1. 60s

2. 70s

3. 80s

4. 90s

5. 00s



Vote now, Vote quick, Vote HARD!

the cover line ups are a bit incorrect.

I love the details like the upper left corner faces on the 80s cover but ... I'm not a fan of Captain America being a cover hog.

The line up with the character modeled after me. Of course.

I've always been a fan of 'Cap's Kooky Quartet' of Captain America, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.

So, definitely the choice that lets me have three out of four of those! Also, Wonder Man & the Beast! Woo!

Although I'm also a fan of Pym, so the first cover appeals to me, and of Monica Rambeau and the She-Hulk, so it's not easy!

The only one that's an auto-lose is the one with Spider-Man and Wolverine on it. Of the six people on that cover, only Captain America and Ms. Marvel feel like Avengers, to me.

I think the 90s line up with Sersi and Crystal is pretty popular here.

The Busiek/ Perez run was probably my favourite line up. That captures a lot of the essence of #2

I'd be interested to hear why the Sersi/Crytal line up was popular, as it's not one I've really read much of.

I agree that the last one doesn't feel at all like an Avengers team. Unless you want to avenge something by unleashing a pointy clawed psycho on it of course.

Lineup number 2 is closest to my ideal Avengers. I'd put it right up there with the classic Bronze Age X-Men lineup(s) from GS # 1, right on thru Rogue joining.

What is your ideal Avengers? curious now.

Pretty much lineup 2. Maybe add Iron Man and Thor or rotate them in and out. T'Challa is negotiable. I would mix and match in some faves from other eras, but I'd be pretty damn satisified with the 2nd lineup above. Beast, for example, made a SO much better Avenger than he ever did an X-Man. Not even close!

Count me among those that hold this group as my fave. Just like I love the JLI group.

The Vision/ Wonder Man/ Scarlet Witch triangle
Captain America
Ms Marvel
Iron Man

I can take or leave Thor, but he could rotate along with Panther, a Pym and a Hawkeye.

I'd probably prefer Carol in there as well. Many of those elements being together is probably why I enjoyed the Busiek/Perez run. Needed some Beast, though.

yeah, he did pop up in one issue of the run if my memory cell is working. It was a decent one too.

The Sersi/Crystal lineup was the 5YL of the Avengers. It sold poorly and got a lot of bad reactions at the time, but those who liked it (and I'm proud to say I'm one of them) will always give a passionate defense of it. It was dark and decidedly different. It was sexy and stylish. And it was a breath of fresh air after four years in a row of the book floundering post-Roger Stern.

As for my ideal Avengers, it hasn't been invented yet.

I like that we're calling it the Sersi/Crystal lineup, because, to me, that's really what it was. Sersi, hands down the most powerful Avenger ever (well, before Superma... er, Sentry), and Crystal, who 'only' has the powers of Terra, Storm, the Human Torch, etc.

And some other dudes. One has a shield. One has a sword. And there's that dude I don't even recognize. Whatever.

It reminds me of that Avengers lineup that had Dr. Strange and a bunch of street-level people like Hawkeye and Echo or whatever. The Sorcerer Supreme (who once knocked out Galactus with a spell)! Also starring, his ninja henchmen / backup dancers, who, on a good day, can take out *three* armed goons at the same time! Woo!

Also I think story line wise, this era focused on Sersi and Crystal + Black Knight.

Herc was kind of a Hulk Smash character.

Which is sad because he got a lot of great treatment earlier (in the "80s" era with his interaction with the Wasp and Namor)

The 80s era itself, which was my favorite and probably will always be. The art! Buscema! and the characterization!

Captain Marvel 2, Wasp as a leader, a great new Ant Man, Jarvis even had a story line! There was a lot of growth that happened during this series. the lien up was pretty revolving though and if I had a criticism of the era it would be that characters were in and out, often because of other story lines in their own books. grrr.

Did the Black Knight ever get to use his sword on crooks?

It's always seemed so limiting that he would have to use the hilt to knock people unconscious or pray that he'd come up against robots, or mindless monsters or zombies that he could just wade into.

I have the same problem with the Persuader. An axe that cuts through anything, yet never does more than a scratch to any of the main characters he's trying to kill.

Imagine the shock if he had decapitated Star Boy in the last arc.
Much in the same way that we would always see the Legion manage to escape form all those cruiser crashes and explosions,. until one of them didn't trying to save the others.

Still, pointy clawed psycho gets away with it I suppose. How do the other Avengers bear to have him in the same room?

