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Avengers Volume Three # 23-40

From the peak of Ultron Unlimited, the book took a steep step down with an issue focused on the Vision. I don’t like seeing an angst-ridden Vision, considering that – as Cobie has already pointed out – Harras had already put Vision through many soul-searching nights, ending with Vision reclaiming his identity; just another example of how selective Busiek is about continuity. The two-parter which followed was a big stumbling bore – the setup was intriguing (what kind of threat could drive the Juggernaut to come running to the Avengers for help?) but the payoff was underwhelming (tellingly, the Exemplars – multiple stereotypes with superpowers – have not been seen anywhere since.) And the ending with Thor throwing his hammer at the reporters is infuriatingly out of character, yet sadly typical of Busiek’s portrayal of Thor as a belligerent oaf.

The next issue is a pleasant surprise – the pacing is unusually fast for Busiek, the guest art team of Stuart Immonen & Wade Von Grawbadger do a wonderful job, the plot twist is clever, and the focus on non-superstars (Carol Danvers, Scott Lang, Genis Mar-Vell, and...ugh...Silverclaw) gives a hint of what this Avengers era could have been. But then, after a lineup-change issue, we reach the low point of the Busiek/Perez issues: the Kulan Gath/origin-of-Silverclaw story. Pseudo-mysticism can be entertaining when it’s done right, but Busiek misses by a mile – it all feels to me like a dumb old jungle movie updated with CGI effects; this arc also introduces the redundant and totally unnecessary “Hank turns into both Goliath and Yellowjacket” plot thread. Next is Perez’s final Avengers storyarc, where the Avengers – and later, the Thunderbolts as well – are up against Masque, the Grim Reaper, and Count Nefaria. The Reaper as a crime lord is more than a little goofy to me, as is Nefaria’s motivation, and the revelation of Masque as having a small army of clones feels like lazy writing. Factoring in the Thunderbolts tie-ins and the double-size conclusion, this is a thin premise stretched out across seven issues worth of pages. The storyarc is basically one prolonged action sequence, and there’s nothing wrong with that, except that Busiek is not particularly good at writing action sequences, plus he falls into the old trap of the excessively-powerful villain. Perez seems to be having a lot of fun with the multitude of characters to draw, but the story is an anti-climactic note on which to leave.

I don’t have a copy of the Maximum Security tie-in, because I don’t want anything to do with Maximum Security for reasons I already gave in an earlier post. The two issues that follow are guest-penciled by Steve Epting, and though Al Vey’s inking ruins many panels, there is still a lot of memorable imagery – Epting’s renditions of Carol Danvers in action should be studied by any artist assigned to draw her, Bloodwraith looks terrifying, and the darkly atmospheric cover to # 37 is a classic. The next issue introduces not only the reliably excellent art of Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, but also a new, more proactive direction (although as with most of Busiek’s Avengers work, nothing much comes of this promising concept, plus the expanded lineup makes the book unfocused, like it was when Byrne was writing it.) The “Hulk City” two-parter is dumber than dumb, but Davis seems to be having fun drawing it, and that helps...a little.

Next week: The Busiek era closes with that plodding white elephant also known as the Kang Dynasty Saga.

Since you mentioned that there (and with the choice of smiley at the end ), I thought I should point out that Marvel's just solicited a HC of that mini [I haven't actually read it myself, so I can't say how good it is]:

I agree about the Vision. Finally his own android. I liked what Byrne did. No Wonder Man brainwaves, no Human Torch body parts.

Harras gave him new brainwaves from a dead man. I dug it.

Then Busiek returns everything to like it was.

Thanks for the information, Reboot. I'll circle that date on my calendar.

Jorge, I was wondering, since you're a Young Avengers fan, if you could please explain just what the current status of the Vision is, because what little I've seen of the Vision since his destruction by Bendis and his resurrection in Young Avengers has left me confused.

I'm not Jorge, but I play him on TV...

Either in House of M or something, Vision (along with Hawkeye and Ant-Man) got killed, and purportedly the Scarlet Witch was responsible for all of that. Being one of those freaks who hasn't bought a mega-crossover since Age of Apocalypse, I have no idea what really happened in House of M, and from the sounds of it, it's been retconned a few times since then anyway...

A character from the future shows up with 30th century technology and attempts to contact the Avengers, but they are disbanded. He manages to track down the remains of the Vision, stored in a box in a Stark Industries warehouse, and manages to awaken his computer AI, if not restore his body. At this point, the Vision is just a holographic image springing up from his wreckage and offering advice to the group. (Frankly, the idea of the Vision as an actual 'vision,' nothing more than a holographic advisor, was cool, and I wish they'd kept that for a bit longer.) The Vision mentions a 'Avengers Next Generation' sort of program that he designed to keep track of the next wave of heroes, in case the Avengers needed to be replaced. Future-dude seeks out these kids and forms the Young Avengers from them, causing his own 30th century armor to change to a red and white approximation of Iron Man's armor (but *vastly* higher tech) and calling himself Iron Lad.

