avengers 267: time and time again

Tags

Avengers, big box of comics, John Buscema, kang, Roger Stern, Storm, time travel, Tom Palmer

One of my favorite Avengers stories features the time-traveling psychopath known as Kang The Conqueror. He sports a ridiculous outfit that only John Buscema and Tom Palmer could make cool.

What kind of evil plan can a person hatch in striped purple thigh-high boots? Stripping to pay his way through college? But don’t judge Kang by his fashion sense, because he rocks hard in this minor masterpiece.

I was 13 when this issue appeared on the comic book rack at the Walgreens on Manchester Road in Ballwin, Missouri. The opening sequence blew my mind, and I still get a thrill reading it years later. The complete three-issue story is one of the few mid-80s superhero yarns that still holds up for me as an adult reader, and though I no longer have the complete Stern/Buscema run, I’ve read it a bunch of times. These days, I just reserve a little space for my absolutely favorite Avengers stories, including this one.

It begins the day Colossus joins the Avengers, and opens with Storm descending from the sky like the weather goddess she is. Goddess and, as we discover, an Avenger.

I love the mood and tone of Stern’s captions on that page and generally for the entire run. Despite some typical comic-book clunkers such as expositional thought balloons, his prose always made me feel like I was reading a book for adults, not children. But back to our story.

The President of the USA escorts Colossus onto the scene to induct him into the Avengers and become an American citizen.

What’s that? You don’t remember Storm and Colossus being Avengers in the 1980s? Pay attention!

Iron Man flies onto the scene to give a gift to the POTUS on this momentous occasion. And gosh, isn’t Tony Stark such a great guy?

Just tug a little harder, sir! But suddenly…

Wait, what? The whole team just got nuked into oblivion? Is the series cancelled? What do you do after THAT?!

If you’re a super-villain, you gloat.

The nuke was just a warm-up. Now, it really starts to hit the fan. It turns out that Kang’s time-traveling adventures are creating all kinds of alternate timelines, and each has its own Kang. A mysterious council has summoned our nuke-loving Kang to their secret chamber in a limbo outside of time. When Kang questions the council’s authority to tell him what a massive screw-up he is for getting his entire planet destroyed, they reveal themselves to be a trio of alternate Kangs!

They kill him then adjourn and vanish. But one Kang comes back to snoop around the building, and who does he run into? One of the other Kangs! John Buscema gives the Jack Kirby treatment to the wonders inside the secret chambers inside the secret chamber, and Kang gives Kang a tour of his time-monitoring operations.

In fewer than ten pages, Stern gave the Avengers new members, nuked an entire planet, discovered alternate realities, hatched a nefarious plot of betrayal and murder spanning centuries and multiple universes, and plumbed the depths of grief, greed, and evil in the human soul. And the real Avengers, the stars of the series, haven’t even appeared yet!

The heroes show up soon enough, and the adventure is a solid one with plenty of twists and turns and mysteries to solve. Despite his goofy outfit, Kang is a strong villain with a plan he seems entirely capable of pulling off, and he steals the show in a way usually reserved for Dr. Doom. Fitting, I suppose, since Kang originally came from the future using Doom’s time-machine and, after becoming an Egyptian Pharaoh in the past, patterned himself after Doom. As far as alternate timeline stories go, I’d rather re-read this classic than re-watch Avengers Endgame any day.

Collector’s Guide: The full story appears in issues 267, 268, and 269 of the original Avengers series, and they cost about $3 to $6 each, depending on their grade.

A big “thank you” to this blog’s readers for making it possible to get these issues as part of my ongoing big box of free comics series.

Son of Big Box of Comics: Turtles, Surfers, and Science-Fiction Mayhem

Tags

Avengers, big box of comics, color classics, comic books, deeper and stranger, John Buscema, Paul Chadwick, Roger Stern, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, world below

The big box of comics series is a tribute to the fun things I wouldn’t have in my life without the readers of this blog who help me earn store credit at MyComicShop.com or Amazon.com every time they use my handy “Collector’s Guides” links to make a purchase.

It’s a symbiotic relationship — much like when an alien symbiote bonds to your nervous system and drinks your adrenaline for survival.

Actually, it’s nothing like that, but you could read that story in the Spectacular Spider-man TPB #1 by Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos.

This month, thanks to readers’ generosity, I put together a run of inexpensive reprints of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2–5, courtesy of IDW’s “Color Classics” versions of early TMNT. A few months ago, readers helped me reunite with the ridiculous majesty of TMNT #6, and I couldn’t go on without reading the preceding issues at least one more time!

Was it fun? Oh, hell yes. But maybe not as great as I remember from my black-and-white collections or the original colorized graphic novels from First. IDW’s coloring is part of that, since they put dark colors over the original Zip-a-Tone midtones, and obscuring the mid-range tends to flatten the artwork and make it less dynamic. Also, one of the pages in one issue seems to be a misprint that duplicates a page from earlier in the story.

AND BRING THE ROBOT TO THE BRIDGE!

But in terms of being an affordable way to read the Turtles’ earliest adventures, these reprints did the job admirably. Because #6 is one of my all-time favorite comics, I enjoyed reliving the outrageous plot that led up to it, and seeing how the storytelling evolved and improved in the early days. As a bonus, I got a few issues from the second volume of Color Classics, including a solo Michelangelo adventure in a kind of Lone Wolf & Cub fantasy of feudal Japan mixed with mystic lizard demons from hell. That issue includes one of my favorite Turtles pages:

Also from the second volume, a color version of an issue of the Return to New York story that’s a favorite of mine. In the black-and-white original, a brain-damaged, dying Triceratops with some kind of plamsa gun kills and burns his way through the New York sewer system for his new friends: a quartet of mutated, intelligent reptiles who are also armored killing machines.