...bringing us nicely back on thread.

The Black Knight had a sword that shot a laser for a while ... and his original sword reflected magic and energy beams acting like a shield.

In my favorite line up, the characterization of everyone was so good that he was focused on more for his intelligence than his sword, and even was next to a guy with a shield most of the time ... which is basically the same character.

There are some ancient now, issues of Dr Strange with the Black Knight's sword having a blood lust that drove him mad and he had to learn to control it.


So Dane is a bit different than Wolverine, he was a lot more about not killing people with his sword. He had a robot flying steed too.

If you were a citizen of ComicWorld, you'd be more worried about the guy running down the street waving a sword about.

But, the Black Knight is probably one of the least dangerous around.

Not slighting the Black Knight. It's a character I've just not seen enough of. I did read some old Captain Britain issues where he got to fight mystical things.

My experience of him as an Avenger was probably more as part of the team that had Doctor Druid in it. So not that great.

[Dr. Druid inspired tangent]
It's one of my many inconsistencies that, sometimes, I just love the 'jerk' characters like Dr. Druid (who was never quite as bad as he was described on-line, I found, and I wonder how much of that was down to him being a pretty non-traditional body-type and age for a hero, obviously late-middle-aged, balding, overweight, all characteristics associated with villains or mad scientists, not superheroes) or Moondragon or Namor or Quicksilver.

But when characters already established for decades as non-jerks, like Brainy, turn into mega-jerks, I hate that...

Gates curmudgeonly personality, for instance, can be a breath of fresh air, on a team full of generally nice people. And, since Gates wasn't a new character, it didn't crap on decades of previous characterization.
[/Dr. Druid inspired tangent]

The dude I didn't recognize was Hercules? Wow. Very different look for him, that, IMO, does him no favors. Him and Thunderstrike on the same team seems a little redundant, as well, although I've never minded Vision and Wonder Man on the same team, and would have loved Thor and Hercules on the same team (as they play so well off each other) or Hercules and Namor on the same team (again, because of the titanic ego-clashage) so I'll shut up now.

Being an art snob, I really don't know much about that Avengers era, because I rarely could pull the trigger and buy it. Given the time period, I may have been spending all my money on shiny, shiny Image art.

btw I think ages ago when talking about Cassady's Astonishing X-Men I said he wasn't my favorite artist but he was great great great at break downs and story telling.

I am reminded of that in these covers. They're nice but the characters are all a bit stiff and cover work dosn't show off Cassaday's great graphic story telling ability.

IMO.

I've never read an Avengers comic but I voted for the 70s one.

That's my favourite era in comics and I like the look of that combination of characters so I'm sure some fun, groovy stories we told with them.

Weirdly enough I was tempted to vote for the 90s one too. Weird because I generally hate comics from the 90s and especially hate the artists and art style that Marvel had in the 90s; which unfortunately DC is utilising and imitating in the 10s. But that line-up looks pretty groovy too. Who knew Lyle had escaped from that Dream Dimension or whatever, chowed down the 'roids and moved to the Marvel Universe?

That was a link of Herculean proportions

he he.

Blacula, A few of us had a re read of that era of Avengers. It was new to me.

Dev, Fanfic Lass and I reviewed and Cobie and others chimed in.

I read the suggested issues:

Originally posted by Fanfic Lady:
Yay Peebs!

" I would recommend, though, reading the entire Harras/Epting run chronologically. Leaving out the fill-in issues by other creators, the run consists of: 334-339, 343-351, 355-369, and 372-375. They're all easy to find cheap. Happy reading. " - Fanfic Lass

But Dev did a whole lot more.

The thread with the reviews is here:

Starts somewhat here:

http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=517070&page=74

Gets going on the next page by me and Dev starts kicking but later and ends about page 90.


For some reason, I think you might actually like this run of Avengers.

Also, I just had a great time rereading our reviews! so much fun!

Hercules was not a Hulk Smash character during that era. Hercules has never been more eloquent, or more noble , or less of a clown, than he was during that era. Even when Stern was writing him, he could be clownish and pig-headed. That's why I like him in the early 90s so much -- it was as if he had learned from his bad behavior in the 80s and the beating from the Masters of Evil that it earned him. Remember when characters actually evolved instead of changing arbitrarily to satisfy the egos of writers?

I agree in the beginning but then he started taking a back seat.

I was talking about towards the end of he run ... these issues specifically

Those were fill-in issues by a different writer, and they came out in the middle of the run, not towards the end.