Stuff happens, future-guy has to return to the future, but the armor has to stay. Vision downloads into the future-armor, which is 'neurokinetic' (which mneans that it responds to it's wearers thoughts and reshapes itself). He makes it resemble 'Iron Lad' at first, but that bothers some of the Young Avengers who miss their former team-mate and he changes it again to look more like a slimmer version of his old Vision appearance.

So the current version of the Vision has all of the memories of the old Vision, but his 'body' is the 30th century uber-armor that does whatever the heck he wants it to do, making him able to duplicate most of his old tricks (density control, eyebeams, fly, interface with machinery, etc.) and do all sorts of other stuff (force blasts, time travel, shapechange, etc.).

I've skipped over some spoilery stuff deliberately, and this is basically the stuff relevant to the Vision character only.

In simpler terms, I can sum up the YA-Vision in three words: Son of Vision.

There are several scenes, most notably in YAv 7-8 (of which I've included the most explicit below), which are there solely to establish that this is NOT the Vision who died in Disassembled, but a new character based on the same "Operating System." (think new computer booted up using your old Windows installation disc) While it's true that he has access to many of the memories of Synthezoid-Vision, he always refers to them - and him - in the third person.

Another great review Stealth. I have to say though, a lot of what I said about Busiek's Vision, though my own thoughts, were put into words better by Reboot in a PM about four or five months ago. . I think we all agree on Busiek's back-tracking though and how much it reeks of the type of comic book writing that is helping kill the industry and lead to Dissassembled type scenarios.

As for Avengers #23-40, I'll recall what I can here:

- First, the Templars story, while pretty to look at (Nova and Spidey!) was really a typical 70's slugfest comic book story with little in substance, though fun. The only problem is that a lot of Busiek's stories were like this. That wouldn't be *so* bad if the characterization we were getting wasn't so off kilter.

- Change in line-up. Stealth, you're dead-on about Thor being out of character. Lashing out at reporters? C'mon. Busiek seemed to be trying to recapture Avengers #150-151, which was somewhat fun, although a little off at times. Loved seeing Hank and Jan back on the team and Carol moving forward, but the problem was I didn't like what was going on with them personality/subplot wise. Triatholon and Silver Claw are two of the more dull Avengers in its history, and stink of stereotypes.

- Hank as Yellowjacket. I think its pretty much been a theme of this thread that we all think this was a dumb move. After Shooter's disgraceful story, to Stern moving Hank forward, to Harras restoring Hank as a great hero without dwelling on the past, there was NO REASON to go this route. And now Hank has suffered for it since. Johns tried to 'fix it' again (failed), Bendis continually refers to it, including insults from other super-heroes (Carol Danvers even THIS WEEK has done so). Hank is one of my favorite heroes. It is the easiest thing in the world to move him past all this crap and make him a great hero again. But no one has the creativity to just go for it.

- Avengers/Thunderbolts crossover - this was somewhat fun at the time, with Hawkeye in the mix and Nefaria, the Grim Reaper, etc. It almost looked like for a time there would be an annual Avengers/Thunderbolts thing going on in the vein of JLA/JSA team-ups of old. Of course, the T-Bolts were screwed over worse than the Avengers, so that didn't pan out.

- Maximum Security - hardly even remember anything about it. I was in college at the time, and remember thinking "why am I even bothering to read this?"

- Bloodwraith/Steve Epting - this story, however, was a highlight of Kurt's run. I remember being really enthralled by Bloodwraith growing so large and being so threatening. Though a quick story, it was the type of story that should have been more pronounced in this run.

- Alan Davis/too many Avengers - Davis has many fans around here, and my father loves his artwork too, but I can't say I've ever really fallen in love with a lot of what he's done. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places? (I've never read his Excalibur stuff). But his run was all too short, which annoys me. I'm greedy and I don't apologize for it--for an artist to truly impress me, I'll need quite a few continual issues. But the main problem here is the same problem Byrne had, etc. Too many Avengers means no focus, meaning not enough drama, which makes me lose interest. The 'B' characters work well in tight situations where we see them excel, or paired up with the super-stars. But having 20 'B' characters only ensures they remain 'B' characters and basically don't do anything other than gang up on a very powerful enemy--which means that sooner or later they'll be cannon-fodder.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Thank you for this amazing thread.
Cobie, Prof and of course Stealth.
You guys are doing a great job. I check this thread everytime I'm on for the latest updates.

Keep up the great work guys.

And, since you mentioned it, I may as well quote the relevant excerpt:

For instance, I still can't buy a literal "Man Without Fear" NOT going nuts nor taking stupid chances and getting themselves killed, since fear's the thing that gives us common sense, like "don't cross the road when the cars are coming you'll get killed" and "don't touch that hot pan - you'll burn yourself." And I don't like repeating patterns - once something's changed, it should stay different. The Scarlet Witch should never be an Avenger again after what she's done. Hank & Jan should never get [have got] back together. Even if Wanda is certified sane and H&J get back on speaking terms - could YOU trust someone who did what Wanda did to watch your back? They don't need to be frozen at their first status after the event, but continuity means many things, and hitting rewind is discontinuous.

