Along the way to comic book superstardom, John Byrne drew the Avengers for a year – a year Bronze Age fans remember fondly. Here is where that legendary stint began. In Avengers #181, writer David Michelinie used a mandate from the federal government to pare down the number of Avengers. This plot device gave us one of the more memorable moments for agent Peter Gyrich, whose apparent main function was to be a major pain in the butt.
Collector’s Guide: from Avengers #181; Marvel, 1979.
Mars Will Send No More 
Thanks for posting this. This is right in the heart of my favorite era of the Avengers, the platonic ideal of Avengers in my mind.
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If you wanted to give a new fan a sampling of the best Avengers stories from their long career, you would have to include some of these Byrne/Perez/Michelinie/Stern issues.
Our favorites from this period, some of which we have shared here before, are the Ultron story with Perez art and the Scarlet Witch/Pietro origin with Byrne art. Several readers spoke up and said this era needed a little more attention – so here we are!
Our favorite Avengers period prior to the introduction of the Ultimates in the new century was the Stern/Buscema/Palmer collaboration. Buried a ways back in our Avengers tag archives now, they are some of the first things we posted back in 2011 to kick off this site.
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