If that doesn’t sound like the greatest scene ever, then you are at the wrong blog!

Along with the batch of ninja nostalgia, I picked up some bargain-priced Fine copies of Paul Chadwick’s The World Below. It’s no secret I love Chadwick’s Concrete series. World Below and its sequel, the four-issue Deeper and Stranger, don’t have the same depth of storytelling and lush rendering as Concrete, but they are a fun romp through Chadwick’s science-fiction imagination.

I like the sequel better than the first series. The sequel uses black and white art with no color, which is almost always how I prefer to see Chadwick’s art. And, the first series suffered from too many flashbacks trying to make me care about characters I never properly met, since the story started right in the middle of the action. Each time a character faced a crisis I wasn’t invested in, the character flashed back to a similar situation in their early life to beat me over the head with how huge an emotional deal it all was. That didn’t work for me.

Also, I could have lived without seeing the characters say, “eff this” and “eff you, you effing effer” instead of using the actual profanity. Those pages in World Below #3 were physically painful to read, and even old-school characters like F@%$ would have been preferable.

It seems to me that if your dialogue depends on using the word “fuck”, then you should just say “fuck”.

The narrative problems (mostly) smooth out in the sequel, which has my favorite issue of the series and an unexpected ending that blew my mind. Deeper and Stranger fulfills the promise of the first World Below and the tagline on those covers: the deeper you go, the stranger it gets!

Finally, this month’s box of comics included a favorite from my Avengers collection that I sold off a few years ago. Recently, someone commented on my old post about the Stern/Buscema/Palmer run on Avengers in the 1980s. It reminded me that while I basically memorized those issues after reading them so many times, Avengers #266 featuring the Silver Surfer really needed to come back to my modest “Avengers favorites” collection.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: the issue is a post-script to one of the most god-awful, tragic dumpster fires Marvel produced in the 1980s: Secret Wars II. Don’t even get me started.

But this issue focuses on two powerful beings—one a respected hero, and one a reviled villain—who need to work together to heal a cataclysmic wound in the Earth before the planet falls apart and kills everyone. All in 32 ad-free pages, in which the fate of the world might depend on one total nerd’s desire to watch sitcom re-runs with his girlfriend instead of letting the disaster take its fatal course. It’s so insane!

This issue has many examples of Stern’s dialogue that endeared me to his Avengers. Namor and Hercules bust each other’s balls like only gods can do, but below their arguing I sense a mutual respect born of the knowledge that they are both beings of power, and maybe they need each other to call each other out sometimes to help keep their rages in check.

She-Hulk isn’t turned off at all by Hercules’ temper tantrums; she flatters him and straight-up asks him to dinner, which is almost as awesome as that time she hooked up with Juggernaut. Jennifer’s a being of great power, too, and she seems perfectly comfortable and relaxed about it.

Hercules’ thoughts on nobility and heroism after the villain supposedly “loses his powers” while saving the Earth — also a lovely piece of internal dialogue.

But my favorite part is the final scene where the villain reveals he never lost his powers at all, and that the hero was complicit in this deception.

But why?

I simply allowed your courage to inspire mine!

The Silver Surfer’s comment on courage and vulnerability really sums up what I love about this Avengers run. Sure, it’s all fun and games in spandex with lots of punching and the fate of the universe at stake, and there’s no shortage of expositional thought balloons. But every now and then, Stern’s humanistic and thoughtful depictions of his characters meld with John Buscema’s and Tom Palmer’s artwork to create peaks of visual literature.

You know what? I might need to reclaim a few more of my favorite story arcs from this run — especially the Kang saga and the assault on Avengers Mansion.

That’s it for September’s big box of free comics, and I am excited to tell you about the October box that is on its way!

Movies vs. Comic Books: Who Controls Time?

Tags

authority, Avengers, Civil War, comic books, film, Mark Millar, movies, narrative structure, planet hulk, superhero, thor ragnarok, time, Warren Ellis, widescreen comics

Now that films based on comic books and superheroes have firmly entered the mainstream of popular culture, characters and storylines we comics readers have enjoyed for years regularly come to life on the big screen for a wider audience than comics ever reached. Long-time readers are often thrilled to see their favorite heroes in live-action movies, but some feel a bit of regret. After all, it can be disheartening to hear people discussing characters as if the movies tell the entire story, when many readers have followed the characters in-depth for years or even decades.

Compressing years of story into a two-hour theater experience means a lot gets left out, as anyone who read the Planet Hulk stories can tell you about the movie Thor: Ragnarok, or anyone who read Marvel’s Civil War comics can tell you about the Captain America movie of the same name. Plus, the big screen and the printed page are two distinctly different mediums, each with its own storytelling conventions, so they deliver distinctly different stories.

Movies usually follow a formulaic narrative structure. From the inciting incident to the hero’s crisis, predicting the next story beat in a movie is pretty easy. Comic books often employ more flexible and unusual structures—a point in their favor in my opinion. This is true despite a trend toward making modern mainstream comic books more cinematic in their approach to storytelling.

