot" new guys. (I know, hard to think of Buscema that way, but still...)

I loved Don's work on AVENGERS when inked by Wally Wood, John Romita (ONE glorious issue!!!) and Frank Giacoia. Dick Ayers-- EHH! Don himself-- DOUBLE-EHH! (But that's me...)


Englehart-Perez only lasted about 6 months! Steve Englehart's entire run is pretty fantastic, although he went through virtually an ARMY of artists of varying talents-- Buscema, Buckler, Cockrum, Heck, Brown, Esposito, Sal Buscema, Joe Staton, Tuska, Colletta, Tartaglione (GAG!!), Perez, Grainger...

And to think, Steve might have stuck around a LOT longer, if it hadn't been for Gerry Conway being such a colossal pain during his absurdly-brief run as editor.

George had a long run on the book... but it was CONSTANTLY being interrupted by months and months of fill-ins, over and over again, due to George's habit of working on 4 projects at the same time and blowing deadlines on ALL of them. It eventually led to his being fired, and when he landed at DC, he "fixed" his problem. (Witness his LONNNNNNNNG, almost-unbroken run on THE NEW TEEN TITANS.) I liked Perez' on FANTASTIC FOUR, but always felt he was born to draw THE AVENGERS, of all the books he ever did. Imagine if he'd been able to do what Buscema-Palmer did in the 80's...!!! (I never realized that in the late 60's, John Buscema was MISSING from SO MANY issues-- because Stan kept yanking him off the book to do other projects, making a farce of the fact that Don Heck had been pushed off the book to make room for Buscema!)

I was a big fan of Busiek's recent run, recapturing some of my favorite themes (although for me, it will never be a true Avengers team without Wonder Man and the Beast playing Ted and Booster).

Right now the only remotely decent Avengers book out is Young Avengers, IMO. This current Wolverine / Ronin / Sentry / Spider-Woman / Luke Cage / Spider-Man line-up just doesn't cut it. A potentially interesting team that could be called 'Iron Man and his dysfunctional super-friends?' Perhaps. Avengers? Not even close.

I end up liking secondary 'Lower Decks' characters more than core members, it seems, no matter the group. While I love the Legion, I also have a serious love for the Subs and Cadet trainees as well, and wish we could have seen more of them.

With the Avengers, I find myself wanting to see more of characters like USAgent, Stingray, Moondragon, Tigra, Living Lightning, She-Hulk, the Beast, Silverclaw, etc. and less of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, etc.

Of those considered founding members, Pym (whatever the heck super-name he's using this week) and the Wasp are my favorites, with the Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye being the next two in line from the second line-up. (Sadly Wanda has been mangled beyond recognition, and I don't think is really recoverable, as a character.)

I didn't realize until I got older how unique it was for the Wasp to be constantly changing costumes, because she was written as a character, and not as an iconic property. Spider-Man and Superman can't ever make a permanant change to their costume. No matter how many times they try, it always 'reboots' back to the 'classic' look, because they've ceased becoming living growing characters and become brands, and changing their look is screwing with their brand identity or some such garbage. They've become so successful, with quarterly earnings reports and many people's jobs tied to them, that meaningful stories really can't be written about them, IMO.

Hank Pym gets my respect for not only pulling a Brainiac 5 and constantly accidentally creating villains for the team to fight, but also being the incidental origin for a half-dozen or more heroes! Two different other Ant-Men have existed, one other Giant-Man, a Black Goliath, Atlas, Stature, Jocasta, Victor Mancha (of the Runaways) and Yellowjacket II are all heroes derived from his research (or created by Ultron, whom he created).

If only Brainy could pump out a half-dozen heroes for every Computo!

prof, my bad on Heck. I always get him and Ditko confused.

And yeah while I know Engleheart/Perez only did six issues...I mentioned them anyways.

While it was erratic that run with so many different writers and artists...is a fave of mine. I think while it seemed a bit(I don't know) generic it really captured what the Avengers were about.

Those Perez Grim Reaper-AntMan-Ultron covers. Then the Byrne issues. Yeah I love that era. Heck I'm even a big fan of...Bloodhawk. heh.

Set, Young Avengers is certainly THE Avengers now.

Also West Coast Avengers was excellent (until Roy Thomas that is). I noticed you've mentioned quite a few characters from WCA/AWC.

Great thread, Stealth, and a great opportunity to explore why/why not to like the Avengers.

I've always preferred DC characters to Marvel characters, mainly because of the influence that DC's truly iconic heroes have on the entire DCU. When you manage to make iconic characters interesting, you've really accomplished something. But, even you when an icon's own books aren't that great, his/her interraction with "second tier" characters can still be great. That is what the Legion is to me, in many respects--Kids from the future literally yearning and learning how to be Superman, with Superman/Boy/Girl often there for mentoring and/or reality check. Same goes for JLA and JSA. The icons are the inspirations and the other characters are there for development and enrichment, since there is only so much you can do to the icons before they lose their iconness.

To me, Avengers was always about the icon, Captain America, mentoring a group of non-iconic heroes, whether they were big guns (Iron Man, Thor) or wonderful supporting cast (Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye). It's like you transported a DC-type icon character into the iconoclastic Marvel universe and watch the fireworks ensue.

None of Marvel's few other true icons (Spiderman, the Thing, Mr. Fantastic, Namor, Hulk, Wolverine, Phoenix, Dr. Strange, Silver Surfer) really work in the Avengers or have no reason to since they are already part of a team. Yes, I know Spidey and Wolvie have been put in New Avengers. I just think it's inappropriate and/or redundant.

I really liked the Avengers because of their atmosphere as both stylish and swanky but also rogueish. Many of the best characters -- Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawkeye, Vision, Wonder Man -- were bad guys. It was like you had a reform school on 5th Avenue. I guess that was a very 60s/70s thing, the stylish, jet-setting, heroic anti-hero, with Captain America always there to keep a lid on the antisocial tendencies. Like the 1970s JLA, the JSA and the Legion, the Avengers were the place the B-list characters went to shine and gain respectability by saving the world.

It's funny, because I think Bendis feels this way too, but New Avengers just hasn't worked, even when their are aspects about it that are really, really good. Maybe all the SHIELD/Civil War stuff has hampered it. I don't know. But if I compare and contrast the following, I begin to see the problem:

Batman is a loner, even though he has partners/surrogates/agents, etc. But, he is committed to the JLA because 1) he doesn't want them out of control and 2) he knows they need his intellect, his resources, his detective skills and 3) he leverages his talents to benefit the world on a massive scale, more than he could do solely by himself. And, he is conscious of all this. He makes the bargain, even though he is not really a joiner.

Contrast with Spidey in the New Avengers. Why is he there, really, other than the fact that he coincidentally needed a home and Iron Man wanted to exploit him? He is a very smart fellow, science-wise, but he's certainly no Richards or Pym, or even Stark, by his own admission. So, why is he on the team? Same with Wolvie. He's an X-Man out of loyalty, gratitude and even love, even though he's a thoroughly irrascible old curmudgeon. None of that applies to the Avengers.

I've gone on too long, and I suspect I'm bitching to the choir about New Avengers. The Old Avengers were always at their best pressing the boundaries and opening new horizons in superhero books, from Black Panter to Vision to Kree/Skrull War to Mantis/Cosmic Madonna to Thanos/Captain Marvel/Warlock to Hank Pym's breakdown. And, they had a LOT of fun along the way, thanks to Hawkeye, Beast, Hercules, Tigra, Sersi, She-Hulk, Eros, Wasp, Jarvis, and lot's of others I have unjustly forgotten.

Avengers Volume One # 1 - 48

As much as I love Avengers, I've always felt that the first 48 issues are mostly setup for better things to come.

Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, the Marvel Universe's founding fathers, did the first 8 issues and shortly after did three more before Kirby left for good after #16. The stories are fun in that early/mid-Silver Age way, but I don't think they compare to Lee & Kirby's cosmic/mythical epics in Fantastic Four and Thor circa 1966-68. On the other hand, there's no denying the academic value of their Avengers issues: the first Avengers lineup (Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man/Giant-Man, Wasp, Hulk); the first superhero team to have a member (the Hulk) quit after only 2 issues, then come back quickly as a villain (alongside the morally ambiguous Sub-Mariner); the return of Captain America, the explanation of his dissapearance, his vendetta against the original Baron Zemo, who killed Cap's WWII sidekick Bucky, the final battle between the two, with Zemo accidentally killing himself; the original Masters of Evil (Zemo I, Radioactive Man, Melter, Black Knight II); Asgardian villainess the Enchantress bringing her schemes to the world of mortals; the first appearance of Kang; and finally, "The Old Order Changeth", establishing a uniquely fluid membership in the Avengers as all the remaning fouding members exit the team, leaving Captain America and three reformed villains (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Hawkeye).

The next creative team, Lee & Don Heck, were no slouches themselves, although their stories were more hit-and-miss. But they introduced Wonder Man, Immortus, Count Nefaria, Swordsman I, and Power Man I (later Goliath III, and still later Atlas). Plus they brought the Black Widow into the Avengers' circle, and they showed us the first glimpse of Kang's future world. The latter is, IMO, the best Avengers story Lee ever wrote -- not only is it the first Avengers story with a scope befitting a superhero team, it also brings out surprising shades of grey in Kang. The first of these two issues -- # 23 -- is gorgeously inked by John Romita (one of the prides of my collection is an original-printing copy of # 23 with Romita's autograph; it's the earliest original-printing copy Avengers issue I have). Regarding Heck's art, I feel that he was much better suited to more down-to-earth material, such as Iron Man's solo adventures. While Heck's work could be very attractive with the right kind of inker, he never quite developed the larger-than-life dynamics and the flair for group scenes that were absolutely essential for Avengers.

Lee left the book halfway through his last story (#34-35), with Roy Thomas scripting the second half over Lee's plot. Thomas did not exactly hit the ground running on Avengers -- the first story he fully plotted himself turned out to be the first and last appearance of a forgettable race of alien androids named the Ultroids. Then, in # 38, Thomas turned around and came up with a very good issue, with Hercules making his entrance into the Avengers circle (albeit under the manipulations of the Enchantress, which resulted in his father Zeus exiling him to Earth). Thomas did not come up with anything as good for a while, and it didn't help that Heck's work was looking increasingly tired and sloppy. Heck's last issue as regular penciler was # 40, although he made several brief returns over the next several years, including Avengers Annual # 1, a fast-moving but overcrowded romp written by Thomas and featuring almost every Avenger to date.

Big John Buscema, the artist who succeeded Heck, did have the dynamics and the flair for group scenes -- and how! Even though his first few issues had their awkward moments (he was, after all, still adjusting to the superhero genre) and bad inking (from the likes of George Roussos, Vince Colletta, and George Tuska), there were still extremely impressive moments -- the full-page splash in # 43 of Hercules hallucinating the mythical many-headed monster Hydra; the cover of # 44, with Buscema's peerless choreography of a crowded battle. And from the start, Buscema drew better faces than any Marvel artist of his generation (with John Romita a close second).

But Thomas still hadn't quite hit his stride. Things picked up somewhat in #47, although the main plot, involving Magneto, was far less interesting than the subplots -- one involving Hercules returning to Olympus to find it deserted, the other involving Thomas's first significant creation in the pages of Avengers: Dane Whitman, scientist nephew of the villainous Black Knight II, who made a promise on his uncle's deathbed to redeem the name of the Black Knight. In #48, Dane made his debut as Black Knight III; unfortunately, the story was blandly drawn by George Tuska. The good news is that John Buscema used this one-issue break to do both pencils and inks on issues # 49 and # 50. And that, IMO, is where the Avengers got really good. Much more on that in my next review.

Stealth, I’m going to follow along and post some of my own thoughts of the Avengers over the years, although probably less detailed than your own. Funny story: the first comics I ever read as a kid were original copies of Avengers #1-16 (my Dad has a duplicate run of Avengers #1-60). So I really started at the beginning. And I loved it. In brief:

Please note, I love ALL eras of the Avengers (almost), so most criticisms are slightly tongue in cheek
Avengers #1-16
To me, this is sacrosanct, and that’s a feeling I’ve inherited from my Dad. But these comics are beyond brilliant and showcase Silver Age Marvel at its best. The sense of wonder and awe is so potent that I feel its never been recreated ever since. Everything is beautiful, from the villains to the art to the covers to the camaraderie (Iron Man calling Hank “High Pockets”, etc.). The early Masters of Evil stories were totally awesome. Cap’s return and the powerful Stan Lee moments of his being a man out of time and still reeling from Bucky’s death are emotional boxing matches. The Hulk and the Sub-Mariner in the very early issues are just so damn perfect. My father still thinks after all these years that the Avengers line-up should be Cap, Thor, Iron Man, Giant-Man and the Wasp. I prefer that all five, or most of them ALWAYS be in an Avengers line-up.

Avengers #16-30: Cap’s Cooky Quartet
A funny story I’ve told on this board before is that when #16 came out, comic book fandom was OUTRAGED. I’m telling you, OUTRAGED. My father told me his friends all quit reading Avengers, half quiet reading all Marvel comics and some even quit reading comics! It amuses me to no end, knowing what spoiled internet comic book fan babies are out there, to know that in the mid-60’s that comic book fandom was outraged at the change of the line-up of the Avengers. A couple of second stringer villains? Of course, as the years have gone on, I’ve grown to love Hawkeye, Wanda and Pietro to the point where they too are my favorites and I grow angry at even thinking of their treatment in recent years. It wasn’t until the Kang story that Stealth mentions and the Power Man story where he’s punching Cap’s shield on the cover (“the Long Road Home” I think its called?) that this began to feel like the Avengers. And little by little it did, and Wanda and Pietro shined, and Hawkeye became a star, and his and Cap’s banter was plain fun to read. BTW, Stealth that’s awesome to have that story signed!

Avengers #30 - #49
What saved Avengers fandom in the mid to late 60’s according to my Dad, then a wee lad, was the return of Giant-Man, now known as Goliath! Seeing the Wasp on the cover of #28 and then Hank’s AWESOME return in #30 as Goliath really marked a turning point in getting this back to being ‘The Avengers’. Following that were some great stories, and although sometimes the main stories or art suffered, the subplots are what made this run such a classic Marvel run. Goliath was definitely the star now, and Hawkeye was a close second and things continued to pick up with Herc joining, Bill Foster being part of the cast (one of my all-time favorite Marvel supporting characters), the Black Widow and some interesting villains (Living Laser, Whirlwind, etc.). And then once again the team began to change, and in a very good way. The Black Knight is by far one of my favorite Marvel heroes of all, and he was welcome here. And the way the exited Hercules, Cap, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver was done really well, in a way leaving them open for future stories.

I agree that at this point, the Avengers got really, really good. In fact, this coming up is one of my favorite Avengers periods ever, if not my absolute favorite. John Buscema’s artwork was phenomenal and at this point Roy Thomas came into his own. If #1-16 was the golden age of great Avengers stories, at this point we are on the cusp of its Silver Age with the Buscema giving us the best artwork since Kirby and Thomas channeling everything good about Stan’s Silver Age Marvel.

Writing this was a lot of fun. Stealth, you rock for starting this thread My insight will be less wordy in future eras, but I know #1 – 100 very well as I spent many a night in my comic book basement as an Avengers-reading wee lad.

Omg, that's a great story. So Avengers has courted controversy almost from the very start? I love it!

Issue # 22, "The Road Back".

Awwww. Thank you, Cobie.

Way back in the early 70's, I only had the odd reprint here and there... but getting the Masterworks in the late 80's finally allowed me to experience the early issues in a manner that made sense. The first 5 or 6 issues feel more like a "company-wide crossover mini-series" than anything else in the 60's. Suddenly, a separate comic featuring (more or less) ALL the "big guns" at the same time-- Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Giant-Man & Wasp (HUH?), Sub-Mariner, Captain America (where'd HE come from??) and of course #4 leads DIRECTLY into the 2-part FF-HULK story which features The Avengers. That last page of #4 where Rick wonders "What'll happen when The Hulk finds out?" made me think months probably went by... but NO! More like a couple days at most. For someone so anti-social doesn't it seem odd Hulk would get pissed that someone DOESN'T want to hang out with him anymore? (Or, maybe when you've only GOT one friend...) Kirby-Roussos did AVENGERS #4 and the 2 FF issues, but while in AVENGERS #4 it feels like every panel is a classic, the FF issues looked rushed and sloppy. (Yeah, I know George inked them over a weekend, but Jack's work on those 2 FF issues doesn't look inspired, either.)

Chic Stone-- WHOA! if only he'd been onboard from the beginning and inked the entire Kirby run. Can you imagine?

Stan slips up with his over-emphasis on "tight continuity" when, in the middle of a plane-flight (and between issues) Iron Man's armor changes completely. If you "read" the splash page of that issue without the naration or dialogue, it makes a lot more sense, as OBVIOUSLY there's at least one episode from TALES OF SUSPENSE that took place in the meantime. Noticing stuff like this when I re-read a pile of comics all in chronological sequence can be kinda funny.

The KANG story is one of my favorites, although Stone's SLICKNESS is replaced with Ayer's "real-world grittiness". When the group shows up for the emergency meeting on the splash page, it doesn't look like a cartoon anymore, instead, you feel you're watching a newsreal documentary. (This is really happening-- as you read it!) Somehow I managed to read Rama-Tut's cameo in a reprint of FF ANNUAL #2 shortly before reading a reprint of Kang's debut, so for once, even in the 70's, I got a small sense of that "continuity".

Incidentally, if you re-read the Doom-Tut scene in that annual, the DIALOGUE Stan wrote on JUST those few pages makes absolutely NO F***ing SENSE at all!!! I love Stan's work, but every so often he really slips a gear. Must be working 2 jobs (editor AND chief writer). Hey, even geniuses have "off" days. (The SAD thing is, every obsessive fanboy writer from Roy Thomas on down (but ESPECIALLY Roy, of course, he never lets anything go) KEEPS refering back to that one completely absurd conversation.)

While Kirby-Ayers packed a punch, Heck-Ayers really DRAGGED the book down, I'm afraid. When Ayers was replaced, the art really improved a hundredfold. Yes, Heck does "real world" real good, so him doing 4 "down-to-Earth" heroes was SORT of a good match. I'd love to see an original printing of that Heck-Romita issue some day. 2 artists FIGHTING for attention, and the results-- WOW!!! It's like Kirby-Wood on SKY MASTERS. Makes me wish Romita had stuck to his guns and done more INKING, instead of all the pain he says he went thru having to do layouts and pencils on SPIDER-MAN. (The biggest mis-matched WASTE of talent had to be the 8 months on ASM when they had Romita on layouts, HECK on pencils, and Esposito on inks. Had it been Heck on layouts, Romita on pencils, Espo on inks, or Heck on pencils & Romita on inks... WOW.)

Heck doing full art on Iron Man could be hit-and-miss, depending on the deadlines. I have almost every original issue, and they're SO much better-looking than reprints it's criminal. But on AVENGERS, full Heck art, to me, is just something that never should have been allowed. The book NEEDED a slicker finished look.

Something else else that really surprised me when I re-read Roy's debut on the book was just how MUCH his influences stood out. I forget which issues, but Roy did an entire story that feels like a Gardner Fox JLA epic! For 2 issues, it doesn't feel like Marvel at ALL!

It was pretty much hit-and-miss for a long time after that... I'll just finish by saying it struck me that MOMENT Roy FINALLY "got good"-- when the entire book suddenly felt "RIGHT"-- was the issue that introduced... The VISION. (Curse you, Stan Lee, for not leaving John Buscema alone and letting him do a long, unbroken run on THE AVENGERS!)

: )

I used to feel the same way, but then I realized that if things had happened that way, Buscema might have burned out on the book and never done his brilliant long 80s run with Roger Stern and Tom Palmer.

Avengers Volume One # 49-60

After months of bad inking from others, John Buscema picked up the brush himself and showed how to do it right. The opening pages of # 49 are absolutely stunning, the Olympian setting and Hercules' encounter with Typhon, the evil titan almost leaping off the page. Towards the end, the issue returns to this plot thread, which I find more engaging than the main plot thread involving Magneto using manipulations to get Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch back on his side. Then in issue # 50, the Hercules plot takes over the book and is jaw-droppingly powerful from start to finish. Hercules is very well-written here, a ferocious fighter who wins back his place among the gods by defeating Typhon. And when the readers are let into his private thoughts, it's one of my favorite Avengers panels: "Yet, in all the endless cosmos, mine eyes did ne'er behold warriors more valiant -- nor friends more faithful. In sooth, though I undertake a thousand thousan quests...though I try to drown my memories in the heady nectar of adventure...a part of Hercules shall ever be...an Avenger!"

In # 51, Thor and Iron Man are temporarily thrown together with Hawkeye, Goliath and Wasp thanks to the schemes of the Collector; Goliath saves the day by smashing the Collector's giant robot and wrecking the Collector's ship. Buscema is inked by Tuska here, yet the inks mostly recall Buscema's own style, and the book is so much the better for it. Buscema comes up with some amazing designs for the Collector's menagerie of otherworldly creatures.

Making a 180 degree turn, the inking in # 52 is by Colletta, who does one of his worst jobs I've ever seen (and that's saying a lot). Still, this issue is important as the Black Panther joins the Avengers and a new villain, the Grim Reaper (Wonder Man's crazy, vindictive brother) debuts.

# 53, a crossover with X-Men, finally resolves the dangling Magneto/Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch thread, as Magneto's much-abused sidekick the Toad betrays him and lets him fall to his apparent death. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch flee with the Toad, not to be seen again for more than twenty issues. The story's average, but it's great to see Buscema draw the X-Men (even though Tuska's inking again, and this time he's just as bad as before).

And then...the Masters of Evil return, in a story that would be second only to Roger Stern's Masters of Evil story as the best story with the villainous team. # 54 and # 55 find the mysterious Crimson Cowl leading previous members Radioactive Man and Melter, and new members Klaw, Whirlwind, and the Black Knight (who only joins so that he can betray the villains to the Avengers). In a clever twist, it appears that the Cowl is the Avengers butler, Jarvis, but instead the Cowl is a creepy-looking robot named Ultron-5 (the panel of Ultron removing his hood and saying, "What makes you think that I am human?" never fails to scare me, no matter how many times I re-read this story). Art-wise, # 54 is, thankfully, Tuska's last Buscema issue; in # 55, the new inker is George Klein, a DC veteran distinguished for his inking over Curt Swan on Legion of Super-Heroes; Klein inking Buscema rivals Tom Palmer as the most perfect fit for Buscema -- Klein's smooth lines, liquid shadows and perfect balance of detail result in a feast for the eyes.

Next, in # 56, the Avengers help Captain America come to terms with Bucky's death by time-travelling with him to that fateful day in 1945. The story continues in Avengers Annual # 2, where they Avengers discover that history has been changed, and this reality's Avengers (the founding members) are pawn of the evil Scarlet Centurion; Thomas's script is powerful, but the art damages it severely -- Don Heck on breakdowns and Werner Roth on pencils and merely miscast, but Vince Colletta on inks is the nail in the coffin.

The cover to Avengers # 57 is one of the greatest of all time: a dark, atmospheric scene, colored in monochromatic red, of the Avengers dwarfed by a new creation -- as the lettering indicates, "Behold...the Vision!" Though the synthethic robot-man would become arguably the cornerstone of the Avengers, he debuts as a villain, but at the end redeems himself by destroying his creator: Ultron-5! The next issue cleared up the mystery of Ultron-5's creation (he was an experiment of Hank "Goliath" Pym's gone horribly wrong), and found the Vision inducted into the Avengers, proving, in its powerful final splash-page, that "even an android can cry."

Rounding out the "new" creations is the cocky costumed anti-hero Yellowjacket, introduced in # 59, at the end of which the Wasp shocks the other Avengers by agreeing to marry him. The marriage issue, # 60 (inked not by Klein but by Mike Esposito), allows Buscema to draw just about every Marvel superhero at the time, and has a more light-hearted tone (the Circus of Crime crashes the wedding) than the intensely dark last few issues. Yellowjacket turns out to be Hank Pym, who assumed a new personality after a lab accident. I'm generally not a fan other light-hearted superheroics, but this issue works for me.

And all of this happened in only one year's worth of issues! Roy Thomas continued to write the Avengers for a long time, but IMO was never more consistenly good in Avengers than issues # 49-60.

OK, I know most of you aren't a fan of the "New Avengers" lineup but I suggest reading Power Pack/Avengers (which I coincidently bought the digest of today). It's got good humor and quite a bit of action.

"I used to feel the same way, but then I realized that if things had happened that way, Buscema might have burned out on the book and never done his brilliant long 80s run with Roger Stern and Tom Palmer."

WHAAAAAAAT?

John Buscema HATED doing super-heroes! There was more than 10 years between his 2 runs. I suspect the reason he did the 2nd run was because CONAN had gone to hell...

I know he would always talk about how much he hated superheroes, but I take that with a grain of salt -- I suspect that, while he probably did hate working on most superhero books, he secretly enjoyed drawing Avengers. Maybe it was the challenge of the group scenes, maybe it was the quality of the scripts (notice that after Stern was fired, Buscema only stayed on a little over one year), maybe it was a little of both.

It still amazes me to think how long Roger Stern did manage to stay on the book, considering the problems the series had after Englehart left Marvel (than YOU, Gerry Conway!). It seemed from the moment Stern came aboard, things settled down on both the writing and art fronts, and they even had a steady, stable art team for the first time in ages. That team, of course, moved over to WEST COAST AVENGERS, but who could have envisioned "the" classic team of the late 60's returning, and for a LONGER and more stable run the 2nd time out? It put a really black mark in my book as far as Mark Gruenwald is concerned when he let his ego get in the way of simply doing his job and letting the WRITERS do their's. (The parallel with what happened on GREEN LANTERN a few years later is inescapable...)

Avengers #49-60

This is definitely one of the best eras ever in the Avengers. One of the cool aspects of it was the transitional feel to a group of issues where Quicksilver and Wanda make their exit, Hercules has his own adventurous exit and the Black Panther shows up, all coupled with Goliath not being able to grow anymore, only shrink for a few issues. It makes for one funny scene where Hawkeye jokes about how between the three active Avengers, there’s only an archer and two super-heroes who can shrink—not exactly the World’s Mightiest Heroes. And then in one issue Goliath’s powers are restored and the Black Panther joins (via a last page panel), coupled with a great guest appearance by Iron Man and Thor, two of Marvel’s biggest stars and ‘the old guard’ of Avengers.

The Black Panther is one of my favorite Marvel heroes, and the Grim Reaper is one of my favorite Marvel villains, so the next issue is one of my favorites. At this point every single person in the series, whether hero, supporting character or villain is fun to read.

The Masters of Evil story is one of the best Avengers stories ever, and does so much in terms of character advancement and story-telling. We see the Black Knight in all his glory and see why for decades and decades certain writers and artists have had a soft spot for him. Great scenes with Jarvis and the Panther showing his metal. We also pick back up the plot that Whirlwind is posing as the Wasp’s chauffer which is a pretty creepy subplot in and of itself. At this point in Avengers history, the truest ‘cornerstone Avengers’ where definitely Hank & Jan and Hawkeye and that is seen so well here. The Masters of Evil themselves are really great, with the return of former Masters Radioactive Man and the Melter and the addition of Klaw, a great Silver Age Marvel villain, and Whirlwind. The Crimson Cowl twist is excellent and the addition of Ultron to the Avenger’s mythos sparks the beginning of the Avengers other great nemesis (the first being Kang IMO).

The Vision story is so classic that you can’t help but love it. The Vision is definitely the cornerstone of the Avengers in later years as you say Stealth, which will later be evidenced by him appearing on all the covers in the upper left hand corner by the logo. He’s such a dynamic character and just fits so perfectly into the ‘Marvel style’. I love the issue where Cap, Iron Man and Thor stop by to figure out his origin with them, making it such a jam-packed cool issue, and the final panel is perhaps tied for Marvel’s most famous panel in its entire history—‘Even an Android can cry’ and ‘face it tiger—you just hit the jackpot’ are probably the most recognizable.

Although the change to Yellowjacket is not one I’m found of, I don’t mind it *too* much. I prefer Goliath as the codename/costume that Hank Pym should be in, and the change to Yellowjacket marks the beginning of years and years of writers referring to Hank Pym’s personality problems, etc. Even though his creating Ultron was a few issues before, this really does it. Still, the wedding issue is fun, and seeing all the heroes together is great.

Looking forward to more reviews. I always enjoyed the next two issues that take place when Jan and Hank are on their honey-moon, especially the one with Dr. Strange and the Black Knight.

This period in Avengers history seems to me like an early example of "breaking something down in order to build it up again" syndrome. It works here, though. With most of the lineup out of the picture, it makes it easier to spotlight the newcomers.

This was a fun time to be an Avengers fan. Great stories and lots of great interaction among the members. I always liked Black Panther and the Black Knight as well and Hawkeye was always a favorite (as were Black Widow and the Swordsman who would come along shortly)

How did the Green Lantern feud play itself out, and who were the writer and editor involved?

I think Englehart, in the one Yellowjacket story he was able to write before he quit Avengers, had a good handle on Hank, and if he had stayed he would have found a way to make Yellowjacket work. Claremont wrote both Yellowjacket and Wasp very well in Marvel Team-Up. It's really Shooter's fault for hijacking the character and using him to deal with his own demons (IMO, Shooter is the godfather of the Chuck Austen school of superhero writing). Gruenwald made things even worse when he ordered Englehart to turn Hank into the WCA's non-superpowered mascot. Stern's morally ambiguous female Yellowjacket II had the potential to develop into yet another reformed villain if only Stern hadn't been fired from Avengers and black-balled at Marvel for almost 10 years. Harras did a fantastic job of bringing Hank back to superheroics as Giant-Man (the Avengers had a major crisis and needed all the help they could get, so Hank suited up and drank down the giant juice -- simple but brilliant). But when Busiek put the character through an endless series of contortions to bring him back to Yellowjacket, it only proved that Yellowjacket's moment had passed. In an Englehart chat I participated in last year, he said that a few years ago, he submitted a proposal to Marvel for a mini-series that would have given Hank a brand-new superhero identity. Marvel, in their "infinite wisdom" (HA HA) never even responded. I'm holding out for Hank to survive Civil War and to eventually -- finally -- have his day of glory.

It's sad that none of the young-ish hot-shot writers of today seem to have a clue on how to do it right.

Avengers Volume One # 61-88

With Janet and Hank on their honeymoon, the remaining three members -- Vision, Black Panther, and Hawkeye -- spent their time helping Dr. Strange battle the forces of nature (literally) in # 61 and foil an attempted coup in the Panther's kingdom of Wakanda in # 62. These would be John Buscema's last issues for a year, and sadly they would also be the last time Buscema was inked by Klein, who died not long after.

In # 63, Thomas brought back Janet and Hank, but the focus of the new story arc was squarely on Hawkeye, who decided that the team needed muscle and he should be it -- so he became Goliath II. IMO, this was one of the worst decisions Thomas ever made, because it completely took away the character's everyman appeal. But that's only one reason I'm not fond of this story -- there's also the matter of Gene Colan's art (he was perfect for Dr. Strange, but completely wrong for Avengers).

The next story (# 66-68) was better -- Vision was revealed to have a pre-programmed command to rebuild his evil creator into Ultron-6. The first two parts were drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith, and as heavy as the Kirby and Steranko influences are, I personally like this early work much better than his more celebrated art of the 1970s (I do like the X-Men stories that he did in the 1980s). The artist on the finale (who would also draw the next four issues) was Sal Buscema, younger brother of John Buscema. Sal lacked John's draftsmanship and was better at drawing monsters than people; his real strength was energetic storytelling, but that showed up more in later work, such as Defenders and Hulk.

Thomas then came up with one of his most epic stories (# 69-71), as the Avengers became caught up in a time-space adventure involving Kang and a new villain, the Grandmaster. The story heavily featured the Black Knight, which is always good.

I don't much care for most of the stories that followed -- after introducing Zodiac (one of my least favorite villain teams), Thomas pulled a Denny O'Neil and started addressing "relevant topics" such as racism, feminism, and others. Still later, he introduced the Squadron Supreme, and my opinion of Marvel's JLA analogs is the opposite of my opinion of Marvel's LSH analogs, the Imperial Guard (in other words, I don't like them). The only issues between # 72 and # 87 that I like are # 75, # 76, and # 84 -- all three featuring Arkon, the interdimensional barbarian warlord. Thomas & John Buscema always had a flair for this sort of character. As added bonuses, # 75-76 bring back Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, while # 84 features the Black Knight and has my favorite Avengers appearance of the Enchantress.

# 88, a Hulk crossover co-plotted by SF writer Harlan Ellison, was a step back in the right direction. But Thomas was just getting his second wind, and the real event was just around the corner -- the Kree-Skrull War!

Re: Buscema hating doing superheroes.

I wonder if that is why half the team on his 2nd run looked like Conan characters?

Hercules, Namor, and the Black Knight. And then Thor ofcourse. And also one of my favorite arcs (if not my fave) Assault on Olympus. There was like 2 or 3 costumed superheroes in that...the rest seemed to be out of a sword & sorcery type book.

Assault on Olympus is a favorite of mine, too. The art doesn't remind me of sword & sorcery, though. I think it suggests what Wonder Woman's book might have looked like if John Buscema had ever drawn it -- Athena herself looks like Wonder Woman in battle armor. (Buscema actually did draw Wonder Woman once, when she guest-starred in the second Spider-Man/Superman crossover.)

Ooooh... we're moving toward the early 100's, when I first started reading the Avengers

Avengers #61-88

We’re of like minds (again) about the majority of this little run, Stealth. While there were some high points, this kind of seemed like a lull b/t Thomas & Buscema’s excellent 50’s, and the upcoming Kree/Skrull War. I have to say, I really enjoy your comments on the artists (pencilers *and* inkers), as that is something I generally put towards the back-burner when I read comics.

Some random thoughts:

- I love those two ‘Hank & Jan are on their honeymoon issues’. I just really liked the Black Knight & Dr. Strange guest-starring and seeing Wakanda, but really, its just the cool chemistry b/t the Panther, Hawkeye and the Vision that makes these issues so great. In fact, this chemistry would continue to peak my interest even when the actual plots aren’t that great.

- I’ve always hated Hawkeye becoming Goliath II, and thought this was kind of a bonehead move. Also, it just made things more confusing when looking at it via historical hindsight. On a side note, I agree with most of your assessment of Hank Pym’s treatment over the years in regards to his various identities. I don’t mind him all *that* much as Yellowjacket, but prefer him as Goliath. I’m hoping for the chance for him to finally shine too.

- The Ultron-6 story was pretty awesome! With Iron Man and Thor being there to show just how serious a threat Ultron had become. Great, great cover to the issue where he’s blasting back the entire line-up. I’d say this story cemented Ultron’s place as ‘Co-Best Avengers Villain’ besides Kang.

- I really like that Gene Colon Swordsman issue. I never really looked at it from the art point of view, but the reason I love it is because this issue (#66) was the one Avengers Comic my Dad and I were missing for almost my entire childhood until he finally got it when I was about 18. Now I kinda have a soft spot for it once I finally got to read it.

- The switch from Yellowjacket and the Wasp to the return of Quicksilver and the Scarlett Witch is interesting to me, in that I don’t mind it despite my love of Hank & Jan, and I feel like Avengers fans of the day wouldn’t have either. Despite Pietro’s cool appearance in Spider-Man in b/t their departure and return, the two hadn’t really appeared in awhile and it was a worthwhile trade to get them back in return for giving up Hank & Jan. It also shows an early example of how rough it is to keep married characters interesting for long runs at a time.

- I too have never cared much for the Squadron Sinister/Supreme. Are the Lethal Legion issues during this period? Man, my Avengers memory isn’t as sharp as my Spidey one . Any team with Man-Ape, the Living Laser and the Grim Reaper on it is one I might actually route for!

- I love how the Valkrye became such an instant sensation that they went and made her an actual character in that Enchantress issue. IIRC, that takes place in Salem, right? Around this time lots of Marvel comics took place in Salem for some reason or another (I suspect Rascally Roy was behind this). Thor was fighting Loki and the Absorbing Man in Salem in his own series roughly around this time.

- I remember thinking that the Harlan Ellison story wasn’t really so great, especially after they had his name all over the cover. Much cooler, in this young fan’s opinion, was that the Falcon was actually guest-starring and the Hulk was back. I haven’t read this story in years though.

"These would be John Buscema's last issues for a year, and sadly they would also be the last time Buscema was inked by Klein, who died not long after."

I just read how Carmine Infantino wanted to "improve" the look of Mort Weisinger's books, and so got rid of several of the older inkers-- INCLUDING Klein. WAS HE OUT OF HIS MIND??? DC's BEST inker (in my opinion) and he went to Marvel (and took a pay cut) for THAT reason? D'ja ever feel like some people just get promoted above their best station?

"there's also the matter of Gene Colan's art (he was perfect for Dr. Strange, but completely wrong for Avengers)."

I understand Gene Colan, Barry Smith & Sal Buscema were all "filling in" because Stan wanted John Buscema for something else... SILVER SURFER? That ONE decision really showed a serious lack of judgment & reveals an unfortunate moment of out-of-control ego. NO ONLY was Jack Kirby offended that he was never even told about the book until it hit the stands (HE wanted to do a Surfer series himself), NOT ONLY did the SS book NOT SELL in the long run (too pointlessly downbeat & depressing), but AVENGERS had to "put up with" lesser or inappropriate artists in the meantime as a result. That said, I feel Sal's BEST work was in the late 60's/early 70's-- he seemed to slowly decline, PROGRESSIVELY, over the course of his entire career. But when John would come back to replace Sal, you could see it was ALWAYS a huge improvement.

By the way, anybody ever get the feeling Jim Shooter had Gene assigned to THE AVENGERS much later, JUST because he was so wrong for the book, and JUST so he'd have more of an excuse to get rid of him (or harass him so much he'd leave on his own)?

"How did the Green Lantern feud play itself out, and who were the writer and editor involved?"

AVENGERS was never QUITE as badly treated as GREEN LANTERN. AVENGERS kept having good periods interspaced with the bad, despite the continual turn-over of writers & artists. When Gruenwald & Stern took over in the wake of Shooter's DISASTROUS 2nd run (which was more ego-trip than anything else) the book settled into a LONG, stable, creative period, only derailed when Gruenwald decided HE wanted to write the book himself (by having a writer who'd do what HE wanted).

GL had been messed with since the mid-60's. The book lost its whole focus, its original creative team, most of its supporting cast... and as a result (I feel), its sales. NO WONDER as a last-ditch desperate move, they let Denny O'Neil do whatever the HELL he wanted. Like the abrupt change on X-MEN (also drawn by Neal Adams-- HMM) it didn't help, and the book was canned. Over the years, it was revived, but it never seemed to really find itself again, at least, until Steve Englehart (HMMM!) came in (in mid-story) and "fixed" things. Steve has said his run on the book was the FIRST time sales ever DOUBLED. I believe him! Then some FOOL decided because GL was now so popular, they'd use it to "anchor" the ACTION COMICS WEEKLY anthology. Steve wasn't interested, and WALKED. The series-- PLUMMETED, worse than ever. Some editors should have their brains examined. Slowly, GL recovered, but near-irreparable damage (over decades) had been done.

Andy Helfer (who oversaw Englehart's run) took over from Denny O'Neil, causing writer Jim Owsley to leave, as his views differed so drastrically from Helfer's, and he felt their friendship was more important. So in came new writer Gerard Jones. HE looked at the train wreck Hal Jordan's career had become, and wanted, right then and there, to replace him with a NEW character (just as Roger Stern had done with STARMAN!!!). But Helfer convinced him not to, and together, they hatched a LONG-TERM scheme to bring Jordan's career some "closure", and eventually, after he'd come to terms with his life and those pesky Guardians, have him replaced with a new, younger character. It didn't work out that way.

I read most of Jones' run. I liked a lot of it-- the way Hal "came back" from the brink, the way the GLC began to come back together, the way they had different artists rotating on stories focusing on the different GLs. But his "Mosaic" story made NO SENSE at all to me, and made me drop the book-- until Jones wrote me a PERSONAL letter asking me to give it another try! Wow. I did. It got better.

After coming back from the brink, the book was successful once again. And THAT's when Helfer (perhaps foolishly) moved on, and his assistant-- Kevin Dooley-- took over. For about a year, thinkgs continued nicely. There was a GL-Flash crossover done as a loving tribute to the 60's. There was a story about a cosmic villain named "Entropy" that I SWORE was intended as a new origin for The Time Trapper (no dice). But then Dooley started flexing his muscles. Hal began appearing ALL-- OVER-- THE-- PLACE. There were like 4 GL books, plus Hal making guest-appearances like crazy. They were doing with Hal what they'd been doing with Superman & Batman. And I felt they were KILLING him with over-exposure. Instead of more success, apparently, it had the reverse effect--sales DROPPED!!! I kept hanging on, but even I was getting sick of it. And they lost ALL their regular artists, and started having different guys on almost every issue.

One more annoying thing about this run was, there seemed to be some running sub-plot mystery going on that was very vague, and left unresolved. Turns out I was right. Jones intended to bring this to a head with his next story: "EMERALD TWILIGHT". He never got the chance.

At the LAST minute, Dooley decided to change the direction of the book-- and the character-- a direction Jones had been working toward for 4 WHOLE YEARS (and which he never would have done in the first place, had it not been for Helfer's urging). Just as Gruenwald had tried to make Stern write a story Stern felt would violate every character involved, Dooley wanted Jones to tell a story that would violate not only Hal, but EVERYTHING he'd spent 4 WHOLE YEARS building toward. He refused. Dooley replaced him. The result was appallingly badly written, and divided GL fans for the next DOZEN years or more. Jones soon got sick of the whole industry, and pretty much dropped out. Dooley-- who had the NERVE to proclaim himself "GL's #1 fan" in a GL Archive book-- EVENTUALLY left DC. Sometime after he did, other, saner heads finally prevailed. Hal Jordan is back, and in the process, EVERY SINGLE GL character is better-written than they've been for ages-- maybe ever. But it never should have HAD to happen that way.

Cobie, the Lethal Legion issues are indeed in that run -- # 78 & # 79. I skimmed over those issues just now, and I think I may have underrated them; and as Prof mentioned earlier in this thread, John Buscema & Tom Palmer really outdid themselves on # 79 -- I had forgotten that several drawings from that issue were used in "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way." Regarding the Valkyrie/Enchantress issues, # 83 (the one I don't like for revealing Thomas's ignorant views on feminism) does not take place in Salem, but in Rutland, Vermont; real-life Rutland resident Tom Fagan, a comics fan, threw Halloween parties which were often attended by comics fans and comics pros; Thomas wrote Fagan into this story as a tribute. # 84 (the issue I do like), takes place in Arkon's dimension, where Enchantress had fled to after her plans in the previous issue were foiled.

Prof, thank you for the Green Lantern info. Between Mike Grell's departure from GL/GA in the 1970s, and Hal Jordan's return in the 2000s, I only have a few issues -- all of them from the early 1980s, by Mike W. Barr and Keith Pollard, because I'm a fan of both creators. It's obvious I didn't miss much, although sometimes I think of trying the Steve Englehart issues (because I've heard so many good things about them) and the Marv Wolfman issues (because at the time, Wolfman was on his New Teen Titans hot streak); in both cases, the reason I haven't tried them yet is because of Joe Staton.

Spellbinder, since the Avengers early 100s are special to you, I'll dedicate the next two reviews to you.

Avengers Volume One # 89-108

For Princess Crujectra

The first few issues of this block are mostly setup for the Kree-Skrull War, and what's amazing is how busily plotted and relentlessly paced they are: Captain Marvel! Rick Jones! Kree Sentry #559! Ronan the Accuser! Annihilus! Goliath II enslaved! Yellowjacket and three fellow scientists devolved into cavemen! An evil politician stirring up anti-alien hostility! Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor disbanding the Avengers! (Or did they?) Even though the art in these issues shows just how mediocre Sal Buscema can be when he's rushed, Thomas's writing definitely rises above the art.

Of course, the main destination of all this buildup is to Neal Adams' brief but astonishing Avengers run. It's hard to choose the best Adams work out of everything he did for both Marvel and DC in the late 1960s/early 1970s, but I always end up coming back to these Avengers issues. They are simply awe-inspiring in all senses: draftsmanship, dynamics, anatomy, design, storytelling, etc. Credit must also go to Tom Palmer for his peerless inking and coloring, and to Roy Thomas for keeping Adams's wild ideas coherent and cohesive. I first read The Kree-Skrull War twenty years after it was originally published, when I bought back issues of the 1980s Prestige Format reprints -- it was still impressive after all that time, but I can only imagine how spectacular it must have looked when it first came out! Space opera like it had never been done in comics before!! And I think it's worth noting that almost all of the main elements of this story -- Kree, Skrulls, Inhumans, Ronan, Super-Skrull, Annihilus, Supreme Intelligence -- had debuted a few years earlier in Fantastic Four. That's why it really annoys me when people complain about the Shi'ar and the Starjammers being brought into Avengers during the Harras/Epting era. So what if those characters and concepts had been mainly associated with the X-Men? IMO, history repeated itself with Operation: Galactic Storm -- another extraordinary space opera in Avengers, and this time with a proper third act.

Re: The Kree-Skrull War's lack of a third act, it's truly a tragedy that Thomas and Adams had some kind of falling out, resulting in Adams walking away and Thomas scrambling to wrap the story up. (Prof, do you know any details about what went down here?) At least they got John Buscema to draw the final installment, such as it was. # 97 would be the last Buscema/Palmer issue for more than a decade, and I think it could be seen as marking the end of an era for Avengers.

If Thomas had left at the same time as Buscema and Palmer, it would have been a good thing, because I feel that Thomas's last few issues were mediocre and uninspiring. The Hercules/Ares/return of Hawkeye story (# 98-100) seems to me like it was hastily put together, and Barry Windsor-Smith's art doesn't help any. I've always been turned off by BWS's tendencies for excessive detail and ugly faces, especially since his worst flaws became hugely influential (i.e. the Image founders). Thomas's final four issues were all unremarkably drawn by Rich Buckler: # 101 is a second Ellison collaboration, but it doesn't work at all; # 102-104 are a deadly dull wrap-up of the Sentinels plot thread from Thomas's second X-Men run, ending his Avengers run with no real sense of resolution.

That's why I find Steve Englehart's first four issues (# 105-108, Avengers vs. Savage Land mutates, Grim Reaper, HYDRA, and...the Space Phantom, unseen since Avengers # 2) so refreshing. He quickly wraps up almost all of Thomas's dangling threads, especially regarding the relationship between Scarlet Witch and Vision. In fact, Wanda comes across as more assertive and more confident than she ever had previously -- Englehart was truly the first male comic book writer who knew how to write convincing superheroines. And the art in these issues is excellent: John Buscema pencils the first one, with capable inks by Jim Mooney; a large number of pencils handle the next three issues (Rich Buckler, George Tuska, Jim Starlin, Don Heck), with Dave Cockrum's inking as the common thread (not to leave out Joe Sinnott, who also contributes some inks). I think Englehart really sells himself short when he criticizes his early Avengers issues -- they're not perfect, but they have such vitality.

I started buying GL regularly when DAVE GIBBONS-- my favorite DOCTOR WHO artist-- got on board. This was the same issue Len Wein took over as both writer & editor. As he'd done on THOR (at the END of his run), Len decided Hal had been in space too long, and wanted to do the latest in the then-trendy "back to basics" fad of having Hal, back on Earth, back at Ferris, back with Carol, back fighting 3rd-rate super-villains. (He's an intergalactic COP, for God's sake!!!!!) Okay, it was actually not that bad, and anything drawn by Gibbons is bound to be a notch above the usual. But Len pulled this STUNT wherein Carol, despite her knowing Hal for decades' worth of comics by then, STILL could not get it thru her worse-than-Lois-Lane head that being GL was important to Hal, it was who he was. So she gave him this "ULTIMATUM" (in the worst possibly way that no doubt made feminists embarassed to have her on their side). HER-- OR THE GLC. And the IDIOT picked HER. The issue he turned in his badge and gun ("Mr. Garrison!! Teachers aren't ALLOWED to carry guns!" "Oh, I guess I can keep it, then?") Arisia had tears in her eyes, because, as it ought to have been obvious by then... SHE was in love with Hal. (NOT in a POSESSIVE, "You're MINE, you DO what I SAY or ELSE!" kinda way... shudder) The Guardians-- who'd already STUCK it to Hal by forcing him to spend an entire year in space away from Carol, NOW decided to STICK it to Hal AGAIN-- by very publicly appointing the hot-headed JOHN STEWART (who Hal did not like at that point) as his replacement!

AND... just as when Len broke up the FF in a year-long story and jumped ship in MID-story... Len had Hal quit being GL and-- wanna guess? Anybody?

Yep-- Len jumped ship-- IN MID-STORY.

Decades later I read that Dave Gibbons wanted to do space stories. When he discovered that just about the ONLY thing Hal wanted to do was stories on Earth with Carol & Ferris Aircraft... well, he got disgusted and pretty soon, decided to leave. Len, hearing the news, decided (FOR NO DAMN REASON!!!) that, HEY, he'd leave too! (Grrrrrrr.)

Andy Helfer got onboard sometime around here. Thru the most REMARKABLE luck, there was exactly ONE fill-in issue. A month later... Steve Englehart & Joe Staton debuted. Steve recently said that Andy told him, do what you what, it doesn't matter. Whatever anybody does, the sales never change on this thing. Steve-- DID what he wanted. The sales-- SHOT UP!!! Damn.

Steve did his homework, FIGURED OUT Carol Ferris from decades of inconsistent and incompetent writing-- and then, GOT RID of her. Shortly after, Hal was a GL again. Shortly after, Arisia declared her love. I swear, Staton's art may be what you'd call "cartoony"-- but when he drew HER, it was like magic. I know he must really love that character. (He was the 1st one to ever draw her, after all, back in the TALES OF THE GLC mini-series Mike Barr wrote.) Now I know some people over the years got VERY uncomfortable, in the same way people got uncomfortable about Jerry Lee Lewis and Wynona Ryder in the movie GREAT BALLS OF FIRE... but dammit, THOSE are among my all-time favorite GL comics!!!

Steve's a LOT more forgiving about certain artists than I am. I did NOT like the guy who filled in for Joe when they were doing MILLENNIUM. For that matter, I found MILLENNIUM one of the most UNREADABLE things ever perpetuated. It took company-wide-crossovers to several whole new levels that we've ALL been suffering for since, and to no good results I ever saw. And right after, ACW happened... YEESH. Before you knew it, Denny "drag 'em thru the mud" O'Neil got his DIRTY paws on the series again (as editor) and he started his run by MURDERING John Stewart's wife in the very 1st episode. Son of a *****!

You know-- generally, stuff like this can't happen when creators OWN the characters they create. Maybe that's why I've slowly gotten more and more disgusted with Marvel & DC over the last 2 decades.

I bought the entire Neal Adams run of AVENGERS-- plus the Barry Smith issues-- as back issues about 25 years ago. Sometime later, the "deluxe" reprints came out, and while nice, a lot of detail & mood was lost in the reprinting.

I've read the story (known at the time as the "Skrull-Kree War"-- they renamed it after-the fact!) about 4 times now. You know, for me, it keeps getting worse. I'm not sure if it's the art, in which so much of the plotting and storytelling is tied up, or Roy's sense of plotting, or just Roy's mock-Shakespearean style of dialogue-writing (why he never worked on ST:TNG is beyond me). The whole thing doesn't really "take off" for me until they head INTO SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!! Then-- WOW.

I now tend to feel that Buscema is a more coherent visual storyteller than Adams has ever been, but having Buscema do a chapter here and the finale there renders a lot of the flow incoherent. From what I've read, Adams kept BLOWING DEADLINES. And, having done so, had the NERVE to be offended when they got Buscema to fill in for him. Which in turn, led to him leaving early (though, I'm not sure anybody but Adams & Thomas had any inkling the story ended before it was meant to at the time).

I only just got all the issues I was missing via ESSENTIAL AVENGERS this year. I'm of the opinion that the 2nd Sentinels story was SO intense, SO volatile, SO wrenching, that it should have been the LAST Sentinels story-- EVER. So having Roy do a 3rd one, and so quickly, was the startt of a BAAAAAAD trend. (For decades, I thought Dave Cockrum's Sentinels story was the 3rd one-- and that THAT should have been the last one, EVER. How many have there been since-- 200? 300???) At least Joe Sinnott's inks were nice.

Roy's dialogue got more and more annoying. When Englehart debuted, his early issues may NOT have been the greatest thing ever... but even with the very 1st issue, I found the dialogue MUCH more tolerable. WHAT A RELIEF!!! My memories of this are still very clear, because, it's been less than a YEAR since I read them (and for my first time ever).

I just wish the art had been more consistent. Apparently, Marvel writers at the time were "de facto editors". It was often the writer's job to line up the art team back then. Naturally, Stan & Roy had more "pull" than Steve. (This explains the large number of issues where Don Heck, Mike Esposito, Bob Brown, etc., were involved.)

By the way... I also managed to pick up every issue of X-MEN from #49 to the end of the run about the same time. Again, the originals look better than any reprints. And to me, Adams' X-MEN run is VASTLY superior to his AVENGERS run. It just holds together much better.

Avengers Volume One # 109-135 and Giant-Size Avengers # 1-4

For Princess Crujectra

After a bright start, the Steve Englehart era took many twists and turns on its voyage to pure brilliance. The 110s and 120s find artists of varying talent coming and going, while the plots and the selection of villains (Dormammu, Loki, Magneto, Ultron, Thanos, and Klaw on the one hand; Imus Champion, the Living Bombs, the Lion God, the Broglodytes and Zodiac on the other hand) are equally uneven. The high point of early Englehart is undoubtedly The Avengers/Defenders Clash, the first -- and one of the best -- multi-issue crossover between two comic books (Avengers # 115-118 and Defenders # 8-11). At the time, Engelhart was writing both books (and at the end of this storyarc, he left Defenders so he could concentrate on improving his work on Avengers.) Secretly manipulated by Dormammu and Loki into fighting each other while searching for the components of a mystical weapon named the Evil Eye, the Avengers and the Defenders eventually team up against the villains, defying them "TO THE DEATH" while the universe is turning into a monster-filled living nightmare. When the smoke clears, the Scarlet Witch is the only hero left standing, and she saves the day! If that's not a major turning point for Wanda, I don't know what is; Engelhart would, from this point on, develop Wanda further into one of the first superheroines with a three-dimensional personality.

Another strong female character would be an original creation of Englehart, who enters the picture in # 112: the mysterious Eurasian martial-arts mistress named Mantis. By # 114, Mantis and her lover, the reformed villain Swordsman have joined the Avengers. As the issues go on, the subplots of Mantis's origin and the Scarlet Witch-Mantis-Vision-Swordsman soap-operatics slowly take over the book, building to the stunning cosmic epic known as The Celestial Madonna Saga (# 129, GSA # 2, # 130-132, GSA # 3, # 133-135, and GSA # 4.) Englehart brings back Kang, unseen for a long time, and firmly establishes him as one the Avengers Top Three villains; his quest for the Celestial Madonna, who turns out to be Mantis, is opposed not only by the Avengers but also by Rama-Tut and Immortus, two of Kang's "other selves". From Earth to Limbo and back, from the return of Hawkeye to the shocking death of the Swordsman, from the origin of the Kree-Skrull conflict to the introduction of the Priests of Pama and the Cotati, from the full origins of Mantis and Vision to the awakening of the Scarlet Witch's full powers, and finally to the weddings of Scarlet Witch & Vision and Mantis and the Cotati-using-the-body-of-Swordsman...this story truly has it all. Even though my sentimental favorite Avengers epic is Harras & Epting's Sersi-Crystal-Black Knight-Proctor Saga, the Celestial Madonna Saga is a very close second, one of the most ambitious stories ever attempted in a superhero comic, and a model for many superhero stories over the last 30 years (including the Sersi-Crystal-Black Knight-Proctor Saga, which has more than a few homages to the Celestial Madonna Saga). And by the way, as long as I'm counting my favorites, I should mention that Operation Galactic Storm takes third place.

Art-wise, this block of Englehart issues has so many artists and is so wildly uneven, it necessitates a paragraph in itself. The high points are: Giant-Size Avengers # 2 (Mantis's revelation and the Swordsman's death) and # 3 (villains: Kang and the Legion of the Un-Living), both spectacularly pencilled by Dave Cockrum -- # 2 is inked by Cockrum himself with a lot of help from Neal Adams and others, while # 3 rises above weak-tea inks by Joe Giella; John Buscema guest-penciling # 124 (villain: Star-Stalker) and # 125 (villains: Thanos's alien armada), with Cockrum inking; Cockrum also inked Bob Brown's last issue, # 126 (villains: Klaw and Solarr). The low points are: basically any issue which Don Heck (who was dealing with personal problems) either pencilled or inked -- Giant-Size # 4 (Heck pencils) looks awful, but it works because of Englehart's brilliant script, so I would say the absolute worst is # 121 (villains: Zodiac) because Heck's inking does the unthinkable by making John Buscema look bad. Somewhere in the middle are: Sal Buscema & Joe Staton's adequate but stable short run, # 127-134 -- Staton, embellishing Sal Buscema's layouts, wisely reins in his cartoony tendencies and sticks to the Marvel house style; Bob Brown's better issues (specifically the Avengers/Defenders Clash and the aforementioned Cockrum issue); and George Tuska's typically bland pencils on # 135.