Sorry to be so pedantic, but that's how passionate I am about that era.

I am quite passionate about some things myself ... the premiere of Agents of SHIELD for one.

and Ru Paul's Drag Race.

I'm surprised Sersi hasn't inspired more drag queens.

That seems like a LOT of fill-ins by guest creators and two or three issues at a time! Did Epting draw all of the 34 issues listed? Is this the entirety of Harras's Avengers scripting for that run? And do any of the issues listed include the "Blood Ties" stories?

I'd have to find the thread where I reviewed this era. There were a few 1 - 3 issue breaks. Some were really jarring in quality.

I believe Blood Ties is in there...

Fanfie would know better than I about Epting...but if he did not do all of the issues above, it's really damn close.

BAM! Yeah 2 to 3 issues at a time ... seems like a lot for fill ins ... it could have been great actually to have a good guest writer and artist do a short take on this crew but ... they were mostly bad ... and by bad .... i mean really really bad ...

I was chuckling at my own review of one saying it was the worst comic I had ever read. Totally a shame because the regular series was great. Seems hard to keep a following.

Lardy, I can tell you right off the top of my head that Epting drew #335-339, 341-342 (guest written by Fabian Nicieza), 343-347, 349-350, 355-361, 363-366, 368, part of 369, and 372-375.

My way of looking at the fill-in writer breaks and the guest artists is that if that's what it took for Harras & Epting to do their best work, then so be it.

And Harras did keep writing Avengers for about a year and half after Epting left, but unfortunately the quality of his writing quickly nosedived. After all these years, I'm still trying to figure out how the same writer could be both so great and so terrible.

That must have been before you read some New 52s! I mean those Avengers fill-ins would probably look like frickin' CLASSICS now in comparison!!!

Ticks me off that I want this cover, but the shop near me had it too expensive for my rational mind. Maybe it has gone down by now.

Hate to say this, but that's really kind of a bad cover! I mean....look at it! How are they supposed to be in that pose, anyway? Are they all supposed to be in some impossible cheerleader triangle balancing on Thunderstrike's back?!?! yeah, I know he could hold them all up---but would they be able to pose like THAT?!?!

I know, I know--artistic license, blah-blah-blah and all that---but IT BUGS ME!!!!!

I think they're coming out of a portal. Norse boy out first to take care of the welcoming committee and their feeble attempts at peace and cakes.

But the portal is slowly rising...and temporally distorted, so the others come out as you see them.

Except for Cap. He's in an inter-dimensional portal. No one can see. Time for some ballet practice.

So, levitating space-time portal anomaly ballet. Simple really.

Group shots are always whacky, because of composition needs.

Sometimes fliers are running, other times people who can't fly are caught mid-leap over everyone else, and it looks like they are flying, and the team speedster is somehow running at tremendous superhuman speed (based on his trail) and yet is always just barely keeping up with the normal dudes who are running in slow motion (same with teleporters, using their amazing power to cross miles in the blink of an eye to catch up with the athletic dude who is running)... I even remember seeing one where Aqualad was 'swimming' through the air, just to balance out the picture.

As I have said before ... I think earlier in this thread ... is that Cassaday is not the greatest cover artist, and by not the greatest, he's a bit wonky. (which is why it is weird he got this job instead of like ... anyone else ... people are usually better at covers than story telling)

Cassaday's paneling is genius though.

I think that's ok because its like they're taking a photo and the teleporter popps in at just the right time as the camera takes the photo .... same with the speeder running up just in time ... after the snap he or she is miles past the camera man.




as for Aqua Lad .... some covers are just abstract. ha ha

It's not my favorite of the covers that he did...but I like that lineup, so I want that cover.

The covers are a bit shy on the eras ... I liked this line up:

Can't argue with the love triangle + the 3 big guns + captain marvel + the Pyms.

I can take or leave Quicksilver + triathlon though.

I'd keep a non crazy Quicksilver but I like how this era and slightly before it introduced a younger generation ... <despite not really liking Triathalon>

This line up was not so shabby either:

Is that Songbird in that line up? Marvel's equivalent to the Adult Legion stories.

Yep, Songbird.

I like She-Hulk and Captain Marvel 2 (Monica), but also like Crystal and Sersi, and both the Scarlet Witch and Miss Marvel, so this was a tough one for me. In the end, Jen/Monica eased out the other gals.

I am digging that new avatar.

Ooh, a definite favorite line up! Avengers Forever was awesome, and I loved seeing Genis and Melissa on the team!