Near the turn of the century, Warren Ellis used the term widescreen comics to describe the blockbuster-movie style he was creating in The Authority with artists Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary. After 12 issues, writer Mark Millar and artist Frank Quitely came on board and kept up the cinematic approach. Millar, Hitch, and Neary soon combined forces to reinvent the Avengers as The Ultimates—the forerunner of the current film versions of the Avengers. For a more in-depth look at widescreen comics, and how they influenced movies as much as movies influenced them, see Peter Suderman’s article for Vox.

As far as I’m concerned, there hasn’t been a movie yet that equals those first 29 issues of The Authority. But it’s more than just the awesome stories, vicious dialogue, and stunning artwork. What makes the printed page most enjoyable for me can be summed up in two words: time control.

In a film, time passes at a fixed speed determined by the flow of film through a projector, or its digital equivalent these days. Yes, a movie can use slow motion or speed up time, but all of that is determined by the movie itself. Moviegoers have no control of it in a theater. Time passes at a pace determined exclusively by the filmmakers.

With printed pages, the reader controls time. The reader determines how long to spend on a panel or page. Readers can turn back the pages to see something again if they did not absorb it on the first read. The reader can set the book down and walk away, then come back to it and pick up again from any point in the narrative. Movies only provide this convenience if you own or stream a copy at home and can rewind it or freeze the frames.

While I enjoy movies, I tend to enjoy their comic-book source material far more due to time control. An awesome action scene might be over in seconds or minutes on the big screen, but I can linger on it for as long as I like with a printed page. A stunning visual appears on the screen for fleeting moments, then moves on to the next one. It leaves me feeling unsatisfied when I want to spend more time taking in all its detail and beauty. With a comic book, I can pore over the artists’ rendering and take time to appreciate every line and shape, every bit of hard work that went into inking and coloring the picture. Instead of having it all fade away as I leave a theater, I can come back to it again and again with a book.

While many recent comic-book movies do look great, the awesomeness always go by too quickly for me. I never have a chance to fully appreciate it before its gone. And when the theater lights come on, fun time is over unless I want to buy another ticket. The experience is transient and ephemeral compared to a physical book I can keep for years.

None of this should be taken as an argument over which medium is “better”. Enjoy what you enjoy. This is only an attempt to articulate a feeling I’ve had for years but never explained very well to people who expect me to be super excited about recent superhero movies. It isn’t that the movies are bad; they simply lack one of the biggest things that gives me enjoyment with comic books: time control.

 

On a less serious note: a video.

john cassaday’s captain america tribute

Tags

Avengers, Captain America, captain america funeral, Falcon, fallen son, jeph loeb, John Cassaday, Red Skull, Sub-Mariner

If every dark cloud has a silver lining, then Captain America’s funeral was the silver lining of his death a few years ago. Well, the silver lining would have been the gut-wrenching epic of the surrounding 50 or so issues of Captain America with Ed Brubaker at the helm. So, let us just say this funeral full of Cap memorials by John Cassaday is not the silver lining. It is the vibranium-adamantium alloy lining. If you know why such an alloy is relevant here, you spend entirely too much time reading Marvel Comics. Welcome to our world.

These pages come from the fifth and final issue of Jeph Loeb’s Captain America: Fallen Son; Marvel Comics, 2007.

Behold.

The Avengers by Stern, Buscema, & Palmer

Tags

Avengers, collection, John Buscema, Marvel Comics, Roger Stern, Tom Palmer

Tom Palmer’s painted cover kicks off our favorite years of the Avengers. Roger Stern, John Buscema, and Tom Palmer would collaborate from #255 through #285 in a number of powerful story arcs and historical events. Stern would hand over the writing reigns to Ralph Macchio and subsequently Walter Simonson while Buscema and Palmer stayed on through #300.

The creative team begins with a brutal destruction of the primitive but beautiful Savage Land, a hidden ecosystem in the Antarctic regions where dinosaurs still roam tropical jungles. While the Avengers take down the bad guy, it comes at a heavy cost, and Stern makes no effort to put a silver lining on the tragedy.

The storytelling in the next arc of deep-space intrigue continues to fire on all cylinders for several issues. Then we get derailed by the hokiest ending possible. Why? All I can type without raising my blood pressure is “Secret Wars II.”

The stories bounce back quickly when Sub-mariner comes on stage. The X-Factor tie in of #263 makes a much better read than the Secret Wars II debacle. Some may revile this issue for cheapening the death of Jean Grey by bringing her back, and they’ve got a point.

After the last unsavory Secret Wars II tie-in, #266 comes as a surprise: one of the highlights of this run.

Maybe it’s that opening splash page of the Silver Surfer zooming through a seething gouge in the earth’s crust, magma and stone implacably raging all around him. Buscema draws the Surfer like no one before or since, and it’s a treat to see him in these pages. Stern gives us an intimate character study of the Surfer and the Molecule Man against a background of geologic ferocity.

The stories kick back into high gear with a totally off-beat Kang story. Stern takes us wandering with lost Avengers in a misty maze of limbo as a madman with a time machine tries to kill off every version of himself except the one living now. This was the story that originally got us into the Avengers, and we may show it some undue favoritism. It still kicks ass.

Just seeing this opening splash panel where Storm joins the Avengers brings a smile to my face. Oh, this is going to be good!