Finally, Roy Thomas made up for his weak last few issues by scripting some of the Celestial Madonna issues from Englehart's plots, and for writing Giant-Size Avengers # 1 (pencilled by Rich Buckler and nicely inked by Dan Adkins), which posited a possible origin for Wanda and her brother as children of Golden Age heroes Whizzer and Miss America. Considering what a disaster the children-of-Magneto origin turned out to be in the long run, this long-forgotten origin looks better every day.

And to think, I came in on the Zodiac story!

Kang had been gone a while, but not nearly THAT long-- he was involved in the Grandmaster story, after all, the one which introduced both The Squadron Sinister-- and funny enough-- The Invaders! (To THINK, Roy Thomas had to scramble for an entire ANNUAL just to "explain" why, during that fight, Captain America had his triangular shield instead of the round one. SHEESH!!!)

I personally rank Heck-Tartag on GIANT #4 as the all-time low point. This is the one where George Perez said he thought the figures during the wedding scene "looked like Mego toys", and walked into the editor's office declaring, "I can do better than THAT!!!" And, so full of youthful arrogance as he was, he got the chance to prove himself! (And wouldn't you know, his first 2 issues they had Colletta on inks. AUGH!)

Oops!

Thanks for the correction. I've edited my previous post.


Avengers Volume One # 136-149

What could possibly follow The Celestial Madonna Saga? Wisely, Englehart chose to write a modest pair of back-to-back short stories that introduced potential members. It appeared that Wasp and Yellowjacket may be returning, and Moondragon, a guest player in the Celestial Madonna Saga, was thinking of sticking around. But the most memorable of the potential newbies was Henry McCoy, the former X-Man known as the Beast. Englehart's first ongoing superhero gig had been the Beast's short-living solo series in Amazing Adventures. Before Englehart took over, the Beast had become a tortured soul with a monstrous appearance. Englehart tossed all the angst out the window, instead choosing to emphasize the Beast's eloquence, intelligence and wit; in fact, Englehart himself has admitted that the Beast became his fictional alter ego, and that if he could have shown Beast smoking pot, he would have. Despite its quality, the series sold poorly, and Englehart had to wrap up the plot in an issue of Incredible Hulk. And when the opportunity presented itself for Beast to join the Avengers, Englehart seized the day.

The first post-Celestial Madonna issue, #136, was actually a fill-in issue, reprinting one of Englehart's Beast solo stories guest starring Iron Man. Fill-ins would be frequent for Avengers throughout the rest of the 1970s, and into the early 1980s.

Issues #137-138 find the team fighting the cosmic villain the Stranger, who, in a Wizard of Oz twist, turns out to be the Toad impersonating the Stranger. Wasp is injured during the battle, and is hospitalized in #139, where her stalker, Whirlwind, disrupts her recovery. Yellowjacket figures out that Whirlwind is Wasp's chauffer, and attacks the creep. But it is Beast who saves the day, while Yellowjacket grows uncontrollably in #140, necessitating the Vision to phase into Yellowjacket's body with the cure. All four of these issues are unremarkably penciled by George Tuska, made even more unremarkable by Vince Colletta's inks.

# 141 is where Englehart really hits his stride, and with him every step of the way is George Perez, the first semi-regular Avengers penciler since John Buscema. Perez spent the 140s saddled with fair-to-middling inkers: Colletta, Grainger, Esposito, but the raw talent was there from the start, and could never be completely obscured. After thirty years, it's nice to see a Marvel book with art that clearly has been influenced by the best of both Marvel and DC up to that time (just as when Perez moved to DC in the 1980s, it was neat to see DC books with elements of the Marvel house style in the art.)

Englehart's scripting definitely took a turn for the quirky here, with a seven-part storyarc (interrupted by a two-part fill-in by another writer in # 145-146) involving the Avengers uncovering corporate corruption and getting trapped in the Squadron Supreme universe, where DC in-jokes abound (my favorite is Lois Lane and Lana Lang sunbathing on a roof). The highlight of the story is the transformation of Patsy Walker (the breakout star of Marvel's by-then-defunct romance comics line) into a superheroine, Hellcat. Englehart had previously written Patsy into the Beast solo stories, and bringing her into Avengers was one of his best decisions. What can I say about Hellcat as written by Steve Englehart except that it's wonderful, delightful, superlative? Hellcat was the ultimate wish-fulfillment character for fangirls. One of the reasons I don't like J.M. De Matteis is because of what he did to Hellcat when he was writing Defenders -- the character was so damaged that even Englehart himself could not undo the damage when he wrote a Hellcat limited series in 2000.

The secondary plot involves a few Avengers tracking Kang through the timestream all the way to...the Old West?? These scenes, IMO, are where the quirkiness gets too thick -- they anticipate the same problem I have with Englehart's West Coast Avengers run. But as long as Englehart sticks to the primary plot, this storyarc (retroactively titled The Serpent Crown when it was recently collected in a TPB) is pure pleasure.

Just as I consider the end of The Kree-Skrull War to be the end of an era, I also consider the end of The Serpent Crown to be the end of an era. Corporate and editorial politics would lead Englehart to temporarily leave Marvel, and in my opinion Avengers didn't completely recover until the Roger Stern/John Buscema era -- more than 100 issues later!

Looks like I’ve gotten behind on this thread! Glad to see you’re keeping this wonderful thread alive Stealth (and thanks for reminding me! )

Avengers Volume One # 89-108

Set-Up for the Kree Skrull War – Even the issues preceding the Kree-Skrull War are a blast to read, and I really love Captain Marvel and Rick Jones involvement. It really gives you a sense of the Marvel U during this time. Like others, this is one of my favorite times in Avengers history too, and the Kree-Skrull War and later Englehart issues make the Avengers one of the best Marvel comics of this entire era. Stealth, you’re absolutely right in that a great deal of these concepts were old Fantastic Four ones that came into play here and the combination of that and the involvement of Cap, Iron Man and Thor really make this a ‘Marvel Universe’ spanning story.

Phenomenal Neal Adams art! Like said, all too brief!

The Kree-Skrull War itself – what a great, great Avengers story, and the beginning of a long tradition of great space epics for the Avengers. I love that in addition to the current Avengers, the five original members were a part of the story. As usual, IMO, the shining participants among the Avengers were the Vision and Hawkeye, and to some degree the Scarlett Witch. There is no doubt that the Vision emerged as the ‘star’ of the Avengers right around here (indeed, he was Marvel’s most popular character in the 70’s besides Spidey and the Thing). I love the issue with Hawk Pym resuming his Ant-Man persona and going inside the Vision. Really, I can go on and on about the Kree-Skrull War, but its all been said before.

Avengers #100 – even as a kid, I could tell this wasn’t the greatest of stories, but the notion that all past Avengers were included, even the Swordsman made this issue just a blast to read. Seeing Hercules again and returning Clint to Hawkeye (after the AWFUL decision to make him Goliath II) are good and I like the Hulk here, even if the Hulk during this era was the 70’s Hulk aka ‘the strongest one there is’.

X-Men/Avengers Crossover – this story stands out for two reasons that don’t have much to do with the story at all (like Stealth says, kinda dull). First, it is one of those rare X-Men appearances b/t the cancellation of their title (it got better) and the New X-Men, so that’s kind of cool. But more important, this story gets Quicksilver away from the Avengers for the first time that really sets him apart and sets him on the path that he’s taken to this day. Although very subtly, it marks Wanda becoming more of an Avenger and more in touch with the Vision, while Quicksilver embraces more the jerk persona that he’s always shown, as well as take his own path for a long time (despite coming in and out of the Avengers some more). If nothing better, at least these issues show some great beginnings to the Wanda/Vision romance, one of the greatest in Marvel’s history (if only a few current comic book writers would understand that—I’m looking at you Brian Bendis).

Enter Englehart – can you name five better writers than Swinging’ Steve during this era? I doubt anyone can. Englehart changed Wanda and you can feel his impact almost immediately. The Grim Reaper/Space Phantom arc remains one of my favorites, and I love, love, love the cover to #108 (at least, I think its #108). Plus, this has one of my favorite line-ups of all, with Iron Man, Thor and Cap back, and with the Panther, Wanda and the Vision in full force (and Hawkeye before he leaves briefly). The minor tweaks to come will turn the Avengers into one of my favorite line-ups of all time. Also, as Stealth says, great art all around!

Avengers Volume One # 109-135 and Giant-Size Avengers # 1-4

Since so many good comments have been made, I’ll just through in a few more:

- The Black Widow joins for one issue (#109) – this is fun for me (with DD included too), even though Natasha joining in this point in her career is obviously a mistake. But I’m glad she ‘officially’ joined here, since she’s so important to Avengers history. Something else else I did recently was reread all her stories in Daredevil and I’ve fallen in love with the idea of the two of them as a team (just like I love reading Cap when it starred him and the Falcon together).

- Avengers/Defenders – what a fun story. Hulk/Thor, one of the best pair-ups for a fight in all of Marvel. Namor/Cap, which rocked! And smack in the middle of it all: Hawkeye, as usual! Great story.

- There’s a cool little Klaw/Panther story in here somewhere, and despite the impressive line-up of Avengers I liked that the Panther was not forgotten and had some good stories before his eventual departing the team in a few issues.

- Mantis/Swordsman – the entrance of Mantis & the Swordsman truly mark one my favorite eras of the Avengers. I love the character of Mantis, from her attempts to ruin the Wanda/Vision romance, to her role as Celestial Madonna, and how she was so important that Marvel’s best had to defend her time and time again, and how she’s such a strong-willed, kick-ass character that she can do it without them. I also like when she says ‘This One’ . I think the Swordsman here is brilliant and his death is one of the best in Marvel’s history.

- The Celestial Madonna Saga – I have many, many favorite Avenger’s stories, but I don’t think I could ever argue with anyone who said this was the greatest Avengers story of them all. It has *everything*. I mean, really, death, weddings, drama, Iron Man & Thor fitting in seamlessly despite their own comics, Thanos, Kang, Kree, Skrulls…it makes you want to catch your breath. Simply comic book magic. (Just like Stealth, my fave is the Sersi-Crystal-Black Knight-Proctor Saga ). Part of me still cringes whenever Mantis is used b/c I feel most don’t get her right, but an even bigger part of me is waiting with great impatience for her return in some great, majestic story in the future.

- One other thing I love, is when Iron Man and Thor are on the roster and are in charge of the team. Cap being the team leader has been done *so* much, that I find it very refreshing when Iron Man and Thor are involved, and I especially love when these two characters get a chance to interact with other Avengers from other eras. Any line-up with Iron Man, Thor, Wanda, Vision, Hawkeye, Mantis with the Black Panther or Cap is one that will have me in pure glee.

Avengers Volume One # 136-149

These are some fun issues, although like you say Stealth, the quirkiness is in full effect towards the end of Englehart’s run. But this was such a rich time for the Avengers, that some things stand out:

- Beast – IMO, Beast is never better than when he’s with the Avengers, especially Wonder Man, although that would come later. In fact, all these years later (and all these stories) and I’ve never really liked seeing him in an X-Men line-up, even for a Marvel Silver-Age traditionalist like myself. He’s so much fun, and so energetic that he really steals the scenes.

- Moondragon – one of the most annoying heroes in Marvel, and thus, one of the most interesting. Although what she did to Quicksilver come years later is probably the worst, I can’t help but want to strangle her when she’s convincing Thor to leave the team! But yet, its so hard to deny the drama and dynamic she brings.

- Hellcat – Though not one of my absolute favorites, I can see why people would love her completely, and her introduction in the Avengers continued the tradition that Mantis & the Swordsman started of new rich characters of this era joining up. I’m glad she’s back ‘to normal’ these days, although I wish I would see her more.

- Yellowjacket & the Wasp – These are two of my favorites and seeing them return marks another transition for the Avengers. I really like how the Vision inside Hank is a play on the earlier Hank inside the Vision story during the Kree-Skrull War. Its this era here that any one reading the Avengers know that beyond the ‘Big 3’ the real core of the Avengers are Hank, Jan, Clint, Wanda, Vision, and even Black Panther & the Beast. Very rarely would another hero encompass that to the same degree (possibly Wonder Man, and Ms. Marvel to a lesser degree, the Black Knight, etc.)

- Perez – IMO, the greatest comic book artist since Jack Kirby and nothing short of amazing. His earliest issues are spectacular, as are all of his issues in almost any era in almost any comic.

- The Serpent Crown Saga – this saga isn’t really up there for ‘greatest Avengers story’ contender, but its fun and its good enough to maintain enjoyment. Seeing Kang so soon after the Celestial Madonna Saga heightened his sense of villainy, and I really enjoy the notion of the Two-Gun Kid and Hawkeye being such good buddies.

This really is the end of an era, as #150 marked the end of Moondragon & Hellcat in the Avengers, Kirby’s return (which I personally enjoy, although I’m sure some not as much) and a different kind of story-telling in Avengers that wasn’t so sharp when it came to character moments. Definitely though, #98 - #149 mark one specific segment of Avenger’s history, with the Englehart issues being some of the best super-hero team book stories ever told.

"All four of these issues are unremarkably penciled by George Tuska, made even more unremarkable by Vince Colletta's inks."

As if countless issues of Tuska art being inked by Mike Esposito weren't bad enough, there was that period when it seemed almost EVERY issue with Tuska art was inked by Vince Colletta. (sigh) That said, it seems Steve Englehart managed to play to Tuska's strenghts-- "blunt, brute force" tension & action. There was a brief running joke where the characters went on about the problems they faced, and The Beast said, "The super-biz is LIKE that, though." Later, when Hank flies into a fit and yells, "It's madness-- MADNESS!!!" Beast replies, "The super-biz is LIKE that, though." What a welcome relief he was to all the overly-serious pretentiousness!

I, of course, had NO idea of Hank & Jan's long solo-career history over all those years, so the revelation that their chauffer was Whirlwind (formerly The Human Top-- one of Stan's STUPIDEST villains, EVER!!!) meant nothing to me-- nor did the fact that, apparently, Hank & Jan were the ONLY people who didn't know by then (the readers, apparently, were in on it for many years before Hank figured it out-- which in retrospect, makes him seem stupid). I have a fond memory of the scene where he grows to huge size, and as Whirwind is trying to fly away, Hank smashes his fist through the side of a brick building, yelling at the top of his lungs, "YOU OWE ME, MISTER!!!" What a change from the "scientific" type! No doubt stuff like this "inspired" (he said-- SARACASTICALLY) the C*** that Jim Shooter pulled later on-- but it was NOT called for.

George Perez-- incredibly-- was once on my "worst artists" list (along with Bob Hall, Alan Kupperberg, Frank Robbins). He got better though. WAY better. I still recall the Grim Repaer story as THE issue where, for the first time, I didn't see any drawing mistakes. YIPEE! Nice to see someone get the chance to "learn on the job". Nobody ever gave ME that chance...

Like Beast, Hellcat was a delight, and it was a shame to lose her from AVENGERS so soon.

Moondragon is one of those characters that is so "personal" to the one who created her (in this case, Jim Starlin) that MOST writers have never "got" her right. Steve Gerber (in DAREDEVIL, where I first saw her) is, to this day, the ONLY writer I've ever seen who treated her in a way I'd consider proper. Sadly, while for the most part back then it seemed Englehart could do no wrong, with Moondragon, he did, and STEVE-- of all people-- set her on the path that EVERY OTHER hack writer has followed, each one treating her WORSE than the one before!! There was a SILVER SURFER graphic novel that Starlin wrote (in the late 80's, I think) where, for the first time in nearly 15 years, somebody (her CREATOR, of course) wrote her properly again.

I was getting really fed up with the CONTUNUAL fill-ins and changes in creative line-ups. The 2-part "Assassin" story-- written by Tony Isabella (the FIRST time he "calmed down" and treated a story "seriously", without getting over-wordy and joking it up) impressed me-- it just never should have appeared when it did. (In fact, while it was supposed to have been GIANT #5, I had a lot of trouble, based on WHO was a member in that story, trying to figure out WHERE it "fit" in continuity!! Don't you hate that?)

My frustration reached its peak when, after spending an entire YEAR having The Avengers searching for a "new lineup", they finally reached #150-- and most of the issue was a "DEADLINE-DOOM" reprint! AUGH!!!

And then, the NEXT month, they announced Steve's departure! WHAT TH'...??? Was I pissed. I actually wrote Stan Lee a personal letter-- one that contained profanity (something I almost never do), saying I wished something could be done about the "chaos". He actually wrote me back, saying he'd look into it. MANY years later, thinking back on that, I dread the thought that my "request" may have-- in even the smallest way-- led to an obsessive, dictatorial CONTROL FREAK taking over as Editor-In-Chief. (AAAUGH!!)

DECADES after-the fact, I discovered that the "editorial interference" I'd read mentioned somewhere... turned out to be ONE person: Gerry "I'm only in it for the money" Conway. According to Englehart himself, Gerry got on his nerves SO much, he not only quit THE AVENGERS, and Marvel entirely, but planned to quit COMICS altogether (following a "brief" tenure at DC, doing JLA and BATMAN, which he'd more-or-less "warmed up for" when he did The Squadron Supreme and The Shroud). THANK YOU, Gerry Conway!!! (He said, sarcastically)

Back then, Steve was my FAVORITE "current" writer, working wonders on EVERYTHING he touched. Marvel, in a great many ways, was never the same after he left. The chaos caused by Conway and the many gaping voids he left with his abrupt departure (to think, had Steve hung in a few months, Conway would have been gone) left an opening for some really talented writers, like Dave Kraft & Jim Shooter-- though the latter seemed hell-bent on needlessly running characters through the mud, and his run on AVENGERS, partly thanks to Perez' out-of-control scheduling problems (taking on 4 projects at a time and blowing deadlines on all of them) meant the bright spots in AVENGERS came in erratic spurts. Oh well...

I just want to say thanks to Prof, Cobie and of course Stealth for this thread.

I'm really enjoying this and I hope you keep going and cover the ENTIRE history, up to and including, the current run.

Keep up the good work guys.

You're very welcome, WWC. Glad you're enjoying. And the best is yet to come.


Avengers Volume One # 150-177 & Annuals # 6-8

Originally intended as the introduction of the new lineup, issue #150 has only a few pages of new Englehart material, and the rest is a reprint of Lee & Kirby's # 16. And then...exit Steve Englehart, enter a most unwelcome Gerry Conway. Issue # 151 is a real Frankenstein's Monster of a story, with Conway and Jim Shooter both padding out Englehart's final bunch of pages. According to Englehart, the pages that he recognizes as his own are 3, 7, 10, 14, 15, 17, 22, 23, 26, 27, 30, and 31. The new Avengers lineup is a dissapointment: Jan & Hank AND Wanda & Vision in the same lineup? I don't think there should be more than one married couple in a superhero team; Hellcat lets Moondragon talk her out of joining the Avengers (NOOOOOO); Moondragon herself is one of my least favorite characters, so I have no problem with her own exit -- regrettably, it wasn't a permanent exit. And then there's the return of Wonder Man. I must admit I've never really been a fan of Wonder Man, mostly because I associate him with the decline of Avengers.

Perez is gone for # 152-153, where John Buscema and Joe Sinnott substitute with art that is far below both artists' standards -- but who can blame them, when they were working from awful Conway scripts? Conway's first Avengers storyarc, a convoluted mess involving the Living Laser, the Whizzer, and Nuklo, ends in Avengers Annual # 6 (the first non-reprint Avengers Annual since # 2), drawn by Perez with three inkers, all of them failing to do Perez justice. By the time Perez returned to the monthly book in # 154, Avengers had acquired the services of Pablo Marcos, a good inker AND an inker who stayed on the book for many issues. Which makes it a shame that Conway's second (and, thankfully, his last) Avengers storyarc -- this one involving the Sub-Mariner, Dr. Doom, and Attuma -- was just as bad as his first. Perez began missing deadlines again, and so # 156-159 have undistinguished guest pencils -- this time from Sal Buscema (# 156, # 158-159) and Don Heck (# 157). Conway left after # 157, a dreary, confusing stand-alone involving the statue of the Black Knight, went to DC, and wrote five thousand issues of JLA.

# 158-159 is the first storyarc by Shooter, and right from the start he establishes one of his recurring flaws -- the villain (in this case, Shooter's creation Graviton) is too powerful! Shooter's issues during his first run tend to follow a pattern: the Avengers are out-matched by a single, powerful villain who is only defeated by some plot contrivance. In addition to this, I personally find Shooter's Avengers stories to be unpleasantly fatalistic and depressing -- Claremont's X-Men stories have the same flaw, but at least Claremont had a fanciful streak and a certain technical flair, while Shooter had neither. The shame of it is, some of Shooter's early issues have really good art -- Perez/Marcos on #160-162 (villains: Grim Reaper, Ultron) and Byrne/Marcos on #164-166 (villains: Lethal Legion II, Count Nefaria). Perez/Marcos also did the first few issues of Shooter's worst folly, the ten-part Korvac Saga (#167-168, #170-177), which in my opinion is just as self-indulgent as its 80s companion, Secret Wars II. I'm utterly puzzled by the high regard in which the Korvac Saga is held -- IMO, it's badly structured and badly paced, it squeezes in a ton of pointless guest stars, it humiliates the Avengers by having the government take away the team's special privileges (those special privileges are what make Avengers such a great wish-fulfillment book in the first place), it has yet another hopeless battle against yet another ridiculously powerful villain, and it has what I consider one of the worst endings of all time: this story asks us to believe that a murderous sociopath was actually on the side of the angels all along, and it asks us to take the egomaniacal Moondragon's word for it! On a personal level, I consider the TPB of this story (which I got rid of after one reading) to be one of the biggest wastes of money in my life. I think it proves that Shooter needed a strong-willed editor like Silver Age Legion of Superheroes editor Mort Weisinger to produce good work; instead, he was editor-in-chief for most of his years at Marvel, and he indulged himself to a sickening extent. Finally, a few words about Shooter's Mary Sue, government suit Henry Peter Gyrich: I know he's supposed to be a character we "love to hate", but I'd rather eat broken glass than read any story with Gyrich in it -- I read superhero comics to escape from the ugly real-life realities of having to deal with jerks like Gyrich, not to be reminded of those ugly real-life realities!

On a happier note, Avengers Annual # 7 (taking place just before Korvac) is in this block of issues, to remind us of how great an Avengers story can be; this is the next-to-last installment of Jim Starlin's Warlock vs. Thanos saga (it concludes in Marvel Two-in-One Annual # 2, but Avengers Annual # 7 does work as a stand-alone), and it's also yet another excellent Avengers space opera. Avengers Annual # 8 (taking place right after Korvac), by Roger Slifer and George Perez, is a well-drawn but nasty little story about Dr. Spectrum's sentient power-prism run amok.

Avengers Volume One # 178-196 & Annual 9

Following the end of Korvac, there were three fill-in issues in a row, after which Avengers picked up where it left off, this time with David Michelinie as the (nominal) writer. Never quite as horrible as Shooter at his worst, this small block of issues is distinguished mostly for being...undistinguished. Nominal writer David Michelinie is my favorite Iron Man writer (or rather, co-writer with Bob Layton), but his Avengers stories are generally dull superheroics that could take place in any run-of-the-mill superhero team book. Additionally, Michelinie was great at writing non-superpowered women in Iron Man (most notably Bethany Cabe), but when it came to writing Wasp, Scarlet Witch, or Ms. Marvel, he was clueless (I don't include Jocasta because the very concept of this she-droid feels creepy and gross to me).

In fairness, I think a couple of the stories are okay -- the battle against the Absorbing Man in #183-184, and the battle against the Grey Gargoyle in #190-191 (although the latter was plotted not by Michelinie but by then-Avengers-editor and future-Avengers-writer Roger Stern, and it's not the only time that Michelinie would have minimal input). And I think the first appearance of Taskmaster (#194-196) is better than okay, it's a good story that should have been the beginning of something better than what actually did follow. I particularly like the guest appearance of Scott Lang as Ant-Man II (a Michelinie/Layton creation who undeservedly ended up on the C-List and later became cannon fodder, because no writer other than his creators knew what to do with him). I think he had the potential to become to the Avengers what the Atom was to the JLA.

Art-wise, Avengers had John Byrne for #181-191 and George Perez for #194-196, but Pablo Marcos was gone, and a mixed bag of inkers (Joe Rubinstein and Gene Day on one hand, Dan Green and Jack Abel on the other hand) keeps this from being a highlight of either pencilers' career. In Avengers Annual # 9, Don Newton -- an underappreciated artist who did far too little work for Marvel -- takes an adequate Bill Mantlo script (villains: Mistress the super-computer and her robot guardian, Arsenal) and produces by far the best-looking issue in this block, especially the second half with inks by Joe Rubinstein.

This time, I gotta do in "reply" form...


"Jan & Hank AND Wanda & Vision in the same lineup? I don't think there should be more than one married couple in a superhero team"

Any idea-- was this Steve's idea, or Gerry's? Steve definitely had a thing for romance, especially if it involved unusual couples.


"Hellcat lets Moondragon talk her out of joining the Avengers (NOOOOOO); Moondragon herself is one of my least favorite characters, so I have no problem with her own exit -- regrettably, it wasn't a permanent exit."

Again-- Steve or Gerry? (Will we ever know?) Hellcat worked out okay in DEFENDERS, but dammit! she belonged HERE-- where George could draw her!

I LIKE Moondragon. But outside of Starlin & Gerber, NOBODY ever wrote her decently-- so it's easy to see why she's so disliked. (Hey, I'D do 'er.)


"Avengers Annual # 6, drawn by Perez with three inkers, all of them failing to do Perez justice."

I just remember it looks "okay", but the story had no zing, nothing special about it AT ALL.


"Pablo Marcos, a good inker AND an inker who stayed on the book for many issues."

I always considered him too overpowering, though Perez' pencils were so tight they did kinda work well together. If George ever slipped back to "layouts", watch out! This happened during that Byrne 3-parter-- the last chapter is clearly MORE Marcos than Byrne. Marcos actually developed a MUCH "cleaner" ink style when he got on STAR TREK: TNG many years later-- I was shocked!


"Sub-Mariner, Dr. Doom, and Attuma"

I just re-read this as part of my re-reading the entire run of SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP. As bad as THAT book tended to be, this story was possibly it's all-time LOW point! Rambling and confused. This is a "plot"???


"right from the start he establishes one of his recurring flaws -- the villain (in this case, Shooter's creation Graviton) is too powerful! Shooter's issues during his first run tend to follow a pattern: the Avengers are out-matched by a single, powerful villain who is only defeated by some plot contrivance. In addition to this, I personally find Shooter's Avengers stories to be unpleasantly fatalistic and depressing"

It's strange... at the time, Shooter seemed like a step UP from Conway (THANK YOU, Gerry Conway!!). I've never re-read any of that run, and mostly remember it for the chaos on the art front, because George kept blowing deadlines all over the Marvel Universe. It says a LOT about the "Marvel Method" that with Perez, Shooter seemed readable. The "Korvac" story was apparently as much George's idea as Jim's-- a real precursor to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS and all the horrors that came after (and keeps coming-- AAAAAUGH!!!). But as soon as George left the book, in mid-story, it barely hung together at all. Shooter seemed more concerned with "story" than "good art", as witness the depths of ugly so-called "art" he plumbed in SECRET WARS II-- the all-time worst-ever crap from a guy who was MUCH more talented than that, Al Milgrom. (Perhaps the office atmosphere "inspired" him in a NEGATIVE way? I've seen it happen in drafting!!!)


"it squeezes in a ton of pointless guest stars"

George wanted the projected 12 issues to guest-star "EVERYBODY"!!! Never got that far.


"Shooter needed a strong-willed editor like Silver Age Legion of Superheroes editor Mort Weisinger to produce good work; instead, he was editor-in-chief for most of his years at Marvel, and he indulged himself to a sickening extent."

AGREED. Totalitarian dictator on one hand ("BECAUSE I SAY SO!!!") and someone no so-called "editor" under his employ could ever say "No" to.


"I read superhero comics to escape from the ugly real-life realities of having to deal with jerks like Gyrich, not to be reminded of those ugly real-life realities!"

I've written real-life SCUM into some of my own stories, and I ALWAYS do it to give them the come-uppance they haven't gotten (yet) in real life. As a friend said to me, "What's the point of writing if you don't play God?" Or, as I said to someone recently, "F*** with me, you end up DEAD in one of my stories."


"Avengers Annual # 7"

This was, I believe, the DEBUT of Joe Rubinstein, one of the BEST inkers of the last 30 years, and one of the few I can think of whose work has NEVER declined in quality in all that time! WOW! (Starlin's art had been SUFFERING from lesser inkers for some time before this.)


"Dan Green"

He started out nice, but by here, SUCKED-- BADLY. He was regularly MURDERING the work of every penciller he touched, including Byrne, Perez, Colan. When he took a shot at pencilling o DOCTOR STRANGE, I was blown away. DAMN! Who knew he was THAT good??? (And then he had the nerve to do a DS graphic novel entirely in watercolors! Holy cow!)


"Don Newton -- an underappreciated artist who did far too little work for Marvel"

This past month BACK ISSUE magazine did an issue spotlighting Don, one of my all-time fave BATMAN artists! It included a timeline of his career, and I had NO IDEA he'd made as many passes at Marvel as he had. For whatever combination of reasons, he NEVER seemed to "connect" with Marvel, and repeatedly kept going back to regular, steady employment at DC. Thank goodness! It's just possible that during Shooter's run as Editor-In-Chief, Don was TOO GOOD for Marvel!!!

Reading this thread has really inspired me to buy the Essential Avengers series, but I've just found an add for the complete run of the Avengers on computer disc.
I'm kind of torn.
If I get the disc it will, I imagine, mean I get perfect quality images and if I get the Essentials it will be black and white on poor paper.
The thing is I like READING comics, as opposed to LOOKING at them on a screen - if you can understand my distinction.
I'll probably buy the Essentials but I just wondered what you guys thought.

I love my essentials. I do miss the coloring, but with the early stuff you aren't talking about too much spectacular, there really wasn't much they could do. So it doesn't really take away.

Now see, for me, this is when I loved the Avengers most of all. Maybe it's because I started reading Avengers then as a kid. Maybe it's because I love George Perez. Maybe (probably) because it featured my favorite Avengers line up of all time (Wasp, Yellowjacket, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Beast, Captain America and Iron Man).

In any case, for me these were the best stories ever! Maybe not the most well executed, but conceptually I loved it. The Ultron issues were among my favorites (betrayed by Ant-Man; the dead or alive cliffhanger; the power of the Scarlet Witch; racing through the streets of New York, following Jocasta and the kidnapped Wasp). Those were a great read to a kid still in his early stages of comics reading.

To this day, Avengers 150 to 200 remain my overall favorite run of the series.

"I'll probably buy the Essentials but I just wondered what you guys thought."

From a few issues into Roy's run to about a dozen issues into Steve's run, I was missing MOST of them-- so the ESSENTIAL books finally filled me in on stuff I'd been missing for decades! For whatever reason, the line reproduction in the B&W books tends to be better than the color MASTERWORKS books, and when you get to the run inked by Tom Palmer, lack of color can almost be a plus!


"I do miss the coloring, but with the early stuff you aren't talking about too much spectacular, there really wasn't much they could do."

On interiors, yes. On the COVERS... oy. In the early 60's, in particular, Stan Goldberg was Marvel's main colorist, and what he did on those covers has NEVER been equalled or duplicated. Back then, Marvel's covers had a UNIQUE look to them, with dark, deep, moody colors. This stuff has NEVER been properly reprinted in color. Usually they just re-color from scratch, which is a shame. I keep thinking that, with modern computer technology, they should be able to reproduce those covers PHOTOGRAPHICALLY, but they just ain't doin' it!

I've spent more time than I should scanning in, cleaning up, "restoring" a lot of the early-60's covers from my own copies, and posting them at Nick Simon's SILVER AGE MARVEL site and the GCD. But it's very time-consuming, and I have such a long way to go. (What's annoying is the number of times editors at the GCD seem to feel my covers look "too good". I think they WANT that site cluttered with dark, dirty, UGLY scans.)

"Maybe it's because I love George Perez. Maybe (probably) because it featured my favorite Avengers line up of all time (Wasp, Yellowjacket, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Beast, Captain America and Iron Man). In any case, for me these were the best stories ever! Maybe not the most well executed, but conceptually I loved it."

Makes me wonder how things might have been is Steve Englehart hadn't left. (CURSE YOU, Gerry Conway!!!)

I'm all about the B-teams. (Like the Subs)

Moondragon is a total favorite. Xavier-class telepathy (able to mentally influence an entire planet!). Jean-class telekinesis. Martial arts skills far in advance of bikini-ninja-action-Psylocke. Enough attitude to sour the cream in Emma Frost's coffee. And hey, bald! Being old enough to have had impure thoughts about Persis Khambatta (sp?) in Star Trek: the Motion Picture, I'm all for the bald hotties.

Other B-listers I'd love to have seen more of;

USAgent, the Beast (hardly a B-lister, but he needs more love), Tigra, Photon (Captain Marvel 2, Pulsar, whatever Monique Rambeau is calling herself this week), Silverclaw, etc.

In regards to this era, I tend to agree with Cru. I actually enjoy it quite a bit and despite a few week stories, see it as a natural extension of the greatness of the previous $150 issues. It wouldn’t be until much later (IMO) that Avengers hit its all time low.

As always though, I don’t tend to focus so much on the art (though I love reading your guys comments). To me my memories of these issues are all about story, subplots and characters. Like Cru, I first read these as a kid (probably about 12 years old) and rereading them takes me back there.

Avengers Volume One # 150-177 & Annuals # 6-8

#150 – I actually like this issue a lot! I like seeing it from the Thing’s point of view, with the newscasters (a tribute to #16, and Kurt Busiek’s later issues decades later would recall this), and its fun to see them attempt to call back in some old Avengers and seek out possible new ones. Although I didn’t like seeing Hellcat leave, I do think she fits better with the Defenders (I like Patsy). I think that its here that Beast actually becomes ‘an Avenger’, and I really wish he could do that again. Having Hank & Jan and Wanda & Vision on the line-up at the same time might be a little much at times, but they are four of my favorites, and I can’t help but eat that up. Add in Cap, Iron Man and Beast, and its close to my preferred line-up (there’s a few others I like in there slightly more). I think Shellhead should always be in the line-up myself.

Gerry Conway – I get such a kick when I read about reactions to Gerry Conway. His Marvel work in the 70’s was so reviled then, now and probably forever . Love the continued presence of the Black Knight in the MU, but despite a handful of appearances here and there it would be many years before he became the star he deserved to be (and deserves to be again).

Wonder Man – I’m also a fan of Wonder Man. Avengers #9 was one of the first Avengers I ever read (the ninth to be exact ), when I was 11 or 12 and I always loved the character and his noble end. Seeing that he was alive again intrigued me so much. And the reason it works *so* well is his connection to the Grim Reaper and the Vision, and therefore Ultron, Hank, Jan, etc. He’s so tied with the Avengers mythos already (not to mention he originally hated Tony, worked with Zemo, etc.) that it works perfectly And he’s powerful enough that he fits in where he’s needed—the Avengers rosters always need flashy, powerful heroes that can fly. His return marks his real entrance into the Avengers, and nothing annoys me more than a know-it-all fan who never read the issues say ‘no, Wonder Man was an Avengers waaaay back in #9!’—not really, if you read them—its here that he makes his mark.

Wonder Man & Beast – while the Torch and Spidey’s friendship remains what I consider the greatest friendship in comics, Simon and Beast give it a good run for their money. I love their interaction and wish we’d see it more.

Perez art – phenomenal. Gentleman George was knockin’ them out of the park even back then. His art makes this era for me, even if he wasn’t on every issue. His art was a transition for the Avengers, taking precedence over all else. George literally dragged them into the next era and made it look pretty.

Whizzer – I actually find this character annoying. I’m glad he’s not related to Wanda and Pietro anymore. I think the Magneto connection to them was pure brilliance—until the Marvel of the last (5) years went and kind put a damper on it. I think there’s still hope though.

Graviton, Count Nefaria, Lethal Legion II – Again, I really like these stories, and the fight scenes with these villains. It reminded me of good ol’ action—the Marvel way, and I liked seeing these villains recur and have long-standing grudges with the Avengers, and remain a viable threat in doing so. And Avengers Mansion should be destroyed every so often anyway

Gyrich – reading those issues, I can see why anyone would hate Gyrich. But he’s kind of a first in comic books, as the government figure putting pressure on super-heroes (not really, I know, Silver Age Iron Man readers know he had to deal with this his whole career). But in terms of becoming a genuine member of the cast, I think so, and it shows, as he’s been around the MU in one comic or another for thirty years. That sure is a great Perez cover with him telling them only seven can stay and the rest are out.

The Korvac Saga – I have only the fondest memories of this saga. While I wouldn’t name it one of the greatest Avengers stories of all time, the sheer mass of it, especially being George’s first time for giving us the everything *and* the kitchen sink, is a pure delight. The ‘Michael’ plot is a little much at times (reminiscent of “Omen & the Prophet”, which I also liked), but the interaction between the heroes is where its really at, including the gradual addition of just about every Avengers EVER, the Guardians of the Galaxy and a whole host of others. The tension, the drama, all of it was there, and at the same time there was a tremendous sense of fun in the story. I know some people loathe the cover with Don Blake pounding on the dying Avenger’s hearts, but I love it!

Secret Wars II gets no love from me though

Avengers Annual # 7 - the next-to-last installment of Jim Starlin's Warlock vs. Thanos saga – I’ve never read this! *choke* (The issue or the Saga). This is one of those stories I’ve been trying to read for fifteen years but have never had the luck. Trust, I know I’m missing out! And I want *in* dammit!

Avengers Volume One # 178-196 & Annual 9

Michelinie is a brilliant writer, as he proved on Iron Man, Amazing Spider-Man, etc., but I agree that these issues are quite ‘knock your socks off’ good. But there are still consistently good character scenes, and some good battles with villains (I like the Absorbing Man issue and the Task Master issue).

Wanda & Pietro’s story continues to unfold over the decades, and Hank, Jan, the new Ant-Man, Jocasta, etc. are involved. In fact, I love the line-up here too, with the Falcon and Ms. Marvel involved, Beast, Wonder Man, Hawkeye, etc. all still around, and of course Cap and Iron Man. (I know the official line-up is 7, but really, the ‘off-screen’ official line-up must have been 10-11).

I also loved the Ultron/Ant-Man/Jocasta/kidnapped Wasp story as well, and think it was a very dynamic and heart-racing story--and a fun read.

And like Stealth said, these issues had a Byrne and Perez arc each and I think they were for the better for it. Overall, George’s Avengers work is some of his greatest, and Byrne at this point in his career was nothing short of phenomenal.

If anything positive can be said about #151 – 196, it must be the characters used and the interaction between them: Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawkeye, Black Panther, Beast, Wonder Man, Iron Man, Captain America, Yellowjacket, Wasp, Ms. Marvel, Falcon, with appearances by Hercules, Black Widow and so many others! I’d say if you asked 75% of *real* Avengers fans who they thought were ‘Avengers’, most would name a list whose majority included Avengers during this period.

Where to next? *EEP*! To me the Avengers were about to hit their all time rock bottom EVER, only to be saved by the glory known as Roger Stern for a really great run.

"To me the Avengers were about to hit their all time rock bottom EVER, only to be saved by the glory known as Roger Stern for a really great run."

Ditto.

What WAS it about David Michelinie, anyway? Twice he got on IRON MAN, blew everybody away, and BOTH times, he left, and the book went COMPLETELY to hell. It wasn't JUST that he was that good... What, did he just leave without ANY warning to whoever was editing the books? You get really SICK of a good writer leaving and then having to put up with, like, 6 consecutive MONTHS of the worst, most amateurish drek imaginable (and by, probably, 6 DIFFERENT bad writers!)

I'll jump ahead here and say just how SEVERELY disappointed I was with THE AVENGERS around that time. Even with Michelinie, Byrne & Perez, the stories were often 2nd-rate, the inks 5TH-rate (Dan Green murdering EVERYBODY). Then, abruptly, Michelinie's gone, Perez is gone, and one of my favorite pencillers of all time-- Gene Colan-- appears to be on the LEAST-appropriate assignment of his entire career. And HIS pencils get MURDERED, too. From various sources, it seems Jim Shooter PERSONALLY did not like Gene's style-- just as those infamous BBC execs in the 80's PERSONALLY did not like DOCTOR WHO-- and wanted him gone. It would appear quite possible that Colan was put on AVENGERS specifically BECAUSE he didn't fit on the book-- and it was the "best" way to make him look REALLY BAD! Then Shooter nit-picks his work TO DEATH (when Stan NEVER had a problem with Gene in ALL his years at Marvel), until Gene finally has no choice but to leave the company, if only to get away from all the aggravation.

Given the circumstances, I feel it's safe to say we NEVER found out what Bill Mantlo could or could not do on AVENGERS. Just as he was unceremoniously KICKED off IRON MAN (because Michelinie & Layton REALLY wanted that book), so Mantlo very quickly disappears, because SHOOTER wants it back. And this time, he didn't even bother with logical stories. He didn't even bother with "AVENGERS" type stories. HELL no! He just went straight for the jugular, determined to run every character he could through the mud. Yellowjacket. Wasp. Tigra. Iron Man. Wasp. (Apparently he had problems with ANYBODY have a really happy, healthy, successful marriage-- or "happy" characters AT ALL.) What an s.o.b.

I'll jump ahead a bit FURTHER here. After Steve Englehart, then Doug Moench, Roger Stern became my favorite comics-writer in the early 80's. But every so often, even he did something that just rubbed me the wrong way. This was one such instance. First, he has Hank Pym pull it together, get the baddies that framed him, and cleared his name. Great. But then, he & Jan split... But THAT'S not the worst part. What is, was when Stern had them say that-- supposedly-- Hank & Jan were "ALWAYS" wrong for each other. WHAT A LOAD!!! Talk about editorial fiat. I'd say part of the job requirement for getting this book was to agree with what Shooter started, and not make waves.

After all, it was MAKING waves that cost Stern the job several years later...

Before I post the next review, I'd like to thank everybody for keeping the thread active during my absence with all this wonderful feedback.

Prof: "The 'Korvac' story was apparently as much George's idea as Jim's. A real precursor to CRISIS ON INFINTE EARTHS and all the horrors that came after (and keeps coming -- AAAAAUGH!!!)"

LOL! I think that Englehart's Avengers/Defenders Clash and Shooter's Korvac Saga are a study in contrasts -- Englelhart's is the right way to do this kind of story, Shooter's is the wrong way.

Prof: "I've written real-life SCUM into some of my own stories, and I ALWAYS do it to give them the comeuppance they haven't gotten (yet) in real life."

I do the same thing (see: Gladiator's fate in my first Imperial Guard storyarc). But I haven't yet seen Gyrich get the kind of comeuppance that I think he deserves -- the one that came closest was the Fabian Nicieza Thunderbolts story where Gyrich tries to destroy all superheroes and Hawkeye shoots an arrow through Gyrich's hand.

Prof: "It's just possible that during Shooter's time as Editor-in-Chief, Don Newton was TOO GOOD for Marvel!!!"

Quite likely. Marvel books went through a long phase in the early 1980s where, with very few exceptions, the art had a dull sameness and a lack of dynamics. This is around the time that George Perez gradually phased himself out of Marvel -- no coincidence there.

WWC, I'll second what Wndola and Prof said -- the Essentials are the way to go.

Cru and Cobie, I certainly respect your opinions re: the first Shooter era, and I should add that I first read the Shooter stories in my late teens/early twenties. I think I would quite possibly have a different perspective on them if I had first read them as a child.

Cobie, there's a Warlock reprint mini-series (simply titled Warlock) and the back issues are cheap.

Finally, I think Cobie and Prof have said just about all that needs to be said about the first couple years of issues that followed # 196. Those issues (specifically, # 197-220) are among the Avengers issues I refuse to read on principle. The only thing I'll add is that Ms. Marvel is another character who was dragged through the mud, and the only story from this era that I've read is Avengers Annual # 10 by Chris Claremont and Michael Golden. Claremont's script is on the wordy side (as usual), but his attempt to rescue Carol from oblivion is honorable, and it has a really cool battle between the Avengers and the definitive lineup of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (Mystique, Destiny, Pyro, Blob, Avalanche, and the pre-redemption Rogue.) Golden's weird, hyper-detailed art shifts from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it just about holds together; and Golden did the coloring himself, and very well.

Avengers Volume One # 221-254 & West Coast Avengers Volume One # 1-4

This is where I come back in. There's still a few issues to go before Roger Stern starts bringing the book back on track. # 221 (plotted by Shooter, scripted by Michelinie) has a nicely-designed cover by Ed Hannigan and introduces the first good lineup in a while, a nice mix of founders (Wasp, Thor, Iron Man), kooky-quartet-ers (Captain America, Hawkeye), and one newbie (She-Hulk). The stories themselves are pretty lame, but tolerable...until # 225-226, where Steven Grant plots and scripts a suprisingly good time-travel story that brings back the Black Knight and pits the Avengers against mystical 12th Century villains. I'm amazed to this day that there's never been a sequel to this story. As a bonus, there's a couple more excellent Ed Hannigan covers.

On the art front, there's a lot of the early-1980s dullness I was talking about in my previous post. But in the cases of Greg LaRocque (# 222-223, # 225-226) and M.D. Bright (# 224) it's excusable, because they were both starting out. I think it's a real shame that LaRocque wasn't kept on the book; it would have been great to see him evolve on Avengers, the way George Perez had in the 1970s. Instead we got Al Milgrom (BLEAH) as the regular penciler; more on him later.

When Roger Stern took over Avengers (# 227), the first order of business was to clean up the mess that Shooter had left. It took four issues, and then Stern could move on to his own plots. Although the stories were hit-and-miss for a while -- the good: Spider-Man/Lava Men/Electro/Rhino/Blackout/Moonstone; Fantastic Four/Annihilus; the bad: Plant Man/Wizard; Dire Wraiths; David Letterman; Spider-Woman/Morgan Le Fay -- Stern's talent for characterization was always in evidence. Stern was the first Avengers writer since Englehart who could write convincing superheroines -- the She-Hulk instantly changed from a caricature to a loveable extrovert; Stern's own creation, Captain Marvel II/Monica Rambeau, had still waters running deep; Jan and Wanda felt like themselves again.

Just a few issues before Stern's arrival, Mark Gruenwald became the editor of Avengers. While I tend to be critical of Gruenwald, I won't deny that his memory is entitled to a good amount of the credit for turning Avengers around. And yet almost from the beginning, there is evidence of a heavy hand: bringing the smarmy, annoying Starfox into the Avengers was entirely Gruenwald's idea; and I suspect that the very long Eternals/Titanians/Maelstrom storyarc (#246-250) was mostly Gruenwald's -- don't get me wrong, I think it's a good story, but it's bothersome to see a writer as talented and distinctive as Stern reduced to a mere scripter.

Around this time, the Wasp had temporarily passed the chairmanship of the team to the Vision (due to events in Secret Wars -- UGH) and the Vision, who had begun to develop quite an ego after Starfox unwisely hooked him up to the Titanian super-computer ISAAC, created a second branch of Avengers, the West Coast Avengers, assigning Hawkeye as leader. The 4-part West Coast Avengers limited series is IMO one of the highlights of the Stern era's first half. Except for Tigra, whom I dislike intensely, the lineup (Hawkeye, Mockingbird, Iron Man, Wonder Man) had good chemistry, Graviton worked as a villain because the team used strategy and smarts to take him down, and I'm of the opinion that Stern wrote Mockingbird better than Steve Englehart would in the ongoing WCA book.

At around the time that the the WCA were establishing themselves, the Vision turned into a utopian megalomaniac, and it took both Avengers teams (including Black Knight and Hercules, two of my favorites) to bring him back to his senses and stop his takeover of the world's computers. This is where I think that Stern started getting really good, and the second (and much better) half of his run was just around the corner.

The art: for someone who had been in the comics industry for over a decade, Al Milgrom's work on the ongoing Avengers book is shockingly amateurish, full of clumsy perspectives and ugly close-ups; the usually great inker Joe Sinnott did a surprisingly sloppy job -- for proof that it wasn't just Milgrom, see the equally sloppy inking over guest artist John Byrne in the Annihilus issue (# 233). On the opposite end, Bob Hall somehow managed to pull himself together and do a really good job on the WCA limited series, although Brett Breeding's inks surely helped a lot; Hall then jumped onto the ongoing book to do breakdowns for the 4-part Vision storyarc (# 251-254)...and suddenly Sinnott was operating at 100 percent again! Unfortunately, Sinnott left after the first two issues, and the next two issues were badly inked (Joe Rubinstein gets partial credit on one of these issues, but I'm guessing he didn't do much more than a few touchups). But the real shame is that John Buscema & Tom Palmer didn't return to the book sooner so that they could have drawn the Vision storyarc -- not only because they were a great art team, but also because Buscema co-created the Vision!!

"Claremont's script is on the wordy side (as usual), but his attempt to rescue Carol from oblivion is honorable"

There've been many instances over the years where one writer does something to contradict a previous writer's work, but this was the first time I can recall it being so blatent-- that the entire story existed FOR NO OTHER REASON than that Chris Claremont was PISSED as what Michelinie, Perez & whoevger else was involved had done with "his" character. But was what Chris did really any better? Stripping Carol Danvers of her powers was one thing, but stripping her of her personal memories-- talk about going too far (or, "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"). I HATED Rogue for what she did, and when she turned up, distraught, BEGGING for help, on the X-MEN's doorstep sometime later, I had NO sympathy for her whatsoever. (As an aside: one of the things I LOVED the most about the 1st X-MEN movie was the way they took my LEAST-favorite character, Rogue, and completely REMOVED the entire part of her back-story that I so venehemntly objected to. Rogue, in the movie, became-- along with Wolverine-- the audience' POV and entry into the whole "world" of the X-MEN, and really worked as a sympathetic character. I pretty much fell in love with her in the film... I could NEVER do that with the comics version.) In AV ANN #10, Claremont pretty nuch "finished the job" started by Michelinie & co. He wanted to make a point by striking back at a previous writer; but the character (and the entire group) paid the price for it.

Funny (NOT REALLY) how, with Shooter in charge of Marvel, writers had to follow strict guidelines, not do certain things, and admit and suffer consequences if they did-- EXCEPT when it came to Shooter himself and his cronies, who could GET AWAY WITH MURDER with impunity. "It's good to be the king." That's why we have presidents in this country... (Moving on...)


"a suprisingly good time-travel story that brings back the Black Knight and pits the Avengers against mystical 12th Century villains. I'm amazed to this day that there's never been a sequel to this story"

I wonder if EVERYONE wasn't just tired of the whole mess. After all, it was Steve Englehart who stuck the Black Knight in the 12th Century WAY back in the Avengers-Defenders clash! That sub-plot had been dragging on for over a decade by then, hadn't it? One good thing early in Shooter's run was writers FINALLY getting around to finishing off long-hanging plot-threads and storylines. This one was hanging longer than most. (Though not as long as the "How can The Hood be Baron Strucker if he was killed back in STRANGE TALES? --or, if Magneto was a robot in the 2nd Sentinels story, WHO was it in the "City of Mutants" story-- and who was behind him?)


"it's excusable, because they were both starting out. I think it's a real shame that LaRocque wasn't kept on the book"

I think I first saw LaRocque on OMAC (the unenviable task of trying to follow Jim Starlin-- yikes!). He didn't really impress me until he got on LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (the later part of Paul Levitz' run), though far too much of his work suffered under not-quite-appropriate inks.


"While I tend to be critical of Gruenwald, I won't deny that his memory is entitled to a good amount of the credit for turning Avengers around. And yet almost from the beginning, there is evidence of a heavy hand"

I'd rank Gruenwald as one more guy who was a BETTER writer than he was an editor. On EVERYTHING he did as an editor, I felt a "heavy hand". Sometimes it worked, but other times... Of course, those editorials he kept doing about the comics biz had such an overbearing, condescending tone about them, I really got SICK of 'em after awhile. Like many before and some since (notably Kevin Dooley), Gruenwald forgot that an editor's job is NOT to write the book himself!!! (Unless, of course, he's the original creator-- or in some fashion, the long-term "caretaker" of a character or series. We really haven't had that sort of editor since Mort Weisinger...)


"When Roger Stern took over Avengers (# 227), the first order of business was to clean up the mess that Shooter had left"

At a yahoo group, someone pointed out that Shooter seemed to HATE all the characters he ever wrote. He'd drag them through hell, but instead of taking them through and bringing them out, in some way, better than when they went in, he'd just DUMP them there. I realized just how true this was when I thought back over Shooter's various works in the 70's & 80's. In DAREDEVIL, he framed Heather's father for countless crimes, and had him commit suicide, thinking he was guilty; Heather found out Matt was DD, and blamed HIM for everything that happened (even though he was the ONLY one who was trying to help); and Matt had a nervous breakdown. Shooter then left it to Roger McKenzie to "clean up the mess". In GHOST RIDER, he had Roxanne suffer amnesia, and (for reasons I've completely forgotten), sent Johnny Blaze out into the desert... WHERE HE NEVER RETURNED!!!! (Until about 50 issues later-- most of them written-- badly-- by Michael "If you've read one of my stories you've read them all" Fleisher.) What WAS Shooter, an 8-year-old whose mother never taught him how to CLEAN UP AFTER HIMSELF????? (I got a lot of people in my neighborhood like that-- they throw trash all over the ground, somehow figuring SOMEONE ELSE will clean it up for them.)


"Except for Tigra, whom I dislike intensely"

ANOTHER character Shooter ran thru the mud!! I never read her original stories as The Cat or Tigra, but I did get a huge kick out of her when she guested for several months in FANTASTIC FOUR. Shooter turned her into a WIMP! My GOD, what was that guy's problem??? How much "damage control" do some writers have to put up with??


"The art: for someone who had been in the comics industry for over a decade, Al Milgrom's work on the ongoing Avengers book is shockingly amateurish, full of clumsy perspectives and ugly close-ups"

Milgrom did some nifty work on both CAPTAIN MARVEL (I think he may have done more episodes than anyone else on that book!) and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (like CM, they seemed to have a hard time finding any kind of steady inker). But in the 80's... WHA' HOPPEN?? Al's pencils dropped; for awhile, he spent his time aping Steve Ditko; and anytime he inked, it was a ugly, wretched nightmare! Last summer I met Jim Starlin for the first time, and among the comments I made were how glad I was to see that Al Milgrom's inks (over Starlin's recent work) were back up to his 70's high standards. (Did Jim Shooter INSPIRE people to draw badly?????


"the usually great inker Joe Sinnott did a surprisingly sloppy job"

See my previous question... Although, I understand in the 80's Joe used a LOT of assistants. WHO KNOWS what he really did-- and didn't?


"But the real shame is that John Buscema & Tom Palmer didn't return to the book sooner so that they could have drawn the Vision storyarc -- not only because they were a great art team, but also because Buscema co-created the Vision!!"

Alright, who WASN'T shocked when John Buscema AND Tom Palmer finally reunited on THE AVENGERS, after so many years of Buscema publicly saying he "hated" drawing superheroes??? And who wasn't STUNNED that they lasted together MUCH longer and more consistently than they did in the late 60's? And how about that Tom Palmer-- even when Buscema finally did leave, after a NICE, LONG run, Palmer stuck around, to ink-- oh, HOW MANY other pencillers' work? In the late 80's, Palmer really became to THE AVENGERS what Joe Sinnott had long been (before John Byrne-- HAH!) to the F.F.-- the "unifying" force that kept the book consistent, no matter WHO else was doing it.

I don't have anything wise to add, I just want to keep this exellent thread on the first page, where it belongs.

First of all, I love that we skipped ahead to #221

I will say though, that I think Claremont attempting to ‘rescue’ Carol and then making her a supporting character in X-Men was a noble attempt. (I actually LOVE Rogue though).

Both Stealth and Prof have made reference to Roger Stern in the 80’s being akin to Englehart in the 70’s and I agree completely. Stern was a master and his Marvel work was like a weekly birthday present to Marvel fans. I can’t say much more without repeating others, other than his Avengers and Spider-Man runs remain two of my all-time favorite runs for any series of any character.

As usual, I’ll just post a few thoughts as Stealth has really nailed the theme of this era:

Black Knight story – the return of the Black Knight here isn’t the greatest story, but it marks an especially cool moment for me as it brings him back after a really long absence. Finally now, with Dane back, we’ll eventually see (in the guiding hand of Stern) the change in Dane being a ‘cool character from the late Silver Age’ to a genuine Avenger and important part of Marvel lore. I love this character, and its owed to both Stern and (even more so) Harris.

She-Hulk – Stern took a character that was basically a female rip-off of a great franchise and made her someone we like and care about, with her own quirks. Marvel has been the better for it. I also love the inclusion of Thor, Wasp, Iron Man, Cap and Hawkeye—all always great in the Avengers. (As I’ve said, I’m a firm believer in Iron Man & Thor being Avengers first and foremost, both more so than Cap).