And any team that, through temporal shenanigans, has *two* Hank Pyms on it, well, that's just a bonus.

I also love how, in that very picture, Wasp pretty much assumes command, while Captain America just stands there and approves.



Replace Triathalon in that picture with the Beast, and I'd be all for it.

I don't mind Triathalon (and really like his powers, if not his red and green costume...), I just don't really see him as belonging with that particular line up. A team of Avengers who never really got their chance to shine, including him, Silverclaw, Justice, Firestar, Living Lightning, Rage, etc. could be interesting. There are a lot of Avengers who always seemed kind of peripheral to the core team, and they might really get a chance to shine on a team without the old standbys of Thor, Cap, Tony, etc.

I think he's just dozed off waiting for Rick Jones to shut up.

Either that or those feathers on his head are tuners and he's found his favourite station - Sounds of the '40s.

This scene is actually very powerful ... This is the grown up Wasp and she effortlessly takes control ... in front of two of her ex's ... one of which is crazy ... in front of Captain America (who has self esteem issues and dosn't pick up the pace) ... and a butchy Hawkeye ...

It would be hard for a normal person just to be in that situation but .. not the Wasp she takes it head on.

This is why her current portrayal as a cougar and only a flirt in Uncanny Avengers seems so silly.

I'd love to see a JLA/Avengers crossover with, as Set says, "members who never really got to shine" - though a lot of the members I'll cite below are pretty popular in their own right.

Dr. Light (Kimiyo Hoshi) and Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau) can bond over their energy powers and sharing code names with arguably more famous heroes.

Living Lightning and Fire could bond over their Latin roots (and shared love of men? heehee. They are both so hooooot).

Ice and Crystal share a "set apart" status - Ice is a "goddess" or at least has links to the gods, Crystal an Inhuman.

And so on and so on...

and Vibe and um....can....uh...

Vibe and D-Man can have a suck-off. (And by that, I mean a contest to see who sucks the most, like a dance-off, but with suck, not at all the way it turned out sounding...)

I'm glad you explained that.

Manitou Raven and Doctor Druid can have a stare-off to determine who is the most culturally-specific third-tier dead magician.

Triumph and Sentry can have a contest to see who is the most retroactively-always-a-member-but-nobody-remembers-or-cares-about-with-Superman-plus-powers.

Rick Jones and Snapper Carr can arm-wrestle for "most annoying non-powered teen sidekick".

Red Tornado and the Vision can have a robot hero with human wife rock-em-sock-em robo-slap fight.

Wasp and Black Canary, animal-themed heroines not taken as seriously as they should be!

Was Risk ever a Leaguer? He'd be a funny match-up against Triathlon. "I have the power of six teens!" Slap! "I have the power of three grown-ups. Sit down and shut up." Pow!

Ditto Silverclaw and Changeling. "I can turn into a hybrid of myself and any South American animal!" "T-Rex, chica, look it up."

Risk wasn't a Leaguer, but I'd pay to see him get slapped in the face.

Power Girl and Ms. Marvel can see who has the bigger chip on her shoulder, and brag about how long it took each of them to get out from under her male counterparts' shadow.

Faith and Echo can discuss being a Latina hero who was unceremoniously swept under the rug.

Black Canary and Green Arrow can double date with Mockingbird and Hawkeye and see who has the more dysfunctional relationship.

That's harsh on Risk. He's quite 'armless really.

Iron Man & Steel can compare notes on chaffing.
Blue Jay and Tigra can go bird spotting.

... and Tigra will come back with blue feathers in her mouth.

Black Knight and Wonder Woman apply the Gordian Knot solution to untangling Mr Fantastic, Martian Mahnunter, Plastic Man and Elongated Man.

My ideal lineup will always be the one from my childhood: Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Beast, Wasp and Yellowjacket. The Avengers from like 140-ish thru 200 will always be the definitive Avengers in my mind. The stories were big without being overblown, the characterizations were spot on and not storyline dictated, and there wasn't a Wolverine or Spiderman in sight

Oh, and the Perez art goes without saying.

Well...checking back in and I got this cover for cover price. At the convention I went to in October.

Wasn't Dr Druid part of this era?

This is the line up I grew up with as well, and might I add Wonder Man, as he was in most of these issues.

I am pretty sure Druid was on the team before this exact lineup. But some of them were on the team with him.

I don't know if this counts as a line-up but I really liked the Avengers grouping from Morgan La Fey's medieval world, the one seen in the first Busiek/Perez story arc, if only for all the redesigns and new names.