The Sub-mariner gets a very sympathetic treatment in these tales. Stern portrays him as arrogant and hot-headed, yes, but he’s also grown up a lot. Public outcry about crimes he has committed in the past saddens him. He knows he has acted rashly and been in the wrong. Captain America and Hercules know what the score is with Prince Namor, though, and they stand by him. The entire team has his back when he needs to set things right in Atlantis, and many readers recall this as a highlight of the series.

The brutality of the next big story arc is all the more disturbing in light of how unflinchingly the team handled the devastation of the Savage Land twenty issues earlier! The Avengers get beat down, and we mean beat down. They suffer.

Since the writing of this arc, many mainstream comics have topped it for sheer shocking brutality. But you would be hard pressed to find an Avengers fan that wasn’t blown away at this particular point in the series. It has a certain subtlety to it, like when we see a character’s face reacting to the horrors we never see.

In the aftermath of this battle, we get a few issues of character studies, shake up the membership roster, and have a quiet moment with Jarvis the Butler in the hospital after his terrible beating. Stern ends this run by pitting the Avengers against the Gods of Olympus in another action-packed confrontation.

The Greatest of These is Love!

Tags

Avengers, funeral, Hawkeye, kang, Mantis, mantis origin, Thor

We previously shared a splash panel and a Doc Ock value stamp from this issue. But, Avengers #130 has a couple other interesting pages worth salvaging from the beat up copy we found. At the Swordsman’s funeral, Thor — a Norse god — eulogizes his departed comrade with words from Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth. A few pages later, Hawkeye gives an honest reaction to the origin of Mantis. It’s more than a little like Miracleman’s wife’s reaction to his “bloody stupid” origin.

Collector’s Guide: From Avengers #130. Reprinted in Essential Avengers TPB #6 (but not with the value stamp!).

The Gargoyle’s Touch Turned My Armor to Stone!

Tags

Avengers, Avengers 191, David Michelinie, George Perez, Grey Gargoyle, John Byrne, Roger Stern

John Byrne pencils one of our favorite Grey Gargoyle appearances in Avengers #191, with the plot/script team of Roger Stern and David Michelinie. Great things were simmering in the pot here: Stern and Byrne would craft a short but memorable run on Captain America, David Michelinie was just a few years from making Spider-man a super-hot franchise with Todd McFarlane, and cover artist George Perez would soon be teaming up with Marv Wolfman to create the wildly successful relaunch of Teen Titans.
Here, however, they prove that most superhero problems can be solved with lots of punching, kicking, beating, hitting, smashing… and a magic ray.

Collector’s Guide:
– from Avengers #191; Marvel, 1980.
– Reprinted in the paperback collection Avengers Visionaries: George Perez. Dont ask us why, since Perez did the cover, not the interior art!

The National Security Council Can’t Even Keep Track of Who’s Coming and Going!

Tags

Avengers, Avengers 181, David Michelinie, John Byrne, Peter Gyrich

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.

The Logic of a Lunatic’s Nightmare!

Tags

Avengers, Avengers 200, David Michelinie, dinosaur, George Perez, Ms Marvel

Avengers #200 is one of those sprawling epics of an ‘anniversary’ issue that makes just about zero effing sense. It has a lot of action, and a lot of wondering what the heck is going on — true hallmarks of monumental superhero milestones. By the time you hit the big flashback that reveals how Carol “Ms. Marvel” Danvers got pregnant for only three days, your suspension of disbelief may have taken too many hits to recover.

But, it has George Perez on pencils, and a huge dinosaur bashing around New York City. That’s enough for a bicentennial! Roll ’em!

Collector’s Guide: from Avengers #200; Marvel, 1980.

This issue is NOT included in the paperback collection Avengers Visionaries: George Perez.

When I Ran the Avengers, We Didn’t Kill People!

Tags

Avengers, Captain Marvel, first issue, Monica Rambeau, Next Wave, Photon, Stuart Immonen, Warren Ellis

Warren Ellis imagines a childhood with photonic laser powers for Monica Rambeau, also known as Photon, formerly known as Captain Marvel, and one-time leader of the Avengers. Bad doggie be quiet now.

Collector’s Guide: from Next Wave #1; Marvel.

Hawkeye Becomes Goliath!

Tags

Avengers, Gene Colan, Goliath, Hawkeye, Roy Thomas

Hawkeye has enjoyed a recent resurgence in superhero popularity thanks to Matt Fraction and David Aja. A long time ago, he gave up shooting arrows to grow really, really big. Don’t believe us? Get the scoop right here from Roy Thomas and Gene Colan. It has to do with a death ray from the sky. Go!

Collector’s Guide: From Avengers #63 and #64; Marvel, 1969.

Did Somebody Say Ultron?

Tags

Age of Ultron, Avengers, Bride of Ultron, Ultron

Ultron. Rockin’ Hard Since 1969. Barry Windsor-Smith and Syd Shores artwork from Avengers #66.

Thank you, Paul, for reminding us about Age of Ultron. Ultron has been a favorite character of ours for about as long as we’ve been able to read. We got lucky and cut our teeth on what may be the all-time Ultron classics of the late 60s and 70s, and our minds have been warped ever since. Here is a handy guide to the Ultron stories in our archives that blew our minds as kids and have stood the test of time.

Avengers #66 (1969, first appearance of Ultron & adamantium, part 1 of 3)
Avengers #135 (1975, origin of Vision)
Avengers #161 (1977, Bride of Ultron Part 1)
Avengers #162 (1977, Bride of Ultron, Part 2)

Longbox Graveyard dicusses 1977’s Bride of Ultron from Avengers #161-162 at Stash My Comics.