Stern’s use of Marvel History – What Roger Stern did (like in Spider-Man) was make incredible use of the vast history of the MU in some really dynamic stories that were fresh and exciting. Blackout & Moonstone: for the first time, I sit up and take notice. Spidey & Electro in Avengers? Hey, that’s kinda cool.

Captain Marvel II (later Photon) – and then we come to a character that I absolutely adore. Have me name you my dream Avengers line-up? Photon is always in it, despite my obvious love for the oldest Avengers members. It was a bunch of things: her powers, her enthusiasm, her ‘newness’ at the time, her friendships with other Avengers, Stern’s obvious knack for writing her as his creation…but the real reason? Because we actually got to see her grow. We saw her introduction, her growth as a junior Avenger to a full-time member that was an important part of the team, to being practically an essential member. By the time we get to the Master of Evil story (perhaps the best MoE story ever), her and Dane are no doubt ‘quintessential Avengers’, perhaps the first two you could really say that about since Wonder-Man! Later she became leader, etc. It amazes me she wasn’t used more during the 90’s…which in hindsight I consider a gift from the comic book deities.

Starfox – generally, I did not like Starfox and only have grown to like the character as the years have passed and I’m become more comfortable with him. Like Moondragon, he didn’t seem to fit, and his smary-ness was annoying, but he did have some likable qualities. The problem with Starfox was that he couldn’t be an Avenger for that long, since he just didn’t have enough depth. That being said, I’ve grown to like the character, love his appearances and think he works great as a supporting character or someone who stays on for a brief stint and moves on.

Wasp as Chairman – yes, I say, YES! This was a great move. I think the Wasp proved to be one of the best Avengers chairman’s in the history of the team, and she truly deserved it, as being pretty much the only one left of the originals to not have been so (some may not realize both Thor and Goliath had stints as chairman). She deserved it, especially after Shooter symbolically slapped her, Hank and the fans a few years before.

East Coast/West Coast Split – this must have seemed very exciting at the time (even when this was coming out, I was about 4 years old), and I generally like all the Avengers being seen these days, especially that the Vision, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, etc. came back into play. Generally, I’m ambivalent about Tigra, which is probably not a good thing in reflection on Marvel. But I like that we had a lot of Avengers to be seen each month. The eventual east coast line-up that would come out of this would be very enjoyable to read.

As usual, I find the insight you guys provide on pencillers & inkers to be fascinating. IMO, the best Avengers in the 80’s stories are about to hit the next portion of this timeline…

I thought you said you were glad Photon wasn't used in the 90s, yet Bob Harris' Avengers run was very certainly the 1990s...

I think the reason she hasn't used more is that she was - and, frankly, is - A Pet Character - Stern's the only creator with any actual interest in her. Take a look at her post-Stern history, after Stern quit rather than make Cap Avengers leader:

• Taken out the book rapidly by Walt Simonson, probably at Greunwald's instruction
• A couple of one-shots, published purely so DC couldn't grab the "Captain Marvel" trademark, in which her powers were played with
• The laziest power-reset ever in one of the Worst Miniseries/Crossover Ever (Starblast)
• Given a new codename so they could move the "Captain Marvel" name over to Genis
• A couple of appearances in the Av v3 opening-Every Avenger Ever story, and written away quickly at the end
• Given a starring role in Avengers Infinity. Written by a certain R. Stern.
• After that, the A-Infinity team appeared in Maximum Security, and then she was quickly dumped on an asteroid by Busiek
• Appeared in Thunderbolts briefly so Genis could nick her name again for a bad joke.
• And that's pretty much that, until Ellis asked for a list of characters "no-one cared about" for Nextwave, and proceeded to describe her as "previously Captain Marvel, Photon, and possibly Pulsar or ‘That Tall Black Woman With The Bad Hair Who Gets Wheeled Out From Time To Time’,”

There is the line of thought that her leadership led to the worst disaster in Avengers history until the whole active team died in Onslaught, and her plan to rectify it amounted to "Let's get Thor to bail us out." Which, y'know, had Zemo attacked five minutes later, Thor wouldn't really have been in any condition to help, with Hela's curse'n'all...

Well, 'Boot, personally, Bob Harris' Avengers run was one of the best part of the entire 1990's for both DC and Marvel IMO. I certainly wish she was used there.

What I basically mean that the 1990's and the late 1980's before that, saw the trend of seeing heroes and heroines have especially horrible stuff happen to them. I by no means meant to indicte the Avengers issues of the 1990's, as I generally feel that the Avengers was actually pretty decent for the majority of it (Heroes Reborn notwithstanding).

But the last thing I would have wanted was for Photon to show up somewhere in Marvel and get dumped on. Generally, I'm more glad she wasn't a DC character, as DC shit on its characters more in the 90's than Marvel did.

I really wish Bob Harris had used her though, like he did Dane, Crystal, Sersi, etc.

I feel like her history does suggest she has been a pet character, but I ultimately feel that she doesn't have to be and has TONS of potential, as Warren Ellis showed us, albeit slightly.

And you know I hate that Thunderbolts Captain Marvel/Photon subplot every bit as you do, complete with the totally unnecessary switch in names, Genis personality, etc., etc.

As for the Wasp, I generally don't like that line of thinking b/c I love the Wasp, but I'm aware of it.

"I think the reason she hasn't used more is that she was - and, frankly, is - A Pet Character - Stern's the only creator with any actual interest in her."

GOOD for her! Lucky lady.

This is in contrast to, say, MANTIS, who NOBODY used after Steve Englehart left... until Steve came back, and then he brought her with him. And before you knew it, Mark "BECAUSE I SAID SO" Gruenwald and his cronies TOLD him, "GET RID OF MANTIS!!!" --insisting that she NEVER appear in ANY Marvel Comics again, ever!!! (Of course, Gruenwald's GONE... Hey! Mantis is back again.)


I can't help it! Instead of a group of creative professionals, the more I look back, all I see is a bunch of overaged adolescents playing fraternity-like power games...

Some of the best characterization, Marvel or DC, has been writers willing to pull old B-grade or even C-grade characters out of the dustbins and gussy them up. Characters like Catman (of all the amazing rebounds!) or Screaming Mimi, transformed into interesting characters. If Screaming Mimi had been around 10 years earlier, for sure she would have been one of the 25 losers killed en masse at the Bar With No Name just to establish the badass street cred of some loser wannabe villain that nobody ever heard of again anyway...

I think characters like Photon or Silverclaw or Moondragon have vastly more potential than yet another attempt to make Captain America or Iron Man fresh and exciting, that inevitably, IMO, ends up mucking up their continuity and characterization.

Plus, from a creative standpoint, the B and C-grade characters give the writer a lot more flexibility. If they want to muck around with the Swordsman's origin or powers or characterization, they don't have 250 issues worth of established contuinity to fight.

I noticed that back in the 70's, it seemed to me the "new" characters were the ones writers did more interesting things with, perhaps because they were (in some cases) the people who had CREATED these new characaters, as opposed to messing up older, established characters whose original creators weren't around anymore.

Among my faves in the 70's were The Punisher, Moon Knight, Hellcat, Moondragon, Iron Fist, Luke Cage Hero For Hire...

D'ja ever wish some of the older, overused characters would just GO AWAY and make room for NEW ones to flourish??? (After all, we'll always have syndicated reruns... or reprints, as the case may be.)

Re: Ms. Marvel and Chris Claremont

Claremont does go too far with Carol's memory loss, but he almost always goes too far no matter what he does. And the bottom line is, if it wasn't for Claremont, Carol would still be trapped in Limbo, suffering a fate similar to that of the female Red Guardian.

Re: Greg La Rocque -- What I was trying to say was, if La Rocque had been the regular Avengers penciler during the first half of Roger Stern's run, imagine how thrilling it would have been to see him gradually improve until reaching the quality of his best work. And imagine if he had drawn the Englehart issues of WCA Vol. 2. Coincidentally (?), La Rocque's first issue of Legion of Superheroes is cover-dated October 1985 -- the same cover date as WCA Vol. 2 # 1.

Re: Mark Gruenwald -- In my opinion, he was a better editor than writer. As an editor, he oversaw Walt Simonson's brilliant Surtur Saga in Thor and the early issues of Michelinie & Layton's 2nd run on Iron Man. As a writer...meh. If he had a co-writer with a better grasp of writing technique -- as he did on Marvel Two-in-One -- he could be good. But Gruenwald flying solo? A lot of concepts and characters with great potential that never quite paid off. Even the much-praised Squadron Supreme maxi-series didn't impress me. Although I do think a brief stretch of his Captain America run (when Ron Lim was penciller) was pretty good.

Re: Al Milgrom -- I'll be sampling his 1970s pencils sometime in the near future, because I recently found out that Dr. Minerva's first appearances were in issues of Captain Marvel that Milgrom pencilled.

Re: Roger Stern and the history of the Marvel Universe -- That's one of my favorite things about Stern: he BUILT on what had come before him, instead of tearing it down, the way a lot of writers (especially in recent years) have done.

Re: Captain Marvel II and Gruenwald's directive -- I think Gruenwald's reasons for Monica's humiliating fate were threefold: replace her with Captain America (whose solo book he writing at the time -- cross-promotion and so on) and replace her as protector of the universe with Quasar (who subsequently got his own solo book, written by guess who.) And I like Quasar, I just don't like those behind-the-scenes machinations. In fact, I once plotted a fanfic where Wendell and Monica married and had a child destined for cosmic greatness (I might get around to writing it someday). And finally, the third reason is a kind of blacklisting of Stern's creations, most likely out of spite -- look at the horrible things that happened to Nebula and Yellowjacket II.

Re: B and C-list characters vs. overused characters

Since the Bob Harras era of Avengers is my favorite, all of my favorite Avengers are on the B and C lists -- Crystal, Black Knight, Hercules, Sersi -- and Harras's own creations -- Deathcry, Swordsman II and Magdalene. It frustrates me that this era doesn't get more respect. One of the things that bothers me most about the Busiek era -- and the Morrison era of JLA for that matter -- is the whole "only the icons count, and that's the way it is" attitude. In the long run, the only thing that attitude leads to is STAGNATION!!

Avengers Volume One # 255-269 & West Coast Avengers Volume Two # 1-10

The very welcome return of John Buscema & Tom Palmer as Avengers artists coincides with Roger Stern working towards a grandiose space opera, the kind of thing Avengers does so brilliantly. While most of the team deals with the fallout from the Vision's hubris and with Terminus's rampage through the Savage Land, Captain Marvel finds herself stranded in deep space, a prisoner of space pirates who have taken over the abandoned battleship once used by Thanos (who IMO should never ever have been resurrected) and have plans to conquer the fragmented Skrull empire.

The real turning point, for both Stern's story and for the Avengers book itself, is issue # 257. It introduces the pirate queen of space, Nebula (who had the potential to become the best of all Marvel super-villainesses) and it shocks us with Terminus's brutal destruction of the Savage Land, Lemuria, and the bird people. This is where the book gets darker, richer, more violent and more intense than it ever was before. By the time the rest of the Avengers join the space battle in # 259 (another of my favorite Avengers issues), the book has worked up a full head of steam. What could possibly throw it off course?

The unfortunate answer is Secret Wars II . Not satisfied with ruining the ending of the Nebula Saga by shoehorning the Beyonder into # 260, Shooter adds insult to injury by bringing the pathetic man-child back in two more Avengers issues (# 261 and # 265), and then by hijacking # 266 for the "special 32-page epilogue to Secret Wars II." To say nothing of all the other terrible SWII crossovers in other Marvel books. :rolleyes:

But even in this sludge, there are gems to be found. # 262 and # 264 are both wonderful stand-alone issues. The former brings the Sub-Mariner into the team, guest stars Stingray (a favorite of mine), and has a memorable conversation between Namor and Captain America. The latter is a wonderful showcase for the winsome Wasp, where the Black Knight helps her master her powers just in time for her to battle Rita De Mara, the new, villainous Yellowjacket. Not so good is # 263, the crossover with Fantastic Four and the first issue of X-Factor, featuring the return of Jean Grey.

# 267-269 bring back Kang, Immortus, and Ravonna for a fast-paced but confusing adventure. And while this is far from the best Kang story, at least it washes out the foul taste of the goofy Kang-in-the-Old-West story.

Alongside the Avengers' 260s are the first ten issues of the West Coast Avengers ongoing book. I'll be reviewing all of Englehart's issues, but not the John Byrne or Roy Thomas issues, for reasons I'll get into in next week's post. For now, I'll say that I don't think Englehart's WCA is his best work by any stretch of the imagination, but even Englehart's lesser work has a certain integrity that's lacking in a lot of superhero writing. But even so, it's appropriate that this team nicknamed themselves Whackos, because this was one weird book, balancing the easy-going camaraderie of the team members with a campy, almost retro, tone and the frequent hints at things far more sinister (and often, more than hints). The quirkiness showed in Englehart's later issues of Avengers frequently goes off the scale in WCA. It does gets off to a good start with a storyarc that culminates in the (temporary but still powerful) death of longtime villain the Grim Reaper. But then it goes way off course with all the demons and monsters and cat people and the focus on Tigra...UGH! The stories don't get back on track until the time-travel adventure starting in # 17, but even then I have my reservations, which I'll get into next week. One thing I'll add is that Firebird was an admirable attempt (especially for a mainstream 1980s comic) at developing a character who was both a non-stereotypical Christian and a non-stereotypical Latina.

There is no contest between the two art teams -- John Buscema and Tom Palmer bring the same outstanding draftsmanship and sharp storytelling that they brought to Avengers in the early 1970s. WCA, meanwhile was saddled with Buscema & Palmer's predecessors, Al Milgrom and Joe Sinnott. The only positive things I can say about their art is that after the first few issues, Milgrom's pencils went from grotesque to merely mediocre, and that every once in a while Sinnott's inking was up to the standards he had set during the Silver Age and the Bronze Age.

As opposed to the '00s, with such light stories as Our Worlds at War, Identity Crisis, Infantile Crisis and 52 (is it true that one issue ended with Sue Dibney resurrected into a straw dummy so she could get killed over again so that Elongated Man could go utterly nutterly?).

I do think there's an implied blind spot here, where the various reversions of Hal Jordan, Supergirl, etc (I'm really, genuinely shocked that the Firestorm switch hasn't been backtracked on once and for all yet) have blinded you to such things as crispy-fried Hippolyta, the Dibny mess and the GA-Superman being brought back to be beaten to death.

True, but I only mentioned it in passing though, to point out that if other writers had been interested in her, that sort of joke wouldn't have been open - i.e. it was only because she'd sat on the sidelines for the better part of twenty years that Genis got to nick her name. Again.

It's true though, isn't it? She got the leadership basically because she asked for it, in Secret Wars (rather than stepping up) she recognised Cap outclassed her in the leadership stakes then went off and %^&*ed Magneto, and when Zemo & co came calling, Hercules & Jarvis got beaten into a coma, the Mansion was demolished and her counter-attack consisted primarily of "Thor, please help. Pretty please."

Okay, at least three points to pick up on here:

1) Protector of the Universe - Monica was not, and never has been, the PotU. The only two significant MU characters to have been are Mar-Vell and Quasar. The only thing she picked up off Mar-Vell was the "Captain Marvel" name. Nor did she have "Marvel Boy"/Crusader's old wristbands, and which I think Marvel Man/Quasar had before the point in question anyway. I'm not aware of any notable connection - EITHER continuity or BTS - between those two characters at all.

2) Rita/Yellowjacket - not sure what you mean here at all - her death in the Crossing was, what, seven-eight years later and followed a three-year stint in Guardians of the Galaxy (yeah, the series went to crap after Valentino left, but it was JV who actually brought her in) as a major team member. Plus, given the inconsistancy between how she left the 31st Century and arrived in the 20th, she's a snap-your-fingers bringback if you really want to.

3) Nebula - this one gets very complicated very quickly. If you mean the intended-to-be-her story from Simonson's Avengers, what's the specific problem? If you mean the fact that that was retconned into not-being-her, that was down to the fact that Englehart used her in F4 in an irreconcilable way while Kang-Nebula was being used in Avengers, and one had to go. If you mean the fact that she was retconned into not-being-Thanos'-granddaughter - well, is it really in character for Mr Death-obsessed to have a kid? I'd agree with Starlin on that one and say it's completely out of character, and retconning that one was needed for the sake of Thanos' character.

Now, you may well be right about the Captain America thing. Still, in-continuity, how quickly did Monica go from rookie to Avengers Leader? And, especially after such a meteoric rise, where else was there for her character to go but down?

Agreed. And the same characters getting brought back from the grave and whitewashed back into service, and other characters being forced back into their milleu from decades past which they had moved on from is a trend that should end.

'Boot, I think you have me confused with some other posters. Though I often say 'the 90's', I of course realize that this isn't an accurate assessment of an era, and I generally include some books that lasted well beyond.

Our Worlds at War was atrocious and I agree with your assessment 100%. What was done to Sue Dibny sickens me. I'm not someone who hates Infinite Crisis, but I'm not going to be its greatest defender, I see the flaws in it. I'm by no means the biggest flag-waving support of DC post-90's, though I am quite pleased with some of what they've done (you know my position no Hal Jordan). I actually am enjoying the current Firestorm these days. I'm by no means suggesting that things have gotten better at any company, I'm just glad Photon has not gone through the same crap they've put through so many other great characters--and I know she has gone through some 'dark' times, but she's relatively okay compared to others.

Unfotunatenly, the Wasp was leader during some of the worst times to be an Avenger, even though they were great stories. Its too bad (for Wasp fans) that Busiek kinda did the same thing with her at the tail end of his run. Like I said though, I really like the character, and I prefer when she's written strongly. But...ugh...I forgot about that Secret Wars thing. Sometimes I remember how bad Secret Wars II was that I forget that generally, Secret Wars I is also pretty horrendous. I'm hard pressed to find any crossovers as well done as CoIE (from all companies).

I'm in total agreement with Stealth and Reboot about the Harris era Avengers, which is possibly my favorite era of all in regards to Avengers.

Sorry, you kind of caught the backlash of a rant that's been building a while, and reading a general "the 90s" comment (mixed a bit, I'll admit, with the fact that you HAVE been recommending DCs, including 52, and you did like the Hal whitewash), was what it took to set me off.

PS - Firestorm\'s cancelled.

Sucks about Firestorm

Yeah, I kinda knew that, so hope *my* reply didn't seem to heavy-handed. Though I do reccomend a bunch of DCs (including 52, honestly I think its really great) a lot of the time our tastes are very similar. I guess I really need to find a better way to generalize the era of comics that annoys me without roping in the entire 90's which is an unfair generalization.

PS - will have comments shortly on the next leg of Stealth's 'timeline'

Wow! You guys been busy!


"Claremont does go too far with Carol's memory loss, but he almost always goes too far no matter what he does."

Somehow, "X-Men DON'T KILL." comes to mind. After awhile, it felt like he was writing robots, not people.


"if La Rocque had been the regular Avengers penciler during the first half of Roger Stern's run, imagine how thrilling it would have been to see him gradually improve until reaching the quality of his best work."

I'd like to have seen him inked by Joe Sinnott! Mike DeCarlo just WASN'T clicking with him, and was even worse over Pat Broderick (but then, I think Broderick's a lost cause for ANY inkers to fix these days) and DeCarlo finally found a perfect match when Keith Giffen returned (it was almost like Kirby-Sinnott before Keith started DISTORTING everyone's faces, starting with his 2ND ISSUE on the book and going steadily downhill from there...)


"Mark Gruenwald -- In my opinion, he was a better editor than writer."

You COULD be onto something here. Arnold Drake said a lot of bad editors are really frustrated writers. If they just did their job AS editors and didn't try "writing" by forcing their writers to do what THEY want instead of what the writers want, they might be better editors. WHO KNOWS how long Roger Stern might have lasted if not for the Gruenwald "incident"? (DITTO Gerard Jones & Kevin Dooley on GREEN LANTERN.)


"That's one of my favorite things about Stern: he BUILT on what had come before him, instead of tearing it down, the way a lot of writers (especially in recent years) have done."

Early on, I noticed Stern's specialty seemed to be taking old, overused, worn-out characters, going back to what made them special in the first place, and finding ways to make them "fresh" all over again. An example that comes to mind is The Vulture in ASM. Because I hadn't read his origin at the time, I had NO IDEA what made the guy tick! Too many times villains return again and again for endless "grudge matches"-- as someone once said, "like so many pro wrestlers". Why are they villains? Don't they have any motivations beyond getting revenge on the hero who stopped them-- over and over and OVER again? That often gets lost by writers who don't do their research, like Englehart & Stern (& Busiek) clearly do.


"Thanos (who IMO should never ever have been resurrected)"

I appreciated the fact that NOBODY brought Thanos back... until Jim Starlin did (his creator AND killer!). At first, it seemed inspired... but THEN...!!! (THANOS QUEST, INFINITY GAUNTLET, INFINITY CRUSADE, INFINITY WAR... when will it end? WHEN WILL IT END?????) There seemed to be a lot of that going on-- sheer desperation to make money leading to INFINITE spin-offs / cross-overs / etc. etc. ETC.!!!!! Bleh.


"# 267-269 bring back Kang, Immortus, and Ravonna for a fast-paced but confusing adventure. And while this is far from the best Kang story, at least it washes out the foul taste of the goofy Kang-in-the-Old-West story."

I hope someday I'll get a chance to re-read this stuff properly. Because of a lot of factors, in the late 80's, I got way behind on my reading, and then decided to pick up with the new books, and catch up on the older ones later. As a result, there's a whole pile of stories from that era I read out-of-sequence-- and what happened was, in several instances I actually read SEQUELS to stories before I read the originals. So I read about the fallout of the Savage Land before seeing its destruction-- and read Nebula's murder BEFORE I read her debut story!!! (It's like a time-traveller experiencing history in the wrong order... heehee)

My recent re-reading of all my 60's Marvels-- in chronological order, for the first time ever-- has been a way of overcoming how I first read MOST of those 60's comics (as reprints), allowing me to experience 60's Marvel development as it happened.

Yeah-- Kang-in-the-West WAS "goofy". Somehow, with early (and still-cartoony) Perez art, it never quite seemed "real", and yet they stood by that story for over a DECADE, didn't they? It took the natural "successor" to Englehart, Stern, to finally bring Kang back and have the nerve to say, "NO-- that WASN'T really Kang's final death we saw back then! What made you think it was?"


"I don't think Englehart's WCA is his best work by any stretch of the imagination"

While I often think Englehart was firing on all cylinders in the 70's, in the 80's his work seemed VERY inconsistent to me. My favorites of his from that time were SILVER SURFER (before Gruenwald & co. DERAILED his plans for it) and GREEN LANTERN CORPS (until Joe Staton took time off to do-- dare I say it-- MILLENNIUM-- aaaaauuugh!!!!). The COYOTE stories in ECLIPSE MONTHLY were brilliant-- the later episodes in his solo book made almost no sense to me. (Maybe it was the art?) WEST COAST AVENGERS seemed like it was going steadily downhill from day one, as was FANTASTIC FOUR (almost the last year of his FF seemed like drivel aimed at 6-year-olds). And VISION AND THE SCARLET WITCH maxi-series was embarrassing to read from start to finish. It was really painful to see one of my top favorite writers self-destruct like that in front of my eyes... I'm SO glad his latest work has been nothing short of BRILLIANT once again! (Very few who I've seen "fall" like that come back from the brink that way.)


"Infantile Crisis"

AHHHH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! (good one)

As Jack Nicholson once said... "Crap. Crap. Crap!" (And in my view, EXTREMEMLY over-produced, over-rendered crap.)


"she recognised Cap outclassed her in the leadership stakes then went off and %^&*ed Magneto"

WHAAAAT????? I don't even remember that! What the HELL was Jim Shooter's problem?????

The Wasp is my FAVORITE female character in the MU-- but when I say that, of course, I'm referring to the Lee-Kirby version of her... (Just like Mary Jane Watson-- the Lee-Romita version-- NOTHING ELSE "counts" in my book. To ME, ALMOST every writer since has totally screwed her over.)


"Protector of the Universe"

I woulda thought that would be DR. STRANGE...!


"Agreed. And the same characters getting brought back from the grave and whitewashed back into service, and other characters being forced back into their milleu from decades past which they had moved on from is a trend that should end."

I keep thinking of how Gerard Jones WANTED to retire Hal Jordan, but Andy Helfer talked him out of it. And then, Gerard Jones WANTED Hal Jordan to find out just how corrupt and MANIPULATIVE the Guardians really were, and QUIT being a GL... but Kevin Dooley DERAILED his plans before he got the chance.

I read ALMOST no DC's these days... among the very few I do are GREEN LANTERN and GREEN LANTERN CORPS, both of which I feel are currently written BETTER than they may ever have been before. Is that ironic, or what????? After DECADES of abuse (and in particular, 13 years of DRIVEL thanks to Dooley), now, ALL the GL's are well-written-- Hal Jordan, John Stewart, GUY GARDNER... and even Arisia is back!!! (Yay!)


"the Harris era Avengers, which is possibly my favorite era of all in regards to Avengers"

Somewhere along the line, I quit buying THE AVENGERS about 6 months into Harris' run. I LOVED the art by new penciller Steve Epting! But the story was doing NOTHING for me... and after the INTERMINABLE drudge Harris had done with NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D., I think I'd just "had it" with him. Too bad...

I didn't pick up another AVENGERS book until the 1st Busiek-Perez issue!

IIRC, Jones was leaving with Jordan anyway - it was just that he was fired early when they wanted a more dramatic finale than Jones had supplied (which worked - orders were apparently up something like 50% on the Marz Emerald Twilight vs. the couple of Jones ET issues that had been solicited.

Actually, Stern was the one who GAVE VULTURE AN ORIGIN. He didn't "go back to what made him special," he made it up out of wholecloth.

Guantlet was decent enough, wheeling out of all of Marvel's less-than-inspired "Abstracts" aside. War & Crusade suffered because Starlin had planned for Quest & Gauntlet, but War & Crusade were tacked on and required the retconning of Guantlet's great ending.

Actually, I think this one really damaged Kang as a character, by combining all the divergent Kangs into one - besides anything else, you've got the basic conceptual problem of "you'll always get more divergences" that's been The Elephant In The Room ever since when it comes to Kang stories.

(Psst... Nebula's not dead. She turned up in Annihilation: Ronan)

"Sorceror Supreme", formally; occasionally the less formal "Master of the Mystic Arts" (less formal since it's not a real title)

Actually, the GL franchise was the specific franchise I was thinking of when I said that, especially for Hal & Guy (John had kind of been "parked", those two had been moved on). And another character brought back from the dead? Oh joy.

*reads no DCs these days.

Nebula was great! I can't remember when she was "killed off". Was it during Simonson's run? And how was she brought back in Annihilation? Was she utilized well?

I think Nebula inspires me subconsciously when I write a villainess I created called Kalla Hryl in the "Omnia" tagteam thread over in Bits. Though the two aren't all that alike, there's a similar vibe somehow.

"Actually..."

Actually, I have my own opinions, too.

Re: Protector of the Universe

When I made that post about Monica and Quasar, I wasn't thinking objectively. That's because, about one year ago, I outlined and plotted what was intended to be a series of fanfics that took place in an alternate MU timeline where the divergence occurs right at the end of Stern's Avengers run. Monica and Quasar was one of those fanfics. Now, the only fanfic that actually got written was the first one, because I parted acrimoniously with the website where I had planned to post them (long story short: one of that site's mods was a crazy person who played mind games on me). In my outline, which I still have, we discover the actual source of the extra-dimensional energy that gave Monica her powers, and we see her on a solo cosmic adventure where she cements her status as Mar-Vell's true successor. So, up until I read Reboot's reply, I hadn't been looking at Monica from the perspective of MU Earth-616 continuity. That's just the way my mind works sometimes.

Re: Rita/Yellowjacket II

Since I never followed any incarnation of Guardians of the Galaxy, I know next to nothing about Rita's stint with the GotG, although I was aware of it (and I didn't read The Crossing, either, because after Steve Epting left Avengers, it quickly became obvious that Harras on Avengers without Epting was like Marv Wolfman on New Teen Titans without George Perez.) If what Reboot says is true and it would be that easy to bring Rita back, then I hope that, in the future, somebody does just that (and maybe, if I get REALLY lucky, it'll be me.) I think Rita has tremendous potential, and she is a major star of the fanfic outline I mentioned before (among other things, she becomes yet another ex-villain to join the Avengers.)

Re: Nebula and 1990s Thanos and Kang divergences

First of all, while I agree that Nebula's claim to be a blood relation of Thanos was not one of Stern's better ideas (I think the only explanation for stealing the Sanctuary II should have been simply because it was a damn powerful battleship), I think that the way that Starlin had Thanos burn her alive and turn her into a zombie and humiliate her was tasteless, mean-spirited, and misogynistic, and I think Ron "Worst Misogynist in Comics" Marz added insult to injury by turning her into a bald-headed cyborg. Is it any wonder no one has taken her seriously as a villainess since? Secondly, and on a more personal level, it is my opinion that Starlin's early 1990s Thanos stories (including and especially Infinity Gauntlet) are take-the-money-and-run hackwork of the worst sort. Sure, they sold lots of copies, but that doesn't make them good. I lost a lot of respect for Starlin because of those stories (although I can still read and enjoy his 1970s Mar-Vell/Warlock/Thanos stories and his 1980s Dreadstar stories). Finally, it's kind of funny to me that the subject of the Kang divergences has come up, because in my opinion, that's the solution for re-inventing Nebula -- if Ravonna posed as Nebula, then it could just be that the victimized Nebula was a Ravonna divergence that stayed in the 20th/21st Century, and there are many other Nebulas running around in the time-space continuum.

Re: 1980s Englehart

While I respect Prof's unfavorable opinion of Englehart's 1980s work, I do feel I must point out that Englehart was the first writer to try to evolve Crystal beyond being a two-dimensional princess (in Vision & Scarlet Witch and in FF) and that, while Harras deserves most of the credit for Crystal's evolution, it was Englehart who got the ball rolling (and Harras fully acknowledged the changes Crystal had gone through in Englehart's stories.)

Oh, and a couple more things -- 1) I was overjoyed when I read the Annihilation spoilers at Wikipedia.

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Drax the Destoyer FINALLY killed Thanos!</span></span>

YES!!

2) In answer to Lardlad's question, the impression regarding Nebula that I got from the Annihilation spoilers is that she was used as nothing more than cannon fodder.

Avengers Volume One # 255-269 & West Coast Avengers Volume Two # 1-10

I’ll add just a few brief comments about things in general:

John Buscema – What’s more enjoyable for a long-time fan of Avengers or Thor than reading an Avengers or Thor comic with Big John as the artist? Really, Buscema’s art was always welcome and it was nice to see his continued involvement with Marvel Super-Heroes.

Nebula/Terminus/Savage Land/etc. – Man, I really have to reread this following your comments Stealth. While I read it long ago and know the basic plotline, I don’t think I’ve ever given it the reread it deserves. I like Nebula a lot too and remember thinking a big ‘WHOA!’ when I first read about the destruction of the Savage Lad, Lemuria, etc.

Secret Wars II – possibly Marvel’s worst idea of the 1980’s. In almost every crossover with one of Marvel’s comics, you could just feel it being bad. Remember that building turned to gold in the Spider-Man issues?

Sub-Mariner – Though I often see myself as a more traditional fan, I like to believe I’m flexible in letting great stories move the MU and DCU forward (so long as their great of course). I generally never thought Namor could be an Avenger, but I really loved his run as an Avenger during Stern’s term as writer. Namor has such a rich history in the MU, having a unique relationship with almost every single major Marvel hero that in theory, there should almost never be a bad Sub-Mariner comic (a theory of course, which was shot to hell ). I liked him here.

Black Knight – I’ve said before a bunch of times how much I love this character, and he’s by far one of my favorite heroes in any universe. If I was writing Avengers (or even Defenders) I would include him without question, and I’ve actually got tons of Black Knight (and Crystal) stories bouncing around in my head for the last ten years or so. I really liked him during Stern’s run, though I didn’t like the potential Dane/Wasp romance.

Female Yellowjacket – though I also am only limited to her Avengers appearances, I remember being intrigued by her when I was a wee lad, when I first saw her on a cover for the Avengers Annual with the High Evolutionary holding a bunch of Avengers in a ball (with Beast, Hulk, Falcon, etc.). I would really have to see more of the character to get a genuine opinion of her, but I like the idea of a female Yellowjacket so Hank Pym never become Yellowjacket again (I really think Hank should be Goliath, and just Goliath, once and for all).

Jean Grey’s return – bad move Marvel. Very bad move. But despite her later appearances in X-Factor still being annoying, she sure was written great in a lot of 90’s stories (again, this shows another 90’s thing I liked, so I’m beginning to see that my earlier generalization of the 90’s was pretty unfair), so I guess what was done was done. Then Grant killed her off again a few years ago, so I say once more ‘what’s done is done’. Jean should stay dead now.

Kang – generally, I’m not too bothered by all the Kang craziness of the last 40 years, b/c I really enjoyed Busiek’s Avengers Forever mini, which did a great job of clearing up a lot of stuff and giving us a great Avengers tale. While I can see the annoyance of many others with understanding, not many Kang stories leave too bad a taste in my mouth given I know that in continuity Kang’s story would continue (in the eyes of the Avengers) in Avengers Forever. Actually, I take that back—Avengers: the Crossing was pretty horrendous.

West Coast Avengers – I admit now that my WCA knowledge is nowhere near what it is to my Avengers Proper knowledge, or other longtime Marvel series. I’ve read the entire run once, with a few gaps in it. It was cool that there was a place for mainstay Avengers to be spotlighted by (1) it was weird and (2) awful things happened to a lot of longtime Avengers because they were stars of the book (not making excuses or agreeing with them, its just what happened).

Still more greatness to come for the Avengers Proper during this era…

Ah, fanfic. Gotcha - I've done that sort of thing myself a few times (the number of times I've typed Leonard McCauley on Legion Wiki and had to go back and correct it later...)

Okay, Thanos-with-Infinity Gauntlet was fooled. Yeah yeah, uh-huh. Have I mentioned recently how Reset Buttons sucketh mightestly?

Let's narrow it for a moment to the IG (and run-up thereto) stuff, since I haven't read the later appearances (presumably in Silver Surfer) where she was cyborgised. You've been handed Thanos, Back From The Dead. He's mightily P.O.ed at Nebula for stealing his ship and, worse, pretending to be his blood-descendent. Remember that this is the guy who Loves Death - he's not going to consider killing someone a punishment. Moreover, Thanos is the bigger villain, so he needs to win - if he can't beat Nebula, what chance has he got against *insert better-known and probably more powerful character here*

A+B = Zombie Nebula.

And I know someone who, while he likes the Harris stuff with Crystal (& Quicksilver), absolutely despises the Englehart Crystal stuff, since it pretty much doomed the character to be... well, let's just say he really hated the stuff with Crystal & Sentry in New Avengers, and sees it as pretty much an inevitable outgrowth of the sort of thing Englehart did with Crystal there, since characters' stories have a tendancy to loop (see Hank Pym for pretty much the most egregious example of this, where he's been utterly defined by That Shooter Story ever since).

[I can't say for myself - I've never read V&SW or that era of FF except the Hulk-crossover FF350]

Not cannon-fodder, but not a major role either.

One of these things though - the Harris BK was a far more ends-justify character, and probably more interesting for it. I get a very "Lite" vibe off the Stern BK

The thing about it is that it breaks down to "Jean is interesting, post-DPS Phoenix is not."

So, obviously, you've got writers like Morrison and Land who define her as Phoenix; and that leads to Phenominal Cosmic Boringness.

*just wants to point out that Iron Man/Cap: Casualties of War referenced the Crossing - and said Kang was behind it, against the AvFor retcon*

And, Avengers Forever #12, AF12... you've got Immortus getting physically ripped out of Kang for... uh... some reason (I ***REALLY*** don't like "strength of will" as a plot device unless you've got something to back it up. A telepath versus a bunch of telepathic brains and winning through strength of will†, I can buy. Someone getting shot by a gun and the gun doing something completely different from what it's supposed to because of it's target's "strength of will".... ummm....).

And then you've got an Immortus who remembers being the Immortus who got killed, yet is meant to be before that Immortus to become that Immortus later, yet that means you've got an Immortus who remembers being that Immortus, yet becomes the Immortus who gets killed only to become... my head hurts.

† - spot the reference

"after Steve Epting left Avengers, it quickly became obvious that Harras on Avengers without Epting was like Marv Wolfman on New Teen Titans without George Perez"

I can see that, having read all of Harris' S.H.I.E.L.D. work-- though that comparison seems like an insult to Wolfman!


"it is my opinion that Starlin's early 1990s Thanos stories (including and especially Infinity Gauntlet) are take-the-money-and-run hackwork of the worst sort. Sure, they sold lots of copies, but that doesn't make them good."

It's a toss-up as to what bugged me most: that there were SO MANY of them (talk about "decompression"-- HAH!), that there were 3 WARLOCK comics going at the same time at one point, or that during each of the 3 crossover minis, there were also COUNTLESS crossovers in just about every other mag, which derailed any hope of consistency in ALL of the books. I was buying very few by then-- DR. STRANGE was one of them, and at the time, Roy Thomas claimed he quit the book in disgust at having it interrupted 3 times for several issues each time. (Just recently, though, he said that had nothing to do with it, and there was a completely different reason he left... though I can't recall what it was. Ever think a lot of people have selective memory?)


"Re: 1980s Englehart"

One of these days-- eventually-- it'd be nice to re-read Steve's run. Having read his comments at his site, I might be able to look at his FF run in an entirely different light. It was apparently the victim of specific tampering and interference on the editorial side, while, when it was coming out, I was under the impression it was a DIFFERENT incident of editorial interference that had caused what I considered the books descent into "drivel". (The earlier issues, presumably, weren't so bad.)


"Annihilation"

Not being up much on Marvel these days, I wasn't sure-- is this "regular" MU, or "Ultimate"?? (I thought it was the latter-- but maybe not...)


"What’s more enjoyable for a long-time fan of Avengers or Thor than reading an Avengers or Thor comic with Big John as the artist?"

Either, with Jack Kirby as the artist?




I now really wish Stan had left John alone so he could have had a long, UNBROKEN run on THE AVENGERS in the late 60's, instead of all those interruptions. Even Neal Adams-- his art looks "WOW!", but his storytelling isn't HALF of Buscema's.


"there should almost never be a bad Sub-Mariner comic"

SHOULD. Early in Bill Everett's early-70's return to his character, there was a letter printed which said, in essence, "after 49 UNREADABLE issues, the book finally got good!" I agreed-- in the extreme. While all of early-70's Marvel went to hell in a morass of gloom and depression, Everett went completely the other way. And he did it with a book that, just before his return, had been possibly the WORST offender in the "hopelessly downbeat" category.

It amazes me that the current AGENTS OF ATLAS has included numerous references to events in Everett's issues-- which I never read until the last 2 years. (It's as if that mini was written just for me!)

The various big events (Annhilation / Civil War) are technically occuring in the mainstream '616' Marvel continuity, but the 616 continuity is now being written by the Ultimates writers, using the 'voices' they established for the Ultimates versions of the characters, and the 616 heroes are increasingly turning into their Ultimates counterparts, who are generally anything but heroes.

Eventually, I'm expecting a Crisis of some sort to come along and eliminate any pretense of them being different universes, so that Xavier and Iron Man and Cap and Reed Richards can be the exact same malevolent dictatorial thugs in the new combined setting.

There was an old 'Death of Phoenix' special once, presenting an alternate version of the story, where Jean was stripped of the powers at the end, which was supposed to be the original ending before some people at Marvel pointed out 'She ate a planet, she can't come back from '11 billion asparagus people die with a horrible scream.''

The quote that always jumped out at me from the interview at the end was that they intended Jean to be depowered, marry Scott and become 'Scott's wife, about as important a character as the left rear wheel of the Blackbird.' That really annoyed me, the idea that Xaviers wonderful dream of humans and mutants living together was written by a bunch of hacks who considered a non-super-powered Jean (and, by extension, human supporting characters, like Kitty's dance instructor, or the dude who kept the grounds, or Angel's girlfriend-of-the-week) to be completely and utterly worthless as a character because she couldn't shoot lightning out of her butt.

Ummm... Keith Giffen's (LoSH, JLI) writing Annihilation, and the lead in minis were written by Giffen, DnA (The Legion), Simon Furman (Transformers) and a guy I've never heard of.

No-one involved with Annihilation has written any Ultimate book. Ever.

Yeah, Reboot is right, Annhilation isn't written at all like anything in the Ultimate universe and is actually pretty excellent. And its very consistent with past Marvel characterizations and stays true to all characters IMO. Though it may sound like it from interviews, etc., there has been very little cannon-fodder.

Its completely 100% a different animal from Civil War in all ways.

Prof:

Re: Jack Kirby...Agree 100%

Re: Sub-Mariner comics...also agree. Subby's had a lot of bad stories over the years (but really, all the great longtime characters have)! Its so odd to see someone with so much potential have so many bad stories in different generations, but thats the way it goes. Not too much of a complaint, at least he got to kick some ass in most of them

From Comics Continuum :

Christopher Yost is writing Marvel Studios' and Lionsgate's Teen Avengers direct-to-video animated movie.

"the mainstream '616' Marvel continuity"

...which goes to show just how far out of the loop I am, I have NO idea what the hell this means!


"There was an old 'Death of Phoenix' special once, presenting an alternate version of the story, where Jean was stripped of the powers at the end, which was supposed to be the original ending before some people at Marvel pointed out 'She ate a planet, she can't come back from '11 billion asparagus people die with a horrible scream.''"

Not "some people". JIM ******* SHOOTER! (Otherwise known as "Jim 'BECAUSE I SAID SO' Shooter")


The thing that got me about that situation was, reportedly, Chris Claremont & John Byrne had such a breakdown in communication while they were co-plotting the book over the course of about 2 whole years, each thinking something other than what the other was... and they reached this point in the story, and thanks to Shooter's editorial regime in place (assistant editor, editor, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF), everything had to pass thru several people, probably several times, before being approved. The asparagus people (from AVENGERS #4!!) had their planet destroyed, maybe 3 months before the climax of the story. It went by without a hitch. 2 more months went by without a hitch. The climax of the story was almost ready to go to the printers, WHEN SUDDENLY, Jim "BECAUSE I SAID SO" Shooter stuck his nose in and said "HOLD IT...!"

In interviews afterwards, I do believe Claremont and Byrne said they felt the resulting story was better than what they intended. Personally, I think they said this because they wanted to keep their jobs. Shooter eventually got fired, not them, so I guess it worked!


(I dunno, until very recently, I never USED to be this nasty about the guy...! I guess my cynicism must be on the rise.)

Excellent. I'm always glad when I'm able to inspire somebody to read or re-read an underrated Avengers story. And do please share your thoughts on it in this thread when you're done re-reading it.

That is most definitely not what I was trying to say. Harras and Epting worked very closely on Avengers, just as Wolfman and Perez did on New Teen Titans. This kind of chemistry galvanized the plots in such a way that even the ocassional guest artist could not stop the momentum. But when Epting and Perez both left, neither of the successors had chemistry with the writers. In NTT's case, it wasn't a question of the artwork: Perez was replaced by Eduardo Barreto, a superb artist, but the chemistry just wasn't there and the stories suffered (Harras was even less lucky that Wolfman -- he got stuck with Mike Deodato during Deodato's "Jim Lee Clone" phase.) Finally, I think that to dismiss Harras's Avengers stories on the basis of having read his S.H.I.E.L.D. stories is like dismissing Doug Moench's Master of Kung Fu stories on the basis of having read his Fantastic Four stories.

Avengers Volume One #270-285 & West Coast Avengers Volume Two #11-39

The 270s could be considered one very long storyarc. In #270-271, it appears that many supervillains are organizing for mysterious reasons. In #272, there is a battle against Atlantis (the Avengers teaming with guest stars Alpha Flight), and the Sub-Mariner takes a leave of absence to search for his runaway lover, Marrina; the Avengers have no idea how losing one of their strongest members is going to affect them.

#273 and #274 are two of the finest Avengers issues ever published. First, we finally discover what the villains are up to -- Baron Zemo II, vindictive son of the deceased Zemo I, has organized the biggest, strongest, and scariest Masters of Evil lineup ever: Zemo, Moonstone, Wrecker, Bulldozer, Thunderball, Piledriver, Tiger Shark, Fixer, Mr. Hyde, Goliath, Blackout, Absorbing Man, Titania, and Yellowjacket II (plus Grey Gargoyle and Screaming Mimi, who are arrested before the plan gets under way, Whirlwind, who is defeated early on by Captain America, and Black Mamba, who gets Hercules dangerously drunk.) As the issue comes to its terrifying end, the MoE have taken over Avengers mansion, with Jarvis as their hostage. Then, in the next issue, the MoE's plan continues to unfold, with increasingly frightening results: Black Knight and Captain America taken hostage, Captain Marvel trapped in the Darkforce dimension, and Hercules beaten into a coma. In addition to the fine-watch precision of Roger Stern's scripts, there is the art of John Buscema & Tom Palmer, which in these issues vaults to an even higher level of quality, as if Stern's story has galvanized them into outdoing themselves.

#275-277 comprise the third act, and while it's not quite as good as the first and second acts, it's still engaging (and stunningly drawn.) #278-279 are an extended coda, in which the Avengers -- left without a mansion after it is destroyed in the battle against the Masters of Evil -- settle on Hydrobase, Wasp volutarily steps down as leader, Captain Marvel succeeds her, and the team is joined by two returnees (She-Hulk and Thor) and one newbie (Dr. Druid, another of Stern's pet characters, but a lame one.) The 270s do have their flaws, but they were, up to that time, the most compelling and cohesive extended run of Avengers since Englehart at his 1970s peak.

#280 is a way, way above-average fill-in (and also the very first Avengers script by Bob Harras) -- despite the bad art, the story is both poignant and uplifting, comprising flashbacks to Jarvis's many years with the Avengers as he recovers from his injuries and ponders retirement...ultimately choosing to not retire.

With Stern, Buscema and Palmer having had a chance to catch their breath, they now dive into a new five-part epic which I think is possibly their finest story: Hercules' father Zeus, driven irrational with rage by his son's fate, wrongly blames the Avengers, and orders the gods who serve him to capture the Avengers and bring them to Olympus to stand trial. Just when it looked like Buscema & Palmer couldn't get any better than they were on the 270s, they actually get even better in #281-285. Buscema comes full circle with his mid-late Silver Age work on the Olympus story from #49-50 by giving us a feast for the eyes, from the finely detailed Olympian architecture to his beautifully individualized renditions of the Olympian pantheon: Zeus, Hera, Artemis, Hephaestus, Ares, Neptune, Pluto, Athena, Dionysus, Apollo, Hermes, Venus...also Prometheus the Titan, who plays a crucial role in the story. Of special note is the battle pitting the four most powerful Avengers -- Thor, Captain Marvel, Namor, and She-Hulk -- against Zeus alone. These scenes should be required reading for superhero writers, because THIS is the way to write a battle between a superhero team and a single, near-omnipotent villain.

Who can say where Stern might have gone from here? It is one of the biggest tragedies in comic book history that Stern was not only fired, but that he was fired at the peak of his creativity. Avengers had reached such a state of perfection that the issues which followed are among those that I refuse to read on principle. So I won't be reviewing #286-304, because I've never seen any reason to witness the heartbreaking spectacle of everything Stern had built for five years being torn down. Walt Simonson made a serious error in judgement by taking on this assignment, but from what I've read in interviews and on the web, Simonson was apparently not prepared for the lack of input allowed or for the lack of available characters for the new lineup. Simonson quit the book once the lineup was established, and less than five issues later, that lineup was history and John Byrne was the writer, beginning a steady stream of mediocrity that I'll elaborate on next week.

Meanwhile, over on West Coast Avengers, Steve Englehart finally put an end to the monster mish-mash and sent the team on an eight-issue time travel adventure. This is the best-known story of Englehart's WCA run, and it encapsulates the best and worst of this run. The basic plot mechanics are undeniably clever and diverting, and Joe Sinnott's inking temporarily got better (although he left the book before the storyarc was finished). What on Earth, then, could have possessed Englehart to write in a subplot about Mockingbird being kidnapped, drugged, and raped? It completely ruins the story!

Post-time travel, the book returned to the usual low-key weirdness -- the Zodiac storyarc and the Iron Curtain storyarc were okay-ish, but not good enough to rise above the art. Sinnott's replacement, Mike Machlan, had done nice work for DC, particularly the early issues of Infinity Inc. But his inking on WCA makes Milgrom's pencils even more mediocre than they already are. Englehart seemed to be gearing up for big changes, dividing the team and bringing in Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Vision...and Mantis! But the usual editorial disagreements brought Englehart's WCA run to an abrupt end.

John Byrne became both writer and artist on WCA, and I refuse to read his issues. Why? Because of what he did to Vision and to Scarlet Witch. The damage to Vision -- the ugly new look and the robotic personality -- was eventually, and very effectively, undone by Bob Harras in Avengers. The damage to Scarlet Witch may have started out as Byrne's typical turn-back-the-clock nonsense -- specifically to rejoin her and Quicksilver with Magneto, just like they were in the early Silver Age -- but the long-term reprecussions were disastrous. Byrne's story directly influenced Bendis (and Bendis has confirmed this in interviews) to turn Wanda evil. And for that, Byrne can never be forgiven.

In an amusing irony, Byrne's exit from WCA was just as abrupt as Englehart's, and it was caused by similar editorial disagreements. Byrne's replacements were the husband-and-wife team of Roy Thomas & Dann Thomas. I've only read a few of their issues, mainly the ones that tied into Operation Galactic Storm and Bloodties, and found them to be lazy and by-the-numbers. WCA was cancelled at the end of the Thomases' run, making the book one which arguably never found any sort of peak, despite running for almost a decade.

"I think that to dismiss Harras's Avengers stories on the basis of having read his S.H.I.E.L.D. stories is like dismissing Doug Moench's Master of Kung Fu stories on the basis of having read his Fantastic Four stories."

Fair enough. Harras's SHIELD was crap of the worst, most destructive sort. I sat thru 6 MONTHS of his AVENGERS without being the slightest bit impressed, EVEN though Epting's art blew me away. Then I dropped the book. That's more of a chance than I gave Tom DeFalco when he took over FANTASTIC FOUR. So many writers had crashed & burned on that book, and I was pretty fed up with it in general. When I heard DeFalco was coming, and feeling as I did that he was (at the time) one of the worst writers to ever have worked for Marvel, I dropped the book BEFORE ever reading a single one of his issues!


"Walt Simonson made a serious error in judgement by taking on this assignment"

I've always felt it was a case of, like Sean Connery in THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY: "I wanted the money."

I believe I read at the time that Simonson signed on to do a dozen issues (under Shooter, 6 consecutive issues on a book netted someone a HEFTY bonus). It's possible Simonson stepped into a situation different (and worse) than he expected, but my impression back then was that he went in with a "take the money and run" attitude. As soon as it was over, he was gone. Oddly enough, right after, Mark Gruenwald stepped in to WRITE the book himself. And then HE was gone. Quit? FIRED for incompetence? Who knows? He did his damage, and what he left in place was brushed aside almost as quickly as he had brushed Stern aside a year earlier. (What goes around comes around?)


"Englehart seemed to be gearing up for big changes, dividing the team and bringing in Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Vision...and Mantis!"

Seems like Steve wanted to reunite the team he might have had if Gerry Conway hadn't gotten in the way, all those years earlier.


"But the usual editorial disagreements brought Englehart's WCA run to an abrupt end."

Steve Englehart must be one of the nicest guys in the biz. He's worked with some really 2nd-rate (or 3rd-rate) artists over the years, but always seems to find something nice to say about each of them. But I'm also wondering if he doesn't have selective memory, as things I've read in recent interviews, on his website and in e-mails often contradicts things I read many years ago.

Back then, the general impression I got was that Mark Gruenwald (yes, the same guy who fired Roger Stern) took a PERSONAL dislike of Steve's character, Mantis, and he, along with Ralph Macchio, ORDERED Steve to get rid of her-- only a few months after her return in SILVER SURFER. I was pleasantly surprised by her character evolution in SS, and after never having cared for her at all in the 70's, found she was quickly becoming one of my favorite characters in SS. So her ABRUPT departure just made no sense. On his website, Steve said he had planned her exit anyway, but this is completely at odds with what I read 2 decades ago!

At any rate, shortly after her ejection, Steve's writing DROPPED in quality in ALL his books. It looked to me as if he were pulling a temper tantrum. Reportedly, he had a firm 3-year contract, and there was apparently nothing Gruenwald & co. could do to get rid of him-- while he knocked out almost DRIVEL for the remainder of his contract.

I admit, this view of events may not be completely accurate... but at times I wonder if I'll ever know the real, full truth.

At any rate, "Mantis" (supposedly) came back in WEST COAST AVENGERS just before John Byrne's debut... but Steve always maintained he DIDN'T write those episodes! Between the awful writing and ABOMINABLE fill-in art, it was no wonder I welcomed John Byrne's run on WCA as much as I did. At least-- at first.

I think Byrne draws about the sexiest Scarlet Witch since Dave Cockrum. But what he did to her in his writing... YEESH! Anybody remember the set of advance covers they used to promote Byrne's run? The last cover in the set NEVER appeared. Sometime before that episode appeared, plans apparently changed (Byrne's fault or his editor?) and whatever he had in mind was detoured in a completely different direction. (That was the month he introduced the Great Lakes Avengers.)

As with the regular book, I read WCA out-of-sequence... I actually read Byrne's run BEFORE reading the entirety of Englehart's! One of these days I gotta go back over in in the proper order...

First, an aside to all (especially Stealth): this thread has inspired me to once more reread large runs of the Avengers, and I started this last Friday. Since I’ve read the first 75 issues more than almost anything else in comics besides Spider-Man (including Legion), I started at #101, to really get a sense of Engleharts Celestial Madonna Saga (and as the issues right before he came on are almost like a lead into his run). So, I read the entire thing and beyond, and I will post comments soon, in a separate post. Needless to say, it was even more enjoyable than I remembered and remains one of the greatest eras ever of the Avengers.

Avengers Volume One #270-285
I’ve got some general comments here, as usual:

Stern/Buscema/Palmer – rarely have the Avengers had such a level of talent when all three were clicking. Truly, this was an ‘A’ team and you can see it in each issue.

The Masters of Evil Saga – even a Silver Age fan like myself has to admit that this was definitely the greatest Masters of Evil story ever written, and it really just hits on so many levels. Stern plays to his strengths, with characters having insightful moments that usually don’t, a gigantic cast and intricate plot, tons of action and growing intensity, and just so much more. This was truly one of the Avengers lowest moments and then greatest triumphs. Without a doubt this ensured the continued use over the years of Zemo II, Moonstone and the Fixer, and a bunch of others. Mr. Hyde sticks out as particularly terrifying, to the point where his original self, as depicted in early Thor comics, really comes across. Cap is heroic and its tragic how they try to hurt him and the Black Knight, despite his tough time, comes across great. Thor’s return to the Avengers, at the height of the Simonsin era, is truly an awesome sight, and Stern gets across how Mighty Thor really is.

Now, I don’t think this is the greatest Avengers story ever, and yes, I see the flaws throughout it—the Wasp’s leadership already being touched upon in this thread—but I do really like this story. Its about as action-packed and dramatic as it gets and really was unique for its time. I think many ‘super-villains vs. super-heroes’ team stories have in a way plagiarized this series greatly in the last two decades.

Dr. Druid – I generally agree that this was a Stern ‘pet’ character and he didn’t really interest me much either. I think the first time I really was interested in him was when he died.

Harris/Jarvis story – one of my favorite issues of the Avengers ever. I reread this so many times growing up…it truly is a powerful, smile-inducing tale. Though I always liked Jarvis for hundreds of issues before, this cemented him as one of my all-time favorite supporting characters in comics.

The 270s could be considered one very long storyarc. In #270-271, it appears that many supervillains are organizing for mysterious reasons. In #272, there is a battle against Atlantis (the Avengers teaming with guest stars Alpha Flight), and the Sub-Mariner takes a leave of absence to search for his runaway lover, Marrina; the Avengers have no idea how losing one of their strongest members is going to affect them.

The Olympeus Saga – well Stealth, now you’ve piqued my interest again. . I’ve read this story before and remember enjoying it, but your high praise of it gives me reason to revisit it for the first time in a decade, so I will. I’ll definitely comment sometime soon!

End of Stern era line-up – you know, I didn’t mind this line-up at all, despite how off-beat it was. By the end of Stern’s run, there was no doubt that the Black Knight and She-Hulk were genuine ‘core Avengers’ in the sense that the Vision, Black Panther or Ms. Marvel are (and in the sense that Mantis, Moondragon and many others are not). I tend to put Captain Marvel II/Photon in this category, but as Reboot pointed out earlier, she’s never really appeared much beyond Stern.

The Stern/Gruenwald stuff – wow, I never really heard any of this stuff until Legion World (I’ve heard you both speak of it before). That’s all truly too bad and I hate to hear about problems between creators and editors causing potentially great comic book runs to never see light.

