Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The All Avengers Thread

"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.