Costume or No Costume, Electro?

Tags

Avengers, Brian Michael Bendis, David Finch, Electro, first issue, New Avengers

In the first issue of New Avengers, some very bad people charge Electro with breaking a bunch of nasty supervillains out of a high-security prison. They ask Electro, “Costume or no costume?” The high-voltage bad guy eagerly replies, “Costume!” Look out, Avengers! He’s going for the spandex! Art by David Finch, Danny Miki, and one of our favorite colorists Frank D’Armata; Story by Brian Michael Bendis.

Collector’s Guide: From New Avengers Vol. 1, #1. You can also find this run in trades and hardcover.

Iron Man Not Giving a Damn!

Tags

Avengers, Iron Man, Vision, Wonder Man

Iron Man’s “Yeah, I don’t give a damn that my team is fighting” attitude just cracks us up. We thought you might enjoy this scene, too!

Collector’s Guide: From Avengers #158

Ultimates 2 Gallery: Bryan Hitch’s 8-Page Fold-out!

Tags

Avengers, Bryan Hitch, Independence Day, Mark Millar, Ultimates, Ultimates 2

Click to expand to full awesomeness.

For Mark Millar‘s re-imagining of The Avengers as The Ultimates, Bryan Hitch produced some truly over-the-top battle scenes. For the final issue, Hitch created what may be the biggest multi-page fold-out in comics history! Eight — count ’em — eight entire pages of super-mayhem! Now that is awesome. Yet another reason why digital comics can never fully match the glory of print.

Collector’s Guide: From Ultimates 2 #13; Marvel, 2006. Also in trade or Ultimate Collection.

The wraparound cover.

Ultimates 2 Gallery: Bryan Hitch Double Splashes!

Tags

Avengers, Bryan Hitch, Hulk, Iron Man, Mark Millar, Thor, Ultimates, Ultimates 2

For Mark Millar‘s re-imagining of The Avengers as The Ultimates, Bryan Hitch produced some truly over-the-top battle scenes. Let’s take a look at how Hitch uses two-page spreads in Ultimates 2, #12. Here we see Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and a whole mess of heroes kicking major butt! If you love a good superhero double-splash, this one’s for you!

Collector’s Guide: From Ultimates 2 #12; Marvel, 2006. Available in trade, single issues, or Ultimate Collection format.

Extracting the Dr. Octopus Value Stamp!

Tags

Avengers, Avengers 130, Dr. Octopus, Iron Man, marvel value stamps, Thor

We’ve discussed Marvel Value Stamps with you before, but we recently reached a new level of geekdom with these little treasures. Our LCS (local comic shop) sold us a cheap grab bag of heavily abused Avengers comics. In that bag awaited Avengers #130. That’s the one that has Marvel Value Stamp #96, Dr. Octopus.

Now, we have a few Value Stamp issues in our collection, but we would NEVER dream of cutting up the pages of our 1970s Marvels. But in this case, the comic existed in such bad shape that we figured, well, to hell with it! (Yes, we know it’s a $100 book in CGC 9.6, but this was more like a $2 VG-/FR.) And so, with a socially inappropriate and childlike glee that only our fellow comic book fans could share, we grabbed a pair of scissors and peformed the first Value Stamp Extraction Surgery of our entire Martian life.

Later, we sacrificed Doc Ock to the gods of art in a mixed-media collage type thing for our Dream Journal series. He is either worth more now, or worth less, depending on how you value things. And just what is the value of a value stamp?

Avengers #130 also had a fun splash page we cut out to decorate our humble abode: Thor putting the smack-down on Iron Man!

It seems Iron Man had a personal grudge and wanted to beat up some characters in a foreign country. Thor told him to chill out and put his personal vendetta aside. Ol’ Shell Head wasn’t having it, though. Rule of thumb: No matter how many billions of dollars your costume cost, don’t get in a fist fight with a thunder god. CLANG!

Collector’s Guide: From Avengers #130. Reprinted in Essential Avengers TPB #6 (but not with the value stamp!).

Avengers 4: Captain America Joins the Avengers!

Tags

Avengers, Captain America, Captain America joins the Avengers, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee

When Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America in 1941, they probably did not imagine the multi-billion dollar franchise he would become. Cap all but disappeared in the 1950s, nearly fading into the permanent fog of obscurity. The Avengers #4 changed all that for good in 1964. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby brought Captain America from the days of World War II into the ranks of the Avengers. Let’s check out this piece of comic book history!

Collector’s Guide: From Marvel Masterworks Avengers #1. Reprints Avengers #4. Reprinted in Essential Avengers TPB #1.

Avengers 162: Bride of Ultron!

Tags

Avengers, Bride of Ultron, George Perez, Jim Shooter, Jocasta, Ultron

George Perez and author Jim Shooter wrap up the “Bride of Ultron” two-part Avengers story in style. You’ll witness the first appearance of Jocasta here. Jocasta played a role as a minor supporting character for a time, without being inducted into the Avengers. She starred more recently in The Initiative and Mighty Avengers, and the Heroic Age.

Collector’s Guide: From Avengers #162. Story begins in Avengers #161. Reprinted in Avengers Visionaries: George Perez

Avengers 161: Beware the Ant Man!