Since you’re not reviewing #286-304, I’ll do it for you Stealth
- #286-299 – generally pretty crappy stuff, despite Simonsin’s usual brand of grandeur. For those of you that did not know, if you wanted to see the Black Knight’s story end, you’d have to check out Thor #390 - #400 for a pretty cool supporting role for Dane in what I consider a very enjoyable epic story (Asgard vs. Set).

#300 - #304 – This was about as stupid as could be, and it became obvious immediately. Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman as Avengers? REALLY?!!! A very cheap marketing stunt and stupid idea, and it was evident immediately and quickly enough undone. Why, that’s as bad as Spider-Man and Wolverine as Avengers. Ooops! Just goes to show, as always, that all the recent things Marvel and DC have done have generally been done before, and usually in the 80’s. As for Gilgamesh…well, we never learned much about him, and he disappeared quickly enough, only to resurface in the 90’s—as a corpse.

I remember that at this time, the X-Men were coming off an awful period where they were stuck in Australia (what a DUMB idea), and Inferno crossed over into the Spidey titles, Avengers, etc., which seemed pretty cool, given it was one of the first crossovers. That was about all that was cool about Avengers #300 - #304.


West Coast Avengers Volume Two #11-39
As I said, I don’t have the same knowledge of the WCA run, and though I read some issues, I didn’t read enough to have a coherent view of the stories. I could probably reread those too (I have access to the issues), but that’s still a maybe. Awful that Mockingbird would be kidnapped and raped, especially since Steve so frequently wrote great female heroes. Then came Byrne, and I also agree that his decisions were awful, in ruining the Vision with only Harras’ later ability to fix the character and make him readable again (although of course, he was no longer the Vision of old, but almost completely different). The Wanda connections with Pietro and Magneto I feel are enjoyable but the ‘Wanda going evil’ stuff never was good when Byrne did it, so it was only ten times worse when Bendis did it with worse execution. Though I guess the blame for that lies squarely with Bendis and Joe Q. It was really around WCA that Byrne’s work had begun to get noticeably worse and less enjoyable.

Really wish I could have read more about Mantis by Steve. I have a Mantis story in my head I've had for years, and I always had a dream where I'd be the writer on Avengers, and big Steve would give me the go ahead with my plans for her.

I did read later WCA issues (much later than #39) towards the end of its run, and I can talk more about them later. Generally, WCA took some lame characters and did some interesting things with them at the end of the run (US Agent, Spider-Woman, War Machine, etc.). So for that it wasn’t all that bad.

"Mr. Hyde sticks out as particularly terrifying, to the point where his original self, as depicted in early Thor comics, really comes across."

I'm reminded of the earlier (?) work Stern did with both The Cobra & Mr. Hyde. In ASM, Cobra escapes from prison, leaving Hyde behind, because he realizes how many times teaming with Hyde has been a disaster. (I get the feeling it was the same issue Peter finally sewed new "underarm webbing" on his costume-- it had been shrinking and finally disappeared for years, Stern took this artists' quirk and made it part of the story by saying the elastic stuff Pete made it out of was hard to find!) In CAPTAIN AMERICA (under Stern, Byrne & Rubinstein-- DEFINITELY an "A" team that broke up way too soon), Hyde escapes prison, hijacks an oil tanker, and plans to detonate it in New York harbor, taking ALL of Manhattan with it-- JUST to make SURE he gets revenge on Cobra, who he believes is hiding somewhere in the city. MONSTROUS, jaw-dropping evil!!!!!


"The Stern/Gruenwald stuff – wow, I never really heard any of this stuff until Legion World (I’ve heard you both speak of it before). That’s all truly too bad and I hate to hear about problems between creators and editors causing potentially great comic book runs to never see light."

The story I read was, Gruenwald got Stern in his office to discuss the next year's worth of issues. Stern went home that weekend to figure out how to make it work. He came in Monday and told Gruenwald he couldn't figure out any way of doing it that wouldn't VIOLATE the integrity of every single character involved. Gruenwald told him, "Fine, then I'll get somebody who can." Stern was out, Simonson was happy to take the money.


"Really wish I could have read more about Mantis by Steve. I have a Mantis story in my head I've had for years, and I always had a dream where I'd be the writer on Avengers, and big Steve would give me the go ahead with my plans for her."

With Gruenwald gone, not only was Stern able to start working for Marvel again, but Steve was eventually able to bring Mantis back, too. Steve has gone on record that any appearances of her NOT written by him "don't count". Who am I to argue?

In-between GIANT AVENGERS #4 and SILVER SURFER, Mantis also appeared in Steve's JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #142 (May'77) and those 2 issues of SCORPIO ROSE --but in both cases, under aliases. She was back at the forefront in Steve's AVENGERS: CELESTIAL QUEST mini-series, though apart from the ONE fill-in issue drawn by Joe Staton, I could barely tolerate the art on most of it (though Steve said he really liked it).

Various posts from Comicboards from Simonson on his first Avengers run (he also finished off the HR-Avengers after Liefeld was sacked):

• Other Reed/Sue posts with no major additional details (not link-fixed): [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] .
• Other posts with no major additional details: Following up [i]Avengers[/i] plots in F4 , Gil\'s headgear , Sarcastic Monica post .

EDIT: Fixing major links to match current Comicboards link schema.

"However, literally just as I was writing the story introducing Reed and Sue into the Avengers, I was told that editorial approval had been withdrawn. Marvel editorial decided that they had to be put back in the FF, and I had to write them out of the Avengers. I'd been working toward a new lineup for Avengers 300 for almost a year by that time and to have it ripped apart at the last second was, to be relatively blunt, fairly annoying."

That seems to match with what Steve Englehart discussed at his own website. Steve wanted the book to evolve, and "retired" Reed & Sue. But about a year later, "editorial" dictated they had to return. The protracted sequence of "dream" stories Steve did after this was his way of thumbing his nose at "editorial"! I'm sure they were not amused... as soon as his 3-year contract was up, he was OUT, and Simonson was in.

Walt's further comments go some way to "explain" what he was doing on the FF at the time. Personally, I kept wishing they'd brought back Joe Sinnott-- Walt & Joe did ONE issue of THOR together (during his 1st run, when Len Wein was writing) that to my eyes was always THE high point of that run, and I would have loved to have seen a LOT more pages that looked like those.

One thing Walt did on the FF that i thought went too far was his "retcon" of Dr. Doom's personal history. John Byrne, during his run as writer, has said that SEVERAL appearances of Doom in various titles that he, personally, did not like, were NOT really Doom, but Doom robots. There was even an extended period during his own run when Doom was apparently in space (thanks to The Beyonder?) and when he returned he set about putting his house in order.

Walt took this a step further-- and WAY past the point of complete absurdity. According to Walt, EVERY single Dr. Doom story since FF #6 had featured a Doom robot, and only the stories Walt wrote featured the "real" Doom, at last returned from DECADES' worth of comics in space. What a LOAD! (This was YEARS before the infamous "Spider-Clone" thing!!!)

I hung around to the end of Walt's run, then said "goodbye" to the book. In originals or reprints, I have every issue from #1 to the end of Walt's run. After that, only the odd ones here and there... I REALLY liked the initial "Heroes Return" issues with Alan Davis art, but when both he AND his writer got bumped due to behind-the-scenes "office politics" (after ONLY 3 issues!!!) I said, SCREW this! Good thing-- I never read a single Claremont issue of the FF...

Actually, if you look at that sequence, the only Doom stories Simonson **actually** retcons into being a Doombot are the Englehart Kristoff-kicked-Doom-out-of-Latveria stories. The rest, he merely has Doom **suggest** that it's kept being Doombots, in response to a badly-phrased comment by the Thing - since "they" kept losing!

EDIT: And, yep:

Prof – as a total Spidey fan (hey, you should stop by my Spidey review thread sometime), I look at that Cobra/Hyde story with Spidey with great fondness! Cobra and Hyde have always been in my top 20 favorite villains of all time (from when I was a wee pre-teen lad reading Silver Age Thor and Daredevil stories) and Stern really used them well in the 80’s. I LOVE that Cap/Hyde story too

I read the Avengers: Celestial Quest mini a few years ago, but remember not really giving it the true read it deserved (don’t you hate when you do that?). I’ll have to reread it again soon, as I just reread the Celestial Madonna Saga—LAST WEEKEND! I’ll have to find some time today (stupid work!) to post some additional thoughts on it. I think there is still tons of room to revisit Mantis without retreading old ground.

Reboot – Thanks for posting those links! It’s interesting to hear Simonsin’s explanation on what he was thinking when he was working on Avengers. I guess, for the most part, that putting Reed and Sue somewhere in a title is an honorable thing to do (though I really don’t like seeing them as Avengers), but this was during that unmemorable (to me) period where Sharon Ventura was She-Thing and the Thing was ‘Spikey Guy’, Crystal was a member, etc. Actually, thanks for the link to the website. Busiek, Simonsin, Harras, etc. all posting is pretty interesting!

Funny thing about the FF members in the Avengers. I always thought Johnny would fit in best and he's the one that has never joined.

I hated Reed & Sue in the Avengers BUT I LOVED Ben in the WCA!!! That was great chemistry.

Depends - out-of-continuity, he's an Avenger in Davis' FF: The End. In-continuity, you're right though.

And, going back to reply to a couple of other bits of prof's post:

Actually, Englehart was booted before the dream stories - but they didn't have a replacement lined up, so they made him fill out his contract. Ergo, the abysmal "John Harkness" dream-stories...

Those were only Simonson-breakdowns though (very loose pencils), with Sinott finishes. Sinott inking finished-Simonson-pencils would have looked a lot more like Simonson's other work - as it was, those issues are halfway to Sinott pencilling & inking.

Davis wasn't bumped - he's said umpteen times he only ever committed to three issues, because he was working on some lots-of-work, short-publication-time projects (might have been JLA: The Nail, which was three double-or-treble-sized issues, come to think of it) and he wanted some issues out that calendar year.

Lobdell, however, WAS bumped, for reasons which have never been entirely clear (I've heard one story most often, but I don't know if I should post it since I can't confirm it...)

"Prof – as a total Spidey fan (hey, you should stop by my Spidey review thread sometime)"

I did read your entire thread. The longer it went on, the more painful it became for me... but that's ME. I didn't want to rain on your parade, since you enjoy the books so much. (I guess I'm just getting too cynical.)


"if you look at that sequence"

Are you KIDDING? It was too painful the FIRST time! I think Walt was completely out of control. That's why I dropped the book after reading it nonstop for 2 DECADES. I knew Walt was better than DeFalco, so NO WAY I was gonna put up with HIM!


"Cobra and Hyde have always been in my top 20 favorite villains of all time"

The very 1st THOR solo story I ever read was the 2nd half of the one about the "house of traps", "The Power Of The Thunder God". I was thrilled to get a copy of that a few years ago, and posted a really nice clean-up of the cover at the GCD...

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=18824&zoom=4


"I read the Avengers: Celestial Quest mini a few years ago, but remember not really giving it the true read it deserved (don’t you hate when you do that?)."

The only "problem" I had with it was, part of it was a sequel to stuff I'd never read, during all those years I stopped reading AVENGERS. Based on Steve's comments, it's possible my never having read all that other stuff was a GOOD thing.

My favorite moment in the mini has nothing to do with the story-- it was when, in part 7 (of 8), the artist blew the deadline, and they got JOE STATON-- Steve's collaborator on GREEN LANTERN CORPS-- to fill in!! So cartoony you'd think he'd be a terrible fit on any modern "Marvel" book, yet in truth, a visual breath of fresh air, and to my eyes, MUCH better than the guy who did the other 7 chapters! I wish Joe had drawn the ENTIRE story.


"Englehart was booted before the dream stories - but they didn't have a replacement lined up, so they made him fill out his contract. Ergo, the abysmal "John Harkness" dream-stories..."

Sounds like PURE editorial INCOMPETENCE to me. All those months and they couldn't find ANY writer to take his place? SHEESH! Steve claims those were pretty much the stories he WOULD have written anyway, except they were framed as "dream" stories to satisfy the editorial dictates. At the time, I just thought he was "writing down" (dumbing down) the book in response to Mantis being ejected from the MU.


"Those were only Simonson-breakdowns though (very loose pencils), with Sinnott finishes. Sinnott inking finished-Simonson-pencils would have looked a lot more like Simonson's other work - as it was, those issues are halfway to Sinnott pencilling & inking."

Yeah? So? THEY LOOK GREAT!!!!!



The rest of that run was pencilled & inked by Tony DeZuniga, over LAYOUTS by John Buscema (boring and ugly as hell) and Walt (less boring, but still ugly). Now, if they'd gotten Tony to draw the book ENTIRELY on his own, THEN it might have looked interesting! 95% (or more) or books Tony has inked over others just wind up looking like a collosal waste of everybody's talent to me. (Ever seen his work on INFINITY INC.? Aaaaaaugh!!!)


"Davis wasn't bumped - he's said umpteen times he only ever committed to three issues, because he was working on some lots-of-work, short-publication-time projects"

Then I blame BOTH Davis AND the editor. I only picked up the series at all because Davis was pencilling. What the HELL kind of "commitment" is 3 ISSUES? (That's like Christopher Eccleston signing on for DOCTOR WHO and going in, in advance, planning to ONLY do ONE season. It's NUTS!)

"" "The Stern/Gruenwald stuff – wow, I never really heard any of this stuff until Legion World (I’ve heard you both speak of it before). That’s all truly too bad and I hate to hear about problems between creators and editors causing potentially great comic book runs to never see light."

The story I read was, Gruenwald got Stern in his office to discuss the next year's worth of issues. Stern went home that weekend to figure out how to make it work. He came in Monday and told Gruenwald he couldn't figure out any way of doing it that wouldn't VIOLATE the integrity of every single character involved. Gruenwald told him, "Fine, then I'll get somebody who can." Stern was out,""


In recent years, Stern has added some details: the core problem was that they disagreed about Captain Marvel -- Stern wanted her to remain leader, Gruenwald wanted her to be replaced by Captain America, in order to boost sales of Cap's solo book (written, at the time, by Gruenwald). Stern refused, insisting that any story with Steve replacing Monica would be racist and sexist. Gruenwald had more power than Stern, so Gruenwald got his way, and IMO Avengers didn't get good again until the Harras/Epting era.

I've also heard a story from another source that Gruenwald wanted to kill off Monica during the Nebula/Terminus Saga!! Luckily, Stern won that particular battle.


"Davis wasn't bumped - he's said umpteen times he only ever committed to three issues, because he was working on some lots-of-work, short-publication-time projects (might have been JLA: The Nail, which was three double-or-treble-sized issues, come to think of it) and he wanted some issues out that calendar year.

Lobdell, however, WAS bumped, for reasons which have never been entirely clear (I've heard one story most often, but I don't know if I should post it since I can't confirm it...)"


Could you please PM the story to me, Reboot? I always like finding out the behind-the-scenes stuff, good or bad.

"I've also heard a story from another source that Gruenwald wanted to kill off Monica during the Nebula/Terminus Saga!!"

Sounds to me like he had a bad "thing" about other people's characters. He wanted Monica killed; and he wanted Mantis GONE, permanently! (Mantis, of course, did return... after Gruenwald was gone, permanently. Sigh...)

*choke* I hope its the actual issues of Spidey's mag and not my reviews that were painful! I tend to be overly possitive and upbeat when reviewing Spidey, but I understand how people could not be completely thrilled with some of those eras...

"*choke* I hope its the actual issues of Spidey's mag and not my reviews that were painful!"

Yes. I was telling a friend (and fellow comics fan) about your thread, and I told him, this guy so clearly loves these books, it wouldn't be polite for me to dump on 'em, just because of how I've come to feel over the years.

One of the reasons I wanted to pull out my 60's comics and re-read them was so i could experience all over again the stuff I DID enjoy. Just as someone here said they refused to read the Simonson AVENGERS issues on principle, there's no point in going back over comics you DON'T like. There's too much good stuff out there-- you just gotta find it!




Of course, this doesn't explain the lengthy reviews of the late-60's CAPTAIN MARVEL I did for Klordny. that was more like watching a train-wreck in slow motion, and not believing what you're seeing. It can't POSSIBLY be THAT bad-- can it? Oh my God-- IT'S WORSE! (How do things like that happen???)



I admit, it cracks me up that, to date, the only 2 series I've ever done in-depth reviews of for my a.p.a. were CM and GL-- 2 "sci-fi series GONE BAD". I suppose it's interesting-- and frustrating-- to see something with a ton of potential gone horribly astray...

C'est moi.

And thanks to the internet and to publications like The Official Marvel Index to the Avengers, it's possible to find out what happened in those stories without even reading those comics in the first place.


Avengers Volume One # 305-333

By this time, changes had taken place in Avengers, none of them for the better. John Buscema had left after # 300, and his eventual replacement as regular Avengers penciler was Paul Ryan, whose pleasant but low-key style was all wrong for Avengers; Mark Gruenwald had left after # 303, and his replacement as editor was the infamous Howard Mackie. Worst of all, John Byrne, fresh from commiting character assasinations over in WCA, now became the writer of BOTH Avengers books! At least Tom Palmer was still around to provide an attractive finish to the art.

While I think Byrne did some great artwork during the 1970s and early 1980s, I've never had much time for him as a writer. I don't think Byrne ever really mastered the craft of writing, because his first regular writing gig (Fantastic Four) was an immediate commercial success.

Byrne's first crime was in de-stabilizing the Avengers lineup so that he could pick and choose any characters he wanted for particular stories. If he was a better writer, he would have realized that without a stable lineup, Avengers would become unfocused, which it did. Then there were the matters of structure and pace -- his Eternals/Blastaar story (the one with the most potential to be a good story, IMO) was compressed into only three issues, and spent way too much time on the setup; on the opposite end, his Nebula/Stranger story was painfully stretched out across five issues (Byrne didn't even finish this story because he quit both Avengers and WCA so abruptly -- Fabian Nicieza's last-minute resolution was pretty lame, but I think Byrne's would have been even worse.)

Byrne's single positive contribution to the Avengers was bringing Sersi into the team, although Byrne and the other pre-Harras writers stuck to Sersi's established characterization as a one-dimensional party girl in a stupid-looking green bikini.

As noted above, Fabian Nicieza jumped aboard to end a story that Byrne left unfinished. Nicieza stuck around long enough to plot and script a six-part bi-weekly story arc entitled The Crossing Line. I've long felt that Nicieza's prolific writing falls into three categories: 1) stories he passionately cares about; 2) energetic but half-baked stories; 3) outright hackwork. The Crossing Line falls into the second category -- on one hand, the pace never lets up and the tons of guest stars (Soviet Super Soldiers, Atlanteans, Alpha Flight) all serve a purpose; on the other hand, it plummets from the sublime to the ridiculous after the nuclear bomb detonates. The rushed-looking art (inevitable on a bi-weekly schedule) doesn't help. These six issues each had a five-page backup story written by Mark Gruenwald, in which the members of the Avengers' staff each become mind-controlled by villains from Captain America's solo book. This culminates in the self-contained, Gruenwald-written issue # 325, one of the single worst Avengers issues every published. If Gruenwald was hoping to attract readers to Captain America's solo book, it's more likely this story had the opposite effect.

But wait -- it gets even worse! The next Avengers writer was Larry Hama, who wrote excellent stories for G.I. Joe, and terrible stories for any superhero title unlucky enough to have him on board. Hama's Avengers issues just reek of his smug contempt for superheroes. He tries to be jokey, deconstructive, gritty, and topical all at once, and fails in every way. To give but one example, Hama's pet character, Rage, wants to clean up the streets, so he demolishes a crackhouse, the implication being that none of the people inside deserved to live. Another example -- when reporters ask Captain America about ex-villain turned Avenger the Sandman's criminal record, Cap replies, "He got a full pardon. If it was good enough for Nixon, it's good enough for him." Obviously no one told Hama that Nixon turned out to be the villain in one of Cap's solo stories. :groan:

I'm glad to have put all that awfulness behind me. Next week, Bob Harras & Steve Epting finally arrive, beginning my favorite Avengers era ever!!

Avengers Volume One # 305-333

Uh…as Stealth says, another groan-worthy era. Most of this era is unmemorable, and I’ll add a few comments to summarize my thoughts:

- Byrne on both Avengers titles – Byrne’s typically declining work during this period as his stories continued to worsen and his character moments and set-up seemed more and more forced. Basically, there just wasn’t enough ‘oomph’ for an Avengers title.

- De-stabilizing the line-up – as many writers have learned over the years, this is a sure-fire way to lead the team into a period where no one is generally caring about the stories because no one is caring about the heroes, since you never know who is going to be around. This also generally feels like the period where a sense of ‘anyone can be an Avenger’ begins to take hold, despite there being past members that some might not consider Avengers material. This probably has more to do with Byrne’s style of using whoever he wanted.

- Sersi – I never generally cared about Sersi at all until the upcoming Harras/Epting era. But her addition here, although she didn’t have much of a personality yet, marks the beginning of another character that would later begin to ‘feel’ like an Avenger in another traditional sense that the Hulk started and some others followed (including possibly Mantis) – that of one that you didn’t really want to rely on.

- Quasar – I also remember this as a period when Quasar was in the Avengers, which to me is more of marker of the time period this era falls into in the general larger picture of the Marvel U. Quasar is yet another character that I’ve never felt any real passion for, even though I don’t dislike him. I liked the notion that he carried on for Captain Marvel as Protector of the Universe (though what Marvel is thinking these days in regards to this is anyone’s guess).

- Larry Hama – Here’s a quick note that someone might find funny. When I first really got into the internet, it was on the old DC Message Boards, generally on the Legion Board, which most of you know led to the creation of this board in some form or another. But I also was on the Batman Board’s quite a bit, and there used to be a camaraderie of posters there equivalent to the LMB here on the Legion Board. Well, during this time period (Spring 1999), Larry Hama was on Batman for probably no more than a (6) issue arc, but it was SO BAD, that the posters there deciding to hold Larry Hama accountable and we created a genuine ‘The People versus Larry Hama’, in which he was tried (and even was given a defense team), and actually found guilty of attempting to destroy Batman and all of Batman’s fans. I generally feel that whether he means to or not, Larry Hama has continually been a part of horrific runs on comic books like this over the years.

- Rage – a rather annoying character and one who didn’t belong as an Avenger. At best, he worked semi-well in the New Warriors, but in reality, he was nothing more than the transition of the old African American stereotypes pushed into a new stereotype (whether with good intentions or not) and forced into an Avengers story.

- Sandman – I like Sandman too, being a Spider-Man fan, and I didn’t even mind him being quasi-good (though I do prefer him as a villain/antagonist). But he also did not have a place in the Avengers. I can see how it was somewhat reminiscent of the Swordsman, but honestly, the execution was so poor (and worse, boring) that it wasn’t worth having him locked in as an Avenger for future stories.

Luckily, all of this above was relatively brief and there was some extraordinary stuff to come, with perhaps my favorite era of all for the Avengers.

Quasar's early Avengers appearances were so unmemorable, I forgot while I was writing my review that he was in the book at all during that era.

I came to like him after Operation Galactic Storm, and when I decided to use him as a point-of-view character in my first Imperial Guard fanfic, I started to really like him over the course of writing that story.

He certainly deserved better than to be killed off (or was he?) during Annihilation.

Great story, Cobie. Thanks, because I needed a good laugh today.

Actually, I probably know him more from your fanfic than anything Marvel has actually done! He just never interested me in the MU.

In Annhilation, he died at the end of Nova #3, but apparently, there is a new Quasar series on there horizon, though I can't remember anything about it.

Glad you liked the Larry Hama story. It was as ridiculous and over the top as you can imagine, complete with an Alt ID as Mr. Freeze being the 'icey' judge.

"At least Tom Palmer was still around to provide an attractive finish to the art."

Yeah, he really became for THE AVENGERS what Joe Sinnott had long been to FANTASTIC FOUR (at least, until John Byrne decided he wanted the art to look really ugly on purpose-- a tribute to the "George Bell" era, no doubt?).


"Byrne didn't even finish this story because he quit both Avengers and WCA so abruptly"

He seems to do a LOT of that, doesn't he? ("I'm gonna take my ball and go home!")


I remember at first thinking Rage was really Luke CAGE, in disguise, since he was MIA at the time and wanted for a murder he didn't commit (and which John Byrne exonerated him for-- in NAMOR THE SUB-MARINER, of all places). The truth of his identity & background was quite surprising, but to me, somewhat disappointing.


Larry Hama first impressed me as a penciller, on 4 of the first 5 episodes of IRON FIST (all inked by Dick Giordano). Great stuff. Later, he wrote the even more brutally violent SAMURAI series in EERIE magazine, all illustrated by Val Mayerik. (This was later continued in a book titled YOUNG MASTER, also by Mayerik, though i forget if Hama wrote it). I recall his AVENGERS being not that bad... but then, I'm sure there were a lot MORE, WORSE books I was reading at the time. I suppose one could say it was the culmination of Gruenwald, Byrne, Hama, Nicieza AND early Harras that finally made me stop reading the book. Oh well!


"Quasar's early Avengers appearances were so unmemorable"

Anybody remember his debut in CAPTAIN AMERICA, as "Marvel Man" ?

Cobie, what would you think of the idea of putting Bendis on trial in this thread?


Avengers Volume One # 334-344

The striking cover to # 334 makes it clear what has been lacking in Avengers for the last few years: a sense of urgency. As Captain America charges to rescue Quicksilver from the assault of new villain Thane Ector, one can feel the intensity and the darkness rushing through Avengers again -- something not seen since the Roger Stern/John Buscema era. From here on, the raw energy of Bob Harras's story builds and builds across six bi-weekly issues -- Ector and his warlike race, the Brethren, attacking first the Inhumans' settlement on the moon, then Earth; Sersi bringing out shades of grey in Ector; the team of Black Panther, Beast, Quasar and Hank Pym investigating the origin of the Brethren; Crystal earnestly volunteering to join the Avengers; the shocking cosmic-level revelations involving both the Brethren, and their former captor, the Collector; and at the end, a rousingly good final battle.

Where the artwork is concerned, there are still
the rough spots inevitable to bi-weekly releases. As Steve Epting tells it in a 1993 interview:

Had Mackie not been replaced as editor by Ralph Macchio, it's quite possible that Harras would have been only the latest writer to pass through the revolving door. Harras himself confirmed it in a 1993 interview:

Following a fill-in issue (# 340), Fabian Nicieza guest-wrote a two-parter guest starring the New Warriors (pencilled by Epting, showing for the first time on Avengers just how good he really is). The main purpose of this story was to write Rage out of Avengers and into New Warriors. Nicieza's story, dealing with racial tensions (this was during the aftermath of the Rodney King beating) is much better-written than his previous Avengers story, although it is definitely more typical of New Warriors.

# 343 is where the Harras/Epting era truly begins: Crystal being officially welcomed into the team, and the last-page introduction of Swordsman II and Magdalene. There is also the introduction of the first stable lineup since the Stern/Buscema era -- Captain America, Black Widow, Black Knight, Crystal, Vision, Hercules, Sersi (MIA), and Thor Substitute (who would mercifully be written out of the book after about a year) -- and one of the high points of this issue is the conversation between Captain America and Black Widow:

BW: Steve, it's nearly 2 AM...we've got an early meeting with the West Coast branch tomorrow. Is anything wrong?

CA: No, 'Tasha. Just couldn't sleep. I've got things on my mind, so I decided to get some work done.

BW: Are you worried about Crystal and ["Thor"]? Really, there's no need, they did fine...or...is it Rage?

CA: Partially. It just seems too many mistakes are being made lately, 'Tasha. Members are coming and going as if there were a revolving door here...there's no stability to the team. Sandman leaves before his ID card is printed! Rage turns out to be a child...even Sersi hasn't been seen in weeks! It makes you wonder...

BW: Wonder what?

CA: Being an Avenger used to mean something! It was a mark of honor, distinction. We were a fellowship of friends. Now it's...I don't know...changed. We've become an ill-defined group of strangers. Stop me if I'm sounding like an elitist.

BW: You? Never. No, you're just a man who cares.

CA: Maybe I'm living in the past. Lord knows I've been accused enough about that in my time. But I can't help worrying. The Avengers gave my life meaning again, I believe in what they stand for. And I can't shake the feeling that something's gone terribly wrong. [pause] Now it is time to hit the hay. Sorry for the maudlin speech.

BW: Steve, you always make maudlin speeches...that's why we love you!

CA: Please...!

# 344 features a thrilling battle against Swordsman II and Magdalene, and the introduction of mysterious new villain Proctor, beginning the longest, most complex, and most ambitious Avengers story since Mantis/Swordsman/Vision/Scarlet Witch. Magdalene is often assumed to be an alternate-world version of Mantis, but according to The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe (http://www.marvunapp.com), she's actually the Marvel analog to DC's Big Barda. I really love Swordsman II (Philip) and Magdalene. They've been missing from the MU for almost a decade now, and I'd love to see them back someday (but not until Marvel's current editorial regime is gone.)

Next week: Operation Galactic Storm!!

Well, she was never Mantis - I mean, we SAW her MU counterpart (and saw her killed off at that!) didn't we?

One thing that always bugged me a bit though - given Proctor's history, he took being spurned by her as opposed to killing her & Swordsman straight away?

Of course we did. But you may be surprised (or not) at how many people on the internet overlook the details and automatically assume that just because she's with an alternate-world Swordsman, it automatically means she's an alternate-world Mantis. Another thing that a lot of people overlook is the great scene in # 357 where the Avengers are questioning Swordsman, and he reveals that the Mantis of his world looked nothing like the Earth-616 Mantis, but she was a dead ringer for Moondragon.

It's a legimate flaw in the story, but I can live with it. And since we never learned that much about these characters' back story, I think it is possible to come up with a credible reason for Proctor letting Swordsman and Magdalene live.

A couple things I forgot to post earlier:

-- Steve Epting's style was particularly refreshing at the time, because he wasn't a Jim Lee clone or a Rob Liefeld clone. Epting combined the best of the old (smooth, eye-pleasing draftsmanship) and the new (dramatic layouts, particularly from the late 350s on.)

-- Starting with # 343, Tom Palmer began doing double-duty as both inker and colorist. The improvement in the book's look was considerable, both richer and more subtle at the same time.

"he reveals that the Mantis of his world looked nothing like the Earth-616 Mantis, but she was a dead ringer for Moondragon"

This makes sense. I recall a scene (somebody??) where Heather Douglas was complaining about how "superior" her upbringing was compared to Mantis (did SHE ever have a "real" name?), and she felt somehow gyped that the Kotati had picked that WHORE to become The Celestial Madonna instead of her. (And if memory serves, someone pointed out it was Heather's very air of "superiority" that nixed her as one of the choices! Like Thor, pre-Donald Blake, she needed to learn some humility.


"Steve Epting's style was particularly refreshing at the time, because he wasn't a Jim Lee clone or a Rob Liefeld clone. Epting combined the best of the old (smooth, eye-pleasing draftsmanship) and the new (dramatic layouts, particularly from the late 350s on.)"

I remember thinking his drawing reminded me of Neal Adams, except with layouts that better aided the story (less of that, "LOOK at me! Aren't I FLASHY just for the sake of it?" kinda thing).

I really dug it when Steve Epting teamed up with Dan Jurgens on AQUAMAN. At the time, it looked like the most "70's Marvel" book I had seen in ages! DAMN shame it got cancelled in only about a year. It's mostly been chaos & crapola since.

Avengers Volume One # 334-344

Late as usual, but I’m here

As I’ve said many times before, this is one of my favorite eras of the Avengers, if not my actual favorite. When the Harras Avengers were coming out, it was when I started reading Avengers in ‘real time’, aka when I was reading the actual issues coming out off the newsstands, as opposed to reading my Father’s massive boxes of back-issues. Harras had a similar type of style to writing the Avengers that Stern and Englehart had, with some definite additional qualities to his writing that I loved. What he would do was acknowledge all of Marvel’s past continuity, and then move forward with it, doing *new* plots and bits with the characters, taking them new places that made sense when viewed in reference to the old. That is the truest and purest way to write in a shared universe with a shared continuity, and Harras not only was able to address that, he was able to make it work for him, just like Stern was able to.

The truly great Harras stuff comes slightly after these initial ten issues, but right away we see some great bits.

- Crystal – one of my favorite Marvel characters of all. Her addition to the Avengers helps *make* the team for me, and I love every minute of it. Its her relationship with the Black Knight that is perhaps my favorite of all Marvel romances, but I also love the drama-filled relationships (not romantic per se) with the Vision and Quicksilver and the rest. I love Crystal here, and I think this is the best she’s ever been written in her history.

- The line-up. The line-up during this era is one that is really very cool. In a way, its full of classic Avengers that never had a chance to really shine before, but it also feels so fresh and so firmly plant in this era. Hercules finally gets some great ongoing character bits and dynamics, and Sersi comes into her own. The Black Knight becomes the break out star, with his ‘whatever it takes’ attitude, and the Black Widow shines for the first time since basically her run in Daredevil’s title in the early 70’s. At first, this tried and true Avenger’s fan thought it would be odd for Captain America not to be the team leader, but by the middle of Harras’ run, I wanted Natasha to have that role.

- that scene you posted Stealth is a great example of the type of dialogue and scenes Harras would do. He could truly convey the sense of history, sense of camaraderie, and sense of progression in a brief second.

- The Proctor & the Gatherers story – although this really comes into play later, the beginning of this story was also very well-done, full of intrigue and mystery and adding a whole new angle to what was to come. Between this ongoing storyline and Operation: Galactic Storm and its ramifications (specifically the follow-up Kree story which I thought was even better), Harras was able to keep two running threads going throughout his run.

- Swordsman II and Magdalene – I like these two characters as well, and I like how they interact with the Avengers throughout. The Swordsman is cool here (for the first time ever in the history of the character) and I’m glad to know they’re out there somewhere (Busiek sent them *somewhere* in his Avengers annual). I like that Harras introduced new characters like Stern and Englehart before him, even if they are generally seen as ‘his’.

- BTW, I love that Moondragon/Mantis bit the Swordsman drops in. There’s all kinds of cool stuff like that in these issues.

- Epting’s art – I’m a huge fan of Steve Epting’s art and feel he’s doing his best art today on Captain America. Here it was a pleasure too, and I definitely see the Neal Adams resemblance, though also a John Buscema one too in a way. It was a very different kind of art when compared to everything else at the time (unfortunately, Mike Deodato’s art that followed didn’t do it for me, though I generally like his art when he’s ‘reigned in’.)

Also, a word on Thunderstrike/Eric Masterson – well, just like I’ve read the entire Spidey run many times, I’ve also read the entire run of Thor comics from his very start to the current issues a few times. Where I generally hated Eric Masterson at first, I’ve come to love all the eras of Thor, no matter how bad they got—and man, where there some really crappy eras. So, its funny, but I’ve come to have a soft spot for Eric, though I didn’t like it when Thor was ‘Thor-lite’ with Eric at the helm. Rereading the Harras Avengers issues though, I kind of like that he was there for a bit before they got rid of him. The problem with Thunderstrike was that he was honestly just ‘filling Thor’s spot’, so when the real deal finally came back, which was needed, Thunderstrike had to stand on his own, which he couldn’t. I wish somehow he could’ve, but that’s here nor there.

One little point on the art - I thought and think Tom Palmer's inks were a really bad mismatch with Epting's pencils. Take a look at Epting's fill-in on Uncanny X-Men #319 where Dan Green & Tim Townsend inked the pencils very lightly to see what I mean.

The Harras era was my first "real time" Avengers reading, too. I had been raised on funny-animal comics, and I only got into superhero comics right after I graduated high school. Along with Peter David's Hulk, Alan Davis's Excalibur, Alan Grant & Barry Kitson's L.E.G.I.O.N., and Mark Waid's Flash, it's still just as much of a good read today as it was back then, maybe better. That doesn't hold true of other comics I was reading at the time (to give one example, the Danny Ketch Ghost Rider and the other Midnight Sons books. )

Absolutely. Thanks to Harras, we had:

- A Sersi who was intense and moody without ever losing her sense of style or her sense of humor.

- A Black Knight who was bold and assertive, rather than reactive.

- A Hercules who was still a ferocious warrior, but who had actually learned from his lessons in humility during the Stern Era.

- A Vision who slowly regained the personality that Byrne had stripped him of.

And of course...

Once again, I totally agree. As written by Harras, Crystal took responsibility for her selfish actions in Steve Engelhart's stories and searched for redemption by joining the Avengers. She was a kind person, a loving mother, and a kick-ass superheroine all at once; I would say she went so far as to inspire me to try to be nicer and less selfish! Not bad for a fictional character.

It's sad that, to paraphrase something Reboot said earlier in this thread, the only thing anyone at Marvel remembers about her today is that she cheated on Quicksilver. No, it's more than sad, it's a crime.

I don't completely disagree about Palmer's inks over Epting's pencils, but I think there were more instances of Palmer retaining Epting's essence than of Palmer overwhelming Epting. I think the main problem is that Epting is simply once of the most difficult artists to ink, and I've never been 100% pleased with anyone's work. Al Williamson preserved the delicacy of Epting's pencils, but he also tended to oversimplify; Rick Magyar kept the amount of detail right, but his lines tended to be stiff where Epting's linework is fluid. Really, Epting's best inker is Epting himself. Here's a good example:

OPERATION: GALACTIC STORM


When I think of Operation: Galactic Storm, I think grandeur, I think colorful spectacle...but most importantly, I think space opera with substance, tragedy on an epic scale, and one of the most daring endings ever published in a mainstream superhero comic book.

Despite being spread out across 19 (!) issues (22 if you count the epilogues) of 7 different comics (Avengers, Avengers West Coast, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Quasar, Wonder Man), there are hardly any wasted panels at all. Unlike Marvel’s earlier attempts at this kind of mega-crossover – Evolutionary War in the 1988 annuals and Atlantis Attacks in the 1989 annuals – Operation: Galactic Storm has a tightly structured and well-thought-out story. It began with a plot for Quasar’s solo book, which Mark Gruenwald the writer quickly realized was too big for just one book, and which Mark Gruenwald the Executive Editor realized would please the Powers That Be who wanted the next Big Event. Although many writers and editors would work on the story (and, according to Ralph Macchio, even the letterers and colorists contributed story bits), there was a firm creative core in the trio of Gruenwald, Bob Harras, and Fabian Nicieza, who together produced a detailed outline. I personally think that Nicieza (who had no writing credit, and whose only O:GS credit of any kind was as editor of Wonder Man) is the true unsung hero, because later that same year (1992), there was another surprisingly good mega-crossover, the X-Cutioner’s Song in the X-Books, and that one was mostly Nicieza’s baby.

Operation: Galactic Storm is a sequel of sorts to the Kree-Skrull War – once again, there are two alien empires fighting, with Earth caught in the middle – but there are crucial differences: 1) This time it’s the Kree vs. the Shi’ar with the Skrulls in a sneakier (but important) position, and 2) This time there are a clear beginning, middle, and end – a particularly powerful ending which carries overtones of America’s bombing of Hiroshima during World War II.

This story is also notable for its cast of thousands: almost everyone who was ever an Avenger, plus guest appearances by Rick Jones, Her, Carol Danvers (as Binary), and the Starjammers, plus Kree villains varying from vintage (the Supreme Intelligence, Ronan the Accuser) to new (Captain Atlas, Korath, Shatterax) to ultra-obscure (Ultimus, Dr. Minerva), plus the Skrulls including Super-Skrull, plus the Shi’ar Imperial Guard a.k.a. Marvel’s Legion of Super-Heroes (including brand-new analogs of Dawnstar, Karate Kid, Rond Vidar, Matter-Eater Lad, and Bouncing Boy), plus Shi’ar Empress Lilandra and her mad sister Deathbird. Amazingly, out of all of these characters, there is not one who doesn't serve a purpose!

The extensive use of characters from the insular X-Corner of the Marvel Universe (authorized by Bob Harras in his role as X-Editor) has been criticized, which I think is ridiculous. Why should the X-Creators be the only ones to play with those beautiful Dave Cockrum-designed toys? Besides, as I said earlier in this thread, almost all of the key players of the Kree-Skrull War had been introduced in the pages of Fantastic Four, and no one complained about that.

As much as I love Operation: Galactic Storm, it’s not perfect, not with so many cooks at the same pot. The scripting varies wildly in quality, and the three Avengers tie-ins drawn by Steve Epting (# 345-347) are arguably the only good art. But, like the Celestial Madonna Saga, which also had a lot of dodgy art, it holds together as one sprawling epic of a story, and it stands the test of time. And now that Operation: Galactic Storm is finally available in trade paperbacks (two volumes), it can be appreciated by generations to come.

Finally, if only for the sake of completeness, here’s a checklist of all the issues:

Part 1: Captain America #398; Part 2: Avengers West Coast #80; Part 3: Quasar #32; Part 4: Wonder Man #7; Part 5: Avengers #345; Part 6: Iron Man #278; Part 7: Thor #445; Part 8: Captain America #399; Part 9: Avengers West Coast #81; Part 10: Quasar #33; Part 11: Wonder Man #8; Part 12: Avengers #346; Part 13: Iron Man #279; Part 14: Thor #446; Part 15: Captain America #400; Part 16: Avengers West Coast #82; Part 17: Quasar #34; Part 18: Wonder Man #9; Part 19: Avengers #347; Epilogue 1: Captain America #401; Epilogue 2: Quasar #35-36.

One thing about those Avengers O:GS issues that really bugged me - Epting kept drawing Quasar with a gas mask. He didn't need one (and if his Q-bands improbably failed, he was in a lot of trouble with or without air) and the rest of the artists followed their references and left it off, meaning it only appeared in the Avengers chapters even when the action ran continuously in or out.

A few other things were wrong too - apparently no-one outside the Iron Man comic itself was aware of Iron Man's seriously poor state of health (most egregiously in the Cap epilogue, where he appears out-of-armour).

Still, good story overall indeed.

Avengers Volume One # 348-357

Following Operation: Galactic Storm were some 1- and 2-part stories with the subplots sailing smoothly – in # 348, the Vision continues to evolve as Crystal becomes his confidant, while Black Knight and Hercules encounter Magdalene’s Earth-616 counterpart only for her to be “gathered” (erased from existence) by Proctor and Magdalene; in # 349, Hera and Ares make a wager to see who can bring Hercules more sorrow, right at the same time as Hercules begins to fall in love with a mortal woman, Taylor Madison (sadly, this subplot wouldn’t be resolved until after Epting had left and the book’s quality was in freefall); in # 350-351, two of the Starjammers, Raza and Hepzibah, are hired by a renegade Kree to assassinate the Black Knight as payback for his actions in Operation: Galactic Storm (this is a very good story, even though the second half is drawn by a different art team.)

Next is a three-part fill-in story arc, giving Harras, Epting, and Palmer a chance to catch their breath. When they come back in # 355, they continue to prove that they’re not interested in bringing back the same old super-villains by giving us the full team of Proctor’s Gatherers (Magdalene, Swordsman, Cassandra, Spoor and Coal Tiger), each one from a different alternate universes which were all destroyed under circumstances to be revealed much later; this issue also introduces Sersi’s new black-and-red costume, far less revealing and far more flattering; plus there’s a great scene where the Black Widow plays matchmaker for an unusually indecisive Hercules.

# 356 is a special issue to me, because it was the first issue of Avengers that I bought off the spinner rack instead of the back-issue bin; in it, the Avengers pursue the Gatherers to Wakanda, where they intend to “gather” Coal Tiger’s Earth-616 counterpart, the Black Panther! Great scene where Magdalene outfights the Vision, and some nice shades of grey from the Swordsman, who at the end is the one Gatherer captured by the Avengers.

# 357 is one of my favorite Avengers issues of all time: there’s no fighting in it, just a lot of great character moments giving Epting a chance to prove that, among Avengers artists, only John Buscema and George Perez are his equals when it comes to characterization. The Crystal/Black Knight/Sersi love triangle is in full bloom, the best of its sort since Scarlet Witch/Vision/Mantis. There’s also the memorable interrogation of the Swordsman which we’ve already mentioned earlier in this thread. And, most importantly, there’s the Black Widow organizing a celebration of the one-year-anniversary of this Avengers lineup. Thor Substitute is gone, and Captain America (who left temporarily after Operation: Galactic Storm) hasn’t returned yet, meaning that the cover shows none of “The Big Three” and the story proves that the Avengers didn’t need the “icons” to be a good book.

So, this being a likely candidate for ‘My favorite Avengers era EVER’, including all the classic Silver Age #1-16 which has been imbedded as being the best to me since I was a wee pre-teen, I, of course, am late on commenting

As usual, Stealth’s comments are so much fun to read that I’m having as much fun reading them as I did reading the issues originally. My comments in brief:

- Operation: Galactic Storm – In my opinion, this was one of the few times where a Marvel Crossover totally succeeded on all levels (actually I agree about Executioner’s Song—during this brief era, it seemed Marvel started having good crossovers for the first time while DC’s became simply atrocious). The grandeur, the scale and the sheer amount of characters is what makes this, as well as the character scenes shown in each and every panel. Of course, this cemented my love for the Black Knight as a ‘do whatever it takes’ hero, and it also showcased a bunch of heroes throughout with good roles, especially Iron Man, Thor, and even some of the lesser-known like Living Lightning. Though I have most of the issues (missing the Quasar ones), I have to admit right away—I’ve never actually read O:GS the way it should be read, in chronological order. Such an oversight on my part is unforgivable—and will fixed one day! I especially love the use of the Skrulls here, and I think the Kree re-emerged as the ultimate bad-ass alien race in Marvel, only to be devastated, and then all surviving Kree shown since would have an additional scariness to them that added intensity to future stories. I’m also reminded that Wonder Man had his own book, and it reminds me of a recent PM I’ve had with Reboot where we mentioned that—which seems to be totally forgotten by all writers since (and not just Bendis/etc, but even Busiek), since he had some very real character growth in his solo comic. I actually enjoyed it, but then again, I read it when I was 12 or so, so its been awhile.

- In a way, the upcoming Proctor/Gatherers Saga is almost like a sequel to the Celestial Madonna Saga, and this is almost like a sequel to the Kree/Skrull War. I mean that very loosely of course, given the long history of great space drama in Avengers, but I think it speaks to how well done this era of the Avengers was—and it very much stood on its own (I only make those connections now, years later).

- Hercules/Taylor Madison – this was the first time IMO that Hercules truly had a great subplot in Avengers, that showed him as a very real person with the same emotions we all have. Though I think the ending was pretty awful farther down the road, I remember thinking that I really enjoyed this romance, especially the awkwardness seen in Hercules which was so rare for the character (I’m thinking of when she ate at the Mansion).

- Raza and Hepzibah – my favorite two Starjammers show up in a great story, but even more, it further cements the long-standing animosity that all surviving Kree have for the Black Knight. I really wish this could be followed up on, as you would expect tons and tons of survivors trying to make Dane (and therefore Earth) a continual target from here on in.

- Proctor and the Gatherers – here begins the real meat of the Proctor story, and I think everything from here on in until #375 is about perfect. The Gatherers make a very interesting team, and having almost all the rest of them be new to Avengers lore was a good move. Proctor himself is interesting and the evil-Vision subplot and Coal Tiger/Black Panther connection make for some very cool drama. The Swordsman (once caught) proves to be a character with a tremendous amount of depth (and Magdalene does later) and it speaks volumes for Harris writing that he could make an alternate Earth Swordsman such a likeable and interesting character.

- Harris’ continual use of history without dwelling on it. Again, this is probably one of the best aspects of the run, and a good example would be the ‘fake-out’ used to draw out the Avengers when a fake Johnny Storm appeals to Crystal for some help and she recognizes their long-standing relationship/friendship. It was little things like this, jam-packed in every issue, that made the book so much more enjoyable.

- The love triangle – as Stealth says, the Black Knight/Crystal/Sersi love triangle is probably the best Avengers romance subplot since Wanda/Vision/Mantis, complete with all the connecting characters that went along with both. There is a continual intensity that builds and builds each issue, with some very real human moments from all three characters, including Sersi, who is not painted to be a bad-guy despite her gradual shift towards madness. The addition of the Vision regaining his humanity (early on), then Proctor, and later Quicksilver, only further this.

- The line-up here is one of my favorites ever, and I agree that it shows you don’t need the big three. I do like the return of Cap coming up, and I really love the return of Hank Pym as Giant-Man, as well as the help of Swordsman, Magdalene and Deathcry, but the basic six post-O:GS (Black Widow, Hercules, Vision, Black Knight, Crystal, Sersi) set the tempo for a very intricate, drama-packed, characterization-filled Avengers line-up.

Oh, and cool tidbit Stealth! I’ve got one too that’s kinda funny. Around the issue where the Avengers are trapped in the snow with the fake Vision captured (and Deathcry first meets them), a very young Cobie (I’d say 13) decided that he was so impressed that I wrote my first letter (and only one) to a comic book, and had my Mom type it out for me. It basically told them that I, so sure of myself as the greatest fan of the Avengers in its history, totally approved of the direction they were taking, enjoyed the Black Widow as leader and wanted to see Dane with Crystal. I never got a reply (or it printed) but it was a pretty cool experience.

PS – in the last few weeks I’ve reread the entire Celestial Madonna Saga, and a large potion of Stern’s run, and I’ve meant to post more in depth comments on them…and will sometime soon

Yeah...Eclipso, Death of Superman, Knightfall -- all the worst things about the 1990s in a nutshell. Whereas, for a while, Marvel was getting almost all the crossovers right, big and small (such as the Hulk/X-Factor crossover during the brief time that Peter David was writing both books.)

"Use of history without dwelling on it." Thank you, Cobie, that sums it up perfectly. Harras always kept such things brief and to the point, unlike some other writers :cough: (Busiek) :cough: who were all like, "Look at me, I'm such a continuity expert!"

That reminds me, I sent a letter to the Avengers editor during that time, too, but I can't seem to remember what I wrote in it. Then again, those were my heady and wild late teens...

Yay! I'm looking forward to that.


One last thing: it's been quite a while since this thread has had any posts about the current state of the Avengers family of books. Even though I don't read any of them myself, I would still like to see some posts about them here, because even though it's wonderful to look back on the classics, I really want this thread to have one foot in the present day.

Celestial Madonna Story
I'm such a lazy reviewer that I should have posted my thoughts when they were fresh about four weeks ago, when I read the entire Celestial Madonna Story--on one Friday night where I took a rare night in. I can say without a doubt that it was *better* than I remembered it being because all of the great things about it were still there, and I noticed even more stuff that I loved about it that got lost in the shuffle the previous time or two I read it.

First, its the little things, the characterization that reinforces how heroic each member of the Avengers was, while also showing how certain Avenger's had certain traits. One of the most powerful scenes to me was that Thor gave the Swordsman eulogy at his funeral, and it was actually quite poignant. Thor talked about living as a mortal vs. an immortal, and how the Swordsman hard life was culminated in a very heroic death. I thought it was very well done. I loved how Englehart played Thor and Iron Man so well together, but at the same time so well with others, and Captain America too, who weaved in and out of the saga (the same could be said for Black Panther). Englehart mastered the Vision and upon rereading them, I remember why I used to be able to relate to that character so well. Even when things were going right for the Vision, he always had a sense of being an outsider, of thinking he had a limited time before he would ultimately meet a final end. That's a feeling everyone can relate to I think.

Though the first half of the Saga, complete with the four way triangle of Wanda/Vision/Mantis/Swordsman have all the best romantic drama, I find myself really getting into the second half, after the Swordsman's death, specifically when they all decide its do or die time--let's find out Mantis' origin. Mantis was both extremely independent and strong, but at the same time had a vulnerability that is very attractive (a quality I'm sure is attractive on both men and women), and it really comes through here. There's a sense that Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye and the Vision are her teammates really backing her up with a true sense of camraderie, that they're in it to the end with her no matter what. Its a very underlying loyalty throughout the second halfof the Saga that I feel is more pronounced when viewed as one complete storyline.

And finally, there's Kang. I've read close to every Kang story there is, and he's been done right many times, and many of them are brillant, from his Silver Age tales (brillance) to Avengers Forever (also wonderful). But I think Kang here is perhaps the best the character ever was. He became *thee* Avengers villain and was much a part of the Saga as half of the Avenger's line-up.

I could probably go on and on for more paragraphs, but I'll stop, as its now four weeks after I read them. But I'll tell you this: I've had a bunch of stories floating around in my head for some time. Although those plots were already formulated, I've kind of used the Celestial Madonna Saga's granduer as inspiration that has rekindled my enthusiasm, and in the meantime have written like four LMB short stories and a 49 page (on MS Word) LMB Onevision. I know, its LMB stuff, but that made it fun Not the ideas mind you, just the overall 'feel' to these Avengers issues, the sense that 'I'm reading something truly amazing and ground-breaking here, and when it ends, I'll be blown away--and sad that it had to end!'.

...had to get our reviews all out of order and retread some old ground

Thank you for your wonderful review, Cobie. I especially liked this observation:

Can't wait to see your reviews of the Stern era.

No worries. I'm a non-linear thinker, anyway.

Avengers Volume One # 358-371

Bringing the Avengers over to Arkon’s dimension for the first time in quite a while, Harras & Epting revisit one of the themes of Operation: Galactic Storm – how literally should the name “Avengers” be taken? This 2-parter (# 358-359) finds Sersi’s behavior crossing over from erratic to dangerous, and as a bonus features one of the few appearances of Thundra where she is not written as a caricature.

The 360s are an extended 30th Anniversary celebration; unfortunately, this being 1993, that meant gimmicky covers and extra pages of filler. But thankfully, the actual stories and art continued to be mostly excellent. First, # 360 introduces two more Gatherers: the shapeshifting Tabula Rasa and the disgustingly creepy Anti-Vision; the Gatherers kidnap Vision to switch bodies with him and Anti-Vision, so that now Vision has a body almost identical to his original one. # 361 is one of my favorite issues, with lots of cool revelations about the Eternals to explain just what is going on with Sersi and what can be done about it, giving Epting a chance to give us his stunning interpretations of the Celestials and the Uni-Mind (yes, he already drew them in the Brethren storyarc, but these renditions are much more polished.) It ends with the love triangle getting sharper: Crystal and Black Knight finally kiss even though the Black Knight has been mind-melded with Sersi. In #362, the Anti-Vision wounds Swordsman and threatens Crystal before Sersi kicks his ass. The next four issues begin with a raid on Proctor’s citadel, where the now-erratic Black Knight defies Captain America in mid-battle and Proctor vanishes after setting the citadel on self-destruct mode and all the Gatherers except Magdalene are apparently blown up; this segues seamlessly into the introduction of Deathcry and the return of renegade Kree-man Galen Kor, this time with his private army of fellow renegades invading Earth along with a fleet of Kree Sentries and a new Nega-Bomb! Desperate for reinforcements, the Avengers draft Magdalene and Hank Pym, the latter returning as Giant-Man and deciding to make it full-time. The last-page revelation of a powerful, supposedly deceased villain as the Kree renegades’ supplier would have more resonance if it hadn’t turned into an unresolved plot thread, but overall this is one of my all-time favorite Avengers storyarcs. I’ve never made any secret that I hated the non-superpowered Hank Pym in that stupid jumpsuit, and I welcomed his return as Giant-Man, in a new costume somewhat reminiscent of Dave Cockrum’s Colossal Boy costume (although the belts and pockets are a very 1990s mistake.) The scene where Giant-Man single-handedly out-fights one of the Kree sentries is a classic Avengers moment, as is this exchange between him and Captain America at the end:

G-M: You know, I’m the only one here who was part of this team when it started way back when...so take it from an old-timer when I say, you did good today, Avengers. You did good.

CA: Amen to that, Hank.

Regarding Deathcry – I’ve always run hot or cold with this character, although I loved the hints at a possible romance between her and Vision. I think the problem was that, later on in Harras’s run, just when he started to give her more depth, was when circumstances derailed the possibility of her evolving further. And Busiek’s infamous criticism of Deathcry amuses me: he said she was a bunch of X-Men cliches, as if Busiek’s own pet character Silverclaw wasn’t a bunch of X-Men cliches herself, right down to the stereotypical “foreigner” speech patterns? :rolleyes:

# 367, a stand-alone, allows the Avengers to catch their breath before the next challenge, and mostly focuses on the Vision’s interaction with the rest of the team as he tries to figure out just who he is and where he fits in. The inside art is weak (Epting & Palmer only did the cover), but the story is good, especially for Vision fans.

And finally, we come to the unfortunate Avengers/X-Men crossover, Bloodties (Avengers # 368, X-Men # 26, Avengers West Coast # 101, Uncanny X-Men # 307, Avengers # 369.) One would think that the creative and editorial teams involved could have come up with something good for the mutual 30th Anniversaries of both teams, but that wasn’t the case here. It does get off to a good start when, after Crystal discovers baby daughter Luna has been kidnapped and is being held in the war-torn country of Genosha (a staple of the X-Books which would take way too long to explain) and the American government doesn’t want the Avengers to interfere, she angrily defies Nick Fury, causing Sersi to remark, “It seems our little kitten’s developed claws! I love it.” But once all the characters arrive in Genosha, the story stumbles without direction from one rote battle to the next. The only thing that I find engaging about the story is Crystal’s love for Luna, and their reunion at the end is very moving.