Tags

Ant Man, Avengers, Bride of Ultron, George Perez, Jim Shooter, Ultron

Jim Shooter’s writing and the art of George Perez brought us one of the coolest Avengers stories of the 1970s: the two-part “Bride of Ultron” that begins here in Avengers #161. A lot of butt gets kicked in this dynamic tale. Ant Man hands out a beatdown to the whole team. The Scarlet Witch shows us why we should be very, very afraid of her. And, the Wasp puts on what may be her sexiest outfit of all time.

Collector’s Guide: From Avengers #161. Concluded in Avengers #162. Reprinted in Avengers Visionaries: George Perez

Avengers 66: The First Appearance of Adamantium!

Tags

adamantium, adamantium skeleton, Avengers, Barry Smith, Barry Windsor Smith, Roy Thomas, Ultron, Ultron-6, Vision

Roy Thomas created the metal Adamantium in 1969 in Avengers #66, the first of a trilogy starring the world’s most evil robot: Ultron! Barry Windsor Smith lays down visually stunning artwork inspired by his predecessors Jack Kirby and John Buscema. Smith returned to adamantium in Wolverine stories Wounded Wolf and Weapon X.

Collector’s Guide:
– From Avengers #66
– Reprinted in Marvel Super Action #27
– Reprinted in Marvel Masterworks: Avengers #7
– Reprinted in Essential Avengers TPB #3

This three-parter may well be our favorite classic Avengers story. Once upon a time, we had only read the conclusion in the reprint Marvel Super Action #29. A big Thank You to @GInvestor888 and @Horace_Austin for opening the doors of our memory, and for reminding us on Twitter this first part of the trilogy introduced adamantium to the Marvel Universe!

Do You Want to Know More about the Creepy Guy at the End of Avengers?

Tags

Avengers, avengers end credits, Avengers movie, Cosmic Cube, guy at the end of avengers, Infinity Gauntlet, Tesseract, Thanos, Thanos comics, Thanos trades

His name is Thanos. And when the nasty Chitauri alien warns him that to mess with the Earthlings “is to court death,” Thanos fans know exactly why that brings a sinister smile to Thanos’ face.

Why? Because Thanos is all about courting Death. We don’t mean living dangerously and playing extreme sports. Thanos loves Death. He wants to marry her. You can see why he might smile about courting her…

We offer you a guide to the most important comic book appearances of Thanos. Our links take you to anything you’d like to purchase. Are you ready for a Titanic Tour of Thanos Thrills? Then let’s rock this thing!

THE BEGINNINGS OF A TITAN

Artist extraordinaire Jim Starlin created Thanos. If you pay attention to the movie credits, you’ll see Starlin gets a mention with other comic book greats. Rather than tracking down all the individual issues, get the orginal Thanos epic collected in The Life of Captain Marvel TPB, orignally printed as single issues. It collects the first and arguably most important early Thanos story. You can also find a deluxe edition printed as Marvel Masterworks Captain Marvel #3. Thanos also appears in The Death of Captain Marvel, so you may opt to just get it all in one shot as The Life and Death of Captain Marvel!

The other early must-read Thanos – which also guest-stars the Avengers in the final showdown – was collected in Warlock Special Edition. Thanos became so popular that Marvel had to reprint the collection! Believe us, it’s a lot easier to buy the Special Edition than track down all the original issues. You’ll also find a deluxe printing of the Thanos parts in Marvel Masterworks Warlock Vol. 2. As we’ve stated in our prieview of Warlock, it’s one of our favorite Bronze Age stories and we can’t recommend it enough.

Thanos Holds the Cosmic Cube by Jim Starlin

SURFING TO INFINITY

When Jim Starlin took over Silver Surfer with artist Ron Lim in 1990, the first thing he did was resurrect Thanos in Silver Surfer Vol. 2, #34-52. Jim went on to bring in all his supporting cast from the earlier Captain Marvel and Warlock sagas. You can find the core story collected as The Rebirth of Thanos which includes the supplementary Thanos Quest.

Next, Starlin takes Thanos on three epic missions to destroy the entire universe. He still thinks this will make Death happy! This chapter of Thanos’ life begins with Infinity Gauntlet (also in single issues.) The sequel is Infinity War. The madness continues unabated in Infinity Crusade. But, things don’t go well for Thanos. Once he becomes god (again), he becomes disillusioned with his quest to win Death’s love.

Thanos therefore loses his taste for “total stellar genocide.” Unfortunately, he built some freaked-out clones of himself that are still hell-bent on destroying all reality. Thus begins Starlin’s fourth cosmic “Infinity” adventure: Infinity Abyss. (Also in single issues.)

Afterwards, Thanos regrets always trying to kill everything and everyone everywhere. So, he sets out to do some good deeds. Crazy, we know – but Starlin writes a good story in the short-lived Thanos series, collected in rare (and expensive) TPBs as Thanos: Epiphany and Samaritan. (Keith Giffen takes over from Starlin for the Samaritan story in 7-12.) We have a preview of a trippy confrontation between Thanos and Galactus from this era.

Eventually, Jim Starlin’s “nice guy” Thanos gets embroiled in another heinous plot involving the destruction of the universe. Although he’s on the good side, Thanos ends up destroying the dang universe in Marvel Universe: The End! (Also in single issues.) We enjoyed this one more than the other Infinity books. For one, the superheroes don’t do a damn thing but get wiped out – and we always figured that’s what really should have happened. Second, Thanos is more than a threat or a co-star. This is really his book.