The next two issues were a 2-part fill-in, followed by the resolution of the Crystal/Black Knight/Sersi/Proctor Saga, which I’ll cover next week.

Avengers Volume One # 372-379

As though Bloodties had never happened, Avengers gets right back on track once the Proctor storyline returns in # 372. The four-part conclusion to this sumptuous epic has so many exciting battles and revelations that I don’t want to spoil them for people who haven’t yet read the Harras/Epting issues (one thing I really hope is that this thread might inspire people to check out these issues.) What I can say is that Proctor has a new band of Gatherers – Rik (as in an alternate-reality Rick Jones), Korg (alternate-reality Thing), Tarkas (alt-reality Karkas?), Sliver (not sure who she’s supposed to be), and Jocasta (self-explanatory, but this one is gold-plated.) This gives Epting yet another chance to display his great sense of character design (to digress for a moment, I forgot to mention before that Crystal got a new black-and-white costume during the early 360s, IMO a great improvement over that blindingly bright yellow number.) And Sersi and Black Knight both seem to be in danger of going over the edge, and we finally learn the origin of Proctor and just who his Earth-616 counterpart really is. Without giving away the ending, I really have to give Harras & Epting credit for tying it all together seamlessly, for providing each key character with important moments, for not overreaching the way creators often do with such ambitious stories, and more than anything for producing a fresh new take on Avengers while still staying true to the spirit of the book, something which nobody who has followed them on Avengers has been able to do since, IMO.

The end of that story was also the end of Epting’s run on Avengers (his last issue was # 375.) Harras stayed on for about seventeen more issues (not counting fill-ins, which included # 376 and # 377), and at first, it looked like his writing would maintain the high standards he had set – # 378 and # 379 brought back the Kree renegades for another go-round, while Deathcry learned some hard lessons about the truth behind Shi’ar legends. The story was strong and the art, mostly by Staz Johnson and Tom Palmer, was adequate except for the last few pages which were drawn (badly) by another penciler/inker team.

The letter column in # 379 informed readers that Epting’s permanent replacement would be Mike Deodato. I can still remember how disappointed I felt at that announcement – up until then, the art in Avengers had been a refreshing alternative to the pseudo-Image style running rampant through the comics industry at the time, and now the book was going to be drawn by a Jim Lee clone. Hoping that maybe Palmer could make Deodato tolerable to me, I bought # 380 and, wow, what a letdown. Not only was Deodato’s art just as unappealing to me as it had been on other books, but the story – some mish-mash about the High Evolutionary and Wundagore – was so bad, I couldn’t believe that Harras’s name was still in the credits. Thinking this might be a fluke, I bought # 381 and it was just as bad. I almost dropped the book right then, but I gave it one final chance with # 384, which was solicited as the resolution to the Hercules/Taylor Madison plot thread. Long story short, that issue was the final straw for me. I didn’t buy an issue of Avengers again until years later.

Looking back on it today, and knowing more about how the comics industry works, I can see what might have contributed to Avengers’ sudden and steep decline: relentless catering to the speculator market whose bubble was about to burst; mega-crossover madness over well-nurtured plots; Harras on his way to the Editor-in-Chief position delegating the plots to Terry Kavanagh; the poisonous influence of DC’s tearing down of Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern; and so on.

Then there was Onslaught/Heroes Reborn, which contributed to my leaving comics for several years – back then, I considered Image “the enemy”, and for Marvel to involve Image’s fading-star creators with their most important titles was just too much for me. I might not have been paying attention, but I don’t recall anyone saying at the time that this would only last one year.

By the time Avengers was relaunched from # 1 with Busiek & Perez, I was mostly ignoring comics. I did buy the odd comic here and there, depending mostly on who the artist was, but it wasn’t until 2005 that I started catching up on what I had been missing. And so, my reviews of Avengers Volume Three will begin next week.

"By the time Avengers was relaunched from # 1 with Busiek & Perez, I was mostly ignoring comics. I did buy the odd comic here and there, depending mostly on who the artist was, but it wasn’t until 2005 that I started catching up on what I had been missing."

I dropped off from Marvel a LOT earlier-- in the case of THE AVENGERS, right at the end of Harras' 1st multi-parter (with Steve Epting). I got pretty much fed up with EVERYTHING Marvel was doing, and for a stretch there, about the only book I bought regularly was-- of all things-- CONAN CLASSICS, reprinting the earliest Thomas-Smith issues which I had never read before. Also, there was a 2-issue FLASH GORDON mini-series by Archie Goodwin & Al Williamson, which must remain one of the most stunningly glorious items to ever come from the company. But before you knew it, I stopped buying any Marvels at all. For several years.

It was at the urging of a good friend and fellow fan that I decided to check out Marvel at all some years later, when Roger Stern decided to FINALLY come back and FINISH (and "fix") the unfinished mess that had been hanging for so long, which led to HOBGOBLIN LIVES! Foolishly, not long after, I checked out some other Spidey titles... within 2 years, I had sworn off the character-- "FOREVER". (Steve Rude notwithstanding.)

However, I did check out FANTASTIC FOUR, IRON MAN and THE AVENGERS when they did "Heroes Return". The FF was amazing-- for all of 3 issues. As soon as I heard Alan Davis was leaving after only 3 issues, I made damn sure I didn't buy #4. And the only new FF's I've bought since are the odd issue drawn by Stuart Immonen.

IRON MAN had me hooked for the entirely of Kurt Busiek's run, as well as Roger Stern's, who sort of finished up what Kurt had started. After that, the book took a bad left turn-- and then got MUCH worse than I could have dreamed. As soon as the story I was reading ended, I was OUTTA there, and have not read a new IM since.

THE AVENGERS was another amazing run. George Perez really showed just how good he'd gotten over all the years he was gone. It was sad when he finally left, but at least this time, he had a nice, long, mostly-"stable" run-- which he never had on the book before.

Alan Davis continued to blow me away with his work... but once again, he left FAR too quickly! Kurt Busiek may be complimented on the real "epic" he created with Kang this time out, but once Davis left, the art was on shaky ground all the way thru to the end. And damn, did it take a LONG time to reach the end. I also feel Busiek went too far. What he had Kang responsible for this time just went over way too many lines. This would have been "okay" in my book, had this been planned, definitively, as the LAST-EVER Kang story. It wasn't. The bastard got away at the end! No F****** way that guy should have been still ALIVE by the end of the story!!! When are they gonna get it into their heads that you don't need to keep villains alive forever to ensure their longevity? Ian Fleming killed EVERY ONE of James Bond's baddies-- except for Blofeld, in their first-and-only appearance. Some villains are much better when you kill 'em off at "the end".

I checked out Geoff Johns' run... was SEVERELY disappointed. The art sucked as well, as I recall. Then Olivier Copiel came along... and didn't realy add anything to THE AVENGERS. His presence served ONLY one function-- to TAKE AWAY from DC's LEGION book, which was FINALLY kicking real ass for the first time in years at that point. I suppose whoever decided to hire him away from DC might be looked at as partly responsible for the current LEGION "reboot", which made ME stop buying that book for the first time since I began buying it regularly back in 1978.

That's the first I've heard about it. I'll definitely put it on my list of back issues to search for. The Star Wars Team Supreme on Flash Gordon...sounds awesome.

Yeah, Hobgoblin Lives was one of the few bright spots during the final year of my first love affair with superhero comics. Stern's Post-1980s work is hit-or-miss to me, but that one really clicked.

Have you read the Invaders story arc that Roger Stern wrote, Steve Epting penciled, and Al Williamson inked? It was serialized in Marvel's short-lived anthology series titled Marvel Universe, and it is OUTSTANDING! I'm not generally an Invaders fan, but a high-quality creative team like that would make just about anything a must-read.

I haven't read either writers' Iron Man issues. There's a Busiek interview on the net from shortly after he left Iron Man, where he talks about how he had wanted the book to be what it was like during the Bill Mantlo era -- which I interpreted as, "pretend like the two Bob Layton eras never existed!" To a hardcore Layton era fangirl like myself, that's heresy!

I'll get into this in more detail in my reviews, but I have to say that IMO Perez's art carried the first three years of Avengers Volume Three through many rough patches where the stories were lacking.

I recall reading somewhere that Davis left because he didn't like the way Busiek had crowded the book with obscure or semi-obscure members. That seems kind of funny to me, given that Busiek's attitude for the early part of Volume Three seemed to be "only the big guns count." That sure came around to bite him on the ass. LOL

Again, I'll get into this in more detail in my reviews, but I think that that so-called "epic" is the biggest waste of space since bloody Korvac.

Yep. Whose idea was it to have Kieron Dwyer draw most of the key issues?? His art is horrible!

I agree. The villain resurrection that particularly pisses me off is Zemo Junior. When Roger Stern had him go splat on the sidewalk at the end of the Masters of Evil story arc, that should have been the end of that. Instead, Gruenwald resurrected him, Busiek pushed him to the forefront through Thunderbolts, and Nicieza tried to turn him into a bloody anti-hero! Now he has his own mini-series. Enough already!

I haven't read Johns' run, because it seems like even Johns' most hardcore fans don't like it. Re: the art -- Kieron Dwyer strikes again. :rolleyes:

Finally, I would like to reiterate that I would really like to see some posts about the current Avengers, like we had at the beginning of this thread. Mighty Avengers is coming out soon, among other things. I'm planning to browse through (but not buy) the first few issues of Mighty Avengers just out of curiosity to see what happens with...

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Ultron.</span></span>

Davis left because he was only ever contracted for six issues while Kilraven (IIRC) was in limbo. Similar story to his three-issue F4 stint a few years earlier.

Ah. Okay. It's still funny to imagine, though.

(Killraven is another Davis work -- besides Superboy's Legion -- that I still don't have in my collection. )

"That's the first I've heard about it. I'll definitely put it on my list of back issues to search for. The Star Wars Team Supreme on Flash Gordon...sounds awesome."

Al Williamson worked on FG 3-- or 4-- times that I know of. He did a brief run in the mid-60's on the King Comics comic-book. I have one issue-- WHOA!!!! Every panel a stunner.

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=20977&zoom=4

I believe he worked on the newspaper strip-- briefly-- but I'm not really sure when, or for how long. The one that bugs me is, Goodwin & Williamson did the comic-book adaptation of the 1980 FG movie-- and I've never found a copy of it! I can only imagine it looks (and probably "reads") better than the film. Then around 1992, they did a 2-issue series, which apparently fits in with the original continuity of the newspaper strip (I'm mostly familiar with the Alex Raymond run, the decades since have ben at a loss), but also paid tribute to the movie serials. It actually featured Azura, Queen of Magic, who'd been in FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS-- but treated her with more respect than that half-baked bad sequel did. (I found out some years ago Universal went thru 3 distinct periods where it was owned by different people-- and as it happens, the 3 FG serials were made by 3 completely different managements! No wonder the 1st & 3rd are so good, but the 2nd one sucks so bad!)


I did get the entire short run of MARVEL UNIVERSE; fun book! Stern brought back the giant "dragon" submarine that had appeared in one of the Simon & Kirby issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA. That was the only INVADERS revival that really interested me.


"There's a Busiek interview on the net from shortly after he left Iron Man, where he talks about how he had wanted the book to be what it was like during the Bill Mantlo era -- which I interpreted as, "pretend like the two Bob Layton eras never existed!""

Interesting; this is the first I've heard that. What I did notice is, Busiek's IM run reminded me of Roy Thomas' 2nd DR. STRANGE run, in that, despite so many years in between, you felt like you were reading a genuine continuation of the EARLIEST stories from the mid-60's-- instead of the book's history having a disjointed feel with different eras, it made you feel like, YES, the entire history of the book is somehow consistent.

Bill Mantlo was the perennial "fill-in" guy. He did so many fill-ins on IM when others kept blowing deadlines... he eventually took over the book, along with the returning George Tuska on HIS 3rd run. When Tuska left the last time (I'm not sure if he ever came back again), they "updated" the art somewhat, and it was at that moment I felt Mantlo was finally coming into his own as a writer. I was really beginning to enjoy his work on the book... when WHAM! He was gone, replaced by Michelinie & Layton, who apparently strong-armed their way onto it in some behind-the-scenes office politics power-play. SURE, they did good. SURE, they were BETTER than Mantlo. But to this day, it still feels "wrong" to me, how they got on the book in the first place.

I felt seriously let down when they revealed Bethany Cabe was still married... and then left the book. To my eyes, it went to HELL... and then Denny O'Neil spent 3 years DRAGGING it thru the mud. When things finally got back to reasonable, he left it to more chaos. I was glad Michelinie & Layton returned. At least half of their 2nd run was fun reading. But then they decided to Tony's life was going too good... BASTARDS. (It was the "Frank Miller syndrome" taking over, that's what it was.) I kept reading the book for around 2 years after they left the 2nd time, but NEVER enjoyed a single issue, and finally quit. Heard HORRIBLE things about it afterwards, and was so happy I missed it all.

The Kurt Busiek-Sean Chen run put the book back on top, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I found myself enjoying the book MORE than I had when Michelinie & Layton were doing it. The reason I figure this was, Michelinie & Layton seemed to me to have too much "attitude"-- they wanted it to be "THEIR" book, "THEIR" characters. Busiek seemed to want to give readers the "REAL" Tony Stark, not some re-invention of the latest know-it-all hot-shot egomaniac writers. But that's me.

One thing I never completely "got" during the entire run was, what the HELL was going on with Pepper & Happy? Apparently they were separated-- but I don't think anybody EVER found out why! As it went on and on, Pepper surprised me by becoming one of my FAVORITE female characters in the whole Marvel Universe. (And Sean Chen drew her cuter than I'd ever seen.) Frankly, when she & Tony looked like they were getting closer, I didn't mind. If her marriage was really done and over with, maybe it was about time. But then Busiek left, and Stern-- true to form-- said, "UH UH". I love Stern's work, but has anyone but me noticed he has this BAD habit of BREAKING UP longtime romances??? (Peter & MJ, Dr. Strange & Clea, Tony & Pepper) When I mentioned this to my comics-shop guy, he made a funny comment about it, but I'm not sure I should repeat it...

Joe Quesada's BRIEF run as writer was a warm-up for his longer run as EIC. Loud, in-your-face, shocking "event" stuff, not much class... I don't even remember who came after him. I just know the writing AND the art was HORRIBLE, and despite numerous hype about this or that big-name talent on the book, I've never been tempted back. I've had enough of "bait-and-switch".


"I think that that so-called "epic" is the biggest waste of space since bloody Korvac."

It looked good when it started. By the end... AAAUGH!


"The villain resurrection that particularly pisses me off is Zemo Junior."

This is always one that I have a hard time connecting with at all. This guy appeared in ONE fill-in issue written by Roy Thomas (if memory serves) in the middle of Steve Englehart's all-time classic run on C.A. And I always got the feeling Roy killed him off at the end of that ONE issue. When someone reminds me that Stern killed him off... I'm left wondering, how was it he was still alive for Stern to kill?


"Davis left because he was only ever contracted for six issues while Kilraven (IIRC) was in limbo."

That's the other thing that got me about Davis. He left AVENGERS-- which was going really good at that moment-- for KILLRAVEN ? Now, for anyone who's never seen it, Davis' art bears a STRIKING resemblance to Neal Adams'-- who drew the first issue of the 1970s KILLRAVEN series! So, you could say he was a good fit. But the story, as it turned out, did NOT-- REALLY-- fit into the original continuity! Fans-- like me-- have been waiting years for the story to be continued. When the original series ended, it was in mid-story. Years later, Don McGregor & Craig Russell did their graphic novel, and if you read it back-to-back with the earlier issues, it feels like it was written the next month. Just picks up like no time had elapsed. They were hoping to do more... but somehow, NEVER DID. So all this time later, I hear they're doing KILLRAVEN... but no McGregor, no Russell, and, apparently, it's an "alternate version". SO WHO CARES?????

I'm not completely sure... it's possible the Davis KILLRAVEN might fit in between a couple of the earliest episodes (the ones before McGregor), but something tells me not.

If Marvel could get Moench & Gulacy to do a brand-new MASTER OF KUNG FU mini-series, then dammit, it's high time they got McGregor & Russell to do a new KILLRAVEN mini-series. (And the same goes for Englehart & Brunner on DR. STRANGE.)

Davis' Kilraven was a pet project of his he'd been angling for for years. And a reboot.

Avengers Volume Three # 1-22 & Annual 1998

Honestly, it puzzles me that the Busiek era is so popular. Maybe it has something to do with not reading it in real time -- as I said earlier in this thread, I wasn't into comics during the late 1990s and early 2000s and didn't start catching up until 2005. Maybe it's a technical thing -- I don't think Busiek was particularly good at pacing or at writing action sequences. Maybe it's a generational thing -- Busiek is one generation older than me, and he was captivated by a different Avengers era than I was. One particular point of contention that I have with Busiek is that he seems to be part of the sizable margin of Avengers fans who put the first 200 issues on a pedastal, whereas I think that there's a lot of good stuff there, but also a lot of not-so-good stuff. Then there's Busiek's tendency to belittle my beloved Harras/Epting era, which leads me to believe that he's jealous -- after all, Harras & Epting came up with something different and exciting that revitalized Avengers (creatively if not commercially), while Busiek rode the warmed-over nostalgia train straight to the bank. Busiek was pretty damn lucky that he had superior artwork for most of his run: Perez, Pacheco, Immonen, Epting, Davis, Reis -- it made his stories a lot more tolerable to me, on the first reading at least (each time I re-read them, which isn't often, I find something else I don't like.)

Perez, of course, was the artist who got the book up and running, and in my opinion, his second run on Avengers is some of the best art of his career -- I feel that there were several years, from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s, where Perez wasn't quite as good as he was capable of, and these Avengers issues are a complete return to peak form.

Now, where the actual stories are concerned...the first arc, where almost everyone who was ever an Avenger assmebles to battle Morgan Le Fay, is good fun for the most part, with some enchanting medieval-fantasyland imagery, but it also establishes a recurring weakness of Busiek's that's similar to one of Shooter's: the villain is so powerful that he or she can only be defeated by a plot contrivance -- in this case, Morgan suddenly acting like a psychotic two-year-old; I just don't buy it. The follow-up issue, where the Big Three plus Jan & Hank come up with a new lineup, has one panel that makes me angry just thinking about it: Sersi, back in that horrible green bikini, rejecting the offer to rejoin but telling them to invite her to the next party, as if the Harras/Epting stories had never happened; the only way I can cope with that panel is by telling myself that it's a shape-shifter posing as Sersi, and that one day, my Sersi, the real Sersi, will return. The final lineup includes ex-New Warriors Firestar and Justice, both characters I like, but not the way that Busiek would consistently mis-characterize them. The new team's first official battle is against the Squadron Supreme, who are being mind-controlled yet again, as if Busiek couldn't think of anything better; eventually -- in the 1998 Annual, drawn by Pacheco -- the two teams combine forces, with some help from Swordsman II and Magdalene, to battle Imus Champion, an obscure villain who was forgettable back in the early 1970s and even more forgettable in the late 1990s; at least Philip and Magdalene get a dignified exit at the end. Next, there's a mini-crossover where Busiek cluelessly tries to tie up some loose ends from the Harras era, involving the Kree renegades and the Supreme Intelligence; this also provides a showcase for Busiek's inept long-term fall-rise-redemption storyarc for Carol Danvers (there was NOTHING in her previous appearances that suggested she was an alcoholic -- so much for Busiek's supposed respect for continuity.) Then, Busiek's forgettable creations Triathlon and Silverclaw (who both remind me of the token minority members from Superfriends) step into the spotlight, while the villain this time is Moses Magnum, if ever there was a more stuck-in-the-1970s villain. :rolleyes: After a battle against the Grim Reaper and a pack of zombie ex-Avengers returned from the dead, there were humdrum guest appearances by the Thunderbolts, the New Warriors, and the Beast, as Busiek started introducing villains of his own creation: Jonathan Tremont and his self-help cult, the Triune Understanding, Lord Templar and his Avatars, and the all-brawn-no-brains Pagan, all of them with potential that was never lived up to in the long run. There followed a very dissapointing three-issue arc guest-written and guest-penciled by Jerry Ordway, who is capable of better things. But it bought Busiek & Perez enough time to put some extra effort into their next, and arguably, best arc, Ultron Unlimited. I feel the same way about it that I feel about David Michelinie's Taskmaster arc: it hits all the right notes, and it's a good read, an anomaly of its era as far as my personal tastes go. Plus, there's the clever revelation that Hank programmed Ultron with his own brain patterns, one of those "But of course! Why didn't somebody come up with that before?" moments. If Busiek had managed to come up with equally good stories during the remainder of his Avengers run, I would have a more positive opinion of it.

I had originally intended to add a review of Busiek's 12-issue time-travel limited series Avengers Forever, but after a few issues I had to admit to myself that it's borderline unreadable, even with the copious footnotes, and I ended up mostly looking at Pacheco's wonderful art and ignoring the text.

Next week: Perez, Immonen, Epting and Davis keep the book afloat, but rough waters are just around the corner.

Well, she was the only Eternal who got panel time AND was still mindwiped at the end of Eternals #7, so... *shrugs*

Heh, I think the return of Giant-Man might've been more excitement from your dad! jk. I can see one of the originals returning injecting some excitement after the kooky quartet was getting old.

But I also think John Buscema helped alot. His work was head & shoulders above the rest at that time.

I agree with Stealth that after #48/49 is when things got good. Infact, IMO this is when superhero soap opera was born.

I'm going to try to go in order in respond to some of these posts cause they are so good.

"Honestly, it puzzles me that the Busiek era is so popular."

Maybe it had to do with what it was following? I stopped reading Marvel IN GENERAL about 6 months after Harras took over AVENGERS, so I missed a lot-- and everything I heard made me think I wasn't missing anything. Busiek & Perez were part of "HEROES RETURN", that promotional push that felt like a apology for "HEROES REBORN". Also, Perez' art was better than I ever remembered it being, and this time, not only did he stay for a good, long, consistent run, but whenever they ad fill-ins, they tended to have as good or better art.


"Then there's Busiek's tendency to belittle my beloved Harras/Epting era, which leads me to believe that he's jealous"

Maybe he never read those issues? Sure would make it easier to ignore tham or pretend they never happened...


"it made his stories a lot more tolerable to me, on the first reading at least (each time I re-read them, which isn't often, I find something else I don't like.)"

I hate when that happens with movies. Bad movies is one thing, but there's movies I really LIKE where, each time I sit thru them, their faults get bigger and bigger. Like THUNDERBALL, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, and THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. (I once read an article which tore SPY apart scene-by-scene-- every criticism stood out so glaringly because they all made sense, it was a sort of "keep things moving so the audience won't notice this", and as a result, while the film still looks great, I've never been able to appreciate it as much since. Logically, it makes NO SENSE AT ALL.)


"The final lineup includes ex-New Warriors Firestar and Justice"

I had no idea who the hell these people were, and the way they were written didn't make me wanna care, either.


"The new team's first official battle is against the Squadron Supreme, who are being mind-controlled yet again, as if Busiek couldn't think of anything better"

Instead of "Justice League done right", every time they'd pop up, they'd make the JLA look great by comparison. (Was Busiek taking under-the-table money from DC??)


"Busiek's inept long-term fall-rise-redemption storyarc for Carol Danvers (there was NOTHING in her previous appearances that suggested she was an alcoholic -- so much for Busiek's supposed respect for continuity.)"

I wonder if it isn't something about her starting life as a supporting character in CAPTAIN MARVEL, the book "nobody" wanted to work on? Gerry Conway cast her as a partially-amnesiac POWER GIRL wannabe (who was a swipe of Supergirl, who was a swipe of Mary Marvel...), Chris Claremont claimed it took him 2 years to figure out what the heck to DO with her (so much for that era's #1 "hotshot writer"), David Michelinie treated her like CRAP, then Claremont treated her EVEN WORSE as a way of getting back at Michelinie... I mean, DAMN. All that time, I just wanted my strong, intelligent, confident & gorgeous blonde powerhouse, not all this "so damaged she can't even stand up" crap. (There's a character like her, oddly enough, in the STORMBOY comic I've been working on-- I wonder if the thing will ever get finished. I treat her with more respect than most of these guys have treated Carol over the years.)


"Jonathan Tremont and his self-help cult, the Triune Understanding"

Good God, was there ever a storyline that just dragged on forever as badly as this one? He keeps trying to convince people he's on the up-and-up, Triathlon, who started out interesting, turns out to be involved with this conspiracy, HE doesn't say anything about it, then he comes on real strong as if, so what, they're okay guys... by the time it was over, I just wanted Tremont DEAD and gone-- permanently.


"Ultron Unlimited"

Ohhh-- I HATED this thing! One more case of bringing back an old villain, AGAIN, and upping the ante, higher and higher, to simply monstrous proportions. And this wasn't even the LAST story with Ultron, was it???


"I had originally intended to add a review of Busiek's 12-issue time-travel limited series Avengers Forever"

Oh don't wimp out on us now! C'mon, SOMEBODY's gotta refresh my memory about that thing. It was too deeply involved in the overlong mess that followed.

Wow, I loved Busieks run, and the stuff he ignored was stuff I didn't happen to like anyway...

And Avengers Forever rocked, IMO. I love continuity porn. I couldn't tell you what it was about *now,* but I couldn't even tell you what the hell Darkseid was up to in the Great Darkness Saga these days, I just remember liking and understanding it at the time.

Avengers Volume One # 358-379

The 360’s – the first time I ever noticed gimmicky covers. I remember thinking, ‘Hey, this is kind of cool’. Talk about overdoing something though—I hope we never see them again.

Proctor/Gatherers Saga continues – the Anti-Vision was awesomely portrayed as creepy and villainous and served the purpose of returning the Vision to his colorful roots. And it kicked off the next leg of the Saga, which only furthered the excellence of the then current Avengers. The return of Cap is great, as is his amazement at Sersi, Black Knight, Herc and others and the angst they are feeling. The Black Knight continues to develop into my favorite Avenger with his ‘whatever it takes’ attitude, and the love triangle b/t Dane, Sersi and Crystal heats up to a point where it becomes my favorite in Marvel history. To say I love this era is an understatement. I’ve repeated myself so many times that I almost don’t want to get into it again, but I could talk for post after post about why this era was so great. Each Avenger clicked, complete with personality flaws and dramatic moments and each issue was better than the next. Proctor’s mystery was truly intriguing, and the gradual deterioration of Sersi was scary and terribly interesting, as we wondered what exactly was going on. And through it all, Crystal and the Black Knight become closer and closer despite themselves.

Galen Kor – and suddenly it shifts gears back to the Kree fallout, in what may be the best story arc of the entire run! The introduction of Deathcry, which as Stealth says, is incredibly seemless, leads right into the follow-up of Operation: Galactic Storm in a kick-ass story. Herc, Dane, Crystal all captured by the Kree! Hank Pym returns as Giant-Man—yay! Giant Man kicks the crap out of a Sentry—double yay!! The entire Earth in trouble! The ultimate kick-ass battle with Magdalene and Deathcry helping out! I was blow away.

Giant-Man – I admit, that at the time in my youth, it was the return of Giant-Man that tipped things over the edge and made me love this run more than anything. I’ve said before that Giant-Man is one of my Dad’s all time favorite heroes (tied with Spidey and Iron Man), and that has influenced me from the first time he read me a comic—probably Avengers #1, though my memory plays tricks on me. I personally love Hank as Giant-Man and Goliath, but loathe him as Yellowjacket and hate when he’s plains-clothes Dr. Pym too. His return as Giant-Man was a ‘cheer’ moment for me, and it was executed beautifully. And Harras does what he does best, just like he was doing with Vision at the time. He was moving the characters forward, albeit in a way that made old fans cheer, but not dwelling on the past. There was no trauma or all the other baggage the character has being addressed, there was just kick-ass Giant Man as part of the team. I loved it. Busiek made some very heavy mistakes later by retreading old ground with Hank. If anything, I prefer him as Goliath, but Giant-Man is just as good.

Deathcry – despite feeling that I should hate her, I kind of have a soft-spot for her. Agree completely with Stealth about Busiek and other’s criticism. I mean really—Triathlon?

Bloodties – you know, I remember loving this too. At this point IMO, the X-titles were pretty awesome at the time too, and the combination of both of them and Harras’ Avengers made for a superb crossover. AWC was still weak at this time, but US Agent shined a little. Of course, the story got off-kilter at one point and didn’t turn out to be the next great Marvel Crossover, ut overall, I thought it worked well. Exodus makes for a great villain and the use of Luna here showcased how central a role in the MU she has. Crystal was awesome here, and I like how Wanda and the Black Knight are portrayed. I haven’t read this in years though, so I probably have rose-colored glasses.

The End of the Proctor/Gatherers Saga – and the final issues of this story from #372 – 375 are damn near perfect in my opinion. The Gatherers continue to prove to be a threat, while the drama between the Black Knight, Crystal and Sersi deepens, now with Quicksilver (FINALLY!) added into the mix. Sersi’s apparent madness becomes more and more understandable and the Black Knight finally reaches a point where he is able to break the Gans Josen (know I spelled that wrong). All the other Avengers shine with a bunch of guest stars included, and Quicksilver and the Black Knight finally learn the truth about Proctor in what has to be one of the best final pages of any Avenger’s story. The final battle is amazing, and even the inclusion of Thunderstrike gave a sense of completion to Harras and Epting’s entire run. It truly is one of the greatest Avenger’s stories ever told—if not *thee* greatest.

The end result was the exit of the Black Knight and Sersi and the end of what is my favorite Marvel romance of all time, that between Crystal and the Black Knight. On the one hand, I recognize brilliance when I read it and love the finale, but on the other hand, it was heart-breaking to read. But to a young boy, the Black Knight’s heroic decision to go with Sersi seemed *so* powerful.

Deodoto and later issues – Deodoto has always been hit or miss with me, and this was an era where his art was just way to over the top. And the line-up began to be more pronounced, so that Deathcry had more screen time, Giant Man was done well, but needed better interaction, and now Quicksilver became a full-time member, which meant it was nice to see a follow-up on where his and Crystal’s story would go from here (as well as get him back in Avengers, where I feel he belongs rather than X-Factor), although I didn’t like him wanting to reconcile with Crystal. The Taylor Madison/Herc story felt kind of like a cop-out, complete with Zeus involvement coming out of left field, so I can understand how people may have hated it.

The Crossing – perhaps the worst Avengers story ever told. Completely all over the field, it was impossible to keep track of read and made little sense. Mantis as the surprise villainous, Kang’s continuity-messy ‘hidden history of the Avengers’, Iron Man betraying them and then teen Tony arriving…it was just crap. It was the epitome of what was wrong with the 90’s. Really, I almost can’t find words venomous enough to talk about it.

Pre-Onslought – right before Onslought, Waid came in and attempted to get the book on track, but ultimately it was too discombobulated.

Heroes Reborn – Awful. Really, there isn’t one good thing to say about it. Ok, it beats the Crossing, but c’mon.

Busiek era? I loved and hated it.

While I really liked the Harras era I didn't think it was perfect. And then Heroes Reborn really made me miss the old Avengers. So Kurt going old school was fine by me. But yes his ignoring some of the more recent Avengers history was good and bad. I guess it depends on the reader.

I really didn't care for the Triathlon story at all. Or the villain Templar, etc. What really made angry was what he did with the Vision and Hank Pym.

The Vision and the Human Torch were now two sepereate androids. Good. I hated the Vision always owing everything he is to others...Ultron, Wonder Man, Human Torch I. I rather him be his own android. Kurt made him a chrono-clone...ugh. Anyways, that is not as big a deal as hank.

Pym returns as YJ? ARGH?!?!?! That was very forced. Infact, I didn't care for Harras returning him as Giant-Man. But ok that's fine. But YJ? The split personality thing?

Engleheart did awesome by making the character Dr. Pym. He was a sci-fi doctor type of hero and it fit. Then the writers want to return him to the hero he was long ago...and it never worked. Still doesn't. YJ???

Avengers Volume Three # 1-22 & Annual 1998

When Busiek and Perez came on, I was beyond excited, and I can still see why. They did a good job in returning the Avenger’s to the ‘Avengers’, especially after the recent years of Heroes Reborn and the Crossing before that. Nostalgia was heavy, but it felt like genuine Marvel Super-Hero action again. But I agree that the run was complete with flaws, for some very real reasons. But first, some of the good:

Perez’s art – talk about knocking it out of the ball park. Every issue was like getting a present. It was breath-taking.

Using old Avengers – Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Hank, Jan, Wanda, Clint, Vision, etc. So many Avengers that are true ‘core Avengers’ were brought back into the line-up and I felt that was very welcome. Especially Thor and Iron Man, who despite some fans thinking they’re part of the ‘big three’, I personally love their involvement in the team—more so than Cap.

The interaction between Avengers, with the everyday moments the dialogue, and the bureaucracy they had to deal with. That was fun and interesting to see.

Nostalgia – and yes, a lot of the nostalgia was nice. Thor yelling ‘Eric!’ to the once again dying Thunderstrike struck a cord with me, and Hawkeye struggling with his old role on the team was good. But in thinking about Busiek’s nostalgia, it hits on one of this run’s biggest flaws, in that it was way too nostalgia-centric at times. And ultimately, Busiek did things that brought he characters right back to the mid-70’s, ignoring tons of things before him. The Vision was no longer the same Vision he was back then and had been through quite a few changes. Hank was not the same ‘broken man’ anymore. Busiek felt the need to do a sequel to Avenger’s stories of old, not taking into account that sequels had already been done, with sequels to those in continuity too. He retread old ground *so* much that a great deal of history was ignored. Suddenly whole eras were lumped into ‘Heroes Reborn’ when there wasn’t any need for that.

And Busiek did the same thing Bendis does, in playing favorites. Sure, every writer does that, we all know Stern and Englehart did. But they were respectful to the past—which could be seen time and time again. But Busiek showered us with Traitholon, Silver Claw, Justice and Firestar, while at the same time ignoring many he didn’t like, just like Bendis does. It was that, and his focus on getting some Avengers stuck back in their old roles which I didn’t like. It felt like it was putting the Avengers back on the poisonous old path of being stale, which ultimately would lead to something as shitty as Avengers Dissassembled. Hate what was done to Carol, disliked his ignoring the Harras era (including changes to Vision, Sersi, Crystal, etc.).

I hated the Jerry Ordway arc. Here he had the Black Knight and Photon, two Avengers just waiting to be used again, and he pretty much mischaracterized them the whole time, on top of a boring story.

But I don’t want to seem as if I hate this era. Not the case at all—like others, I dislike parts of it, but love parts of it too. I liked the “Ultron Unlimited Arc” and thought it was fantastic. Earlier arcs with the Grim Reaper and the first few appearances with Lord Templar and Pagan were very interesting, and I couldn’t wait to see where it went. Generally, the first 25 issues of the run were pretty excellent, with only some minor things that were annoying. But those things would continue to become more pronounced later.

Avengers Forever, I actually loved. I thought it was very well done, and I loved the tributes he paid to various earlier eras, especially with Hank and Jan in tow. Songbird and Captain Marvel III (his first appearance) were interesting and the revelations were all exciting. It was like he came and ‘fixed’ all the stupid things over the years with a really great story that roped in the Kree, Srkulls, Kang, Immortus, Rick Jones, etc. It was really awesome. I think if he only retreaded old ground here most of us would have been satisfied.

Umm... Avengers Forever was not only NOT Genis' first appearance, he'd ACTUALLY HAD HIS OWN MINISERIES a couple of years earlier.

Oh, I know that . It was a pretty awful mini too (though Beta Ray Bill showed up). But at the end of two long posts, I was getting sloppy. I meant mainly Genis first appearance in that costume. Really, its the first time he appeared that it counted, but I guess that's all a matter of opinion.

Nit-picker

I actually liked Legacy. He first appeared in the Silver Surfer. He made a few appearances there. I want to say next was Cosmic Powers mini? Then his own mini. I liked him in space better.

But yeah AF is when he actually mattered. Poor Genis. He got the shaft.

So there is hope for Sersi after all, just like there's hope for Rita, the female Yellowjacket. Yay!

Oh, Busiek's read those issues, all right. He never misses a chance to pompously pontificate about how superior HIS issues are, how HE didn't try to make the Avengers more like the X-Men. *&)()&*%^% arrogant, clueless jerk! I enjoyed Harras & Epting's Avengers because it WASN'T like the X-Men, and I actually half-heartedly followed X-Men at the same time as Avengers, until the ridiculous resolution of the whole "Who's the real Betsy?" mess.

I would highly recommend reading the Firestar mini-series (now available in digest form) and New Warriors Volume One # 1-25.

LOL I think bigger is sometimes better, when it's done right. And as far as I know, Ultron didn't reappear until just this month, in Mighty Avengers # 1, which I haven't browsed through yet, but I've read some spoilers and it sounds eye-rollingly bad. :rolleyes:

Sorry, but I can't do it -- I don't want my brain to melt.

Thank you, Cobie, for once again covering the issues I don't have. I'm wondering...my Avengers collection ends with Busiek's last issue. Would you like to take over the chronology from Johns through the present day?

Amen to that. Especially the part about putting the Avengers back on the path of being stale, which led to Avengers Disassembled. If Busiek was a better writer (and less of a stick-in-the-mud), he could have gradually evolved the team so that it went from overly-familiar members to fresh new members. Instead, the book got so grindingly stale with the status quo, that the pendulum swang too far the other way, and the book was shattered, perhaps forever. This is why I have no patience for people with very rigid ideas of what the Avengers "should" and "shouldn't" be. The book spent its first 30 years taking chances and getting better and better thanks to those chances -- there is a lesson to be learned here.

Stealth, I'd love to take over chronology wise, though I only see myself as a deputy performing duties for you for the issues you're missing It won't be too many either, the John's issues can basically be covered pretty fast. I'm a John's fan, but his Avengers run wasn't anything special (and Austen...heh, Austen...).

Looking forward to thoughts on the second half of Busiek's run--which actually began with what I thought were some fine Avengers moments, only to end up going through one of the more drawn out stories in Avengers history.

"And as far as I know, Ultron didn't reappear until just this month, in Mighty Avengers # 1"

I just took a quick glance down my index, there was a one-shot called THE ULTRON IMPERATIVE (Nov'01) written by Busiek (w/ plot assist by Roy Thomas!) and with dialogue & art by a nostalgic ARMY of former & new AVENGERS creators (Roger Stern, Steve Englehart, Jim Starlin, etc.)

I'd also love for someone to review the Hellcat-related stories, AVENGERS INFINITY, the completely over-the-top absurdity of MAXIMUM SECURITY (some story ideas just go TOO DAMN FAR) and CELESTIAL QUEST.

By the way, I also looked over my index, and noticed that the editor in charge of the entirety of Busiek's run-- and Johns' run-- was Tom Brevoort. When I started adding editors to my index, that's when I noticed that nearly every major turning point in a series or change in creative line-up coincided with changes in editors, which told me editors often have more influence on a book than writers. It's pretty obvious Brevoort is also a nostalgia freak, which is not necessarily a bad thing (especially when I see how so much of Marvel & DC have degenerated over the last 15 years).

Let's put it this way... whenever something happens-- good or bad-- ALWAYS blame whoever's in charge! (As Captain Kirk said on at least one occasion-- "It's MY ship-- and MY responsibility.")

Okay, here's what I want to know. Maybe it's been asked before... whatever.

Anyway, in Civil War: The Confession Tony said-- and I quote-- "The Avengers avenge, X-Men defend, the Fantastic Four explore." Which, yeah, okay, we already knew. But what is it that the Avengers are avenging? (Also, side note: If the X-Men defend, what exactly do the Defenders do?)

I mean, the X-Men are defending mutants from humans (and humans from mutants if the House of M debacle is any indication) and the FF exploration is basically self-explanatory but... yeah. What is there to avenge, exactly? Or who? And why are these people doing it?

Brevoort then is responsible for the current nightmare. What's wrong with the middle road I say?

Tis the job of the Avengers to avenge all attempts of attack and subversion upon the normal folk of Mid-Guard as noble Thor once said!

In 40 years of history, this has never truly been explained though. It was just such a cool name in the 1960's!

"In 40 years of history, this has never truly been explained though. It was just such a cool name in the 1960's!"

Jan said something like, "We need a name like The Avengers, or..." Sheesh.

Sure seems to me Stan Lee (& Marvel in general) spent some time gutting existing tv shows for their names...

THE AVENGERS
THE DEFENDERS
THE INVADERS
THE CHAMPIONS

At least you can't confuse the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA with anyone else!




I guess when THE X-FILES started it was "payback". Had it been a comic-book rather than a tv show, I suspect Marvel's lawyers would have been all over them...

Thanks, I appreciate it. Sometimes it's more fun to review mediocre-to-bad comics than good comics, isn't it? Real cathartic.

Here's a little advance sample:

The Kulan Gath/Origin-of-Silverclaw storyarc reminds me of those hokey old black & white jungle movies that Joel and Mike and the robots used to make fun of on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Sounds moderately intriguing. If Busiek's name wasn't on it, I probably would put it on my list of back issues to search for.

Hellcat-related stories? Do you mean the Avengers and T-bolt annuals where she's brought back to life?

I once considered buying the back issues of Avengers Infinity, because Roger Stern is one of my favorite writers and Sean Chen is a good artist. But when I found out it stars three of my least favorite Avengers -- Starfox, Tigra, and Moondragon -- I decided against it.

I feel so lucky that uncannyxmen.net has detailed summaries of Maximum Security, so I could find out what happened without wasting money. Just as with the mini-crossover Live Kree or Die, Busiek proves he shouldn't be let anywhere near the sub-genre of superhero space opera.

I haven't read Avengers: Celestial Quest, and I've never really felt much curiosity about it. I guess it's because I think Thanos should never have been resurrected, and his presence in any comic book is an automatic turn-off to me, even with Steve Englehart writing it.

It would be interesting to use that reasoning on the Avengers editors who came before Brevoort. At the moment, I don't have access to my copies of the Official Marvel Index to the Avengers (the 1990s update of the original), and I need them to reference the exact dates and issues. But I definitely will come back to this subject very soon.

I have a feeling that neither Stan Lee nor anyone else at Marvel gave any serious thought to the true meaning of the name until Bob Harras referred to it twice during his run, raising interesting questions about whether or not to take the name literally, and where to draw the line that heroes shouldn't cross. Forgive me for being vague, it's just I'm afraid that if I go into detail, I'll spoil the stories.

No one since Harras has ever addressed the subject, but hopefully that will change sometime in the future.

My indexes aren't completely updated, but I thought I'd see what I did have and pass it on...

STAN LEE -- #1 / Sep'63
ROY THOMAS -- #103 / Sep'72
LEN WEIN -- #133 / Mar'75
MARV WOLFMAN -- #140 / Oct'75
ARCHIE GOODWIN -- #150 / Aug'76
GERRY CONWAY -- #151 / Sep'76
ARCHIE GOODWIN -- #158 / Apr'77
JIM SHOOTER -- #171 / May'78
ROGER STERN -- #173 / Jul'78
JIM SALICRUP -- #192 / Feb'80
MARK GRUENWALD -- #222 / Aug'82
HOWARD MACKIE -- #304 / Jun'89
RALPH MACCHIO -- #335 / Aug'91

I stopped buying a few months after this...

TOM BREVOORT w/Gregg Schigiel -- #1 / Feb'98
TOM BREVOORT w/Frank Dunkerley -- #28 / May'00
TOM BREVOORT w/Marc Sumerak -- #38 / Mar'01
TOM BREVOORT w/Marc Sumerak & Jeff Youngquist -- #47 / Dec'01
TOM BREVOORT w/Marc Sumerak -- #52 / May'02
TOM BREVOORT w/Marc Sumerak & Andy Schmidt -- #58 / Nov'02

I don't know how much assistant editors influence books, but I figured I'd include them on this list.

Ultron also appeared in Frank Tieri's last Iron Man arc (v3 #45-49 or thereabouts), following up on Ultron Imperative and explaining away Quesada's Sentient Armour (and something else Quesada introduced...).

Avengers Volume Three # 23-40

From the peak of Ultron Unlimited, the book took a steep step down with an issue focused on the Vision. I don’t like seeing an angst-ridden Vision, considering that – as Cobie has already pointed out – Harras had already put Vision through many soul-searching nights, ending with Vision reclaiming his identity; just another example of how selective Busiek is about continuity. The two-parter which followed was a big stumbling bore – the setup was intriguing (what kind of threat could drive the Juggernaut to come running to the Avengers for help?) but the payoff was underwhelming (tellingly, the Exemplars – multiple stereotypes with superpowers – have not been seen anywhere since.) And the ending with Thor throwing his hammer at the reporters is infuriatingly out of character, yet sadly typical of Busiek’s portrayal of Thor as a belligerent oaf.

The next issue is a pleasant surprise – the pacing is unusually fast for Busiek, the guest art team of Stuart Immonen & Wade Von Grawbadger do a wonderful job, the plot twist is clever, and the focus on non-superstars (Carol Danvers, Scott Lang, Genis Mar-Vell, and...ugh...Silverclaw) gives a hint of what this Avengers era could have been. But then, after a lineup-change issue, we reach the low point of the Busiek/Perez issues: the Kulan Gath/origin-of-Silverclaw story. Pseudo-mysticism can be entertaining when it’s done right, but Busiek misses by a mile – it all feels to me like a dumb old jungle movie updated with CGI effects; this arc also introduces the redundant and totally unnecessary “Hank turns into both Goliath and Yellowjacket” plot thread. Next is Perez’s final Avengers storyarc, where the Avengers – and later, the Thunderbolts as well – are up against Masque, the Grim Reaper, and Count Nefaria. The Reaper as a crime lord is more than a little goofy to me, as is Nefaria’s motivation, and the revelation of Masque as having a small army of clones feels like lazy writing. Factoring in the Thunderbolts tie-ins and the double-size conclusion, this is a thin premise stretched out across seven issues worth of pages. The storyarc is basically one prolonged action sequence, and there’s nothing wrong with that, except that Busiek is not particularly good at writing action sequences, plus he falls into the old trap of the excessively-powerful villain. Perez seems to be having a lot of fun with the multitude of characters to draw, but the story is an anti-climactic note on which to leave.

I don’t have a copy of the Maximum Security tie-in, because I don’t want anything to do with Maximum Security for reasons I already gave in an earlier post. The two issues that follow are guest-penciled by Steve Epting, and though Al Vey’s inking ruins many panels, there is still a lot of memorable imagery – Epting’s renditions of Carol Danvers in action should be studied by any artist assigned to draw her, Bloodwraith looks terrifying, and the darkly atmospheric cover to # 37 is a classic. The next issue introduces not only the reliably excellent art of Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, but also a new, more proactive direction (although as with most of Busiek’s Avengers work, nothing much comes of this promising concept, plus the expanded lineup makes the book unfocused, like it was when Byrne was writing it.) The “Hulk City” two-parter is dumber than dumb, but Davis seems to be having fun drawing it, and that helps...a little.

Next week: The Busiek era closes with that plodding white elephant also known as the Kang Dynasty Saga.

Since you mentioned that there (and with the choice of smiley at the end ), I thought I should point out that Marvel's just solicited a HC of that mini [I haven't actually read it myself, so I can't say how good it is]:

I agree about the Vision. Finally his own android. I liked what Byrne did. No Wonder Man brainwaves, no Human Torch body parts.

Harras gave him new brainwaves from a dead man. I dug it.

Then Busiek returns everything to like it was.

Thanks for the information, Reboot. I'll circle that date on my calendar.

Jorge, I was wondering, since you're a Young Avengers fan, if you could please explain just what the current status of the Vision is, because what little I've seen of the Vision since his destruction by Bendis and his resurrection in Young Avengers has left me confused.

I'm not Jorge, but I play him on TV...

Either in House of M or something, Vision (along with Hawkeye and Ant-Man) got killed, and purportedly the Scarlet Witch was responsible for all of that. Being one of those freaks who hasn't bought a mega-crossover since Age of Apocalypse, I have no idea what really happened in House of M, and from the sounds of it, it's been retconned a few times since then anyway...

A character from the future shows up with 30th century technology and attempts to contact the Avengers, but they are disbanded. He manages to track down the remains of the Vision, stored in a box in a Stark Industries warehouse, and manages to awaken his computer AI, if not restore his body. At this point, the Vision is just a holographic image springing up from his wreckage and offering advice to the group. (Frankly, the idea of the Vision as an actual 'vision,' nothing more than a holographic advisor, was cool, and I wish they'd kept that for a bit longer.) The Vision mentions a 'Avengers Next Generation' sort of program that he designed to keep track of the next wave of heroes, in case the Avengers needed to be replaced. Future-dude seeks out these kids and forms the Young Avengers from them, causing his own 30th century armor to change to a red and white approximation of Iron Man's armor (but *vastly* higher tech) and calling himself Iron Lad.

Stuff happens, future-guy has to return to the future, but the armor has to stay. Vision downloads into the future-armor, which is 'neurokinetic' (which mneans that it responds to it's wearers thoughts and reshapes itself). He makes it resemble 'Iron Lad' at first, but that bothers some of the Young Avengers who miss their former team-mate and he changes it again to look more like a slimmer version of his old Vision appearance.

So the current version of the Vision has all of the memories of the old Vision, but his 'body' is the 30th century uber-armor that does whatever the heck he wants it to do, making him able to duplicate most of his old tricks (density control, eyebeams, fly, interface with machinery, etc.) and do all sorts of other stuff (force blasts, time travel, shapechange, etc.).

I've skipped over some spoilery stuff deliberately, and this is basically the stuff relevant to the Vision character only.

In simpler terms, I can sum up the YA-Vision in three words: Son of Vision.

There are several scenes, most notably in YAv 7-8 (of which I've included the most explicit below), which are there solely to establish that this is NOT the Vision who died in Disassembled, but a new character based on the same "Operating System." (think new computer booted up using your old Windows installation disc) While it's true that he has access to many of the memories of Synthezoid-Vision, he always refers to them - and him - in the third person.

Another great review Stealth. I have to say though, a lot of what I said about Busiek's Vision, though my own thoughts, were put into words better by Reboot in a PM about four or five months ago. . I think we all agree on Busiek's back-tracking though and how much it reeks of the type of comic book writing that is helping kill the industry and lead to Dissassembled type scenarios.

As for Avengers #23-40, I'll recall what I can here:

- First, the Templars story, while pretty to look at (Nova and Spidey!) was really a typical 70's slugfest comic book story with little in substance, though fun. The only problem is that a lot of Busiek's stories were like this. That wouldn't be *so* bad if the characterization we were getting wasn't so off kilter.

- Change in line-up. Stealth, you're dead-on about Thor being out of character. Lashing out at reporters? C'mon. Busiek seemed to be trying to recapture Avengers #150-151, which was somewhat fun, although a little off at times. Loved seeing Hank and Jan back on the team and Carol moving forward, but the problem was I didn't like what was going on with them personality/subplot wise. Triatholon and Silver Claw are two of the more dull Avengers in its history, and stink of stereotypes.

- Hank as Yellowjacket. I think its pretty much been a theme of this thread that we all think this was a dumb move. After Shooter's disgraceful story, to Stern moving Hank forward, to Harras restoring Hank as a great hero without dwelling on the past, there was NO REASON to go this route. And now Hank has suffered for it since. Johns tried to 'fix it' again (failed), Bendis continually refers to it, including insults from other super-heroes (Carol Danvers even THIS WEEK has done so). Hank is one of my favorite heroes. It is the easiest thing in the world to move him past all this crap and make him a great hero again. But no one has the creativity to just go for it.

- Avengers/Thunderbolts crossover - this was somewhat fun at the time, with Hawkeye in the mix and Nefaria, the Grim Reaper, etc. It almost looked like for a time there would be an annual Avengers/Thunderbolts thing going on in the vein of JLA/JSA team-ups of old. Of course, the T-Bolts were screwed over worse than the Avengers, so that didn't pan out.

- Maximum Security - hardly even remember anything about it. I was in college at the time, and remember thinking "why am I even bothering to read this?"

- Bloodwraith/Steve Epting - this story, however, was a highlight of Kurt's run. I remember being really enthralled by Bloodwraith growing so large and being so threatening. Though a quick story, it was the type of story that should have been more pronounced in this run.

- Alan Davis/too many Avengers - Davis has many fans around here, and my father loves his artwork too, but I can't say I've ever really fallen in love with a lot of what he's done. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places? (I've never read his Excalibur stuff). But his run was all too short, which annoys me. I'm greedy and I don't apologize for it--for an artist to truly impress me, I'll need quite a few continual issues. But the main problem here is the same problem Byrne had, etc. Too many Avengers means no focus, meaning not enough drama, which makes me lose interest. The 'B' characters work well in tight situations where we see them excel, or paired up with the super-stars. But having 20 'B' characters only ensures they remain 'B' characters and basically don't do anything other than gang up on a very powerful enemy--which means that sooner or later they'll be cannon-fodder.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Thank you for this amazing thread.
Cobie, Prof and of course Stealth.
You guys are doing a great job. I check this thread everytime I'm on for the latest updates.

Keep up the great work guys.

And, since you mentioned it, I may as well quote the relevant excerpt:

For instance, I still can't buy a literal "Man Without Fear" NOT going nuts nor taking stupid chances and getting themselves killed, since fear's the thing that gives us common sense, like "don't cross the road when the cars are coming you'll get killed" and "don't touch that hot pan - you'll burn yourself." And I don't like repeating patterns - once something's changed, it should stay different. The Scarlet Witch should never be an Avenger again after what she's done. Hank & Jan should never get [have got] back together. Even if Wanda is certified sane and H&J get back on speaking terms - could YOU trust someone who did what Wanda did to watch your back? They don't need to be frozen at their first status after the event, but continuity means many things, and hitting rewind is discontinuous.

And that was something Harris was good at in his Avengers run, probably best exemplified by his treatment of the Vision. He gave him back his red/green/yellow colour scheme, his ears & genitals, and his emotions. But the Vision at the end of Harris' run was still FAR different from the pre-Byrne Vision. Then Busiek took over post-Heroes Reborn and set about wiping Vision back thirty years, deleting the Alex Lipton element in favour of making him more like Wonder Man than ever, and losing that "we're a unique being" stuff from the end of Harris' Vision mini. [And, of course, Wonder Man got reset to his pre-WCA days, never mind the resurrection itself from the ion bomb DnA hit him with.]

What surprising is that no one here's yet mentioned that Silverclaw is a direct, complete Snowbird (of Alpha Flight) rip-off.

Half-goddess, changes into animals of her native region which are always a specific colour...

In a word? WØRD.

"Alan Davis -- his run was all too short, which annoys me."

Yeah, me too, on both F.F. and AVENGERS. No point getting on this book if that book is waiting in the wings. Had either Epting or Davis done the entire Kang story, it probably would have been-- at least-- a bit more tolerable... He left AVENGERS for KILLRAVEN??? It was a piece of C***! Oh sure, pretty to look at, and he captures "Neal Adams" very well-- which is how KILLRAVEN started originally. But I'm sure most KILLRAVEN fans want RUSSELL, not Adams. It was average AT BEST, and there was just NO POINT in creating an "alternate" version of that series! If they wanted to do an "early" adventure, couldn't they have EASILY fit it into continuity somewhere???


"Hank as Yellowjacket -- After Shooter's disgraceful story, to Stern moving Hank forward, to Harras restoring Hank as a great hero without dwelling on the past, there was NO REASON to go this route. And now Hank has suffered for it since. Johns tried to 'fix it' again (failed), Bendis continually refers to it, including insults from other super-heroes (Carol Danvers even THIS WEEK has done so). Hank is one of my favorite heroes. It is the easiest thing in the world to move him past all this crap and make him a great hero again. But no one has the creativity to just go for it."

Shooter screwed Hank over TWICE! First, he had him go crazy in the "Ant-Man" story George Perez drew. If anyone remembers, shortly after this, Claremont & Byrne did a 2-parter in MARVEL TEAM-UP where they amped up the Wasps's powers, and showed Hank was completely himself again. I always took that as a subtle "Up YOURS, Shooter!" from those guys. (Unlike when Claremont pulled an "Up YOURS, Michelinie!" with Ms. Marvel, and wound up screwing HER over even more in the process.) Shooter's 2nd screwing over of Hank didn't feel like he was trying to veto Claremont & Byrne, it just felt like part of a general screwing over of EVERY single character in the Marvel Universe that Shooter could do anything to. Talk about "NO REASON to go this route"!!!

Some writers seems to spend their entire careers destroying what others have created. As if to balance this out, other writers spend an awful lot of time trying to "fix" what those writers screwed over in the first place. This is what you get with corporate-owned characetrs who completely dominate the marketplace and are NEVER going to go away.

There's also the case of Hal Jordan-- who was REPEATEDLY screwed over by dozens of writers & editors for decades. There was NO REASON for it. Along came Steve Englehart, who "fixed" his book like it had never been fixed before. Sales DOUBLED. But some people couldn't have that. Denny O'Neil, master of destroying other people's characters, got back on the series as editor, and immediately undid everything Englehart worked so hard at. Gerard Jones had to work twice as hard trying to "fix" the damage. And then editor Kevin Dooley decided to try and out-do O'Neil. Again-- "NO REASON for it". 15 YEARS later, Hal Jordan is finally a viable character again-- in some ways, better-written than he ever was before. But of course, after so much damage for so long, this BIG "fix" has really rubbed some fans the wrong way. (At least I'm reading it again-- and, I think, enjoying it more than ever before.) From reading all the latest posts on this thread, I'm tempted to put Geoff Johns' GL more in the Harras category than the Busiek category. Because, apart from a few odd things, it really has been that damn good. So far.


MAXIUMUM SECURITY struck me as Marvel's attempt to out-do DC's INVASION-- or maybe that whacked-out Superman graphic novel, "The Planet Stealers". How can any writer possibly deal with "everyday normal" stories, after something like this????? (So, of course, they followed it up with the Kang epic... OY!!!)

It was something he'd always wanted to do. He even said here that it was the [Marvel] work of his he most wanted in TPB.

Another quote:
[quote]

I did buy and read the entire mini-series. I repeat what I said. It looked nice, but the story was nothing special. And, there was no reason to create an alternate version when they already had the existing series-- which has been left hanging for DECADES now, still unfinished. If Davis didn't want to pick up where McGregor & Russell left off, he could have found a way to do a flashback set in between some of the existing issues, or before the Neal Adams issue. Instead, we're left with one more "reboot", which diehard fans of the original will no doubt dismiss simply because, "It's not the REAL Killraven"!

Son of Vision? Kid Vision? I don't like it at all. The MU has turned into such a mess.

Yeah, what was with those later issues of Thunderbolts? Nicieza's early issues had some great moments -- Scourge decapitating Zemo, Hawkeye shooting an arrow through Gyrich's hand -- but after # 50, the stories seemed like something inspired by a bad drug trip (and it can't be a coincidence that the decline started as soon as Mark Bagley left.) I wonder what kind of behind-the-scenes craziness was going on?

And speaking of Carol's rude remark...I finally got a chance yesterday to browse through Mighty Avengers # 1. What really makes me laugh is the way that Bendis seems to be trying to make the book all things to all people (so much for his carefully crafted reputation as a maverick. :rolleyes: ) And then the book closes with what appears to be Iron Man being transformed by Ultron into a female cyborg. Not so funny is that all the members of the team are written as one-dimensional sharp-tongued cynics who kill without hesitation. Alan Grant wrote great sharp-tongued cynics in L.E.G.I.O.N. and Peter David currently writes great sharp-tongued cynics in X-Factor (and except for Lobo, none of them were killers -- Lydea Mallor doesn't count, and neither does Guido, as they were both mind-controlled at the time.) Bendis, like that wildly overrated so-called auteur Tarantino, seems to write all of his characters as extensions of his own public persona.

I can't believe that never occured to me! Well, that just gives me one more reason to dislike her.

Yes, even with Perez's art, that's one of the stories I have the most difficulty reading, because of what it foreshadows.

The Claremont/Byrne MTU story is great. It, along with most of their other MTU stories as well, stands the test of time better than their more well-known work on Uncanny X-Men.


Here's the editor-by-editor analysis that I had said I would do:

I'll start with Roger Stern, since he was the first Avengers editor who was not also the editor-in-chief. He started in the middle of the Korvac arc, so I'll absolve him of any blame for that. Once that was over, he edited the first 11 issues of the Michelinie Era, # 181-191. As I said earlier, I think these stories are not bad, but they're too generic and small-scale. Stern did provide the plot for one of the better ones, the Grey Gargoyle two-parter in # 190-191. It's been documented that Stern did not enjoy being an editor, so once other editors started coming into Marvel, he got out as soon as he could, and stuck to what he did best: writing.

Jim Salicrup's first couple issues were in the same mold as what had immediately come before. But the Taksmaster arc (# 194-196) is by far my favorite of this era. I haven't read the remainder of the Salicrup issues, except for # 221, which was his last issue and pretty lame. The stuff that falls between 197 and 220 sounds just awful, full of character assassinations (Ms. Marvel, Yellowjacket), spotlights on characters I don’t like (Tigra, Moondragon) and fill-in issues, and so I refuse to read it. The impression this leaves me with is that Salicrup fell into a situation of Shooter’s ego run amuck (as both writer and editor-in-chief), and all he could do was hang on for his life.

Mark Gruenwald’s first three issues as editor were weak, but then the Steven Grant/Black Knight two-parter steered the book back in the right direction. The next issue, Roger Stern took the wheel and kept the book in the right direction, even though there were some bumps and detours before Buscema & Palmer arrived and the book was the best it had been since the Steve Englehart era. I would imagine that the professional relationship between Gruenwald and Stern was very intense and very complicated. In the end, what really matters is that some of the all-time best Avengers stories came out of this relationship. If not for Gruenwald’s expanding ego (there’s that word again) there would have been more great stories for who knows how many more years (how long was Stern on Superman? 12 years?) The Simonson quotes posted in this thread by Reboot show that Simonson contributed more than I had originally suspected, but it still seems that Gruenwald became too controlling (his last three issues as editor were plotted by...Gruenwald himself.)

Howard Mackie – URGH! The direction he provided was literally no direction at all, because writers kept going in and out of a revolving door after only a few issues each. The only good thing he did was to put Bob Harras & Steve Epting on the book, and then step aside.

Ralph Macchio had a good track record before he became Avengers editor (out of all his pre-Avenger books, I’d have to single out Ann Nocenti’s excellent run on Daredevil.) Harras & Epting were already in place when he arrived, and he seems to have mostly allowed them to do their best work possible (coincidentally, Harras’ first job at Marvel was as Macchio’s assistant editor.) Just as when Macchio was editing Daredevil, he never got in the way of the creators taking chances and trying a fresh new approach. On the other hand, Macchio was still editing the book when it suddenly declined so sharply that I stopped reading it. I would imagine, though, that pressure from the Powers That Be had a lot to do with this decline – by the mid 1990s, Marvel had either tarnished or entirely wiped out everything that had been good about their books. Macchio must be really good at office politics, because he’s the only one of the editorial old guard to have survived all the upheavals and still be working there (he’s currently group editor of the Ultimate books.) I don’t know when exactly Macchio left Avengers or who, if anyone, came in between Macchio and Brevoort, because I didn’t read Avengers for a long time.

Tom Brevoort still edits Avengers today, and later this year will be his tenth anniversary as Avengers editor! That means that he has overseen both the Busiek approach and the Bendis approach – proving that these approaches are flip-sides of each other. Brevoort’s policy seems to be, “Whatever makes the sales go up, no matter how much it damages the book’s legacy,” because I think Busiek and Bendis have both done damage, each in his own way. And as long as Brevoort doesn't leave, the damage will continue.

"Bendis, like that wildly overrated so-called auteur Tarantino, seems to write all of his characters as extensions of his own public persona."

You know, I think I may only have seen one of his films, and after, all I could think was, what a waste of my time that was!


"Yes, even with Perez's art, that's one of the stories I have the most difficulty reading, because of what it foreshadows."

I don't think it foreshadowed anything-- at the time. In retrospect, though... AUGH!! (It's like what I said about GL. I did a 40-page retrospective of GL for KLORDNY shortly after ZERO HOUR, and it was astonishing, considering all the holes in my collection, how MANY scenes I found in earlier issues that were mirrors of bad stuff that came later. Like Steve Englehart's initial 2-part JLA story that brought back Jack Kirby's 1970's Manhunters-- and had Hal Jordan accused of MASS MURDER!!!!)

I guess it was still early in Shooter's run as writer, I wasn't sure what to expect. What I remember mostly was, the issue before, with The Grim Reaper, was the 1st issue George did where I noticed he had made NO drawing mistakes. Funny thing to notice, eh? George did what many only dream of-- he learned ON THE JOB. And those issues were when he finally got good. (Anything inked by Joe Sinnott doesn't count-- he ALWAYS "fixes" things!)


"The Claremont/Byrne MTU story is great. It, along with most of their other MTU stories as well, stands the test of time better than their more well-known work on Uncanny X-Men."

I remember one of the things I liked was having Dave Hunt on inks. I once spent about a half-hour with Chris discussing artists and inkers (but NOT writing!), and he didn't care for Hunt over Byrne. But at the time (and come to think of it, quite a LOT over the last 10-15 years) Byrne's art often seemed "muddy", and it was nice to have someone so "CLEAN" doing the inks. I also enjoyed it when Joe Sinnott started inking Byrne, beginning with MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #50. (I hated Byrne's insistence on inking himself when he started writing the FF-- but by the end of his run, his art had changed so much, an issue inked by Sinnott showed they were no longer a good fit.)

Another story I loved at the time was the 2-parter with Iron Fist and the Daughters of the Dragon, the sort-of link between the last issue of IF and POWER MAN #48. I really wished Chris & John had stayed on PM-IF longer than they did. Seemed a waste to "save" the book like they did and then dump it for other things.


"I haven't read the remainder of the Salicrup issues, except for # 221, which was his last issue and pretty lame. The stuff that falls between 197 and 220 sounds just awful, full of character assassinations (Ms. Marvel, Yellowjacket), spotlights on characters I don’t like (Tigra, Moondragon) and fill-in issues, and so I refuse to read it. The impression this leaves me with is that Salicrup fell into a situation of Shooter’s ego run amuck (as both writer and editor-in-chief), and all he could do was hang on for his life."

Salicrup also took over X-MEN right as the Hellfire Club story began-- but left at its finale. Which suggests to me that as an editor, he was NOT really in control of what was going on in his books! There's been tons of discussion over the years about "lack of communication" between Claremont & Byrne over Jean Grey & Phoenix. SOMEHOW, they got right up to the very point of doing the finale of the story before Shooter suddenly stuck his nose in and said, "UH UH." (I should probably check the dates to see if there's any connection...) On Shooter's 2nd AVENGERS run, it just seems to me he was gonna do whatever the HELL he wanted, and nobody was gonna dare try to stop him. (I sometimes wonder how it might have been if Stan Lee had worked with an editor while HE was writing every book in sight!)

I do wish somebody would pick these issues to pieces. Why should the characters and the readers be the only ones to suffer?


"the Steven Grant/Black Knight two-parter steered the book back in the right direction"

Boy-- talk about a long-hanging sub-plot! (It's very surprising nobody got to that much earlier in Shooter's run as EIC.)


"the book was the best it had been since the Steve Englehart era"

AMEN! (Took long enough, didn't it?)


"If not for Gruenwald’s expanding ego (there’s that word again) there would have been more great stories for who knows how many more years"

I sometimes feel the same way about Stan Lee & Jack Kirby. Lee's ego blew up in the late 60's, and the only thing that popped that balloon was Kirby's abrupt departure. Kirby quit-- Stern was booted. Sad, either way.


"quotes posted in this thread by Reboot show that Simonson contributed more than I had originally suspected, but it still seems that Gruenwald became too controlling"

Yeah, for ages I had the impression he'd just pulled a "take the money and run" thing. But editorial mandates bigger than even Gruenwald made him lose his enthusiasm for the book.


"Macchio must be really good at office politics, because he’s the only one of the editorial old guard to have survived all the upheavals and still be working there"

This is kinda funny, because it strikes me that he took the longest to become a full editor, spending many years as just an assistant editor, often staying on a series as assistant while other guys replaced the main editor. He's also the guy, reportedly, who spent a lot of time bad-mouthing Jack Kirby-- though, who knows, this could be "simply" trying to be on the good side of upper management.


"Tom Brevoort still edits Avengers today, and later this year will be his tenth anniversary as Avengers editor!"

Holy cow! It's the John Nathan-Turner syndrome!


“Whatever makes the sales go up, no matter how much it damages the book’s legacy,”

Holy cow! It's the Joe Quesada syndrome!!!

This might not be the issue you're referring to, but the FF annual that crossed over with the Avengers annual (it has lots of Skrulls, and it takes place immediately after the Nebula Saga) has Byrne/Sinnott art and IMO it looks great. The reunion that didn't work at all was on the FF issue about Jean Grey's resurrection that crossed over with Avengers and X-Factor -- Byrne and Terry Austin were working together for the first time in five years, and it looked surprisingly bad, probably because of the way Byrne's pencils had changed.

But if they had stayed on the book, we might not have gotten the wonderful Jo Duffy/Kerry Gammill run (the only time I've ever found either PM or IF halfway interesting.)

Yeah, it's a shame that Kirby didn't get to kill off the Asgardian pantheon with Ragnarok and replace them with the New Gods. That would've been cool, and it would have prevented the Thor book from getting stale and repetetive for decades and decades. Sure, we wouldn't have had Simonson's Thor, but instead we would have had Simonson's New Gods (at least we have Simonson's Orion to enjoy.)

Um...who is John Nathan-Turner?

Now that one, I got right away.

The... how you american say... "showrunner" of Doctor Who in the 1980s. The WHOLE of the 1980s.

I don't think the comparison's quite accurate, however - for his last few years in the role, JNT was literally begging to be allowed to do something else, and was told "no" every time [He eventually quit the BBC not that long after Dr Who was cancelled, and died prematurely in the late 1990s.] There's no sign that Brevoort doesn't want to be running the Avengers corner from what I can see [and a chunk of the books he nominally edits are, and have been for a few years, delegated to the lower orders of his office. If he didn't want to deal with Bendis, he could simply arrange for a subordinate to do NAv & MAv.].

Oh, and on Macchio: Cable/Deadpool #36 recap page

"This might not be the issue you're referring to, but the FF annual that crossed over with the Avengers annual (it has lots of Skrulls, and it takes place immediately after the Nebula Saga) has Byrne/Sinnott art and IMO it looks great."

No, I don't quite remember that, but my index still isn't updated. Seems to me it was near the end of Byrne's run, around the time Al Gordon came on as inker. Sinnott did one or two issues, and they just looked odd. I realized Byrne had changed his drawing a lot.


"But if they had stayed on the book, we might not have gotten the wonderful Jo Duffy/Kerry Gammill run (the only time I've ever found either PM or IF halfway interesting.)"

Yeah, but remember, there was about a YEAR in between Chris & John bailing and Duffy-Gammill getting on there. I know they only stayed about a year, really-- but at least I consider it an "era" of sorts, Claremont-Byrne's so short it's more like a speed bump. Duffy-Gammill remains my 2ND-favorite period of PM-- the 1st, always, is Steve Englehart's run, with George Tuska & Billy Graham (Billy alternating between inking Tuska and doing full art).

I dug out the first few issue of HERO FOR HIRE last year (the ones Archie Goodwin wrote) and after all this time, it suddenly hit me just how much of a "Golden Age" feel the art and writing on that book had! Most early-70's Marvels got dark, gloomy, depressing... HFH was violent, but somehow FUN! I didn't realize back then just how long Tuska had been in the biz-- he really was another one of those Golden Age artists Stan liked to re-hire when Marvel got back up and running in the 60's. Graham was something else-- he was one of the "young turks", but his style looked even "older" than Tuska's! He was also one of the most interesting inkers Tuska had around then, when most of the time it was either Esposito or (God help us) Colletta. Those issues are SO good it almost hurts to look at 'em-- because I'm always reminded that for MOST of its 125 issues, PM was usually 3rd-rate, if that.

Avengers Volume Three # 41-56 & Annual 2001

To say that Busiek took a kitchen sink approach to the Kang arc is an understatement. Almost all the plot threads he had hanging around get tied up here, whether they’re relevant to the main plot or not: Triunes, Carol, Hank, Templar, Pagan...you name it, it’s there, awkwardly shoehorned into a not-particularly-engaging story of Kang invading 21st Century Earth with intent to conquer. Kang spends a LOT of time posturing and pontificating before attacking Earth. Until then, there’s awkwardly-structured battles against the Atlanteans, the Deviants, the Presence, and the Master of the World; there’s also the American governement stupidly launching a Sentinel attack against Kang, and if you guessed that Kang ends up controlling the Sentinels, you’re absolutely correct. It’s also ANOTHER case of a disaster occurring under Jan’s leadership! Hank overcomes his identity confusion and settles on being Yellowjacket – as we’ve all already agreed, that was a bad idea with terrible repercussions; the resolution of the Triune thread aspires to the kind of borderline-esoterica that Engelhart pulled off so seamlessly way back during the Celestial Madonna Saga, but Busiek doesn’t even come close. Kang commits mass murder and other atrocities, but the story is so cold and so unfocused that I don’t feel any sense of sadness or horror – just numbness.

As it has been for most of Busiek’s run, it’s Carol who suffers the worst – first, her confrontation with Kang’s “son,” the Scarlet Centurion, triggers a flashback to her rape during the Michelinie era (one of the stories I refuse to read) and there’s a long, tasteless, creepy conversation between Carol and the Centurion that has NO POINT being in this story or any other story – what the &^)(((*& was Busiek thinking?? And then later, Carol KILLS the Master of the World! For a story written by a guy who constantly criticizes the Harras era (I maintain, out of secret jealousy), this scene has more than a few echoes of Operation: Galactic Storm – the difference is, the morally dubious event in that story was carefully built up and presented from different points of view, whereas the morally dubious event in the Kang story is completely arbitrary and seems to be there only for shock value, regardless of how it taints the character of Carol.

(And speaking of Operation: Galactic Storm, it’s rather telling that the Kang Dynasty Saga is 15 issues to O: GS’s 22, yet it feels LONGER...and slower, much slower.)

Then there’s the art: Davis & Farmer do the first three issues (# 41-43) with their usual high quality; Ivan Reis & Scott Hanna do Annual 2001 – it looks pretty good, even though Reis has improved a lot since and Hanna’s inks are not a good match; Manuel Garcia and Bob Layton do the next four (# 44-47), and Layton’s inks are surprisingly bad, doing no favors to Garcia’s mediocre pencils; Kieron Dwyer & Rick Remender (# 48-50 and # 53-54) do the crudest, smudgiest, most amateurish Avengers art since Milgrom & Sinnott; in between Dwyer & Remender’s double-your-displeasure, Brent Anderson & Tom Palmer do one issue (# 51) and it’s okay, but not as good as they’re both capable of, and Reis returns for one issue (# 52), this time with Randy Emberlin inking – as with the annual, it’s okay but Reis has gone on to do better; Patrick Zircher & Scott Koblish do the epilogue (# 55) and once again, it could have been better.

To reiterate something that Prof said earlier in this thread, Kang really should have died at the end of this arc. That he didn’t is a cop-out which renders the whole mess pointless, and it shows that Busiek didn’t really have it in him to do a dark and hard-edged Avengers story.

Busiek’s final Avengers issue (# 56), is a lightweight stand-alone (drawn by Yanick Paquette and Ray Snyder) with the Avengers flashing back, one by one, to a battle against D-list villains the Elements of Doom during an accounting. It pretty much sums up the Busiek era: derivative, redundant, unfocused, and soft-edged.

And what has come since then...

I haven’t read the Geoff Johns issues because they sound like nothing special, and I haven’t read the Chuck Austen issues for obvious reasons. When I was first getting back into comics in early 2005, I browsed through the Disassembled trade at a bookstore, and I think the layouts and atmospherics are good, but the actual drawings are ugly and scratchy, while Bendis’s script is like something a ten-year-old on a sugar high would write. I gave New Avengers two chances, and both times I thought it was horrible. I gave Young Avengers a chance, I thought it was well-drawn but the characters and stories did not engage me. I’ve browsed through both of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes minis and they both came across to me as insincere nostalgic mush, no real surprise to me because Joe Casey is one of my least favorite writers with one of the most annoying public personas in the world (shame that Tom Palmer wasted his talent on the second EMH mini.) I already posted my impressions of Mighty Avengers # 1, and will continue to browse through it at least through the end of the Ultron arc, but so far it’s in the “so bad it’s funny” category. :rolleyes: And I'll browse through Avengers: Initiative and the "second season" of Young Avengers (whenever THAT finally reaches the comic shops.)

Cobie will be continuing the chronology up to the present day, and also, I really hope more people start contributing their thoughts on both the current Avengers and the classic Avengers. I'd like to see this thread go on and on and on.

"Kang commits mass murder and other atrocities, but the story is so cold and so unfocused that I don’t feel any sense of sadness or horror – just numbness."

That's about right. I think it was the concentration camp issue that really got me. There's just so many times writers can go "too far" and expect to be able to go on later as if it's "business as usual". Maybe that's why I prefer "smaller" stories. "Big" ones too often just go against the whole concept of long-running series.


"As it has been for most of Busiek’s run, it’s Carol who suffers the worst – first, her confrontation with Kang’s “son,” the Scarlet Centurion, triggers a flashback to her rape during the Michelinie era (one of the stories I refuse to read) and there’s a long, tasteless, creepy conversation between Carol and the Centurion that has NO POINT being in this story or any other story – what the &^)(((*& was Busiek thinking??"

My impression is it took this potentially interesting character out of the realm of conqueror into the area of deviant serial whacko.


"And then later, Carol KILLS the Master of the World!"

I don't know what anybody else thinks, but from his 1st appearance, I thought John Byrne's "Master of the World" was just one all-powerful world-conqueror too many. The whole thing with those collossal walls shooting up that he built was so far beyond believability for me, rather than being awe-inspiring, I just kept thinking, "Are you kidding?"


"yet it feels LONGER...and slower, much slower."

Yeah, I got that feeling. I'm surprised (without looking at my index) that this story wasn't much longer, because it seemed like it was.


"Davis & Farmer do the first three issues (# 41-43)"

See, that's the part that pissed me off right from the word go. If Davis was gonna leave the book, he should have done it BETWEEN stories, not 3 issues into a long-running serial! That's just B**S***! Carlos Pacheco managed to make it through all 12 episodes of AVENGERS FOREVER, which served as possibly ther longest "prequel" in comics history.


"Reis has improved a lot since"

Has anyone seen his work on GREEN LANTERN ? Wow. he's "doing" Neal Adams-- and BETTER than Adams!


"Kieron Dwyer & Rick Remender (# 48-50 and # 53-54) do the crudest, smudgiest, most amateurish Avengers art since Milgrom & Sinnott"

Oh, come on-- that's an INSULT to Milgrom & Sinnott! (At his worst-- which I tend to think is when he relies mostly on assistants-- Sinnott STILL looks better than 90% of the stuff out there.) Milgrom WAS doing the worst work of his career in the 80's during Shooter's run. What was Shooter, anti-art? Of course, he hit rock-bottom with SECRET WARS 2. I was pleasantly shocked to see Milgrom's inks on Starlin in recent years, and to find he'd gotten good again. (Of course, Shooter's not around anymore-- it makes me wonder.)


"To reiterate something that Prof said earlier in this thread, Kang really should have died at the end of this arc. That he didn’t is a cop-out which renders the whole mess pointless, and it shows that Busiek didn’t really have it in him to do a dark and hard-edged Avengers story."

AMEN. To have gone to such absurd lengths, first with AVENGERS FOREVER, and then the Kang invasion, and NOT done the proper conclusion... OY. Someone once said the same thing about The Kingpin. That, at the end of "Born Again", he should have been killed, because you just DON'T do what that guy did to Matt Murdock and get away with it. When I saw what followed, I dropped the book. Permanently. I could put up with Frank Miller's S*** at that point-- just barely. But not the S*** from the people trying to follow him. (And of course, that story just opened the floodgates, didn't it... Like what followed in the wake of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN, when dozens of people with far less talent & imagination all said at once... "HEY! I can do something like THAT!")


"I haven’t read the Chuck Austen issues for obvious reasons."

You know, I keep having a very hard time relating this "Chuck Austen" I keep reading about and whom so many seem to despise so much with the guy who did those wonderful, fun X-rated comics I loved so much 15 years ago. I can't shake the feeling that during his extended hiatus from comics that he suffered some kind of nervous breakdown & complete personality change. The only recent thing of his I've actually read was the WAR MACHINE mini that was part of the MAX line, which was one of the nastiest F***s of a comic I've ever run across.


"I'd like to see this thread go on and on and on."

Like the Kang invasion story?

I just did a long post for this thread, but its not showing up

Will get back to it when I get a moment!

Basically, I pretty much agree whole-heartedly with Stealth and Prof's assessment (but had some additional words on Busiek's run).

The reviews shall continue! I want to say thanks to Stealth for making this one of the most enjoyable LW threads for these last few months, but I don't want it seem like this thread will be ending anytime soon! There will always be Avengers comics to review, and we'll always have our two cents to throw in

I've never read an Avengers comic but I'm *really* enjoying this thread about them!

It's like taking a History class at school, except FUN!

Has Byrne ever created a memorable villain? And why would Busiek have thought the Master was worth plucking out of obscurity?

He sure is. He’s one of the main reasons I read Green Lantern.

Sinnott is a great talent, but Milgrom’s Avengers pencils were so bad, they dragged Sinnott (and Sinnott’s assistants) down to their level.

I guess I’m lucky that I never read Born Again. I’ve always thought Miller was overrated. I love the work of the first writer who followed Miller after Born Again, Ann Nocenti. Her first year suffered from the lack of a regular artist, and then after the arrival of John Romita Junior (not my favorite artist by any stretch, but at least the book had a regular artist), she did some pretty cool stuff with her creation, Typhoid Mary, but it was still basically the same old crime stuff. When she had Daredevil leave New York, the book got great, and I really wish her Daredevil versus Mephisto storyarc would be reprinted in a trade. The most underrated Daredevil arc of all time, IMO.

Heh.

I was more than happy to do it, and I look forward to reading yours and others contributions and to keep making contributions myself. Plus I've got a new review thread in the works and I'm planning to bump up a thread I've neglected. So everybody keep watching the Dr. Gym'll board.

Glad you’re enjoying. And it just gets more fun from here. I mean, really – She-Ultron? It is to laugh.

"Sinnott is a great talent, but Milgrom’s Avengers pencils were so bad, they dragged Sinnott (and Sinnott’s assistants) down to their level."

I guess compared to everything else Milgrom did in the 80's, it just looked stellar. His 70's work was MUCH better. This reminds me of the last 3 Wally Wood issues of DAREDEVIL, when Stan had him team up with Bob Powell. 2ND-RATE. Wally, THE greatest inker in the history of the biz, being dragged down like that. Not right! (Of course, that was nothing to when Wally worked over Keith Giffen layouts on JSA.) From comments I've read recently, Powell was at his BEST when he inked himself. But "the Marvel Method" didn't usually allow for that. So much easier (more convenient) to have one guy do pencils, then Stan would write the dialogue, pass the pages to the letterer, THEN, pass them to WHOEVER THE HELL was available that day to ink them. (Look at the early Mike Ploog GHOST RIDERs-- a different inker every freakin' issue!)


"I guess I’m lucky that I never read Born Again. I’ve always thought Miller was overrated. I love the work of the first writer who followed Miller after Born Again, Ann Nocenti."

This is with many years of retrospect, but... When Miller started pencilling DD, it looked cool. Nobody had ever "clicked" with Klaus Janson so well-- those dark, UGLY inks that just wouldn't go away, year after year! Also, since Bob Brown passed away, the book had not had any artistic stability. And the Gene Colan fill-ins were awful. (I blame Jim Shooter's constant harrassment of Gene for this, to be honest.) When McKenzie suddenly left Marvel & Miller got a shot at writing, it was pretty impressive. Not Elektra-- I always HATED that bitch and still do. His 3-part Kingpin story blew me away, though. The problem-- as I see it-- is Miller is a ONE-TRICK PONY. He does dark & nasty. That's ALL he does!!! To me, DD was NEVER meant to be dark & nasty. Heck, if you look at DD's early rogues' gallery, it seems he was intended as Marvel's answer to The Flash! What's wrong with having a "fun" book???

"Born Again", of course, could be looked at as Miller's "grand finale" on DD-- if you ignore the fact that Denny O'Neil dragged the book thru the mud for 3 years between issues. Those 2 guys are like bookends-- they're not happy unless they're destroying the happiness of every character they write-- or destroying the characters themselves. (I've never forgiven them for murdering Heather Glenn. I LIKED Heather!)

Ann Nocenti's track record made me drop the book (on top of everything else). Her issues of SPIDER-WOMAN somehow made Mike Fleisher look like he knew what he was doing. I've heard a LOT of good comments about her work after that-- but the stuff of hers I did read was so bad, I just avoided her as if she was the next Tom DeFalco.

Long post from elsewhere on the Harris run that I think is worth linking: http://www.comicboards.com/avengers/view.php?rpl=070401081253

The Avengers V.3 #57-76

There are many people who feel that Geoff Johns can do no wrong. There are also a smaller group that hate everything he touches. I’m neither extreme, but I do lean more towards the ‘no wrong’ side of the pendulum. Honestly, I think Geoff Johns has revitailzed a bunch of comics that need it, and he brings a love of the medium and enthusiasm that has been sorely missed for some time. I feel that 95% of his DC work is pure genius. What he’s done with JSA and Green Lantern are mind-blowingly phenomenal, and I thought his Flash run was as good as Waid’s, making it the only other run to ever be as good as the early Silver Age Flash. But that can all be argued until the cows come home and that’s not what this thread is for.

I feel his run on Avengers was with the best of intentions and had potential, but ultimately fell quite flat. Now, I don’t have the insight to what happens behind the scenes at Marvel like Prof or Reboot, but there’s obviously something that was going on with the editors and Geoff, in that the finished product was not what he wanted. It didn’t help that this was when Bill Jemas headed Marvel, and it was the peak period of ‘write to the trade’ policy on ALL of Marvel’s comics, so that each story dragged out and there was often a disconnect b/t stories. I certainly feel a great deal of blame lies on Marvel’s editors and upper-management. But Geoff of course isn’t innocent of all charges (again, I didn’t *hate* this run).

Geoff came in following Kurt Busiek’s monster story and attempted to get the Avengers back on track again, and in doing so, came up with a very large cast of what he saw as essential Avengers: Cap, Iron Man, Black Panther, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Vision, Ms. Marvel, Yellow Jacket, the Wasp, She-Hulk, etc. There are others I’m forgetting. Sub-Mariner and Thor were there at the start, but left shortly after. The problem was this line-up looks great on paper, but is simply too many Avengers. Sure, most of them ‘belong’ in the Avengers, but at the same time it means with a line-up of 10-12+, the comic book loses focus and direction and we thus the emotional impact of what’s happening to the characters. And like Busiek’s previous run, it relegates too many Avengers to ‘dog-piling on the rabbit’ in battle, in other words, being there in large panels as four or five heroes attack. By not doing anything ‘awesome’ or unusual’, there basically setting the pattern of Hero-A being there but not doing anything. In other words, too much of that means Hero A will soon be a B Character, and then be cannon-fodder. Which is what happened.

Geoff added Ant-Man II (Scott Lang) and Jack of Hearts to the Avenger’s roster. I happen to like both characters quite a bit, though they have struggled to stay out of limbo for 20 years. I’m not quite sold on either person being an ‘Avenger’ per se, and unfortunately, I never had the chance to see much to convince me other wise (unlike, say, Crystal). The ongoing plot of the two of them not getting along was ‘okay’ in that at least we had some characterization, but it ultimately never really got me interested. It matters little now, as Bendis came in and killed them both off in Dissassembled, in an almost ‘last ones in, first ones out’ fashion. Slap in the face to Johns? Probably.

The actual storylines were alright, and the trouble with this run was that there isn’t so much that I remember of it. I’ll be quick:

- the Initial storyline – which I thought was a dud. It ultimately ends up with all of the Avengers, including Thor, Sub-Mariner and other big guns, dog-piling on the villain of the piece. It was unfortunately, very unmemorable.

- Red Zone – now, I realize I’m skipping ahead, but I’m too lazy to recall what came between these stories because well, I just wasn’t that interested. Red Zone is probably the peak of the John’s run, and was the one complete, good story he was able to do. That being said, it reeks of editorially driven ‘fit the trade’ mentality. It does have some good moments with the Vision and Ms. Marvel, The Falcon and Cap shine when the Red Skull is revealed as the enemy, and the Black Panther has a good seen at the end. There is also an ongoing Black Panther/Iron Man subplot, as it appears that John’s is trying to restore their friendship after Priest showed a very real tension between the two characters in his Black Panther run. Personally, I thought Priest was very unfair to Iron Man (similar to JMS and everyone else at Marvel right now), but I actually did kind of like the tension between the two characters. John’s intentions are noble, but it feels forced and awkward and Johns goes too far. It would have been nice if he showed them being ‘okay’ with one another, rather than being buddy-buddy at the end.

- Hank/Jan stand alone issue – Its no secret I love these two characters, and by all accounts I should like this issue. But I don’t. And here’s why. Johns, like Busiek, likes the characters too, and its obvious he wants to ‘restore’ Hank and Jan to their proper glory. The problem is that Stern and then Harras already were able to move Hank past all the crap that Shooter put him through and return him to his truly glorious Silver Age self. Johns, like Busiek, referred more to his Yellowjacket days, which was a mistake. And after Busiek screwed Hank up again, Johns came in and attempt to show how Jan and Hank are back together and firmly in love once more. But it still felt too forced. I love Hank and Jan as a couple and I want them to be together. But what happened needs to be addressed somewhat in a logical way that does not dwell on what Shooter did. And both Busiek and Johns still wrote Hank as a weakling, while Stern and Harras wrote him as a strong, confident man. John’s also did an outrageous ‘use the shrinking for sexual pleasure scene’ that I was shocked to see in a comic book that I would expect pre-teens to be reading, and ended up making Whirlwind seem like a sicko rapist/stalker which was too creepy for my Marvel’s Mightiest Super-Hero team. It reminds me of an earlier issue in John’s run where he implies that Scarecrow was raped in prison. I don’t want that in an all-ages comic book about super-heroes. I’m sorry. I just don’t.

- She-Hulk/Hulk story – again, above all, this suffered as it was fit for a trade, when it could have been told in two issues max, possibly one issue. She-Hulk is relegated to rampaging and uncontrollable, which was annoying since at the time Dan Slott was breaking ground on her solo title. Cap, Iron Man and the rest don’t do much but talk and then ‘dog-pile’ on the Hulk who shows up. Considering the Hulk’s history with the Avengers the stage is always all set for maximum drama when the two interact, but this fell somewhat flat. Bruce Banner having the Hulk take the blame is noble, but it’s a plot point left untouched and ultimately Slott had to address it in his run, along with other stupid things writers were putting She-Hulk through (I’m looking at you Chuck Austen, having her sleep with Juggernaut—no worries, I’ll lambaste your Avenger’s run next Monday).

I’ll let others talk about the art, but I remember Copiel coming in and doing Red Zone, which helped make it much more enjoyable. By now Marvel had stolen him away from DC’s Legion, where he was sorely missed, and it was cool to see him on Avengers. But he didn’t remain a consistent Avengers artist, which only made it worse when they had other people come in. I forget who started John’s run, but I know it wasn’t quite up to snuff. I suddenly forget the artist’s name who was on Flash with John’s and did the She-Hulk/Hulk story, but I remember not liking the art there as much as I did on Flash. Honestly, I’ll let someone else talk about the art if they want to.

All in all, Geoff John’s followed up Kurt Busiek’s in much the same vein as Kurt. I thought it was good and well-intended, but it ultimately was very flawed. Both runs, combined with Austen’s upcoming horrific run helped pave the way for Dissassembled, which was disastrous. John’s run further relegated many Avengers to being members of the team that did little, which would lead them to be cannon-fodder. And unlike Busiek, John’s was saddled with Marvel’s right to the trade format policy that further hurt his stories. I can easily see why after twenty issues, John’s immediately wanted to be exclusive to DC, given the level of quality his Avenger’s run has in comparison to his other comics.

Up next: Austen! Perhaps the worst thing since Shooter?

Re: Daredevil (I guess belongs in another thread). I guess my opinions both disagree and agree with some of your guys. About four years ago I had the pleasure of reading Daredevil's entire run from #1 to the current issues. I personally think Miller's first run was the best thing to happen to DD and loved it--and was completely blown away by Born Again and think its the greatest Daredevil story ever told, if not one of the greatest comic book stories ever told. And Ann Nocenti's run is absolutely brillant, complete with the Bullet, Mephisto and especially Typhoid Mary. At that time, with JR JR, it was probably Marvel's best comic book. I can go on and on with compliments, but I'd get redundent. Then came a few years of awful stories and then Bendis did perhaps his finest work ever in comics on his run, followed by the current Brubaker run which makes it tied for Single Best Comic Book being published right now (April 2007). That's how I feel about the history of Daredevil. I honestly never really loved the character until a few years ago and now he's one of my favorites. I do like the more fun 70's years, the Black Widow years and of course the beautiful Silver Age years.

"Re: Daredevil (I guess belongs in another thread)."

One of the things I've enjoyed so much about this thread is, since it deals with The Avengers, it's rather far-reaching and encompasses a lot of things not in actual AVENGERS comics. Plus, too many of the side-bars involve comics that over the years have gone bad so badly they turn my stomach, and I find it more fun to focus on just certain points worth discussing.


"The problem is that Stern and then Harras already were able to move Hank past all the crap that Shooter put him through and return him to his truly glorious Silver Age self."

Having missed the entire Harras run, I had no idea that Busiek was needlessly repeating what Harras had already done. What's wrong with these writers? You know, I'd rather read about characters I like having great ADVENTURES, then read endless soap-opera about characters whose lives are getting repeatedly, horribly ripped to pieces... and, yeah, by the way, they also somehow have "adventures", too, though people in as bad psychological shape as the ones most of these writers are writing about should be utterly INCAPABLE of surviving the kind of "adventures" these people have. They'd be too busy in rehab...

Excellent review, Cobie. The next time I'm at the comics shop I'll see if they have a Red Zone trade and if they do, I'll browse through it.

Looking forward to the lambasting of the Austen era next week.

Btw, the artist who worked with Johns on both Flash and Avengers was Scott Kolins.

To paraphrase something I said earlier in this thread about Harras: I don't think it's fair to dismiss Nocenti just because her work on Spider-Woman was bad. Everybody's gotta start somewhere, and many people get really good once they're more seasoned -- IMO, Nocenti got good. Just out of curiosity, have you read the original Longshot mini-series? Nocenti wrote that after Sp-W but before DD, and that's where she came into her own as a writer.

That's an awesome thread (although it's full of spoilers -- anyone who is curious about the Harras era should wait until after they've read the stories before looking at that thread.) I echo the sentiments of the poster who hopes that the two volumes of O: GS sell well enough for the Proctor/Gatherers Saga to be collected in trades (but without scenes being omitted like in the European trades.)

Yes. As the thread-starter, I officially declare that just about anything goes in this thread!

I spent the last two days reading through this amazing thread, which I'd somehow managed to overlook before. The reviews are intelligent, well-written, and insightful. Even where I've disagreed with a reviewer, I've learned new things about a particular run or creator.

I hope to comment more in depth at a later time, but I do want to briefly defend one of my favorite villain teams, Zodiac, which was given a brief, negative mention earlier.

I'll agree that for most of their appearances, the crime cartel was not handled right. (The worst case was the DEFENDERS arc, when the real team didn't even appear, but were replaced by clones!) Heck, even in their first couple of appearances, most of Zodiac seemed mainly to be supporting characters for two of their members, Scorpio and Aries.

But I first encountered them, luckily, in AVENGERS # 120-122, during Englehart's run. When the group first appeared, blasting their way through the wall of Avengers Mansion and taking the heroes completely by surprise, they seemed formidable and even scary. (Kudos to Bob Brown -- I believe -- the artist, for drawing them as menacing and powerful.) They grew even scarier as their plan unfolded: to kill every Gemini in Manhattan as part of an extortion scheme. The plan is just crazy enough to be credible; it has genocidal undertones, although would-be victims were singled out by birth sign instead of race.

Then there was the intergroup conflict: the new Aries and Scorpio (who replaced the deceased or supposedly deceased originals) butted heads with Taurus, the new leader. Gemini, whom we got to know as tortured hero/villain (a policeman whose body is unkowingly taken over by his criminal brother) plays a pivotal role in all this. And most of the other characters, though seen briefly, intrigued me enough to wonder who they were, how they got their powers, etc. -- a lot like my first few Legion stories.

But my favorite character quickly became Libra. He represented my own birth sign, so I was glad when he turned out to be not such a bad guy, after all. He discovered he was Mantis' father and betrayed Zodiac to save her. He then accompanied the Avengers, revealing Mantis' origin along the way, and even popped up briefly during the conclusion of the Celestial Madonna sequence, only to fade away with the rest of Zodiac, mostly.

(Of course, Libra wasn't a saint. After all, he went along with the scheme to kill all Geminis in Manhattan, among other things.)

When Zodiac next appeared, it was in the pages of GHOST RIDER, wherein one member, Aquarius, had made a deal with Satan to gain all the powers and identities of his cartel teammates. Bad deal, Aquarius.

The second Aries then appeared in CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON, where he was transformed by Lucifer into a second Lucifer (!). This deal, too, ended badly.

Then came the clones in DEFENDERS, created by Jake Fury, the original Scorpio, who had faked his own death, only to commit suicide this time around. I vaguely remember one other appearance by the original Zodiac, thereafter; as I recall, the entire team was killed off in a brief appearance that set up some other story. I don't remember when or where this took place; it's probably just as well.

It's a shame the original Zodiac never lived up to its full potential. But for at least one story they came off as a formidable menace that could easily defeat the Avengers and cause serious damage to one of the largest cities in the world. Few other villains of that time seemed as ruthlessly capable of achieving their ends.

I admit I'm not absolutely sure about this... but that's only because it seems to me several writers over the years contradicted each other. I believe Jake Fury was the 2nd Scorpio, and took the place of the original (the Italian race-car driver) who WAS blown sky high in his first (and only) appearance in SHIELD #1. But then, Steranko left so many loose ends hanging for others to pick up, and never explained half of what he was doing. (Let's face it-- he was always more interested in blowing people's minds than "simply" telling good stories.)

After 2 stories with the endings left hanging, unresolved, it was Roy Thomas who came along and revealed that Scorpio was just the vanguard for an entire crime cartel, Zodiac.

Jake Fury-- with the help of David Anthony Kraft & Keith Giffen-- was the one who created the 2nd Zodiac (the androids), who had the kibosh put on them VERY quickly by The Defenders. At which point, Jake committed suicide. You just didn't see that sort of thing in comics before then...

My memory for trivia isn't what it used to be, so thanks for the correction, prof.

One other thing about Englehart's Zodiac story stands out to me, and that's an exchange where Gemini (Joshua Link, the bad twin) complains that people with his birth sign have to get the axe in Manhattan. Aries II (in a close-up shot) retorts with "Maybe that's because you Geminis are a shiftless bunch!" (or words to that effect).

Perhaps Aries II was just trying to get Joshua's goat (not to be confused with Capricorn, of course), but there's an undercurrent of bigotry in that remark that seems ironic, considering that Aries II was a black man.

Englehart's writing remains memorable because it worked on so many levels.

"Perhaps Aries II was just trying to get Joshua's goat (not to be confused with Capricorn, of course), but there's an undercurrent of bigotry in that remark that seems ironic, considering that Aries II was a black man. Englehart's writing remains memorable because it worked on so many levels."

Englehart also wrote the BEST Luke Cage I ever read. (I was looking forward to McGregor's run, but that was sabotaged from the word go by constant changes in art.) And of course, there's that classic scene in his Red Skull story, where the guy upsets his ENTIRE plan just because... Geez...

"That black schwein-- with the WHITE woman!"

Fr***in' Nazi bastard!!!

(It's terrible, but it's also hilarious in the context of the story-- he just couldn't HELP himself.)

"To paraphrase something I said earlier in this thread about Harras: I don't think it's fair to dismiss Nocenti just because her work on Spider-Woman was bad. Everybody's gotta start somewhere, and many people get really good once they're more seasoned -- IMO, Nocenti got good."

It may not be "fair". It just happened. I read SPIDER-WOMAN from the beginning. Wolfman was surprisingly good. Gruenwald was even better-- and that was my 1st exposure to him. Fleisher was a waste of paper. As, almost always. (His 70's SPECTRE stories were fun-- but repetitive, when you get right down to it, and he's been repetitive ever since!) Claremont-- who'd said he had so much trouble trying to figure out how to write Ms. Marvel (oh, boo hoo) knocked it out of the ballpark with Spider-Woman. WHY in the living HELL both he and Steve Leialoha left as quick as they did-- it just bugged me no end. The length of each writer on that book seemed about the same, as if nobody could stand it for longer than that. What was it, some kind of "community service"? Nocenti was TERRIBLE. That's all I knew.

Later, on DAREDEVIL, I'd put up with Miller's incessant nastiness as long as I could. O'Neil was like Miller without the talent. then Miller came back-- did one HELL of a story-- which could be looked at as the "grand finale" of all Miller stories. the book should have changed its tone completely after that. Instead, all I saw was chaos. I left-- I think-- before Nocenti even got on it. I had NO interest in ever reading DD again at that point. I still haven't.

Then there's MACHINE MAN. I loved Kirby's work on that book. Wolfman-- and Ditko-- made me wanna puke. It just wasn't right. Then Wolfman was replaced by DeFalco. He made Wolfman's stuff look good by comparison. You see a pattern here? I dropped the book before it got cancelled.

FANTASTIC FOUR had been-- seriously-- hit-and-miss from the day Kirby left. Everybody did bad on that book. Lee! Thomas! Conway! Wolfman! Moench! (MOENCH, for God's sake!) Stern! (STERN, for Heaven's sake!!) Englehart-- geez... (I've read in detail what he wanted to do on the book at his website, but it just doesn't jibe with my memories of actually reading a couple years' worth of really baaaaaaaaaaad issues.) I tolerated Simonson... until the end. when I heard DeFalco-- DEFALCO!!!-- was taking over-- I dropped the book. Have not bought it regular since.


And don't get me started on SPIDER-MAN...

"My memory for trivia isn't what it used to be, so thanks for the correction, prof."

Just to be clear... I'm NOT sure it was a correction.

Steranko-- APPARENTLY-- intended Scorpio's identity to be a mystery. he appeared to get blown to atoms at the end of SHIELD #1. but then he came back in SHIELD #5. (Or did he???) Fury recognized him at the end of the issue- but we never got to see who it was!

A few months later, Roy Thomas dropped the other shoe in AVENGERS #72 (I think). If memory serves (I could look it up, but...) Roy revealed Scorpio was really Nick Fury (SAY WHAT???). This tied in with Fury's assassination-- shot DEAD in the last issue of SHIELD! It was really an LMD that got "murdered", while Nick was off trying to infiltrate Zodiac, once he'd discovered his BROTHER, Jake, was Scorpio. I don't recall if there any explanation for how Scorpio survived that explosion in SHIELD #1.

In DEFENDERS, Dave Kraft & Keith Giffen revealed that Jake saw Scorpio blown to bits in SHIELD #1-- then took his identity, in order to kill Nick. Is this what Steranko had in mind? Is this how Thomas interpreted it? I'm not sure!! But it does seem to me some other writer-- many years later-- added to this, or downright contradicted part of it. (Damn you, Steranko! If you're gonna start a story, FINISH it!)

Retroactive continuity can be a B****.

He Who Wanders, I may not be a fan of Zodiac, but I always respect an opposing opinion, especially when it's phrased as eloquently and passionately as yours. And that's exactly what I want to see more of in this thread: passionate opinions.

Thanks for the compliment, Stealth. Opposing views (passionate, but respectful) are important in any meaningful dialogue -- or at least that's what I try to teach my students.

prof: I think you are probably right about Scorpio. It was accepted for years that Jake was the second Scorpio and that "Frenchy" was the third. At least that's how they were referred to in George Olshevsky's MARVEL COMICS INDEX series, as I recall.

Bigotry was a recurring theme in Englehart's writing. In addition to the Red Skull scene you mentioned, there was also Pietro's discrimination against the Vision (AV. # 110), and the Living Bombs taking that same discrimination even further, to fanatical and fatal ends (# 113) -- a story that resonates even more deeply today.

One of my favorite Englehart scenes...

"THREE HUNDRED POUNDS of steel-hard muscle races across the rooftop. THREE HUNDRED POUNDS of steel-hard muscle launches into space high over the street. And when THREE HUNDRED POUNDS of steel-hard muscle hits the roof on the other side of the street...

"...MAMA, IT HOLDS!!!"




(I related this to a friend on the phone, when I got to the punch line, he was laughing hysterically. I'm paraphrasing-- but without looking it up, that's how I remember the narration.)

"It was accepted for years that Jake was the second Scorpio and that "Frenchy" was the third."

"Frenchy"? Wait a minute-- would this be in the Englehart AVENGERS story? Okay, that kinda sounds right... (ESSENTIAL AVENGERS Vol.5 stops just before the Zodiac story-- so I haven't re-read that one in decades.)

Yes, the third Scorpio, who appeared in AV 120-122, had a distinct French accent, or what passed for one in those days. ("Mais Oui! Zat stellar device of yours eez incredible, Taurus!" [or words to that effect]).

"Mais Oui! Zat stellar device of yours eez incredible, Taurus!"

Maurice Chevalier, anybody? (Or maybe Pepe Le Peiu)

There's an excellent, comprehensive Roger Stern interview from only a few months ago at http://www.marvelmasterworks.com/ (I couldn't do a direct link, because the interview is HTML). I copied and pasted everything about Avengers:

Which begs the question: Could Stern have succeeded where both Byrne and Busiek failed? I think he could have found a way to make it work.

From an earlier post by Stealth:

One particular point of contention that I have with Busiek is that he seems to be part of the sizable margin of Avengers fans who put the first 200 issues on a pedastal, whereas I think that there's a lot of good stuff there, but also a lot of not-so-good stuff.

I found this comment interesting because I realized, without embarrassment or hurt feelings, that it applied to me. Maybe it is a generational thing, as Stealth says earlier in this post, or maybe it's because so much of the post issue 200 years were particularly bad, but AVENGERS did peak for me during Englehart's run and much of the next 50 issues.

Too many subsequent writers seemed to be trying to recapture something that had been created fresh before, like warmed-over oatmeal. This includes, unfortunately, the much admired Roger Stern era. For some reason, his writing never connected with me. Perhaps it's because he was saddled with the dreary Milgrom/Sinnott art for much of his run. But even when Buscema/Palmer returned, their art just didn't seem as fresh as it did in the earlier era. Or perhaps I was just getting bored with The Avengers reliving past glories. Perhaps I wanted something new and fresh.

(To be fair to Stern, there were original highlights in his run, including Monica Rambeau, the Masters of Evil storyline and the all-too-brief addition of Namor [I loved the ego conflict between him and Herc]. But Stern was also bogged down with Starfox, Dr. Druid, and storylines that just seemed improbable or went on too long, e.g., Vision taking over the world. The premise of this story intrigued me, but the Avengers seemed to go along too easily with Vizh's plans when his atypical behavior should have sent up red flags. At least that's how I remember it.)

It's an odd feeling. In some ways, the Avengers to me have to include at least some combination of the following characters: Thor, Iron Man, Cap, Vision, and Wanda (particularly Thor, who has always been a favorite), yet I also want something new and exciting. But when writers give me too much of what I expect, it leads to a sense of living in the past, like going back to high school again and pretending nothing's changed. This was certainly true of Busiek's run, and thank you, Stealth, for pointing this out. I now understand why I was so disappointed in his work. Even Perez's art, gorgeous though it was, seemed as if it offered nothing new.

The Avengers are at their best, to me, when they are unpredictable: when they challenge the notion that "Oh, you can't do that!" -- such as when Hulk and then all of the original members left, or when Hawkeye killed Egghead (again, a Stern highlight).

You're welcome. And thank you for sharing that insight. I have to say, as much as I love the Harras era, if some future Avengers writer tried way too hard to replicate the Harras era, I would not be satisfied.

The only problem in working with John, is that his heart was never really in drawing super-heroes. Try as I might, I could never get him as interested in The Avengers as he was in Conan.

Hm. Perhaps Buscema's lack of excitement explains my own similar feelings about his second run.

Speaking of artists, I reread AVENGERS # 120 last night, and it reminded me of how underrated Bob Brown was. Don Heck, who inked this issue, probably was not the best inker for Brown, but even so, Brown's considerable strengths shine through.

One particular strength is Brown's layouts, which always managed to be interesting and varied. Consider page 2, a "quiet" scene of Cornelius Van Lunt visiting Joshua Link in jail. The number of panels, their various sizes, and the use of shadow convey an ominous feeling that something bad is about to happen, yet it's very subtle.

Brown's figures also convey a sense of power without being too exaggerated. Look at Taurus' body language in the two-page spread (pp. 16-17): He looks confident and menacing, yet completely natural. And the sequence of Gemini dodging the Avengers only to be punched out by Thor (p. 10) is both fluid and graceful.

Brown also had a good eye for scenery: The shots from atop the World Trade Center on pages 26 and 30 capture both the majesty and the acrophobic feeling of great height.

Brown had his weaknesses, particularly women's faces, but his work stands up there with Perez and Buscema's early work in my eyes.

My favorite ink jobs over Bob Brown were by Paul Gulacy on DAREDEVIL #108 (the 1st issue I bought new-- sadly, it was ALL DOWNHILL after that!!), and Dave Cockrum on AVENGERS #126 (featuring perhaps the sexiest Scarlet Witch I'd ever seen).

The 2nd half of his DD run was murdered (in my view) by the incessantly dark and nightmarish inks of Klaus Janson. When Jim Mooney filled in, it was a breath of fresh air, and one could see (or, one should have) that Brown & Janson-- in fact, Daredevil & Janson-- were just NOT a suitable match!!! And yet, Janson stayed and stayed... thru Kane (nightmare on top of nightmare), Infantino, MILLER (at last, a real kindred spirit, no wonder they worked so well together) and then, Janson. (Who the hell's idea was THAT?)

Tragically, Marvel's "fun" hero has been nightmarishly dark and downbeat EVER SINCE. (That's how I see it, anyway.)

I've been thinking...history is sort of repeating itself with Bendis' Avengers:

- Disassembled was the Simonson era redux (callously tearing down what had come before.)

- New Avengers is the Byrne era redux (no structure, no focus, stories either drifting endlessly or ending anti-climatically)

- Mighty Avengers is the Hama era redux (trying to be all things to all people while at the same time reeking of a smug attitude -- the end result is so bad it's funny)

Which would mean that whoever replaces Bendis (yes, it'll probably take several years, but it'll happen eventually) will be the next Harras, which makes me happy (unless it turns out to be that hypothetical Harras imitator that I mentioned in a recent post.)

I haven't read The Avengers in quite some time -- since # 19 of Busiek's run, in fact -- and, from the above descriptions, I can't say I miss it.

A friend did loan me the first seven issues of YOUNG AVENGERS last year. I thought it was fairly good, but unnecessary. Most spinoffs are.

However, this thread has prompted me to go back and re-read some earlier issues. I just finished the Trial of Henry Pym (# 227-230), which marked the beginning of Stern's run. This story line was well done and showed Stern to be a better writer than I remembered. The finale, with Hank saying goodbye to everyone, especially Jan, was deeply moving.

Therein, however, lies one of the problems I have with super-hero comics in general, and AVENGERS in particular: No one ever goes away for good.

Think of it: Hank Pym has been through a Goliath-sized wringer: His life has come undone by his own design (and then made even worse by Egghead) -- yet he manages to save the day, defeat Egghead, clear his name, and assert a new identity for himself: an identity that does not involve being a costumed hero. This transformation was utterly believable: Not everyone is cut out to be a super-hero. For Hank to finally admit that was probably one of the most heroic things he ever did.

So it pained me years later to pick up Busiek's AVENGERS and find out that Hank was Giant-Man once again. I have no idea how or why this happened. (I had stopped reading Volume One around # 378 or so.) But it was as if the previous years and all that Hank had gone through had been for nothing. And, somehow, he not only had gone back to being a costumed hero, but had also rekindled his relationship with Jan (or maybe this happened later; I don't care to remember). Although Hank and Jan were one of the cornerstone couples of the Marvel Universe, their relationship had ended. They forgave each other, yes, but that doesn't mean they should be together again.

I would rather have had Hank's story left as it ended in # 230: with him going off to a "Midwest research facility" and never setting foot in New York or Avengers Mansion ever again. I would have preferred it if he had never become Hank Pym, plainclothed adventurer (and Avenger) in AVENGERS and WCA. I would rather have believed that he had gone off to find happiness far removed from the life that had brought him so much pain and agony.

That, of course, would have been the "real world" outcome -- and there was a time when I actually believed that Marvel (moreso than DC) was concerned with creating "real world" super-heroes, who despite having powers, were first and foremost human beings. But nothing screams "THIS IS ONLY A COMIC BOOK" to me louder than characters who keep going back to being the way they used to be, with only a superficial nod at change.

I dunno. Perhaps I expected too much out of fictional characters.

HWW, are you sure you stopped reading Volume One with # 378? Because Hank became Giant-Man again in # 366, written by Bob Harras, which I think is one of the best Avengers issues ever published. I'll use a spoiler box for the exact circumstances.

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Firstly, I mean no disrespect to Stern's well-written story, but I personally could do with a little less of the real world in superhero comics, because I believe that superhero comics are, more than anything, wish-fulfillment to take us out of the real world for a short while. I respect that many readers prefer a more true-to-life approach, but that just doesn't work for me.