Thanos Confronts Galactus by Jim Starlin

ANNIHILATION

With Annihilation, Marvel re-charged all their Bronze Age “cosmic” characters for a new generation. Fans loved it, and Thanos made a return from the oblivion of The End to wrap up the action. Annihilation forms such a star-spanning saga that collecting it can be a part-time job. This handy infographic will help you! You will find dozens of Annihilation paperbacks.

But – don’t stress. The whole deal climaxes in The Thanos Imperative, a Thanos extravaganza collecting in a single set The Thanos Imperative, Thanos Imperative:Ignition, Thanos Imperative: Devastation, and the Thanos Sourcebook. If collecting Annihilation seems daunting, this trade may be a good way for you to get your Thanos kicks without breaking the bank!

ULTIMATE THANOS ROCKS

Last but not least, Thanos appears in two intergalactic tales of the “Ultimate” version of Fantastic Four. They are collected in the affordable trades Ultimate Fantastic Four TPB #7 and TPB #10. Although Jim Starlin is a huge favorite of ours, these two totally intense non-Starlin Thanos stories deserve a place in the collection of any Thanos fan.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TESSERACT?

In many of these stories – Captain Marvel, Warlock, and Ultimate Fantastic Four – Thanos obsesses with the Cosmic Cube. The Avengers movie calls it the Tesseract. You may be interested in knowing a little more about the comics history of this device.

The Cosmic Cube originally gave Captain America a hard time as a weapon of the Red Skull in Tales of Suspense #79. The story runs two more issues in T.O.S. #80 and #81. In fact, Captain America #186 details how the Red Skull created Cap’s buddy The Falcon with the Cosmic Cube even though The Falcon had been starring with Cap for quite some time by then.

More recently, the Cosmic Cube played a major role in the first few arcs of Ed Brubaker’s Captain America, which deserves your shelf space now!

Thanos Being Huge and Evil by George Tuska

As a postscript, we’d like to direct you to previews of complete Thanos stories on the king of 1970s comics blogs: Diversions of the Groovy Kind. If you dig around in Groove’s archives, you’ll find plenty more Warlock and Captain Marvel stories from the Bronze Age.
The Death of Thanos
The Final Flower

You Liked the Avengers Movie. What Comics Should You Buy?

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Avengers, Avengers comics, Avengers movie, Avengers trades, what avengers trades should i buy

Fans of the Avengers movie all across the globe want to know what Avengers comics they should buy. We’d like to share with you our favorites from the rich history of the Avengers. Our hyperlinks will assist you in locating anything that interests you for purchase. Keep in mind that we look for not just great stories or great art, but both – and we love comics from all eras!

First, the books most likely to please movie fans are the two Ultimates limited series by Mark “Kick Ass” Millar, Bryan Hitch, and Paul Neary. You get Loki, the Chitauri, the flying aircraft carrier, and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Millar’s modern re-imagining of the Avengers as “The Ultimates” will bludgeon you in the skull with awesomeness and adventure! It lies outside the ‘Marvel Universe,’ so you don’t need to know about decades of Avengers history to enjoy it. Just jump in at page one and hold on tight!

You can pick up Ultimates One in trade, single issues, or Ultimate Collection format. You can also get the sequel Ultimates Two in trade, single issues, or Ultimate Collection format. And, if you want to see the Avengers slug it out with the X-Men, skip this summer’s Avengers Vs. X-Men and instead go for Ultimate War.

Although we love the artwork in Ultimates Three, we can’t endorse the story. But, you can check out our preview.

Now let’s take a quick look at the highlights of 50 years of Avengers Awesomeness!

SILVER AGE:

Going back in time to the Silver Age, we recommend the late 1960s run by Roy Thomas and John Buscema from Avengers #41-62. Nothing against Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, but these stories easily deliver the very best of the early Avengers. Read an issue in our preview of a Black Panther story.

If you can’t drain your bank account on these beauties, collect the highlights in the reprint series Marvel Super Action #14-23 (circa 1980) or in black and white as Essential Avengers TPB #2 and 3, 2005 edition.

BRONZE AGE:

Artistic powerhouse John Buscema returned to the Avengers more than once. We revere his mid-1980s collaboration with author Roger Stern and inker Tom Palmer as one of the greatest sets of Avengers arcs of all time. A journey across space, a trip through time, a war with ancient gods, a battle for Atlantis, and the near-destruction of the mansion await you in Avengers #255-285. We have a preview of their ill-fated trip to the Savage Land you can enjoy.

Author David Michelinie enjoyed a solid Bronze Age run on the Avengers. Michelinie should be a household name by now, but he isn’t. Why? Because his most famous work – on the Amazing Spider-man in the late 1980s – remains overshadowed by the fame of the artist he worked with: Todd McFarlane. Highlights of his Avengers include his work with John Byrne in Avengers #181-191 and George Perez in Avengers #194-202. You can preview our sample of John Byrne’s Avengers. Much of George Perez’s work is collected in the TPB Avengers Visonaries: George Perez.

Additionally, our cyber-friends with Bronze Age comics blogs bring you the lowdown on many more Avengers classics from the 1970s and 1980s: Diversions of the Groovy Kind hosts an Avengers Week. Longbox Graveyard reviews the classic Kree/Skrull War. Issues #93-96 of the Kree/Skrull War appear on Warrior’s Den.