Hank's return as Giant-Man came about because the team was facing a major crisis (Kree invaders with a plan to destroy Earth) and needed all the help they could get (some key members had been taken hostage by the Kree.) And so Hank became Giant-Man again, even with the risk to his own health, with the most selfless of motivations -- to prevent the destruction of Earth. He then takes on a Kree Sentry who is trying to wreck the team's ship, and single-handedly defeats the Sentry. This is immediately followed by an exchange between Giant-Man and Captain America that puts it all in a nutshell:

GM: You know, I'd forgotten how exhilarating all this could be!

CA: But, Hank -- your heart...

GM: Cap, with the fate of the world in the balance, my health problems pale in significance, don't you think?

I think Hank WAS meant to be a superhero, he just wasn't ready for it the first time around. By giving him a second chance, Harras did what is, in my opinion, a fantastic job of bringing together all the stops and starts and stumbles in Hank's checkered history (and as Prof has pointed out earlier in this thread, a lot of this came from writers working at cross-purposes, specifically Claremont/Byrne and Shooter) and moving the character to the next level.

Subsequent writers, probably out of a mixture of ego and lack of inspiration, have messed up Hank all over again (and Millar's -- forgive the expression -- turd-polishing of Shooter's view of Hank in Ultimates hasn't helped at all.) And that's just the sad reality of multiple writers taking their turns on comic book characters.</span></span>

My opinion... Shooter's insane rampages are just the sort of completely wrong-headed $#%* that deserves later writers contradicting the hell out of it. (Like EMERALD TWILIGHT. Sorry, couldn't help it.) Roger Stern hit the ground running with the beginning of one of the best runs in the books' history. HOWEVER... it also contained one of the few things in his entire run that really, REALLY rubbed me the wrong way, and has remained a serious sore point with me ever since. That is, him saying Hank & Jan were "never" right for each other. In the words of Pam Bouvier-- "B***S***!!!!!" This has always felt to me-- more than anything else-- as Stern following a editorial edict of Shooter's-- nothing less.

Meanwhile, I'm surprised that so few have reviewed WEST COAST AVENGERS yet. I'm kind of wondering... what does anyone think of Steve Englehart-- COMPLETELY out of left field, especially for him-- having Hank ATTEMPT SUICIDE????? Jesus...

HWW, you should really check out the issue Stealth mentions. I think the execution of Hank rejoining the team during the Harras era really reflects where he was after Stern's story and is a very logical and understanding turn of events.

Its only later during Busiek's run and the bad runs since Busiek that Hank has reverted to the mess of a character he is now.

But from Avengers #366 - 380 (or so), Hank was really Hank, back in business as Giant-Man and an Avenger, having grown even further as a man. I think it was done really well.

Stealth - I hope you're right. I hope there is some great era of Avengers just over the horizon. Something else else new and fresh, drawing on some old characters (re: not just members), but moving forward in some new direction. We all want it so badly...it will assuredly happen. Lets just hope the don't ruin the Marvel Universe too badly in the meantime.

Here's another thing that makes me hopeful -- Bendis' Avengers books may be selling well, but let's not forget that Morrison's X-Men sold well at the time and was hyped as being "edgy", but today it's generally looked at as little more than a footnote.

For the moment, I must report that I browsed through Avengers: The Initiative # 1 and found it dreary and mean-spirited. I think that Marvel made a big mistake by turning it into an ongoing at the last minute. Hey, maybe it'll be the first scratch in the armor of the current Avengers.

HWW, are you sure you stopped reading Volume One with # 378?

Not entirely. Much of that period is a blur to me. Someday, I'm going to have to re-read those Harras issues; my memories of them are vague. I remember being unimpressed with the new Swordsman arc (mainly because I felt that Swordy was another character whose story was "over" and should have been left that way, alternate version or not).

I don't remember the spoiler story you described at all. That tells me that either it just wasn't very memorable, or I never read it in the first place.

Yes, comics are meant as escapist fantasy. But Marvel always raised the bar a bit, and this particularly true in the early '80s, with the death of Phoenix and then Hank's meltdown. I saw these types of stories as an extension to the "heroes with problems" theme that Marvel pioneered in the early '60s: Spidey's money problems and being branded a menace by the Daily Bugle; the FF bickering among themselves; Cap feeling like a relic, etc. Then, too, I grew up during the Watergate era, in which a President resigned (an incident that was memorably reinterpretted by Englehart in CAPTAIN AMERICA), and John Lennon had been murdered in 1980. So, real world heroes were flawed and finite; comic book heroes, I felt, should be the same. It made their attempts to accomplish something good even more heroic.

As for Jan and Hank saying they were never meant for each other, I don't know if they ever used those exact words, but in # 230, Hank tells Jan, "I fell for the young lady who reminded me of my first wife ... and you fell for the strong, silent hero. But I was never that strong, Jan. You know that now." To which Jan replies, "Uh-huh."

It is probably true that both initially had unrealistic expectations of each other (which happens often in relationships). But it's also true that they were married for a very long time, even by Marvel standards ... long enough, I'd bet, to get to know and love each other for who they really were.

Given that they were going their separate ways in # 230, it's possible that Hank tried to soften the blow by assuring Jan that their love was never meant to be (and Jan sought to return the favor by agreeing with him). I wouldn't read anything of Stern or Shooter's motives into this.

Avengers v.3 #77 - 84

There was a time a few years ago that Chuck Austen got a terrible reputation online. I'm understating it actually--he had by far the worst reputation out of any writer I've ever seen save possibly Byrne or Liefield.

Unfortunately, he largely deserved the criticism. And no where was it more pronounced than in Avengers.

If you've never read the Austen Avengers issues, I can't justify reccomending them to anyone. They'll simply annoy you. Allow me to highlight them:

(1) The writing is downright terrible. Weak stories that have little accomplished. Dialogue is forced and ridiculous, coming across like a sitcom. Stories are at the peak of Marvel's 'pad it for the trade' era, stretching six issues each time. There is nothing good here.

(2) Chuck Austen ultimately had to sex it up for no reason, and in doing so, made many characters look very bad and out of character. We've spoken at length about Harras good things with Hank, Busiek's rehashing and then John's bad decision to put Hank and Jan firmly together even moreso than Busiek. Well, now comes the worst one. Austen decides to make Jan cheat on Hank with Hawkeye. Does Jan come off as a tramp (I won't use a worse word b/c I think that would be unneccessary)? Yes, she does. Does Hank seem weak-willed and slightly unhinged/'out there' again? Yes. Does Hawkeye seem like a complete jerk for doing this to his friend? Oh yes--and let's not forget that at one point the Avengers were simply Jan, Hank and Clint, and all were three very close friends, and remained so for many years. Hank and Clint stuck by each other during Hank's final battle with Egghead after all. But here's Austen's take: "Fuck continuity, let's sex up the Avengers for some drama". Even worse, he tries to sell it as some 'pro-female' situation, which ultimately fails and feels patronizing.

(3) Captain Britain II - the ultimate 1990's stereotype of a battered woman/single mother, who becomes a super-hero. Not a bad concept, and it could have worked well. But Austen failed in delivery. Horribly. Have you never seen her again in Avengers? There's a reason.

(4) No real antagonists/storylines. I'm going through my brain repeatedly right now trying to figure out what stories I'm forgetting. I realize its because so many were so bad I blocked them out. The Wrecking Crew were stretched out for four or six issues and the story sucked.

(5) Giant-Jan - stupid.

Ultimately, I feel this was as bad an era as Shooter's era post #200, and definately worse than Byrne's post #300. It was a terrible time for Avenger's fans, and it made Bendis Dissassembled happen. Because by then the Avengers had been dissassembling since around Busiek's Kang story, and never recovered. The majority besides the big three were reduced to B-listers who did nothing other than dog-pile on the villains, and the Marvel Editorial staff had gone so far beyond forgetting the characters continuity, that they were making up their own versions of the characters with each story. It didn't help that the 'fit the trade' approach was more prominent than ever, and Marvel's sensationlism had shifted from entertaining you to outraging you.

But when Austen left the Avengers, a clear path could be seen with 20/20 hindsight to how we had gotten to the start of Bendis' run.

I almost didn't say this, b/c I'm afraid someone will say they liked Austen's run and be offended. But honestly, anyone who says that it was good better be a better orator than Martin Luther or Cicero, b/c your credibility is on the line.

The only Chuck Austen stories I've read of late were the WAR MACHINE mini-series, which took me a bit to figure out were not in continuity with the "main" MU. Dark, nasty, MEAN-spirited... sheesh. And then I started hearing all these things about the other stuff he was doing... YEESH! What the hell happened to the guy whose work I used to LOVE 15 or so years back?

Austen started out as an artist with a rather realistic style, but he offended many of his earliest fans when he struck out and evolved a more "cartoony" style. As that was when I came in, I loved it. He was also doing one of my favorite x-rated book at the time-- STRIPS. The one thing I couldn't figure out back then was, the letters page (yep, a letters page in a porn comic!) had some of the nastiest, most viscious in-fighting and back-biting I'd ever seen in a comic-book letter column. What th'...?

At some point, the book got canned, and Austen dropped from sight. Several years later, he resurfaced, and tried to pick up right where he left off. But he made one of the dumbest marketing blunders I'd ever seen. For a few months, he was publishing 2 separate runs of STRIPS simultaneously-- new episodes (that picked up where the original story left off) and reprints of the originals, with extra "new" material added. This was just a rip-off! If you already had the orignals, you'd feel ripped off if you bought the reprints just for the few new pages. (Topps pulled this EXACT same crap with the 2nd LADY RAWHIDE mini-series, which was cancelled after 5 issues-- and then, the reprints were cancelled after 4.) Meanwhile, if you didn't have the old issues, you might not wanna buy the new episodes UNTIL you had all the earlier ones. A TPB collecting all the earlier episodes would have been the way to go. OY.

Some time later still, Austen turned up at Marvel as a writer. My impression is that, just possibly, he'd had some kind of nervous breakdown and complete personality change since 15+ years ago. I dunno. It's just so bizarre...


As it is, I dropped AVENGERS before Johns left, and have not picked it up since. Haven't missed it, either. Although, after reading all the posts here, I may just wanna look up the Harras run one of these days when finances are a lot better.

I'll get back to some of this (not just this post) later, just one minor point just now:
Yes - Claremont grabbed her (and changed her name to "Lionheart"). Considering she's such a Claremontian stereotype, even given that Austen created her, not so surprising...

Jeez Louise! :rolleyes:

Shouldn't Brevoort share some of the blame for the blase attitude toward continuity? After all, Austen AND Busiek AND Bendis each committed a whole bunch of continuity sins...and all under Brevoort's supervision!

I think that's an accurate comparison, because, as I said early on in this thread, Shooter's grafting of his personal demons onto these characters predated a similar approach from Austen.

I'm very glad that you're considering giving the Harras run a chance.

One minor thing about Austen though - didn't he take Hank out of the Yellowjacket costume near the end? (Even if Bendis dropped him right in it again)

I'm trying to recall, and I can't, probably b/c Bendis and McNiven paid no attention if he did. For some reason I don't think so, but think we might have just seen more scenes with Hank in regular old scientist gear. I probably won't be re-reading these issues anytime soon.

And 'Boot, I forgot that Captain Britain II was in Excalibur under Claremont. Oh boy, I can imagine that one :rolleyes:

BTW, up next is Bendis' Avengers Dissassembled. Stealth, did you read that? If so, I'll return the ball to your court for reviewing, if not, I can give a very brief but unkind review of it.

I've read Disassembled only once, as a trade, more than two years ago, in one sitting at a Barnes & Noble. I remember thinking it was mean-spirited and senseless and incredibly stupid, like something a ten-year-old on a sugar high might write. I also remember thinking that David Finch's layouts were dynamic, but the drawings themselves were ugly and scrathy (although that might have had to do with the inking.) And I remember that the extra issue at the end (was it called Avengers Finale?) had a lot of guest artists, some of them very talented, but the coloring was so murky that none of them looked their best.

Lucky for you, I didn't have to actually read an issue to verify it

Avengers v3 #83, p2: http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?action=page2&issue=05819410642%2083

PS: Scott Kolins' Wasp headshot in that last panel REALLY reminds me of Triad, for some reason.
PPS: Fer the heckavit: http://www.thexaxis.com/misc/avengers81.htm - and while I'm at it: http://www.thexaxis.com/xmen/xmen164.htm

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuup

"it was mean-spirited and senseless and incredibly stupid, like something a ten-year-old on a sugar high might write"

This brings up a point I've had on my mind for some months now. More and more I get the feeling that a lot of "professionals" found success too fast, too early, too YOUNG. They hit adolescence and turned their backs on everything they liked and believed in when they were kids (normal, natural), but never quite reached adulthood when they would come to their senses and embrace things from their childhoods that WERE worth holding onto. I strongly suspect a LOT of writing in comics these days is a result of writers who never really grew up, and since they're getting paid for writing at a 15-year-old level, they don't have to, and probably never will.

Of course, there's some guys who are just cynical and mean-spirited by nature. While watching COMIC-BOOK SUPERHEROES UNMASKED on the History Channel, it really pissed me off to hear Denny O'Neil talk about how as the years have gone by, he's come to realize that as writers, they're the "custodians" of modern mythology. OH. REALLY. Took him THIS F****** long to figure that out, did it? After he almost single-handedly DESTROYED my #1 favorite costumed character, and with the help of his cronie, Frank Miller, pushed the entirety of "mainstream" superheroes into a dark, ugly pit from which they may never escape.


Meanwhile... I'm still waiting for detailed overviews of WEST COAST AVENGERS! (I didn't miss 'em-- did I?)

I wonder how much the writers actually have to do with the direction of the characters, or whether they are just "mouthpieces" for editors or publishers who really control the characters.

It would be naive to think that Marvel didn't know what Bendis, Austen, etc., were doing. It would be even more naive to think they could get away with "destroying" the characters without the parent company's consent. I've always viewed writers and artists who work for Marvel and DC as foot soldiers, carrying out the commands of some unseen authority, which can always find someone to do its dirty work.

Well said.

No, you haven't missed them. I'm still waiting for them, too.

C'mon, Whacko fans! Where are you??

I think that's true some of the time, but I think there's always a handful of writers who become successful and then find themselves working for editors who indulge their every whim.


And, finally, here's something I forgot to include in the post last night (I was getting tired by that time.) If anyone hasn't read Disassembled but is curious about what actually happened, here it is:

A strange force is causing terrible things to happen at Avengers mansion. The mansion is set on fire; Ant-Man, Vision, and Jack of Hearts all die; She-Hulk goes savage; a small army of Ultrons attacks; a Kree armada comes out of nowhere and attacks and Hawkeye dies counterattacking; finally, the enemy is revealed to be the Scarlet Witch, because (according to Bendis) she's always been unstable and potentially dangerous and she's finally snapped. In an ending that's even worse than what's come before, the Avengers allow Magneto to carry away the unconscious Scarlet Witch. Yes, you read that right.

Pitiful, isn't it? And this is the reason why I think that revealing Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch to be Magneto's children was a terrible idea in the long run.

"I've always viewed writers and artists who work for Marvel and DC as foot soldiers, carrying out the commands of some unseen authority, which can always find someone to do its dirty work."

"I think that's true some of the time, but I think there's always a handful of writers who become successful and then find themselves working for editors who indulge their every whim."

In the case of Denny O'Neil, the "destruction" didn't really start until he became an editor! Then-- KABLOOIE! (Need I remind anyone who was editor on DAREDEVIL when Frank Miller decided Jim Shooter's dark, nightmarish character-destruction habits were something to be expanded on? I'm pretty sure the 2 of them collaborated on Heather Glenn's murder. I know it was a suicide. But somebody had to WRITE it. That's murder in my (comic) book!)

When O'Neil returned to DC in 1986... OHHH boy. Overnight, he took my favorite costumed hero-- who he'd generally written really decent stories about in the past-- and unleashed something that has only recently begun to back off.

A lot of the guys who've written character-destructive storylines in the years since have been trying to "out-Miller" Miller-- only without the talent. Kinda like all those slasher movies that followed in the wake of HALLOWEEN. "Hey! WE can do something like THAT!" (No-- they couldn't...)


Wasn't it John Byrne who came up with the idea of revealing that Wanda & Pietro were Magneto's kids-- and that the idea was best if NOBODY but the audience would ever find out? Shame it didn't stay that way...

Yeah, but once the secret was out, Byrne decided he wanted to turn Wanda evil and have her fight at Magneto's side -- and Bendis has confirmed that this story was the one that inspired him to turn Wanda evil. If not for Byrne, it might never have happened and the Marvel Universe would be a better place.

"Yeah, but once the secret was out, Byrne decided he wanted to turn Wanda evil and have her fight at Magneto's side"

So... is THAT why Byrne had the Federal Government MURDER the Vision-- so the Scarlet Witch would go crazy?

I still recall the ad announcing Byrne's run on WCA, which featured 5 covers (I think). They got thru the first 4, but the 5th never appeared. It seems like Byrne abruptly changed the story's direction just before the climax, making a farce (in my eyes) of the whole "destroyed Vision" storyline.

Byrne then JUMPED ship-- just as abruptly-- just as he'd done on SHE-HULK, HULK, CAPTAIN AMERICA... (boy, this guy has a long track record of pulling temper tantrums and leaving books without warning, doesn't he?). Roy Thomas-- apparently-- finished off the "Wanda goes crazy" story, but it didn't really make much sense. I don't think I had a clue it was Byrne's idea, either.

Byrne's art & writing at the time was still pretty damn good at the time-- and in some ways, was a HUGE improvement over what he came after. But the actual stories he told... EHHH!!! The other main memory I had of those issues was, Byrne & Bob Wiacek (I think) did the SEXIEST Scarlet Witch since Dave Cockrum. I don't think the art on the book ever recovered after he left. (sigh)


The strangest thing about those WCA issues, for me, may be that I was so far behind on my reading, but a big Byrne fan at the time-- so I actually read Byrne's issues of WCA before any of Englehart's! (Let that thought soak in!)

And yet, for every writer that is a big deconstructionist, insisting that whatever came before 'sucked' and must be torn down and 'made fresh' by crapping all over it and turning everything that made it popular upside down and inside out, there's a writer who has the nostalgia bug, who has some sense of reverence for what has come before.

Both sides have their downsides. I believe it was Stealth who made a point that Busiek did nothing new, bringing back an old team, telling old stories, putting Hank back in a costume he'd grown out of, rearranging relationships to a 'classical' mode that they had evolved beyond, etc.

While *I* loved that sort of thing, being a nostalgia goob, and felt not a speck of interest for the characters that Stealth holds up as the best Avengers ever, I do agree that too much 'nostalgia,' if it leads to stagnation and characters forever frozen and unable to change or grow or develop, can be stale and backwards-looking.

So there's some mythical 'happy medium,' where an author can allow a character to grow (allow Spider-Man to marry Mary-Jane, allow Dick Grayson to become Nightwing and leave the shadow of the bat, etc.), without crapping all over what has made them great in the past.

Dan Didio, who wants Nightwing dead, dead, dead, or Joe Quesada, who wants Mary-Jane dead, dead, dead, are both guilty of, IMO, going too far in *both* directions. They want to freeze the clock in some aspects, and they want to upturn the apple cart in others by radically transforming Stark into a ruthless villain, idealistic Wonder Woman into a cold-blooded pragmatist, Captain America into a waffling poll-watcher, Hal Jordan into a psychopath, etc.

I love reading this thread, even if some of the opinions are 180 degrees reversed from my own!

For the WCA, I don't think I could really do justice for reviews for the first 80 or so issues, but I do remember the final 20, and the Forceworks comic that followed. I'm more interested in all of your guy's comments, so I know what to look at and avoid upon a reread

Prof, I'm currently rereading the entire Spider-Man run (I'm about #87 right now, issues before Capt. Stacey dies-- ), and I recently read the Quicksilver appearance (early 70's). Sexiest Scarlet Witch may just go to Johnny Romita Sr. in that one issue, where we only see her for about two pages! But WOW, Jr. Sr. could draw beautiful women! Of course, Jr. Sr.'s Gwen is the benchmark for me, but his touch could be seen on all his characters (men also, since his Peter Parker, Flash Thompson, Ned Leeds, and even older Joe Robertson have a strong leading man attractiveness to them that even I can see).

HWW, I definately agree that the editors not only have the knowledge of what's happening, but are most likely pushing for it. The so-called 'protector of Marvel's past' Tom Brevoort is probably anything but, that I'm convinced of. Still, better than Axel Alonzo, who does the Spider-Man comics these days.

Set, great points and I think we all agree on that. Some degree of a happy medium is needed, and I think that's where the best comic book writers since the late 60's have excelled. Steve Englehart's run on Avengers is probably the best example.

That's the exact spirit in which I started this thread. Everyone is welcome, and the greater the diversity of opinions, the better.

"So there's some mythical 'happy medium,' where an author can allow a character to grow (allow Spider-Man to marry Mary-Jane, allow Dick Grayson to become Nightwing and leave the shadow of the bat, etc.), without crapping all over what has made them great in the past."

I read a fantastic article once-- in SCARLET STREET, I think-- that talked about how drastic changes and character growth often destroy long-running series. The writer's favorite example of the opposite was NERO WOLFE. The stories were written over a stretch of decades, each clearly taking place during the period it was written in. But Nero & Archie NEVER changed! The whole POINT of the series wasn't watching the characters change, it was watching the GREAT characters take part in extrememly well-written stories. I often think too many writers these days can't really write, either-- and just take the "easy" way out by doing bad soap-opera. (And of course, in soap-operas, EVERYBODY's miserable, all the time.)


As for SPIDER-MAN, I'm afraid that, being a fan from about 1967-up, I see the book as one that has REPEATEDLY "jumped the shark"-- each time worse than the time before-- and I wonder how some ever put up with it. Of course, for me, the first time was the death of Captain Stacy. Gil Kane got on the book, and his "specialty" seems to be high-tension nightmares and characters on the verge of a nervous breakdown all the time. (Gee, he might have been a good artist for the SPACE: 1999 comic! heehee) I only read the 2 years following Stacy's death a couple years ago, but they were far more downbeat and miserable than I expected. And unfortunately, except for brief periods here and there, it's been that way ever since. Oh well...


So guess what I just started watching on my VCR today???

I often think Marvel spoiled us (or me, at least), by creating the "illusion of change," where characters could grow and face serious changes. At least, that's what I've come to expect from serialized comics in general.

I started reading comics a little later than you did, so I grew up with a Legion while it was being that Bates-and-Cockrumized, a Spider-Man who was mourning the loss of Gwen, and a Captain America who quit being Cap for several months. Change was practically written into my comics-reading experience from the beginning.

So, for me, the issue becomes what changes are too much and when do they go too far? I'm not sure I have an answer, but one change that went too far for me was Byrne's demolition of The Vision and dismissal of his and Wanda's children. These changes set the characters back, not forward.

For an example of a TV series where change is an integral part of its development, I'd point to "7th Heaven," which is now ending after 11 seasons. The show has remained true to its premise, even though the original children have grown up and several have moved on. New cast additions have kept the story moving forward instead of detracting from it.

A huge pet peeve of mine. Change is good, within reason, but the characters are no longer seen as characters. They are seen as iconic properties, and changing anything about their 'IPs' is a major no-no, from name to costume to marital status to physical condition.

Robin 'growing up' and becoming Nightwing could *never* happen in todays environment, I fear. He'd be back as Robin within six months, because Dan Didio is happy enough to massacre and decapicate and dismember and rape characters, but he'll be *damned* before he'll allow one of them to mature or develop or grow as a character.

Hank Pym coming to the realization that he doesn't need a costume or fancy name in West Coast Avengers was good character development, IMO. Having him go back to the 'crutch' of his name(s) or costume(s) doesn't work for me.

Getting rid of Mary-Jane to 'reboot' Spider-Man back into a loner doesn't work for me. Having Superman, or Spider-Man, change costumes and then mysteriously reboot back to their classic look the moment a new creative team comes along doesn't work for me. Reed and Sue breaking up *because Reed's become an insane monster who takes his moral guidance from a super-villain who'se first name is 'Mad'* and then Joe deciding that they get back together because the event is over, without any consequences at all, doesn't work for me. Xavier getting out of the chair, and then back into it, and then back out of it, and then back into it, doesn't work for me. Let the man walk already! The wheelchair does not *define* Charles Xavier! How many broken backs does one man need? It's like 'bold new direction! Right back to where we started...'

Those are good examples, Set.

Another "change" that stuck in my craw was Byrne's (just to pick on him some more) redaction of The Vision being the original Human Torch. Vizh's true identity had long been established and was important in his development (learning of his heroic past gave him the courage to propose to Wanda). Undoing this made no sense, and was completely unnecessary. All it did was resurrect the original Torch for a few unmemorable stories.

I don't mind characters growing up naturally. DICK TRACY started out as a bachelor; he adopted an oprhan long before he got married and had kids of his own. "Life" went on!

Gwen Stacy, on the other hand... this "SHOCKING MOMENT-- FROM WHICH NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!!!!!" stuff, is a load of C***!!!

And I just thought of something... you know how in recent decades, that some fans have complained about certain "artists" who think they're "writers"? One of my favorite artists was responsible for that mess!!! DAMN you, John Romita!!!



Okay, to be honest... I LOVED MJ, and hated Gwen Stacy. But after Stan pushed the Pete & Gwen relationship against all odds and all common sense, it was really a case of people getting "cold feet" and not wanting to progress to the next logical, natural development. Or, according to Romita, it was a case of just trying to "shake things up" while simultaneously "paying tribute" to his hero-- Milton Caniff-- who'd once killed off Steve Canyon's girlfriend in the papers, which caused readers to talk about it for months-- or years-- after. Good grief...

I know, this is decades behind us... but that one event seems to have-- ahem-- "inspired" dozens of later writers to keep trying to out-do each other in the "SHOCKING EVENT!!!" category.

In current Avengers news, I browsed through Mighty Avengers # 2 at my local comic shop yesterday, and it continues to be in the so-bad-it's-funny category. The team spends the whole story standing around, sporadically getting blasted by She-Ultron. To break up the monotony, we get more flashbacks to the formation of the team, but these only serve as further proof of how clueless Bendis is about these characters. Moving on to Avengers: Initiative, the extensive previews posted at Newsarama are so bad, they have almost convinced me to not even bother browsing through it any more. The upcoming appearance of Dani Moonstar is the only thing that prevents me from simply turning my back on that book.

And that's precisely why I never have a problem with a non-traditional Avengers lineup, and in fact prefer it to a more traditional lineup.

Interesting point, because it relates to a certain pet peeve of my own. The key word is "crutch". Now, I'll admit I'm biased because I personally didn't like Hank as a cross between Dr. Who and Snapper Carr. The appeal to me of costumed superheroes is that they allow the characters to express their truest selves, at the risk of being humiliated or attacked yet gritting their teeth and expressing themselves anyway. So a Hank who decides to turn back on his truest self doesn't work for me at all. Another example is She-Hulk. To me, the real She-Hulk is the one who is big and green 24 hours a day. I've read posts about her current self, who goes back and forth between mousy lawyer Jennifer and big ball-buster She-Hulk, being described on another forum as "Jennifer no longer using She-Hulk as a crutch." I don't see it that way at all. I see it as She-Hulk (and Hank) giving in to the pressures of society, and I don't like that.

And, on a simpler level, Hank as Giant-Man and always-big-and-green She-Hulk are the verisons of these characters that go back to my personal favorite era in comics, a little bit on both sides of 1993. On that level, my opinion is purely subjective.

And that's precisely why I never have a problem with a non-traditional Avengers lineup, and in fact prefer it to a more traditional lineup.

Just to be clear, I don't have a problem with non-tradional lineups, either. Though I prefer some combination of "my" five Avengers (Thor, IM, Cap, Vizh, Wanda) to be present, I also regard new recruits as a necessity. Some of the best storylines in Avengers history have involved The Swordsman, Mantis, Beast, Wonder Man, and others.

The appeal to me of costumed superheroes is that they allow the characters to express their truest selves [...]. So a Hank who decides to turn back on his truest self doesn't work for me at all.

The whole point of the Stern and Englehart story lines was that being Dr. Pym was Hank's true self.

That was the impression that I'd gotten from it as well. That the reason why he was never comfortable in the 'skins' of Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath or Yellowjacket is that these were assumed identities and not truly 'him.' None of the other founding Avengers seemed as dissatisfied with their identities, so it was a sign of actual character growth for him to realize that no rotating series of masks was going to fix the problem. If anything, the masks *were* the problem.

He had 'Stark syndrome' before even Stark.

[By 'Stark syndrome,' I mean a tendency to put on the mask to avoid seeing that other face, which Stark has taken to the logical, if psychotically dissociative, next stage of completely denying responsibility for anything he has ever done wrong, lying to himself, his fellow Avengers and the rest of the world about who was responsible for rampages like the Armor Wars, which was the first time he has been responsible for killing a fellow super-hero (and assaulted a bunch of others), but, sadly, not the last.]

In my opinion, Dr. Pym was just as much of a mask as Yellowjacket and Ant-Man, and Giant-Man is Hank's true self. I think the concept of the costumed superhero is analogous to real-lfie people who dress unconventionally, and/or wear their hair unconventionally, and/or practice alternative lifestyles. For a lot of people, this is a passing phase before the get older and start acting and looking "normal." But there's also a lot of people who try to be "normal" because they're so insecure and they worry so much about what other people think of them -- in many cases, they become depressed and suicidal. I think Hank was completely fooling himself by thinking he should just be Dr. Pym -- that was a cop-out which I believe would have led him to becoming depressed and suicidal a second time. Becoming Giant-Man again saved his life, and from there he spent a few years confident and angst-free. If the writers who followed Harras had respected continuity and left well enough alone, he'd probably still be confident and angst-free.

"But there's also a lot of people who try to be "normal" because they're so insecure and they worry so much about what other people think of them -- in many cases, they become depressed and suicidal. I think if Hank had stayed Dr. Pym longer, he would have gotten depressed and suicidal -- which he already went through just before he became Dr. Pym. I think he was completely fooling himself by thinking he should just be Dr. Pym -- that was the easy way out. Becoming Giant-Man again saved his life, and from there he spent a few years confident and angst-free. If the writers who followed Harras had respected continuity and left well enough alone, he'd probably still be confident and angst-free."

As I mentioned earlier, Pym DID become depressed and in fact DID try to commit suicide-- during the Englehart run of WCA!! It came as a shock to me reading it, because it just seemed to come out of nowhere. Here, Roger Stern was trying to convince us that he'd gotten himself back together-- Steve Englehart was apparently taking it to the next level-- and then-- where did THIS come from??? He was "saved", in part, by Firestar (if memory serves), who'd "gotten religion".

I'm really wishing I'd read the bulk of Harras' run now...


I think it's safe to "blame" Gerry Conway and Jim Shooter for all this in the long run. Conway drove Englehart so crazy in such a short time he quit Marvel and actually planned to quit comics altogether-- and I know from personal experience how ONE person can screw you and your career up like that. Then Shooter pulled his number of Pym-- TWICE-- and the 2nd time, he was in charge, so who was gonna stop him?

This makes me wonder what Englehart might've done if he HADN'T left Marvel (and THE AVENGERS) when he did, way back in the 70's.

Firebird/Espirita, not Firestar.

"Firebird/Espirita, not Firestar."

Well, I was close!

I think the concept of the costumed superhero is analogous to real-lfie people who dress unconventionally, and/or wear their hair unconventionally, and/or practice alternative lifestyles.

I agree with this analogy, and believe it fits most super-heroes (Spider-Man, for example). But there are people who "conform to non-conformity" merely because they are trying to fit in with someone they perceive to be more powerful or attractive. Some children, for example, dress rebelliously not to express themselves, but to fit in with other kids who dress that way and are perceived as strong or cool.

Consider, also, girls who suffer from annorexia or bullimia because they want to look thin, like models.

During Stern's trial of Yellowjacket arc, Hank explains to a psychiatrist that one of the reasons he became Giant-Man was to impress Jan, whose flirtatious comments about Thor made Hank feel insecure. Stern brilliantly used a minor and long-forgotten aspect of Jan's personality to show how it must have felt to her boyfriend, at the time, to be compared, literally, to a god.

I think of Hank's transition from Yellow Jacket to plain ol' Dr. Pym a natural transition, but like Stealth, I also think that his switch back to Giant-Man was as natural a transition as any for the character.

What it did was not place Hank squarely back in 'angst-ridden adventurer super-hero', but show him in the light of a man who has the intelligence and wits to help out, powers that could be helpful, and the courage and bravery to use them despite a long-standing preference to *not* use them for many years/months. When he became Giant-Man once more, in an effort to save the team of Avengers when all else had failed, he didn't do so out of any insecurities or because he wanted to be adulated, but because he knew he had the experience and the means, and that deep down, Hank is a super-hero in the Marvel Universe, and in one of the truest senses a 'Silver Age Super-Hero' aka Scienctist/Explorer/Adventurer.

I also think that he was deluduing himself for years by thinking that being plain 'ol Dr. Pym was what he truly wanted. Now, I do think Stern's story was excellent and achieved the idea that Hank could put behind him his troubles with Jan, his feelings of insecurity and his inability to create a real identity for himself. After becoming 'Hank Pym' again, after dismissing his countless identities, there was something still lacking from this, and that was the idea that deep down he's a hero, and he has the powers and the know-how to make a difference. It was only during Harras' run that he was presented with a 'do or die' opportunity and he seized the moment and did what was right and for the first time in ages felt an aspect of himself that he hadn't felt in a long time, and was complete again.

By the end of Harras' run, Hank was Giant-Man. He should never have become Ant-Man or Yellow Jacket again (the latter laid to rest by Stern years earlier). And plain ol' Dr. Pym, while being the dominant part of Hank's personality, was lacking something that Giant-Man made up for. (Also, Giant Man basically = Goliath, so I see little difference there. If anything, I wish he was Goliath now as a tribute to Bill Foster, who longtime fans should know was one of Hank's best friends).

Harras did a great job thereafter showing Hank as the scientist Avenger he was meant to be, without dwelling on any of his personnal problems that have become beyond redundant at this point, showing that he had grown and moved on from them and was now complete. Its too bad we never got to see what was in store next for *that* Hank, since I believe Busiek's entire run with Hank was a means to somehow get him back in the Yellow Jacket costume. If anything, there should just have been a new Yellow Jacket to satisfy anyone who wanted to see that costume back in action.

I guess what I'm saying is that sure, Hank grew past all those identities during Stern's story and naturally moved on as Dr. Pym. But there was something missing, because he couldn't simply forget about all his experiences and couldn't deny that he had the means to make a difference out there. So by returning as Giant-Man in that story, he was able to find the final piece of himself that was missing.

I kinda liked the Rita DeMar (?) Yellowjacket. The notion of Hank Pym creating and casting off super-hero persona, which then get picked up by others (like Scott Lang), was kinda neat.

Unfortunately, every single super-hero that Pym has created has died. Black Goliath. Clint Barton - Goliath. Rita - Yellowjacket. Lang - Ant-Man. Jocasta. Atlas has the ionic energy thing bringing him back to life, but he's died at least twice. It's like the curse of Pym...

And Atlas is currently in a bad way - he's currently stuck giant-sized-and-depowered in Germany (depowered meaning he doesn't have the strength to move, speak or crap. That catheter's going to be a doozy...).

You know, for most of the Busiek run, certain things kept frustrating me-- but I tended to brush them aside because, compared to 90% of what Marvel was doing around then, it was pretty damn good. By comparison! The longer his run went on, though... AI YI YI!!!

I think I'd have to agree with most of what's been said here about Hank Pym. The one exception, for me, is that Stern should have NEVER had Hank & Jan go their separate ways. I guess I'm just from a different generation, but 2 people who'd been together as long as they had and been as much in love as they were should have been able to work things out. The fact that they got back together eventually just proves it. It just keeps looking to me like one writer determined to do whatever they wanted, character history be damned, and other, later writers, determined to "fix" what other writers screwed over.

It's not that I don't appreciate the "fixes". Without them, many longtime series would be in even worse shape today than they are. It's just that most of these "fixes" should never have been "necessary"!

I loved Rita. I mentioned in this thread a while ago that I was planning to do a series of fanfics which would have taken place in an alternate timeline which diverged at the point where Stern's run ended. Rita would have been one of the stars. I had an origin story for her and everything (I don't know if she ever had an origin story in Guardians of the Galaxy, since I wasn't into that book, but even if she did, my stories took place outside of Earth-616 anyway.) I had plans for Rita to become the latest ex-villain to join the Avengers, for Wasp to forgive her and become her friend, for She-Hulk to also become her friend, for Rita to start a relationship with Scott Lang and become a mother figure to Cassie Lang, and for a Masters of Evil storyarc where the Masters, now led by Moonstone, try to blackmail Rita into betraying the Avengers.

I may still write those stories. Time will tell.

What it did was not place Hank squarely back in 'angst-ridden adventurer super-hero', but show him in the light of a man who has the intelligence and wits to help out, powers that could be helpful, and the courage and bravery to use them despite a long-standing preference to *not* use them for many years/months.

I just want to say that this is nicely argued, well supported, and highly convincing, Cobie.

I haven't read (or don't remember reading) the stories in question, so I haven't formed an opinion on them. But I can accept that Hank would become Giant-Man once more if he thought doing so would serve the greater good. (I'm not sure if this means he would continue being GM permanently, but that's a different issue.)

Did anyone read the recent BEYOND miniseries? It featured a Hank Pym that was definitely still an adventurer, though an unmasked, uncostumed one. He used the 'pym particle' powers of shrinking/enlarging objects (including the whole cast at one point, I think) rather than focusing on 'personal' size changing. To me, this seemed much more like Hank Pym than anything Marvel's published in years.

Anyway, I thought it was a fun rendition of Hank-- much more so than anything featuring the character in that Yellowjacket costume (why other Marvel characters don't run for the hills as soon as they see that black and yellow number is beyond me...) Seriously, I wish some character or other would make this observation. Currently, there are too many hating on him, though.

I always thought it'd be a cool storyline for Hank to mentor a small team comprised of an Ant-man, a Giant-man and a Yellowjacket-- each with personality conflicts similar to ones Hank has experienced. This would depend upon him being relatively stable for a period of time before the story's opening, however. That doesn't look likely to occur for some time, given the current regime's attitude towards the character.

(why other Marvel characters don't run for the hills as soon as they see that black and yellow number is beyond me...)

While re-reading the Stern issues, it occurred to me that Hank should have run whenever he saw that costume. The shoulder doohickeys were so high, he couldn't possibly have seen over them. Who would want to go into battle with their vision obstructed like a horse with blinders? Perhaps Hank had suicidal tendencies even then.

Any idea who designed the Yellowjacket costume? John Romita? John Buscema? Roy Thomas? (I seriously doubt it was Jack Kirby... heh heh.)

Thanks HWW! I've got to say that I'm honestly thrilled that so many people like Hank, and the majority of us all want to see good things for him. I feel like even if there's some small disagreement, its more like we're almost all on the same side of the coin.

The other side being Jim Shooter, Brian Bendis, etc.

The Hank issue and the well-spoken arguements (particulurly the respectable nature of them so far) is one of the reasons I check this thread so regularly!

As for the costume, I feel like it was Jr. Sr. for some reason. But I can't remember where I read that now.

I agree 100%. That was Hank! Nice to see you again buddy. It's been over a decade!

"As for the costume, I feel like it was Jr. Sr. for some reason. But I can't remember where I read that now."

You mean J.R. Sr., right? Or, as I like to just call him... "JOHN ROMITA". (the "real" one)

Seems like in the early 60's Kirby was designing every new character that came along-- unless Steve Ditko was doing them. But after Romita came onboard at the start of 1966, he began doing more and more and more for Stan. I guess that's what happens when you're working IN the office all the time-- it's just too easy for the editor to pull you aside and ask "Could you do THIS?" I read Romita felt it would be easier to focus and get more work done if he wasn't doing it at home. The flip side of that was, his run on ASM was REPEATEDLY interrupted by other projects. (In a way, it's similar to what happened with John Buscema on THE AVENGERS-- Stan kept yanking him away for other projects as well. Did Stan have a problem focusing??)

When I think of Romita costumes, I'm afraid the ones that keep sticking in my mind-- and not in a good way-- are all those "open shirt" things he did in the early 70's. Seems every character-- including the WOMEN!!! --were showing more and more skin. For the women, none of those outfits looked as good as the one he was no doubt inspired by... Vampirella's. (Costume designed by Trina Robbins, if memory serves!)

There's a funny thing that happened much later where Jack Kirby once did a cover (or pin-up) of The Avengers, included both Giant-Man and Yellowjacket in the line-up, apparently because he didn't know they were supposed to be the same guy!

Speaking of Hank's costumes, anyone know who designed the yellow/blue one? I always liked that one...

I'd guess it might have been Jack Kirby, if only because Jack drew several covers with Goliath featured prominently on them at the time.

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=20047&zoom=4

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=20186&zoom=4

Some random Avengers-related thoughts:

1A. Writers I would like to see on Avengers: Alan Grant, Dave Gibbons, Tony Bedard, Roger Stern, Peter David, Fabian Nicieza, Mark Waid, Mike Carey, Gail Simone

1B. Writers I don’t ever want to see on Avengers: Joe Casey, Ed Brubaker, Judd Winick, Greg Rucka, Keith Giffen, J. Michael Straczyniski, Dan Jurgens

2. Until re-reading the Busiek era for this thread, I’d never before admitted to myself just how much I dislike that era. I’m seriously considering putting the Busiek issues in my collection up for sale.

3. In my opinion, She-Ultron is the latest proof that Bendis is a misogynist.

4. One particular criticism of the Harras era that angers me is the claim that alternate-universe counterparts are like something out of the X-Men. The concept of alternate-universe counterparts didn’t originate in Claremont’s X-Men, as these people seem to think. They originated in JLA during the Silver Age. One development I would have loved to see in the Avengers is the discovery of an alternate universe where the planet has not been devastated and where the Avengers of both worlds befriend each other and have a team-up every year, in the same spirit as the JLA/JSA team-ups, which happened every year from the early 1960s to the early 1980s.

5. One particular scene that I hate from the first Shooter era is from the “attacked by the Ant-Man” issue where the Scarlet Witch panics when the ants are crawling all over her. Englehart’s Scarlet Witch would have calmly hexed away the ants with a flick of her wrist.

Not been reading the two Earth's Mightiest Heroes minis then, huh?

You got it. I wouldn't touch either of the EMH minis with a twenty-foot pole. On other forums, I've seen a lot of posts that say they want Casey on an ongoing Avengers book. I hope that never comes to pass. It would probably be a lot like the Busiek era, only worse.

Again, I must offer a (somewhat) dissenting opinion. I admit I'm not that familiar with JMS's comics work (and, even then, mainly his Top Cow series, RISING STARS and MIDNIGHT NATION), but my all-time favorite TV series is "Babylon 5," which JMS co-created, executive produced, and wrote the lion's share of episodes.

I did read some of JMS's SPIDER-MAN work last year, on the "rebirth" arc (or whatever it was called; I borrowed the issues from a friend and no longer have them), which started out really well, but ended up going in an all-too-famliar direction:

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Spidey dies and comes back to life. Where have we seen that before?</span></span>

As I recall, JMS wrote the early parts of the arc, which I liked best.

So, just out of curiosity, why is he writer non grata on The Avengers?

I disagree. Casey is an Avengers fanboy he loves the history like Busiek BUT most his other books are very progressive. Heck, even EMH shows the inbetween issues things as progressive.

I think it was Buscema? Maybe Heck but I wanna say Buscema.

You are far too kind. Bendis is a political hack who wants to express his contempt for what is going on in this country by tainting and destroying and trashing everything he gets his hands on, like a frustrated child having a tantrum. Everything from 'do you think this A on my head stands for France' on has been nothing more than him crapping on the characters and fans in an attempt to highlight how pissed off he is at the world and how we are too damn stupid to appreciate his very important point.

Joey Q is just clueless enough to not have noticed how much BiMBo is flipping him off (and Marvel as a company, it's properties and it's customers as a whole) with every single genre convention or fan favorite character he derides and pisses all over.

Bendis just stomps around screaming, "Pay attention to me! I'm so controversial! This is my face while I'm ****ing you in the ***!" like a 90 lb goth prepubescent pretending to be Godzilla.

And he can't get a book out on time to save his chapped hide, so he's also incompetent.

Other than that, I don't much like him...

Ummm... that was all Millar ("A for France" = Ultimates v1)

And, whatever Bendis' many and copious faults, he <strike>makes the trains run</strike> gets his books out on time as a general rule.

They aren't the same person? Well crud. That conspiracy theory shot to heck. I could never tell any of the Authority / Ultimates writers apart. The stories always seemed to be the same. Someone punches someone in the brain. Stuff blows up. Look into the camera and say something nasty.

I'm with you! That was very well said. And Millar goes along with that as well. They both are good writers but both seem to have an agenda...especially Bendis.

"I think it was Buscema? Maybe Heck but I wanna say Buscema."

Well, as seen here...

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=20047&zoom=4

...it debuted in AVENGERS #28 (May'66), pencilled by Don Heck, but the cover was Jack Kirby. John Romita had already come back some months before, but as far as I know John Buscema didn't return until some months later (his return being in STRANGE TALES #150 and TALES TO ASTONISH #85 / both Nov'66).

You know, it's fairly simple-- it could be a Romita design!

I thought the blue/yellow came later for some reason. Oh well.

I definately never want JMS on a Marvel or DC comic book again, because of his runs on Spider-Man or Fantastic Four.

He's on par with Chuck Austen for me of writers I never want on my favorite comics.

I am terrified of him writing Thor already. I agree with Stealth about all the writers I don't want on Avengers except Joe Casey. Ofcourse can it get any worse?

I hate that JMS is bringing back Donald Blake. ugh!

Here's a nice John Buscema GOLIATH (blue & yellow)...

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=21128&zoom=4

...and another one...

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=21793&zoom=4


Now here's a good question: who designed THIS one?

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=22654&zoom=4

Re: J. Michael Straczynski -- I only started disliking JMS recently. During the mid-late 1980s, he was one of my favorite TV cartoon writers, thanks to his work on She-Ra, He-Man, and especially The Real Ghostbusters, the last of which he story-edited for its first 65 episodes. And although I never really got into Babylon 5 -- despite the show starring one of my favorite actresses, Claudia Christian -- I certainly respect how JMS achieved his ambitious plans for the show.

Being completely unfamiliar with his comics work when I started reading comics again two years ago, I was very excited that he was going to be doing Fantastic Four. And even after his character asassination of Reed Richards in the FF's Civil War tie-ins (which I'm sure was at least partly dictated by Millar and the editors), I still think his Pre-CW FF issues were quite good, including the ones with Dr. Doom and Thor's hammer, which were advertised as a CW prologue but ended up having nothing to do with Civil War.

What made JMS lose a lot of my respect was when I found out after-the-fact that the did a retcon in Spider-Man where Gwen Stacy had an affair with Norman Osborn (if that's not a vomit-inducing midlife-crisis fantasy, I don't know what is.) And when he did a recent interview, talking about his plans for Thor, where he announced it was going to be a "comedy of manners" with the Asgardian gods living in the American heartland, that was really the last straw for me. And I agree with Jorge about bringing back Donald Blake -- that's adding insult to injury.

Re: Joe Casey -- Casey puts the first 200 issues of Avengers on a pedastal, and the Harras era doesn't fit into Casey's narrow view of what the Avengers are "supposed" to be. I respect his opinions, but I don't want anyone with those opinions to write Avengers. And if any of the writers on my list of writers I DO want has the same opinons as Casey, then I would no longer want them writing Avengers. I firmly believe that setting limits to what the book is "supposed" to be and that holding up a certain bunch of issues as un-reachable are the reasons the Avengers haven't had an approach that feels fresh to me since the Harras era.

Re: Bendis and Millar -- I think Bendis is basically an arrested nerd who, even as a supposed grown-up, still thinks it makes him "cool" to act like a schoolyard bully, and who is too self-centered to ever convincingly write a character who is not an extension of himself. Millar is the one who really angers me, with his flippancy, his utter contempt for America and Americans, and his cynical pandering to the lowest common denominator (and he's not the only one -- see also Ellis' Thunderbolts.)

I can't speak to Millar's disrespect towards Americans or cynical pandering to the lowest common denominator, since his Ultimate Cap and Ultimate Hank left such a bad taste in my mouth not too long ago, but I do think he's gotten quite a bad rap for Civil War, where the blame shouldn't really fall on him. I think he's a extremely talented writer and lots of his Marvel work has restored a sense of granduer and escapism that other writers imitate, and fail at doing so. But Tony being a facist and Reed being a McCarthist are not Millar's fault, and he's said so. Neither really come across that way in Civil War #1-7, especially Tony. No, the fault there lies with JMS. JMS is the one who made Tony look so over the top facist in Spider-Man, and then did the worst Reed scenes in comic book history in Spidey and FF--which are unforgivable. Jenkins, the Black Panther writer and a few others just added insult to injury with their bit of hack writing. But Millar all along stressed that Tony had a more conservative point of view and was really trying to do the right thing. But its Joe Q and Marvel editorial's inability to understand that viewpoint that helped them push for a more and more facist Tony, which is what we've gotten. Add in Bendis writing him like some strange version of 'an uneducated American's view of a smarmy business man' (which is how I read it) and you get Tony in the Avengers title. The ultimate blame must go to Tom Brevoort though, for allowing all of the Civil War related titles to be nothing at all like Civil War. Tony really comes across as villianous, hell, as a strait-up DICK, in the spin-offs and tie-ins, while Millar tries for seven issues to show a logical, in-character way for Tony to be on one side against the side that the fans are obviously going to side with all along.

I honestly think Millar tried to make Tony a complex character in Civil War, and JMS, Joe Q, Bendis and Brevoort made him out to be Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, and every other conversative figure that people love to hate. So I think Millar is off the hook here, and JMS, once more, gets a large portion of my blame.

As for Bendis, I can't understand how he can be so damn brillant sometimes, as with Alias, Daredevil, and Ultimate Spider-Man, and be so damn terrible other times, as with all of his Avengers related titles. Even his USM stories are often lacking, but he makes up for it by being able to convey the 'spirit' of a young Spider-Man. Probably b/c that is who is really is (Bendis I mean), still a real life Peter Parker who grew up, got married, had kids and has a pretty cool life, but still feels that anxiety of old. He simply can't write team comics, fight scenes or cosmic widescreen epics.

Ellis I don't know why anyone likes. His comics should be 10 cents for the amount of content you get in each one.

Jenkins is another one that I just don't know why people like. I think the last semi-decent comic book he wrote that didn't star the Sentry was probably an issue of Spider-Man in 1999 or 2000. He obviously doesn't know the characters or material and has no problems hiding it (like Ellis, who gloats about that in interviews).

So if I'm the biggest Speedball fan of all time and Jenkins introduces some new reporter in Civil War: Frontline, what am I supposed to think? If I was breaking into the comics industry, I'd bide my time, get hired by Marvel and give that new character a gruesome death in retribution. Okay, I'm kidding, because that's obviously way over the top and no one would really do that. Right? I'd say wrong, because I'm pretty sure that's what John Byrne has been doing for the last ten years, and so have a bunch of other creators.

It's much easier to deconstruct a character or concept that build upon it and create new things. There should be little praise left for deconstructionalists after Watchman and Dark Knight Returns in 1986. We got it. We've moved on. No more Avengers: Dissessembled. No more tear everything down at one time and render it inert, so something new can take its place. Be creative and be fresh, and if a character dies and it fits the story, than so be it. No one screamed when the Swordsman met his end, or few can argue that Phoenix's original death wasn't brillant. But people do get mad about Hawkeye for a reason.

Guess I started ranting

Really. I don't think Millar hates Americans. You guys have to realize he writes Americans as the rest of the world sees you, especially in the current climate. And it's certainly not entirely their fault the world sees you as the Kobe Bryant of Nations. (Actually that analogy is so perfect I'm claiming dibs on it.)

And yes they've hijacked the MU to tell an allegorical tale of what it's like to deal with Americans these days. And yes Reed and Tony infuriate me. But the comics medium was always an allegory. Be it joining the war effort, why snitching on criminals is good or standing up to bullies one day they'll find a new morality tale and they'll move on.

Tamper Lad Trust me on this, it's not real fun for half of the people living in this country in the current climate. Many of my best friends I just can't talk to about anything substantive, since they get red-faced and screaming if I bring up Guantanamo Bay or Pat Tillman or something.

And yet, I pick up Civil War, supposedly an entertainment, and Reed Richards is throwing people into the Negative Zone without due process or trials or habeas corpus or any of those quaint things. I'm the liberalist peacenik wussy that ever wussed, and yet *I* don't want to pick up my comic books to see super-heroes preaching at me, and the WWII hero representative of spirit of America being chased through crowded New York City streets and buildings by people launching explosive missiles at him because 'they are the responsible ones.'

That's a bit over the top in the 'see how hypocritical they are' area. I got it. We're dicks. There are two kinds of people in America. The half who don't like it, and the half who do, and Civil War isn't going to change either of our minds. Millar, Bendis, etc. may or may not have an ounce of talent, but they sure aren't Jon Stewart or Rush Limbaugh.

More super-heroes please, less 'you people reading this comic suck.' Lead by example. If there must be a timely comic-book analogy to current political events, show Captain America presenting the moral argument, and in the time-honored fashion of superhero funny books *winning, because he's right.*

Sure, that's not how it works in the real-world, but when I pick up a comic-book with the word 'Avengers' in the title, I'm wanting to read about superheroes. (or, possibly, a British woman in a catsuit named Emma Peel)

Quick thoughts.

Kobe Bryant? I can tell if that's a compliment or not. I mean he has no individual awards like an MVP like that selfish canuck Nash or anything but has three team 3 rings! (i love Steve Nash!)

You know I went to Spain last summer and hung out with some adults from all over Europe. At first they said how bad the USA is seen across the world. I proposed the USA is on a big stage and they don't have 30 neighboring countries to worry about. We are the cowboys. But for every "atrocity" every other country may have more. These people were mostly English and German. The funny part is they said that France is worse than the USA just hide it better. I couldn't stop laughing when they told me that one. I think the US sadly seems to be dominated by extremes and the rational silent majority needs not to speak up. Speak up in a logical wise way. I always say the extremes in every country/culture are a minority...but minorities have napolean complexes and like to be seen and heard.

Bendis and the Marvel lefties are like this. They certainly want to be heard.

I actually have no problem with Millar's politics. His American politics (and Jenkins) are more thought out and realistic. The Americans IMO are the ones that make us look bad.

Stealth, how do we know he doesn't care for the Harras run? Has he said it in an interview? I can say you hold the Harras run in a pedestal. Just because Casey loves the old Avengers doesn't mean he will write that. He honestly is one of the more progressive writers out there. He's not Kurt Busiek who I agree was too retro.

Bah. If people around the world really feel like all Americans are like this, than they deserve to be conquered

True only your leadership is Kobe. The rest of you are collectively knonw as, 'The 11 other Lakers'.

You know, 95% of real Americans hate Los Angeles and hate seeing it in movies, TV shows, the news, etc.

I know I never root for any L.A. teams. Then again, I prefer if the Yankees won every World Series from here on out, but that's neither here nor there...

Millar still writes Americans in the same stereotypical vain as Luke Cage was written in the 70's.

Who had a pretty good night last night.

I don't understand the hate for the big city teams personally.

IMO Bendis writes Luke Cage in a 2000s stereotypical way.

I hate LA and I'm not even in the US.

And thats the thing Jorge. I think the world appreciates Americans like basketball fans appreciate Kobe (as the best player in the world.) But like Kobe gets on people's nerves the US does that too. Or to use Cobie's analogy. The US is to the world what LA is to Americans.

Sterotypical writing yes, and I think it's intentional. But I don't think Millar's writing Civil War from anti-Americanism. Certainly I thought he really got the character of Superman, and you can't write Superman without appreciating the basic founding mythology of the US.

If the American media weren't so inward looking they'd show Americans that Millar's writing of the MU US population as a bunch of idiots is a reflection of a widespread view in the rest of the world (both amongst the intelligensia and the guys and gals on the street). It wouldn't suprise me if he's writing the equivalent of a politcal caricature of Americans.

Of course any subtelty was lost when it got to JoeQ's office. He's not one to know subtlety and irony when it smacks him in the head.

When Tamper talks he makes me hate the rest of the world, my own country and the comic book industry at the same time But Joe Q above all others.

(Light-hearted Friday comment)

PS - I don't think Millar is anti-American either, but Tamper is right in that he plays to the American caricatures. He's actually made me like him more and more despite myself these last few years, and I do really enjoy 90% of his work.

(me american, me smart, me make typos)

See that is where I have a problem though. (this has nothing to do with the avengers). The US gets stereotyped in those people living in the midwest with no education. Hey there are people like that in the rest of the world. Infact I think the US has a pretty good rate of education when it comes to that. We think of France? We think of Paris. We don't think about the sheep herders who can't spell their names.

I think part of it is our two party system. It's a strength and weakness. It's a strength because it unites the country into just two factions versus 10. But we have less options that's the weakness.

I saw a special the other day of Indian phone reps making fun of how stupid Americans are that their helpdesk. It made Americans sound real stupid with 65 year old women who never have used a computer. Half of India can't read!

I think there are many reasons the rest of the world thinks Americans are ignorant but some of that is because of their own ignorance. Infact taking that position is pretty ignorant. I just don't like seeing the worst of each country...i like to see the best and I think the rest of the world looks at the worst at the USA. ohwell. I will continue my education by sending a PM to the canadian brainiac TL.

Cobie, I haven't read the Civil War mini or any of the non-FF tie-ins you mentioned, so I wouldn't be able to give an informed reply. It does sound to me, though, as if maybe Millar is trying to cover his ass because reader response turned out differently than he expected; I take anything he says with a grain of salt.

I love your spot-on comment on Ellis:

Jorge, I wouldn't say I put the Harras era on a pedastal, because I don't hold it up as unattainable perfection. I think it is attainable for a future Avengers writer to come up with a fresh new approach to Avengers that would please me as much as, if not even more than, the Harras era. But that won't happen until Quesada, Brevoort, and their cronies are kicked out through the door. And Casey did indeed make those statements in an interview. I'll PM you his exact words, because I don't want to give publicity to the site where the interview is.

"I wouldn't say I put the Harras era on a pedastal, because I don't hold it up as unattainable perfection. I think it is attainable for a future Avengers writer to come up with a fresh new approach to Avengers that would please me as much as, if not even more than, the Harras era."

It seems a shame I never read most of the Harras era, but he had, in my eyes, everything against him. First was several eras in a row where the book continued to disappoint. Then there was his own track record, which were some of the worst, character-destructive, over-written drek of the 80's. Between those 2 things, and the fact that I did NOT enjoy his first storyline at all, I'd just about had it, and gave up on the book (as I was giving up on most of Marvel in general around the same time). Some people do get better... but some people may never see it, if their earlier stuff turns them off that much.

Which brings up a question: has anyone here read Harras' run on NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D.? It wasn't pretty... to say the least.

Stealth, I agree that Harras' run was fresh. He managed to use two of my faves (Herc/Black Knight) and elevate Sersi and Crystal as well. I even like Deathstrike.

As for Casey? Well how many times can you use Ultron? I hope if he ever gets the book he realizes that the things he likes have been done to death. And I think I know the site the interview is from. I sent them a few nasty emails cause they were very rude to Stern in an interview.

Prof, I have read his six issues of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well has his mini-series, Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. It's all very trendy and deconstructive and mean-spirited, from the time where Watchmen and Dark Knight (both absurdly overrated, IMO) became widely influential. Just about every writer has a skeleton in their closet, and those S.H.I.E.L.D. stories are his.

But he also wrote two Iron Man annuals from the 1980s, one of which turned the original Power Man into Goliath, so that's pretty significant (and a good story in my opinion.) There's also his witty fill-in issue of Thor (# 356), where Hercules tells tall tales where inevitably he comes out looking better than Thor.

Most importantly, his first Avengers script was an outstanding fill-in issue (# 280, towards the end of the Stern/Buscema era), the one where Jarvis looks back on his years of serving the Avengers as he ponders retirement.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: everybody's gotta start somewhere, and sometimes they get good in the long run.

How many times can you use Ultron? I think Bendis' first Mighty Avengers arc has answered that question.

"It's all very trendy and deconstructive and mean-spirited, from the time where Watchmen and Dark Knight (both absurdly overrated, IMO) became widely influential."

I forget which came first, exactly... see, back in the 1970's, every hack out there was making SHIELD (my heroes) look bad. They're not the CIA-- they're SHIELD! They should be better than that. There was a number of loose stories and a few with recurring sub-plots (The Huntress series in MARVEL SUPER ACTION, starring Bobbi Morse) which built up a picture that all was not right with the organization. For years it built, and at some point they announced a mini-series would deal with the problem-- head on.

Then YEARS went by, and when the long-awaited story finally came out, instead of a mini-series, or even a MAXI-series (12-issues), those greedy bastards milked it for all they could by putting it out instead as 6 "prestige format" issues. The equivalent of 12 normal issues for twice the price.

For those who missed it, the plot of "NICK FURY VS. SHIELD" involved a traitor in the organization who framed Fury as a traitor. It went on and on and ON. By the time it was over, we learned that-- supposedly-- the entire governing body (only ever seen as faces hidden in shadows in the Kirby issues) were corrupt and evil, and in fact, ALWAYS had been! Also, by the end, most of the supporting cast were brutally murdered, and Fury's longtime relationship with Val was a thing of the past. Due to overwhelming corruption, SHIELD was closed down, and Fury, one of the few left alive, retired. I waited that many years for THIS crap?????

One of the most infuriating things about it is, anyone who's read SHIELD #13 by Steve Parkhouse & Barry Smith would recognize the opening segment of the story. "BEEN THERE, DONE THAT." And Parkhouse & Smith, in a SINGLE regular size issues, had DONE IT BETTER!!!!! (It bugged me that both guys only ever did that ONE issue... Gary "Burnout" Friedrich & Herb "Hulk Smash!" Trimpe finished the story over the following 2 issues. Sort of. Parts 2 & 3 never quite "connected" well with the opening installment, "Hell Hath No Fury", my personal favorite of the post-Steranko issues.)

Then... as if to add injury to insult, some months later, they announced a new ongoing series. The same people were responsible. That's like asking Richard Nixon to "fix" the Watergate situation. The first 6 issues of the new NICK FURY pretty much amounted to Bob Harras virtually APOLOGIZING to Fury's fans, by revealing that SHIELD had NOT "always" been corrupt, that the governing body had one by one been murdered and replaced by agents of Hydra, until there was almost nobody left to watch the store. Had this come out in the "VS." story, it might have made "VS." more tolerable. The way it worked out, it just struck me as a painful load of garbage. Oh, they also revealed that several of the dead characters were still alive-- and had been prisoners since the previous storyline. Geez.

Somehow I made it thru Harras' 2nd 6 issues-- just barely. I decided, since he was leaving, to give his replacements a chance. Somehow, it never quite came together. It felt like it should have, but it never did. Then they did another LONG story involving outer space which Herb Trimpe pencilled (HIM again?). Herb was not what he had been by this point. Whoever wrote it seemed like they had no idea what they were doing. I got so fed up I decided, as soon as THIS story was over, I was outta there.

The next month I noticed they'd reinstated the 60's SHIELD logo. It caught my attention. I picked up the book. I CURSED. Butch Guice had taken over the art. Those BASTARDS. Just at the point where I swore I was dropping the book, they brought in one of my top fave artists.

D.G.Chichester & Butch Guice did the single BEST book Marvel was putting out at that point, for about the next 6 months. It was ASTONISHINGLY good. It was what the mini and what followed should have been. It made every issue that came before it look EVEN WORSE than they were by comparison. But Marvel's marketing was going into hellish overdrive... That was about the time they started doing "connected" annuals. They dragged SHIELD into it, trying to "force" you to read part of the story by spacing it out over 3 different annuals. Each annual only contained about 10-12 pages of the "big story", the rest was crap filler by unknowns getting tryouts. Even with the regular book as good as it was, they were still pissing me off.

Then, in something that would be a lot more timley now than then, "Graduation Day" had Hydra STRIKE-- levelling SHIELD HQ to the ground and killing everyone in the building. The kid gloves were off. 2 issues later-- Guice was gone. NO explanation. Marvel rarely had letters columns by then. This book still did-- but not once did they mention what happened to Guice. (Turned out he'd gone over to draw SUPERMAN). The new art was an ugly abortion trying to imitate Steranko's "OUTLAND" style. I hated it. Then they started dragging in guest-stars like Wolverine. The art changed again, Chichester left in the middle of the epic he started... and suddenly, the book looked "nice"-- very typical 70's-style Marvel art-- but the writing seemed on a 7-year-old level. That was it. I'd had enough "bait and switch". I quit.

About 2 YEARS later, I picked up the LAST issue of the book. Who'd guess it, they dragged out the revived Baron Strucker story for 3 WHOLE freakin' years. I feel lucky I missed most of it by then-- at least I caught the ending. Geez.

There was a long stretch there where I bought no Marvels at all. Stuff like this may help explain why!

Harras' issue of Thor where Hercules tells the stories about him and Thor to the kids has got to be one of the finest, if not *the* finest Hercules tale of all time! He captures Herc so well, specifically when Herc realizes that his over the top version of Thor losing is hurting the little kids supporting Thor, so he changes the story abrubtly, so that its Thor who acts heroic and wins out in the end. Its such a simple, nice tale, but it really conveys Hercules so well. Probably my #1 favorite Hercules scene in Marvel history!

I'm so glad you reminded me about it Stealth!

ARRRGH!!! I accidentally bought "Mighty Avengers" # 2 thinking it was "Initiative Avengers" (Dan Slott's book) # 2. BARF!

Well, guess what... Ultron's a transsexual now!

Y'know, I was really hoping that was going to turn out to be Jocasta... THAT might have been cool.


Bleeeeah.

I DID TOO!!! (accidently bought it)

I bet they planned that.........

After all the talk about Shooter & DeFalco & Harras and etc...... I just HAD to pass this on.

My God! It's like sitting in on a MAFIA conference!!!


http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2007/04/vinnie-collettas-exit-interview.html

Re: Colletta erasing pencils so he wouldn't have to ink them.

There's always two sides to every story, and it's good to hear why Colletta probably had to do this (in order to finish on time another artist's late work) and why many feel his inking was so rushed. I'm not taking sides in this debate -- I don't have an opinion on Colletta's work one way or the other -- but it's good to read another view of someone whose work is so often denigrated by fans.

Re: the transcribed phone conversation/interview.

This provides a very interesting look at the events that led up to Shooter's firing from Marvel, as well as Colletta's views on Shooter and Hobson. I can't help wondering, though, who recorded this conversation and whether or not Colletta knew it was being recorded.

You're welcome, Cobie. I find that story especially delightful since I first read it after I had read Harras' entire Avengers run. It shows that he already understood Hercules years before he began writing Hercules on a monthly basis.

Lash, Disaster Boy, sorry you both got burned. It gives new meaning to the old saying "Let the buyer beware," huh?

Prof, thanks for that link. I love that kind of behind-the-scenes dirt. There is so much potential for a great book to be written about comics in the 1970s and 1980s.

Colletta isn't the only inker whose work suffered to beat deadlines other people screwed over before he got involved. Back in the 80's, I met Brett Breeding-- an inker in the Bob Layton style whose work I really admired (he made Don Heck look FANTASTIC on 2 issues of J.L.A.!!). He looked too young to possibly have been in the biz as long as he was by then. Anyway, he told me a story of how the editor on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN got in the bad habit of dragging his ass on everything. You know how the production line goes. Plot in, pencils out. Pencils in, letters out. Letters in, inks out. Well, instead of looking over the art the moment it came in, this guy would let it sit on his desk for a week-- or MORE. Every time. By the time it got to the inking stage, it was running right up against a blown deadline!!! Breeding would take the pages, and-- just like "George Bell"-- knock out the work like a madman. Compared to his usual great stuff, it began to look like CRAP. But he made those deadlines. However, HIS rep as a decent inker began to suffer-- for something he had NOTHING to do with!

When I think of all the inkers I've seen who started out great and soon went to hell, I begin to think there must be a lot of this going around.


By the way, apart from THOR, if you wanna see some TERRIFIC Colletta inks, check out the otherwise questionable CAPTAIN MARVEL comic in the late 60's. During its run, TWICE, Vinnie replaced someone else who was MURDERING the art (Paul Reinmen, then John Tartaglione). Both times, Vince's inks were a HUGE improvement!!! (I wouldn't make up a thing like this.)

See, now I'm wondering if some of the artists / inkers / writers I consider 'bad' actually had mitigating stories like this. I definitely know that some of the ones I consider 'good,' only seem to be good under certain conditions (such as paired with inkers who bring out their work), but I wonder if I've judged some too harshly.

Carmine Infantino is one artist that, at the tender age of ten, I denounced and stopped buying Flash comics because I *hated* his art. (Yes, I was an opinionated ten year old.) And now I'm wondering if I just caught him in a bad circumstance...

Set, there are just some good artists not everybody likes. I don't care for Scot Kolins. You go see fan reactions to his art and you either love him or hate him.

I do love his work on the Thor mini last year. When it's fantasy it works but besides that I don't care for it.

Carmine Infantino's a terrific "designer" and "storyteller". But over the years his work got looser and looser, to the point where what he may consider "pencils" would be somebody else's "rough layouts". It takes a special talent to decipher those sketchy lines properly!

Some of Carmine's best work was done by other people. What I mean is, in the late 60's, he started designing almost all of DC's covers, to help them compete with the more "dynamic" stuff Marvel was doing. It worked, to a degree. DC's covers across the line improved DRASTICALLY, many of Carmine's designs being illustrated by the likes of Curt Swan, Jack Sparling, Neal Adams. But al too often, the interiors were the same, dull, boring, stodgy, stuff. I wonder how many fans felt ripped off, as if those great covers were nothing more than "false advertising"? Then again, I felt the same way in the mid-70's every time Dave Cockrum did a fabulous cover for Marvel-- and inside, you had 3rd-rate hack work. (That's sort of the reverse of a year or so earlier, when Gil Kane did hundreds of covers, effectively "hiding" the fact that inside, you might have wonderful stuff. All those Paul Gulacy MASTER OF KUNG FU issues were a prime example. Best stuff Marvel put out at the time, with some of the worst covers ever!)

Brett Breeding inked the 4-part West Coast Avengers mini-series that Roger Stern wrote and Bob Hall penciled. The first issue was magnificently inked, doing the near-impossible of making Bob Hall look good, but then the inks seemed to decline with each successive issue. I don't the issues on hand right now, but I seem to remember at least one, maybe two issues, were credited to "Brett Breeding and Friends" or something like that.

Even with the art, it still had excellent writing by Stern. IMO, the WCA mini-series was far superior to any stories that Englehart, or Byrne, or Thomas wrote in the WCA ongoing.

Which provides a convenient segue...

As both Prof and myself have pointed out, we still haven't had any in-depth discussions about WCA in this thread. So if you're reading this and you're a WCA fan, please share your thoughts.

"Brett Breeding and Friends"

Hey, that's right! A credit like that is a sure sign of desperation to beat a deadline. (Like the often-used "D.Hands"-- alias "Diverse Hands", which I always took as a joking reference to "Deadly Hands"-- of Kung Fu, of course.)

I hate it when a mini-series doesn't manage to be consistent. By its nature, a mini-series should be a "special event". WHY should it be rushed into production like the usual CR... er, comics?



Now, where did I read, just recently, that the WCA mini was never intended to go any further?


Anybody besides me seen that run of JLA I referred to? George Perez, after being fired by Marvel for blowing too many deadlines, felt he needed to rebuild his rep at DC, and not take on too many projects at once. His first book was JLA-- which he picked up because longtime penciller Dick Dillin died of a heart attack! Good grief-- what a way to "inherit" a title. Dillin may still hold the record for most number of JLA issues-- anybody know? I know he broke Mike Sekowsky's record, and I don't believe there were any fill-ins (apart from a reprint here or there).

Perez got a variety of inkers at DC-- Frank McLaughlin (who I felt overpowered everybody, his style was like Dick Giordano on steroids-- heehee), Brett Breeding, John Beatty (WOW!!). By comparison, Romeo Tanghal was always just "okay" by me. He & George sure did a TON of TITANS issues together. I remember George made a store appearance just before this new project of his, TITANS, came out-- and at first, I didn't know what he was talking about. Then I realized-- TEEN Titans! Oh. It'd been cancelled 3 times, they figured Marv & George couldn't screw it up any worse. Sort of like when those 2 complete unknowns Mike Friedrich & Jim Starlin took over CAPTAIN MARVEL. Who knew???? Shortly after, George said he had to decide on ONE book to do, to ensure he stay on deadline. JLA went. TITANS became DC's best seller. WHO KNEW?????

Before George completely left, Don Heck came in to do a 2-part time-travel story which featured a team-up of all of DC's wetsern heroes. What fun! Don was inked by Brett Breeding. BEST-looking Don Heck art in years, it was even better than when Joe Giella inked him on STEEL, THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN. (Boy, do I wish that book had not gotten canned when it did. What a waste of so much potential!) Later, Don became the regular JLA guy... but he never got such good inks again. It seemed it was a slow slide to obscurity after that... When Chuck Patton took over, his "cartoony" style, kinda reminiscent of Perez when he first started, was a welcome change. Whatever happened to him??


It always cracks me up to think that 2 guys who started out like they didn't know how to draw that well, both got popular, then got FIRED, then rebuilt their careers at DC, and the result was DC's 2 best-selling books in the 1980's-- TITANS, and LEGION! Perez & Giffen... separated at birth?

Right here in this very thread, on Page 13, where I posted the Avengers-related material from an interview with Roger Stern.

Re: JLA -- Dillin, whose work I like a lot from the early 1970s on, did an all-time record-setting 115 issues!! Other than the reprints, the only fill-in was # 153, penciled by George Tuska. I've read some of Perez's JLA issues -- off the top of my head, I think the Red Tornado ones (inked by John Beatty) were especially good. I haven't yet read the time-travel-to-the-Old-West story, but I'll search for it. I have read some of Heck's other JLA issues, the two JLA/JSA team-ups he drew and the search for the Atom in the microscopic universe. I agree the inking could have been better, but those issues still have many nice moments by Heck.

"Right here in this very thread, on Page 13"

Wow! And we're up to 20 now.


"Dillin, whose work I like a lot from the early 1970s on, did an all-time record-setting 115 issues!!"

I knew it was a lot! I bought the book regular when Steve Englehart went to DC. Was amazed how he took such a purely "DC" book and successfully grafted his own more "Marvel" style onto it, WITHOUT any drastic changes or losing anything that made the book so "DC" in the first place.


"the only fill-in was # 153, penciled by George Tuska"

Really! All these years, this is the first I've heard of this. I bought ONE issue by Gerry Conway and dropped it... until about 2 years later, when he brought Firestorm in. Funny, huh? I suppose Conway was just such a DROP after Englehart-- and I was still bugged at the way Conway replaced Englehart on that OTHER superhero book... now, which one was it?



Someone once supposedly said "Superman looks like it was drawn in a bank"-- referring to how stodgy and dull DC Comics became in the 50's. But one thing I do admire about the old days was how they'd put a creative team together, and they'd STAY on a book and really make it theirs. JLA is a perfect example. From the start, Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, Bernard Sachs-- EVERY SINGLE ISSUE, all 3 guys, for years on end!! Then, after the big change of regime (when, for a number of various reasons, a LOT of DC's old guard left in a short space of time), Dick Dillin got on the book, and did even MORE issues! Amazing.

Every time I'd pick up one of Steve's JLA issue, and look at the covers, I kept wishing Jack Abel was inking Dillin, since his inks on the covers looked so much nicer than Frank McLaughlin. It took until the 80's before I started to like McLaughlin's inks-- over Carmine Infantino, of all people!! Carmine's "pencils" became more and more like very sketchy diagrams, which baffled most inkers. McLaughlin gave them a solidity and weight that made the pair of them a perfect team. Anybody see the DANGER TRAIL mini-series they did? Great stuff. (The Paul Gulacy covers were definitely an added attraction.)

Seeing Breeding ink Heck made me realize what a missed opportunity they had-- imagine if Bob Layton had inked Heck on IRON MAN ? Don's pencils dropped in quality in the 70's, but if you ask me, he was STILL a better "storyteller" than Layton (who somebody should really try convincing not to pencil anymore...).

Time for the snark-of-the-month.

In the latest Mighty Avengers, which I browsed through but did not buy, Sentry and She-Ultron fight, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Heli-Carriers gets flipped around and crashes, and...uh...that's about it. Of course there's still lots of that lame pseudo-hip dialogue and intrusive thought balloons. And the usual lack of teamwork.

I've noticed that almost no one on this board other than me has commented on Mighty Avengers. Surely I can't be the only one here who's read it. If you're reading this and you read Mighty Avengers, then why don't you post a reply, whether you agree or disagree with my posts? I've said this before: I really want this thread to have one foot in the present.

Unfortunately, both of my feet are planted firmly in the past, as far as the Avengers are concerned. I haven't bought an issue since # 19 of Busiek's run (when was that -- 2000?). Although I read a few isses of YOUNG AVENGERS that a friend loaned me, I have no interest in following the title or any of its permutations at present.

There was a time, though, when AVENGERS was second only to LEGION as my favorite comic book. In fact, AVENGERS was the one title I followed consistently for more than 20 years (1973-94). But things change, I've changed, and life moves on. Blame (or credit) Busiek for that: even when he gave us a "classic" Avengers run, it just felt wrong. Sometimes, you really can't go back.

I still think there is the possibility of the book renewing itself, like it has in the past. Between the end of the Englehart era and the beginning of the Stern/Buscema/Palmer era, there are over one hundred issues which I think are mostly fair-to-middling (and sometimes awful.) If it takes that long for Bendis and Brevoort and Quesada to leave, I'll still be waiting for the day when that happens and looking forward to the possibility of renewal.

"over one hundred issues which I think are mostly fair-to-middling (and sometimes awful.)"

And to think, that was when I was buying and reading the book the most consistently. (It's amazing what you'll put up with sometimes.)

"Fair-to-middling"-- that's what Yosemite Sam saids he was with a pencil! "Alright, pardner-- DRAW!"

I agree the peroid between Engleheart and Stern to be not consistent.

It was writer by committee. Micheline, Steven Grant, Stern, Grunewald even methinks? And Shooter ofcourse.

But for some reasons I have fond memories. To tell the truth it was very generic superhero stories yet I liked the generic feel it had. Perez art didn't hurt. I'm also it seems the only fan of Shooter's Avengers work.

I also feel that the Avengers book is salvagable and it isn't that far gone.

I have some comments on the recent series:

(1) New Avengers - by far the worst of the lot, New Avengers suffers from the fact that Brian Bendis simply doesn't have a handle on how to write a super-hero team comic. Its forcefully 'new' and 'hip' and that might work on a pre-teen (and if it does--good for Marvel!), but it doesn't work on me. Spider-Man does not belong to the point that it hurts. Luke Cage simply is not what they've melded him into here, and I just can't get over it. The fact that this isn't really an Avengers comic, and more of a 'Defenders comic with the Avengers name to maintain sales' is blatant, and I don't mind that per se. It kind of makes it easier to accept Wolverine and Spider-Woman, and Iron Fist joining Luke again is somewhat enjoyable. But essentially, the comic remains flat. The 'anti-registration heroes' are soooo obviously and blatantly 'in the right' in Bendis' eyes that you can't help but feel editorial trickery. Dr. Strange is so out of place it hurts, as he could essentially defeat anything that the entire team together might have trouble with. The return of Hawkeye, and how its being accomplished, however, is somewhat welcome and fun. Ninjas and Electra are not. Echo is interesting to me, now that this is obviously 'New Defenders'. I want to like this book. I do. But I can't justify it with the level of quality. And I don't hate Bendis--I think he's a truly gifted writer. But he's a poor *Avengers* writer. Yu's art is not my favorite, but I recognize he has his own style and that is very refreshing sometimes.

(2) Mighty Avengers - to be honest Stealth, you've summed it up quite good for me. Iron Man is being written as overly arrogant and semi-facist, the Wasp is being written as her character at its worst to the 10th degree which essentially means (to me) that its 100% out of character, and so far there is no real reason Ares is there other than 'he looks cool and it might shock fans'. Black Widow is an obvious spy for Nick Fury (if you didn't see that one coming, well, oops!). Everything Paul Jenkins does to make the Sentry interesting, Bendis undoes with every panel he features the character. In my opinion, Bendis (when writing Avengers) takes the absolutel worst periods of the characters pasts, when the writers simply just were pissing on fans, and uses that to define the characters. As for Cho's art, I like attractive people as much as the rest, but that isn't enough to make me keep buying a comic book.

(3) Avengers: the Iniative - despite Dan Slott, I'm still not convinced. There is a cool and interesting notion of 'super-hero GI Joe' going on, but the execution is poor in that you have guys like Guantlet and a contiuation of Marvel saying that the pro-registration heroes have their own 'good side', when editorial clearly believes they don't. But I trust Slott and feel he has a plan, so I'm glad that at least Justice, Hank and Rhodey are in his hands. Art isn't exactly my favorite. I'm here for Slott and the heroes he's picked up. We'll see what happens...

(4) Young Avengers - though I do recognize that this was a great comic, I just can't subscribe to the notion that it was 'one of the industry's best' like so many others. Heinberg's schedule is so inconsistent I'm left with a feeling that I really just don't care. The first six issues were really great, but the second six were merely so-so. Maybe if I reread them all in a row I'll get a better sense of the drama and tension, but the long wait between issues made me lose that. Jim Chueng's art is nothing short of phenominal though, and I've been a huge fan since Psion at Crossgen. Again, I want to love this--but I can't, until I get the sense that Marvel really cares enough to deliver a product with both quality and consistency. Hey, Jack Kirby could do it, and do it brillantly. I see no reason that any artist or writer in comics today cannot.

I think George Perez had a mitigating effect on Shooter's writing, in the same way his work with Marv Wolfman on TITANS was light years ahead of virtually everything else Wolfman ever did with anyone else. Back then, I kept wishing George would have just focused on ONE book-- and it seemed to me, the book he was born to draw was THE AVENGERS. All those incessant fill-ins and blown deadlines really didn't help. (Of course, he was on board for the rape of Ms. Marvel-- I wonder how much of that, if any, was his fault?)

profh011, the way I remember it Michelline wanted the father of the baby be the Supreme Intelligence. Who wanted to a kree-human hybrid.

Shooter did not go for it and plugged in Immortus.

yeah one of the worst issues ever. Nice art though.

Three points to reply to Cob's post:

1) Glanced at the Bendis and Slutt books, didn't like them, didn't expect to, although I'm still flicking through Mighty Avengers and wishing Cho would get back to Liberty Meadows

2) Young Avengers - Heinberg's now announced he'll only co-plot v2/"Season 2". His co-plotter/scripter hasn't been announced yet, but it's been heavily noted that he shares a studio with The Lobe. Oh dear.

3) If you're not reading Marvel Adventures Avengers, you're missing out. I know it's the "kiddie"/non-continuity book, but it's Crazy in a good way, and Just Plain Fun. Like Silver Age without the stuff I find annoying, with a hint of Livewires mixed in. I started with #9 (Everybody Is MODOC) and also especially recommend #11 (The Power of Motivational Speaking When Combined With Snakes on a Quinjet) and #12 (Ego the Loving Planet). Which isn't to say that #10 (Black Knight) and #13 (Giant-Girl (Jan)'s origin, guest-starring Ant-Man) aren't good, just Good rather than Great

"In my opinion, Bendis (when writing Avengers) takes the absolutel worst periods of the characters pasts, when the writers simply just were pissing on fans, and uses that to define the characters."

Oh, like Jim Shooter!


"the way I remember it Michelline wanted the father of the baby be the Supreme Intelligence. Who wanted to a kree-human hybrid. Shooter did not go for it and plugged in Immortus."

Oh, great. Michelinie had a horrible idea, then Shooter made it 10 times worse! Way to go, Shooter.


"wishing Cho would get back to Liberty Meadows"

I put up with SHANNA, but that was my limit. Some people are "too good" to be working for Marvel, in my opinion. They're doing work for Marvel somehow makes the company seem legitimate these days, instead of the dark, sleezy trash-monger they really are.

Meanwhile, I'm SO glad Mike Allred is FINALLY back doing MADMAN-- and Steve Rude is FINALLY back doing NEXUS!

Actually, the reason for the switcheroo was that What If had done a baby-Intelligence Supreme just beforehand. The redone version with Marcus Immortus was, by all accounts, a VERY last minute rewrite.

...And I thought slavegirl Leia had it bad with Jabba the Hutt...!

Cobie, I would be interested to know what you think of Ultimates. Myself, I think it's beautifully drawn but horribly written.

Thanks for the recommendation, Reboot. I'll browse through it next time I'm at the comic shop.

(1) Agreed about Liberty Meadows

(2) Interesting. A co-plotter would be great in theory, but like you say, the idea of Loeb coming on board...oh dear.

(3) Thanks for the reccomendation! I've seen this 100 times and been interested but never gave it a chance. I think I'll take a look--I can always use a fun Avengers book, and I've always thought Storm on the Avengers would be cool (I'm pretty sure I saw her on the covers).

Re: the Ms. Marvel atrocity. If it was never mentioned again (by Marvel, not us) I'd be thankful.

She sorta was very briefly: in the first few pages of Roger Stern's Kang storyarc, we see an alternate-timeline Avengers where Storm and Colossus are members.

"The redone version with Marcus Immortus was, by all accounts, a VERY last minute rewrite."

Hasn't anybody figured out yet that "last-minute rewrites" are DEATH for any series???

I'm sure we can come up with a list of examples... starting with the infamous ARMAGEDDON 2001.

Of course, this also happens in movies... I understand this sort of thing to some degree hurt such films as X-MEN 3, SPIDER-MAN 3 and the infamous HALLOWEEN 6. (As my pal Kevin calls it, "A bastardization of an abortion." It was horribly bad to begin with-- then, after-the-fact, the director made it 10 times worse! HOW could somebody DO a thing like that???)

I'm actually enjoying Mighty Avengers. It's not perfect but I love the art. Bendis gives me enough character moments and lots of action.

All right, this thread has been inactive for way too long. Once again, I ask West Coast Avengers fans to please post your thoughts on the series, because we STILL haven't had an in-depth WCA discussion. Here are all of my opinions on WCA, copied and pasted from earlier posts in this thread (and slightly edited as well.) Do you agree or disagree? I'd like to know.

During his brief time as Avengers chairman, the Vision created a second branch of Avengers, the West Coast Avengers, assigning Hawkeye as leader. The 4-part West Coast Avengers limited series is IMO one of the highlights of the Roger Stern era's first half. Except for Tigra, whom I dislike intensely, the lineup (Hawkeye, Mockingbird, Iron Man, Wonder Man) had good chemistry, Graviton worked as a villain because the team used strategy and smarts to take him down, and I'm of the opinion that Stern wrote Mockingbird better than Steve Englehart would in the ongoing WCA book. In fact, I think Stern's WCA mini-series is better written than anything from any of the writers on the WCA ongoing (Englehart, Byrne, Mr. & Mrs. Thomas) And the art on the WCA mini-series, by Bob Hall and Brett Breeding, is IMO better than any of the art I've seen from the WCA ongoing issues that I've read.

I don't think Englehart's WCA is his best work by any stretch of the imagination, but even Englehart's lesser work has a certain integrity that's lacking in a lot of superhero writing. But even so, it's appropriate that this team nicknamed themselves Whackos, because this was one weird book, balancing the easy-going camaraderie of the team members with a campy, almost retro, tone and the frequent hints at things far more sinister (and often, more than hints). The quirkiness showed in Englehart's later issues of Avengers frequently goes off the scale in WCA. It does gets off to a good start with a storyarc that culminates in the (temporary but still powerful) death of longtime villain the Grim Reaper. But then it goes way off course with all the demons and monsters and cat people and the focus on Tigra...UGH! The stories don't get back on track until the time-travel adventure starting in # 17, but even then I have my reservations, which I'll get into next week. One thing I'll add is that Firebird was an admirable attempt (especially for a mainstream 1980s comic) at developing a character who was both a non-stereotypical Christian and a non-stereotypical Latina.

The only positive things I can say about the WCA art of Al Milgrom and Joe Sinnott is that after the first few issues, Milgrom's pencils went from grotesque to merely mediocre, and that every once in a while Sinnott's inking was up to the standards he had set during the Silver Age and the Bronze Age.

With WCA #17, Steve Englehart finally put an end to the monster mish-mash and sent the team on an eight-issue time travel adventure. This is the best-known story of Englehart's WCA run, and it encapsulates the best and worst of this run. The basic plot mechanics are undeniably clever and diverting, and Joe Sinnott's inking temporarily got better (although he left the book before the storyarc was finished). What on Earth, then, could have possessed Englehart to write in a subplot about Mockingbird being kidnapped, drugged, and raped? It completely ruins the story!

Post-time travel, the book returned to the usual low-key weirdness -- the Zodiac storyarc and the Iron Curtain/Hank's-first-wife-is-alive storyarc were okay-ish (which, for a non-fan of Zodiac like me, is something of an achievement), but not good enough to rise above the art. Sinnott's replacement, Mike Machlan, had done nice work for DC, particularly the early issues of Infinity Inc. But his inking on WCA makes Milgrom's pencils even more mediocre than they already are. Englehart seemed to be gearing up for big changes, dividing the team and bringing in Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Vision...and Mantis! But the usual editorial disagreements brought Englehart's WCA run to an abrupt end.

John Byrne became both writer and artist on WCA, and I refuse to read his issues. Why? Because of what he did to Vision and to Scarlet Witch. The damage to Vision -- the ugly new look and the robotic personality -- was eventually, and very effectively, undone by Bob Harras in Avengers. The damage to Scarlet Witch may have started out as Byrne's typical turn-back-the-clock nonsense -- specifically to rejoin her and Quicksilver with Magneto, just like they were in the early Silver Age -- but the long-term reprecussions were disastrous. Byrne's story directly influenced Bendis (and Bendis has confirmed this in interviews) to turn Wanda evil. And for that, Byrne can never be forgiven.

In an amusing irony, Byrne's exit from WCA was just as abrupt as Englehart's, and it was caused by similar editorial disagreements (specifically, both writers clashed with Marvel's then-EiC, Tom DeFalco.) Byrne's replacements were the husband-and-wife team of Roy Thomas & Dann Thomas. I've only read a few of their issues, mainly the ones that tied into Operation Galactic Storm and Bloodties, and found them to be lazy and by-the-numbers. WCA was cancelled at the end of the Thomases' run, making the book one which arguably never found any sort of peak, despite running for almost a decade.

I'll get back to this a bit later - my WCA/AWC reading is a bit spotty, and a while back at that.

The ending of the series was rushed as hell though - you've got the Death of Mockingbird, which appeared to be a 100th issue stunt for a sales boost. Then you've got a crossover (Bloodties) issue which has absolutely no connection to the previous issue (except in that Mockingbird was obviously absent). And then DnA were brought in to restart the flagging book under a new title, with a last issue which was almost pure deck-clearing as a result (Although, while far less satisfying to read, probably worked better for sales than giving them eight issues to fill/deck-clear before giving them the new #1).

Then they killed off Wonder Man . Who, as we've previously discussed, got brought back by Busiek as if nothing in WCA/AWC or later/elsewhere had ever happened.

I think I jumped in on the Byrne bandwagon, and ended up finding USAgent to be a pretty darn compelling character (more so than Captain America, which is probably sixteen different brands of heresy, considering that if anyone admitted to me that they liked Guy Gardner better than Kyle or John Stewart, I'd be tempted to flee in horror).

There were a lot of interesting standalone issues, such as That Which Prevails, something that Byrne does pretty well, but there wasn't much of a compelling arc, and Byrne has a habit of forgetting what he's done in the previous story and end up unintentionally treading and retreading the same damn story. Wanda in particular got soundly crapped upon, issue after issue, and I don't think Byrne *meant* to do that, but it happened nonetheless. It seemed like four arcs right in a row utterly decimated the poor woman (kids wiped from existence, husband discombobulated, possessed by critters, kidnapped to be the bride of Set, blah-blah).

In retrospect, Byrne's reputation for misogyny probably didn't get any favors from his treatment of both Wanda and Tigra in this set of stories. He didn't hold back on dumping on the menfolk either (USAgent having his parents murdered, for instance), but even then it looked bad to me and I didn't have any idea yet what 'Women in Refrigerators' meant.

I was fond of the Hank Pym character, as in the one who no longer called himself Yellow-Ant-Giant-Goliath-Man. He no longer exists, but it was an interesting notion.

I didn't mind the pale Vision, since he definitely didn't seem to be emotionless (and, frankly, I liked the ghostly coloration better than than Vision as the ghost-of-christmas in red, green and yellow), just lacking in some of his memories. It had the potential to be an interesting arc, but, like Carol Danvers and her emotional plunderage, was pretty much handled off-screen, ignored, and then gotten rid of when it proved inconvenient, much like his new coloration. I kinda loathe how terrified comics execs are of change. Spider-Man can't change his costume for more than a year. Professor X's back can't stay unbroken for more than 10 issues. If someone's powers change, they will inevitably change back. If someone cuts their hair into a funky mohawk and changes their entire demeanor, they'll be back to the old style within a year. I imagine that Scott Summers will have his glasses on within the year, despite being freaking cured, and that Rogue will never learn to control her powers, despite a half-dozen ways to control her power having been floated past her.

As relates to WCA, we've got Wanda, developed to become a parent, and then retconned back into being a non-parent, we've got Vision, changed and then changed back, we've got Hank Pym, abandoning his character growth to revert to Yellowjacket. Grr. It's like being a Legion fan all over again. Spend years growing along with Garth and Imra, and then watch them endlessly rebooted, their kid(s), their marriage, their entire *history* retconned out of existence, again and again.

For all that Byrne seemed to take a sadistic childlike glee in smacking Wanda around, he also gave her some of her most impressive moments, I thought. At one point, she is standing in front of the military complex in which her husband was dissassembled, and she points at it and the whole building just collapses into a pile of rubble and dust. The blurb is something like (paraphrasing), "Wanda has no idea what impossibly long odds it would be that every structural support, every brick of concrete and beam of steel, every spot of paint and spool of cable, would all fail exactly at the same moment. Nor does she care. She wants this building to die, and die it does."

She also has one pretty buff moment when the team is exploring the new information that the Vision is *not* actually composed of the body of the WWII era Human Torch, as previously believed. The Avengers are at the grave of said Torch, Hammond, and gabbing about how it can't be possible and blither-blather about if the robot is actually in the grave or not and Wanda, who is still freaking out about her husband being ripped open like a crackerjack box yells at them to shut up, waves her hands and reactivates the Human Torch robot, who has been inactive in this grave for about 50 years or so.

He comes bursting up on fire from his grave and she walks away, satisfied that he clearly isn't her husband, with the rest of the team is giving her a look like, 'uh, I guess *raising the dead* is one way to check who'se in the grave...'

But while I like many of the characters chosen, the stories were uneven and the artwork was appalling after Byrne left, prompting me to drop the comic like a hot potato when the WCA started fighting cactus people and gila monsters and embodiments of the four primal forces or whatever. Man, it got cheesy, almost as bad as the run on the normal Avengers where Gilgamesh got beaten up by lava monsters and the hydrobase got blown up by giant robots that appeared for the apparent sole purpose of blowing up hydrobase, 'cause the writers were tired of it...

I'm pretty sure one of the Shogun Warriors enemies showed up in there, Dr. Demonicus, or something. All we needed was a visit from Rom, Spaceknight to cement the descent into madness.

I've been reading and enjoying this topic, and, although it's been at least 10 years since I reread my WCAvengers issues, I will contribute in the hope of encouraging others to do so.

West Coast Avengers dates from the one period in my life in which I was buying a lot of Marvel titles. I only started buying Marvel-Universe series after the DC Implosion devastated my reading list, and I gave up on everything except Peter David's Hulk sometime before the "Heroes Reborn" fiasco -- and stopped buying Hulk when PAD left.

The stories in WCA may have been less ambitious than Englehart's other work of that period, but his issues certainly did have a quirky feel that was different from just about any other superhero title of the period.

My favorite character was probably "Dr. Pym, Scientific Adventurer!" Using Pym particles to shrink or enlarge anything except himself - at the time, I wished more had been done with this.

I didn't dislike Tigra the way Stealth does, but I'll admit that the cat-demon business got more panel time than it deserved.

Character Note That Some People May Care About: the Iron Man that was in the WCA was James Rhodes, not Tony Stark.

I will agree that, as far as I can remember, the art during the Englehart run was never better than average.

Memorable Moments:

-The conclusion of the Dr. Doom storyarc (in which the real Doom contended with the brainwashed-into-believing-he-was-Doom Kristoff for control of Latveria and the loyalty of the Doombots): the real Doom, in a rare show of maturity, acknowledged that maybe he'd made some not-so-good decisions lately. The listening Doombots take this admission as evidence that he must be the phony, and throw their support behind Kristoff once and for all.

-West Coast Avengers had one of my all-time favorite fill-in issues (yeah, a dubious distinction I know, but work with me here ), in which interdimensional would-be invaders abduct the WCA, as a representative sample of Earth's defense forces, and make each of them face a robot warrior in single combat. Dr. Pym defeated his opponent by shrinking it down to the size of a bug and STEPPING on it!!

I dropped the title sometime after Byrne came on board, being seriously unimpressed with the story ideas he brought to the book.

I've been hoping the last couple days someone would start this back up again! I've read about the first 70 issues of this book-- not in the proper sequence (which doesn't help), but only once, ages ago, so it's easier for me to respond to comments than post new ones.


"Except for Tigra, whom I dislike intensely"

Is it the character, or the way she's handled? I keep thinking of that 2-parter by Shooter & Weiss where Shooter turned her into a wimpy coward! (WTF was that guy's problem??? I know, we've all asked that question before.) A shame, as I sometimes liked her, particularly when she turned up near the end of Roy Thomas' 2nd run on the FF (where she seemed as goofy as Hellcat often used to be).


"And the art on the WCA mini-series, by Bob Hall and Brett Breeding, is IMO better than any of the art I've seen from the WCA ongoing issues that I've read."

If memory serves, the WCA mini was almost like a sequel to the HAWKEYE mini, art by the same guys, where Hawkeye first met Mockingbird, fell in love and wound up getting married all in one story! (Shades of DHARMA AND GREG.)


"I don't think Englehart's WCA is his best work by any stretch of the imagination"

Steve had been my #1 favorite comics writer of the 1970's. He always seemed like the ONE guy of that era who could write just about any book better than anyone else. It was a real blow when he quit Marvel, then left comics altogether. When he came back, his work was very uneven. COYOTE started out brilliant, then devolved into "WTF?"-ness. His FF and WCA wavered from pretty good to pretty BAD. His run on GREEN LANTERN / GREEN LANTERN CORPS really seemed inspired-- until Joe Staton took off to do MILLENNIUM, at which point everything seemed to degenerate. I loved his early SILVER SURFER-- was hurt by the editorial interference (which he later denied on his website), and thought his last year on the book was "readable"-- but that was about it. Much better than his last year on the FF.


"What on Earth, then, could have possessed Englehart to write in a subplot about Mockingbird being kidnapped, drugged, and raped? It completely ruins the story!"

That had to do with the original GHOST RIDER, didn't it? Talk about destroying the reputation for a long-standing hero! I still don't know what was going on there.


"John Byrne became both writer and artist on WCA, and I refuse to read his issues. Why? Because of what he did to Vision and to Scarlet Witch."

It's a horrible shame. I was so far behind on my reading, I actually STARTED reading WCA with Byrne's issues, then went back later to read the entire Englehart run. At the time, I thought Byrne's art was top-notch, and his writing (style) was still decent. But WHAT he was writing-- again-- "WTF????" What's the point of drawing a really hot Scarlet Witch if you're gonna treat her THAT way?


"considering that if anyone admitted to me that they liked Guy Gardner better than Kyle or John Stewart, I'd be tempted to flee in horror"

Heh. Funny... under Englehart, Guy Gardner developed a bad attitude via some form of brain-damage. Then Keith Giffen came along, and in JLI, turned that "brain-damaged" personality into one of the highlights of the book. (Some things work better when they're funny-- like JJJ.) But in the last 2 years, Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons have genuinely written the BEST Guy Gardner I've ever seen. Especially when Gibbons is also doing the art!


"Rogue will never learn to control her powers, despite a half-dozen ways to control her power having been floated past her"

Rogue was a MAJOR sore point for me way back when she was first introduced. After she joined the X-Men, I could not believe that Professor X NEVER (in any stories I read) even tried to find a way to help her control her power, since that seemed one of the main points of being an X-Man was about! (That was over 20 years ago, I admit, but it's still a valid complaint.)


"the artwork was appalling after Byrne left"

Yeah, I agree with that. Ironic, isn't it, considering how long Byrne has caught hell for HIS art going bad in the years since.


"Mike Machlan, had done nice work for DC, particularly the early issues of Infinity Inc. But his inking on WCA makes Milgrom's pencils even more mediocre than they already are."

I could never understand that. A LOT of inkers have done GREAT work at DC and C*** work at Marvel. Editorial incompetence? Brett Breeding once told me of how his Spidey editor used to let pages sit on his desk for weeks at a time, instead of looking them over and passing them on to the next stage of the assembly-line immediately. As a result, by the time he got 'em, they were already late, and his 2 choices were blown deadlines or rushed-looking art, which hurt his reputation. Then again, Al Milgrom USED to be a decent artist in the 70's (and I see he's doing good work again these days). But when Shooter was in charge, for whatever reason, Milgrom became one of the WORST artists at Marvel. I suppose his work dragged down both Sinnott AND Machlan-- and good as he was, Machlan was no Sinnott. (Who is?)

Being even more of an Avengers fan than even a Legion fan, it's time I add my views on all this.

New Avengers still isn't my cup of tea, even though Civil War has now stirred things up a bit and AT LAST something is happening in the book. But this is the Defenders, not the Avengers. Bendis still can't write a team book after all this time, but as long as the title sells, we won't have a return back to the "real" Avengers.

Mighty Avengers could be a great book. The team is a good mix, but once again, Bendis prefers spending time ridiculising Hank Pym than writing a good script with the characters he uses. He can't even write proper thought balloons. And I agree, Cho should go back to Liberty Meadows. This way, I wouldn't have to suffer through his art in Avengers. It's not a good match

Initiative is a very interesting book. Loads of potential and certainly very well written. Still it neeeds to find the right balance. Getting there though. But Slott has my vote only for redeeming Hank Pym, the most wronged character in a Marvel Comic book.

Young Avengers: The best of the lot! I'm so looking forward to the second season, even if it's only co-written by Heinberg.

Marvel Adventures Avengers: Great book showing how Wolverine and Spider-Man can really work in the Avengers. Bendis, take some notes please!

Ultimates... OK, the 26 issues by Millar were just great. Now, I'm really scared to see volume 3 by Loeb, whom I consider a very overrated writer

profh0011 The thing here is when the comic inevitably comes out with the retcon that Professor X was always an evil manipulative prick (a la the new version of the Doom Patrol's Chief), suddenly his apparent unwillingness to ever actually help characters like Rogue and Scott, which we've seen that characters like Emma, Jean and Magneto can cure *like that,* turns out to be just Charles being a controlling ass and keeping them under his thumb by forbidding them any chance of actually ever leaving and living a normal life.

I know that in a 'meta' sense it was nothing of the sort, at the time, and Charles didn't flex his mighty frontal lobe and retrain his wards to be able to control their powers in about the same amount of time it would take him to teach them to speak an alien language fluently was because the story demanded that Cyclops retain his trademark glasses and Rogue have something emo to whine about with the whole, 'I can't screw Gambit, but really want to, please pity me' character theme. [Add Wolverine and Storm and, more recently, the Beast, to the list of X-folk with mental conditions that Chuck could have helped with, if not actually snapped his fingers and cured, if he had the slightest inclination to actually do so...]

But nowadays, it's 'cool' to turn old long-standing 'heroes' into mustachio-twirling manipulative bastards, with Charles, Reed and Tony at the head of the wannabe-a-supervillain class, so I'm just waiting to read that inevitable bit of character assassination, disguised as 'character development.'

Anywho, my point was that character development, character growth, character *change,* is not a bad thing. Quesada has stated openly that he wants to kill off Mary-Jane and return Spider-Man to being an unmarried geeky no-luck-but-bad-luck sort of fellow, that he feels Spidey being married somehow detracts from the character. Didio has stated openly that he wants to kill of Nightwing, since he doesn't think that there is any room for a character that isn't Robin anymore. As long as reactionary twits like this remain in charge, viewing the characters as inflexible static forever-changeless IPs and 'properties' and 'trademark / icons,' they are never going to be able to grow and develop. If they'd been in charge at the beginning, the Hulk would still be grey (as would Iron Man), Reed and Sue never would have married, Garth and Imra never would have had a kid, Gwen Stacy never would have died, the Silver Surfer would still be trapped on Earth, Hank Pym would be Giant-Man, etc. since they *fear change.*

I never really read much WCA, except a few issues here and there, though I came in on the last 25 or so of the series. I have to say, at the time, I thought it wasn't that bad, considering what else was being offered by Marvel, DC, Image, Valiant and Dark Horse. I found myself at first hating the line-up, but then growing fond of US Agent, Spider-Woman (Julia), Rhodey as War Machine and even Darkhawk when he was appearing. Of course, Hawkeye had his second run as Goliath II, which was absurd, and Wanda was never really written right in the 90’s. But overall, it wasn’t *too* bad, though I have to really reread the issues to give it an honest review. I remember reading the Mockingbird death issue, but at the time, I hardly knew who she was (I didn’t read her stories until a few years after I read her death). Honestly, I’m largely ambivalent about the character now, as I like Hawkeye as an unmarried man, and don’t see what made her unique in comparison to a hundred other similar characters.

I did read Force Works when it came out, and I remember then thinking it wasn’t that great. The art was over the top, Wonder Man was killed VERY poorly, Century was a bit of an odd character that has been completely ignored. But on the other hand, US Agent had a cool new costume, there was a Recorder with an interesting subplot, and Iron Man was well done here IIRC. There was an early sense by DnA that they were carving out their own little corner of the Avengers-MU, and it was working. Then came along the Crossing, which completely destroyed the book. Tony was ruined, of course, but also there was an odd subplot about an inserted-into-continuity hero named Moonraker with a relationship with Julia or Wanda or something, and it pretty much fell flat from there.

I honestly think part of the reason Avengers West Coast isn’t being clamored for by fans is because the title of the comic seems slightly ‘meh’. In my opinion, in order for such a comic to stand on its own, it needs a very real separation from the main Avengers title, but having a ‘West Coast Avengers’ team kind of implies that its working in unison with the East Coast. Even at age 11 I thought it was kind of weak.

So yeah, I never read the Englehart or Byrne issues, and I’ve got to say…I’m not sure I want to now

PS - in other news, Mighty and New Avengers continue to reach new levels of hack writing. Man, Bendis has really dropped the ball here.

I followed West Coast Avengers from the beginning until sometime after Byrne’s tenure. I think I stopped with # 78. What do I remember about WCA after all this time? I think it was an unnecessary title that turned out pretty well. Unnecessary because it was part of Marvel’s inflated expansion of the mid ‘80s: mini-series, X-Factor, New Universe, etc. – projects that seemed generated through marketing instead of creative vision. Actually, if there was a creative vision at all, it seemed to be Jim Shooter’s idea of the Big Bang: expand as rapidly as possible in as many directions as possible. The end result was a watered-down line of comics without any real thought as to what made each title unique.

WCA started out in this vein. The characters were all second-stringers -- Hawkeye, Mockingbird, Wonder Man, Tigra, Jim Rhoades as Iron Man – who were suddenly elevated to star status. “Second stringers” may not be the best term; they were actually supporting characters who added flavor to the regular Avengers title, but lacked the substance to be truly important to it. I expected their own book to be about the same: All frosting and no cake.

But thanks to Steve Englehart, WCA turned out to be a fun, engaging, and sometimes even insightful read – often more so than the regular Avengers book. It’s been years since I’ve read those stories, so my memories are vague (Wonder Man becoming an actor; Master Pandemonium, etc.). The only story that truly stands out is Englehart’s “Lost in Space-Time” arc. As Stealth mentioned above, the story telling mechanics were clever and that alone made it memorable to me. But Englehart went further by bringing in Firebird as a Christian who counsels Hank Pym out of suicide, and then by having Mockingbird be raped by and then kill the Phantom Rider.

I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t really matter what happens to characters – it’s how they respond to their circumstances that makes a story compelling and reveals character (and, therefore, reveals truths about the human experience). Both of these story lines tackled real and tragic problems: Friends sometimes do try to kill themselves (and sometimes succeed), even those you would never expect; women sometimes are raped, even “strong” and “independent” women. The fact that these circumstances happened to characters we care about makes these stories significant, in my opinion: How the characters reacted to their circumstances tells us a little about ourselves.

Hank Pym’s story line had a positive outcome. He came to realize that suicide wasn’t the answer (and kudos to Englehart for Firebird’s role in this; people often come to such a decision through spiritual or faith intervention). Furthermore, he came to accept himself as a “plainclothes” scientist who made *other* things grow and shrink. I viewed this as a metaphor for any number of conditions (physical, spiritual, sexual, etc.) that people have trouble accepting in themselves. (This is why it’s hard for me to accept Hank returning to his Giant-Man identity; it’s like saying, “Now that you’ve accepted being gay, you can go back to being straight.”)

Mockingbird’s story turned out differently. She sought revenge (understandably) and took it to its final conclusion, but the consequences devastated her and her marriage. I don’t recall if Hawkeye knew fully what had happened to her, but he could not abide a wife who had murdered. His reaction mirrored that of many men whose wives and partners make similar, life-altering decisions. (I remember equating Mockingbird’s actions and Clint’s reaction to abortion, which was major news at the time.) Whether it was right or wrong for him to feel this way was left to the reader to decide. But Hawkeye and Mockingbird became very human characters as a result of this story line; Englehart forced the reader to question his or her own attitudes about life, death, and the relationships of men and women.

WCA/ACW never again reached similar heights for me – certainly not during Byrne’s sloppy re-plastering job, in which bad things seemed to happen just because they were bad things. After Byrne left, the stories became standard super-hero fare. I remember the Living Lightning (whom I thought of as a Hispanic stereotype) and the unnecessary resurrection of the original Human Torch, and little else.

Though my memories of the early WCA, are vague, my impressions of it are fond. In some ways, it truly rose above the mediocre expectations I had for it. I think it helped that Englehart kept a consistent core membership: this allowed him to take chances in character development that would have been impractical in the regular Avengers title. Byrne’s practice of rotating the membership between the two Avengers books destroyed WCA's uniqueness. The book already had a fragile identity to begin with; after Byrne, it seemed to have no identity at all.

"The thing here is when the comic inevitably comes out with the retcon that Professor X was always an evil manipulative prick (a la the new version of the Doom Patrol's Chief)"

I'm SURE Arnold Drake would not have appreciated that...


"the story demanded that Cyclops retain his trademark glasses and Rogue have something emo to whine about"

I just call it, "BAD WRITING".


"Quesada has stated openly that he wants to kill off Mary-Jane and return Spider-Man to being an unmarried geeky no-luck-but-bad-luck sort of fellow, that he feels Spidey being married somehow detracts from the character."

They ALREADY killed off Mary Jane (when John Byrne was doing the book-- or should I say SCREWING OVER the book?). That's why I not only stopped reading it, I swore off EVER reading it again, no matter what they did or who they got to do it. Enough was enough.


"If they'd been in charge at the beginning...Gwen Stacy never would have died"

We can blame JOHN ROMITA (and by extension, his hero Milton Caniff) for that bit. If not for that, Pete & GWEN might have been married since the early 70s, as-- possibly-- Stan Lee intended when he shoved MJ aside in favor of Gwen for ALL those issues in the first place.


"the Silver Surfer would still be trapped on Earth"

We can thank Stan Lee for all the YEARS he was trapped on Earth. There's a reason I like Steve Englehart's writing as much as I do...!


"the title of the comic seems slightly ‘meh’"

That's nothing. You should read (OR MAYBE NOT!!!) the 12-issue VISION AND SCARLET WITCH series Englehart did. AWFUL!!!!!


"Actually, if there was a creative vision at all, it seemed to be Jim Shooter’s idea of the Big Bang: expand as rapidly as possible in as many directions as possible. The end result was a watered-down line of comics without any real thought as to what made each title unique."

Well put. It could be directly connected with something Bill Black of AC Comics described. After the "direct" market became such a success for so many smaller companies, the "big 2" decided to barge their way in. Result? Stores happily buying everything they possibly could from "the big 2", and not having any money left to order books from EVERYBODY ELSE. The people who made the "direct" market a success got screwed over by the unrelenting GREED of the bigger companies. they don't want competition, they don't want free enterprise, they want it ALL. To me, that's not "business"-- that lack of morality.


"bad things seemed to happen just because they were bad things"

In the wake of Frank Miller's 2nd DD run, it seemed like everybody was trying to follow his "example". Like-- "Hey-- WE can do something like THAT!"

WCA

I loved this book. So many character moments/arcs. Hawkeye as leader, Bobbi killing the Phantom Rider, Wonder Man's confidence, the competitive sparring between Iron Man and Wonder Man, Firebird(!), Tigra's mission to kill Master Panda! and most importantly DR. PYM!!!

While Stern/Buscema were on Avengers I did feel like this was the more "fun" book. It seemed like "Avengers On Vacation". They were in Hollywood and characters like Wonder Man and Tigra were living it up. From Wonder Man's horrible costume to his black/red costume.

Most importantly Steve Engleheart knew how to fix HANK PYM. Not Ant-Man, Yellow Jacket, Goliath or Giant-Man. No, he fixed Hank. He didn't try to figure out a way to bring YJ back. I can go on and on about Hank but I still cringe seeing him in the YJ costume. I loved how they used him in BEYOND! As Dr. Pym scientific adventurer.

Marvel characters are known for their weaknesses. Let Hank live with his. I prefer him not changing size unless a dire emergency.

AWC? Hey, I liked it. I guess as a kid I always thought Vision/Scarlet Witch as a mutant with a toaster.