MODERN AGE:

In 2003, fan favorite Geoff Johns (loved for his DC Comics work on Flash, Teen Titans, and Blackest Night) teamed up with artist Olivier Coipel for one of our favorite Avengers storylines: Red Zone. The Avengers uncover a heinous plot to use biological warfare against the United States, masterminded by Senator Dell Rusk. And if you don’t know who Dell Rusk is, you need to! Red Zone is collected in the Red Zone Hardcover and in single issues as Avengers (1997 Series) #64-70.

The 1997 Avengers series closed with a stunning 4-issue story masterminded by Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch, in Avengers #500-503. This arc set the stage for their popular first volume of New Avengers. Along with guest superstars Steve McNiven, Mike Deodato, Frank Cho, and Stuart Immomen, Bendis and Finch hit a home run with the first two dozen New Avengers. You can also find this run in trades and hardcover.

Enjoy our preview of our favorite dinosaur-themed New Avengers scene.

AVENGERS-RELATED AWESOMENESS:

Bendis also penned a limited series called Illuminati that ends in a prelude to the Skrull-fest Secret Invasion. And in case you didn’t know, the Chitauri in the movie get their name from Mark Millar’s “Ultimates” re-naming of the Skrulls, a shape-shifting alien menace first cooked up by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the Fantastic Four. Illuminati stars Iron Man and some supporting characters from the Avengers in fast-paced action stories that span time and space. You can rock it in single issues or hardcover.

Civil War featured a lot of Avengers in action – not all of whom enjoyed happy endings! It’s a mega-crossover comics event, but the central story all takes place in the 7 issues of Civil War, also available in trade or hardcover.

Civil War ties into the famous Death of Captain America saga which takes place in the monumental run by crime writer Ed Brubaker. Brubaker continues to write the title now, but we most love his first 50 issues, now collected in omnibus format.

The Avengers play a huge role in the first Secret Wars Limited Series, now collected in paperback and a deluxe omnibus. All the Avengers from the movie are there with the exception of Black Widow. Also, Iron Man is James Rhodes in this epic, not Tony Stark. One of the major Marvel events of the 1980s, the 12-issue Secret Wars also features the first appearance of Spider-man’s black suit which would soon become the fan favorite Venom. Plus, Dr. Doom vs. god!

Horror writer Bruce Jones created our favorite Hulk stories with Mike Deodato and John Romita, Jr. (who recently won a new generation of fans with his art on World War Hulk and Kick Ass). Spanning issues #34-76 of the Incredible Hulk, Jones’ Hulk epic of the early 2000s captured everything awesome about the Greenskin Goliath.

Iron Man has a long, rich history. The modern take by Matt Fraction and Salvador LaRocca remains a fan favorite and makes a great read. It does tie into some other Marvel “events” but you don’t need to be an expert on them to enjoy this stellar run in single issues, trade, or hardcover.

We also strongly recommend Orson Scott Card and Andy Kubert’s Ultimate Iron Man in trade, hardcover, or single issues. Card wrote the must-read science fiction classic Ender’s Game. (Marvel recently produced that as a comic, too!) He brings a deep sci-fi edge to Iron Man that we wish had formed the basis of the recent movies. Preview Tony Stark’s ‘ultimate’ birth scene. Card also gives us a damn good reason why Tony drinks. It isn’t what you think, and it has no relation to David Michelinie’s groundbreaking 1979 look at Stark’s alcoholism, “Demon in a Bottle.” (See also Iron Man #128.)

We haven’t read much modern Thor, but Walter Simonson’s 1980s run is revered as a classic. It was recently released in Omnibus format to rave reviews. We already had the rip-roaring single issues, #337-382. Taste the awesome in our preview of Thor’s battle with a huge nasty dragon.

Finally, if you liked Joss Whedon as director of the Avengers, rock his take on the X-Men in the Astonishing X-Men Omnibus.

Happy Reading!

The Birth of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver!

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Avengers, birth, Bova, David Michelinie, High Evolutionary, John Byrne, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, X-men

Let’s take a look at the scene from the Avengers where the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are born. The tale of their birth comes to us in a flashback by Bova. No, not sci-fi author Ben Bova! Bova is a humanoid cow created by the High Evolutionary. We don’t know if Bova is still single. But if she is, we’ll hook her up with a date with Hip Flask of the Elephantmen. They’d hit it right off!

Plot by Mark Gruenwald and Steven Grant. Script by David Michelinie. Pencils by John Byrne. Inks by Dan Green.

Collector’s Guide: From Avengers #186.

They’re Treating Me as the Invader!

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Avengers, Fantastic Voyage, microbes, Steve Englehart, Vision, Yellowjacket

In this scene from the Avengers, the Vision travels through the body of Yellowjacket to deliver a life-saving serum. Author Steve Englehart acknowledges Isaac Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage, where scientists shrink down to microbe size and travel through a patient’s body. Speaking of microbes, the Vision punches a few of them out! He also dives into a heart and travels through lots of icky, trippy body tissues. Drawn by George Tuska and Vince Coletta.

Collector’s Guide: From Avengers #140; Marvel, 1975. Reprinted in Essential Avengers TPB #6.

Historical Note: This story forms a kind of symmetry with Avengers #93 in which, as Paul points out in our comments section, the Ant Man takes a similar Fantastic Voyage inside the Vision. Don’t let the names throw you off — Ant Man is another alias of Yellowjacket. Henry Pym figured out how to get both smaller and bigger in the course of his career. We encourage you to visit Warrior’s Den to read the complete Avengers #93: This Beachhead Earth.