And that was something Harris was good at in his Avengers run, probably best exemplified by his treatment of the Vision. He gave him back his red/green/yellow colour scheme, his ears & genitals, and his emotions. But the Vision at the end of Harris' run was still FAR different from the pre-Byrne Vision. Then Busiek took over post-Heroes Reborn and set about wiping Vision back thirty years, deleting the Alex Lipton element in favour of making him more like Wonder Man than ever, and losing that "we're a unique being" stuff from the end of Harris' Vision mini. [And, of course, Wonder Man got reset to his pre-WCA days, never mind the resurrection itself from the ion bomb DnA hit him with.]

What surprising is that no one here's yet mentioned that Silverclaw is a direct, complete Snowbird (of Alpha Flight) rip-off.

Half-goddess, changes into animals of her native region which are always a specific colour...

In a word? WØRD.

"Alan Davis -- his run was all too short, which annoys me."

Yeah, me too, on both F.F. and AVENGERS. No point getting on this book if that book is waiting in the wings. Had either Epting or Davis done the entire Kang story, it probably would have been-- at least-- a bit more tolerable... He left AVENGERS for KILLRAVEN??? It was a piece of C***! Oh sure, pretty to look at, and he captures "Neal Adams" very well-- which is how KILLRAVEN started originally. But I'm sure most KILLRAVEN fans want RUSSELL, not Adams. It was average AT BEST, and there was just NO POINT in creating an "alternate" version of that series! If they wanted to do an "early" adventure, couldn't they have EASILY fit it into continuity somewhere???


"Hank as Yellowjacket -- After Shooter's disgraceful story, to Stern moving Hank forward, to Harras restoring Hank as a great hero without dwelling on the past, there was NO REASON to go this route. And now Hank has suffered for it since. Johns tried to 'fix it' again (failed), Bendis continually refers to it, including insults from other super-heroes (Carol Danvers even THIS WEEK has done so). Hank is one of my favorite heroes. It is the easiest thing in the world to move him past all this crap and make him a great hero again. But no one has the creativity to just go for it."

Shooter screwed Hank over TWICE! First, he had him go crazy in the "Ant-Man" story George Perez drew. If anyone remembers, shortly after this, Claremont & Byrne did a 2-parter in MARVEL TEAM-UP where they amped up the Wasps's powers, and showed Hank was completely himself again. I always took that as a subtle "Up YOURS, Shooter!" from those guys. (Unlike when Claremont pulled an "Up YOURS, Michelinie!" with Ms. Marvel, and wound up screwing HER over even more in the process.) Shooter's 2nd screwing over of Hank didn't feel like he was trying to veto Claremont & Byrne, it just felt like part of a general screwing over of EVERY single character in the Marvel Universe that Shooter could do anything to. Talk about "NO REASON to go this route"!!!

Some writers seems to spend their entire careers destroying what others have created. As if to balance this out, other writers spend an awful lot of time trying to "fix" what those writers screwed over in the first place. This is what you get with corporate-owned characetrs who completely dominate the marketplace and are NEVER going to go away.

There's also the case of Hal Jordan-- who was REPEATEDLY screwed over by dozens of writers & editors for decades. There was NO REASON for it. Along came Steve Englehart, who "fixed" his book like it had never been fixed before. Sales DOUBLED. But some people couldn't have that. Denny O'Neil, master of destroying other people's characters, got back on the series as editor, and immediately undid everything Englehart worked so hard at. Gerard Jones had to work twice as hard trying to "fix" the damage. And then editor Kevin Dooley decided to try and out-do O'Neil. Again-- "NO REASON for it". 15 YEARS later, Hal Jordan is finally a viable character again-- in some ways, better-written than he ever was before. But of course, after so much damage for so long, this BIG "fix" has really rubbed some fans the wrong way. (At least I'm reading it again-- and, I think, enjoying it more than ever before.) From reading all the latest posts on this thread, I'm tempted to put Geoff Johns' GL more in the Harras category than the Busiek category. Because, apart from a few odd things, it really has been that damn good. So far.


MAXIUMUM SECURITY struck me as Marvel's attempt to out-do DC's INVASION-- or maybe that whacked-out Superman graphic novel, "The Planet Stealers". How can any writer possibly deal with "everyday normal" stories, after something like this????? (So, of course, they followed it up with the Kang epic... OY!!!)

It was something he'd always wanted to do. He even said here that it was the [Marvel] work of his he most wanted in TPB.

Another quote:
[quote]

I did buy and read the entire mini-series. I repeat what I said. It looked nice, but the story was nothing special. And, there was no reason to create an alternate version when they already had the existing series-- which has been left hanging for DECADES now, still unfinished. If Davis didn't want to pick up where McGregor & Russell left off, he could have found a way to do a flashback set in between some of the existing issues, or before the Neal Adams issue. Instead, we're left with one more "reboot", which diehard fans of the original will no doubt dismiss simply because, "It's not the REAL Killraven"!

Son of Vision? Kid Vision? I don't like it at all. The MU has turned into such a mess.

Yeah, what was with those later issues of Thunderbolts? Nicieza's early issues had some great moments -- Scourge decapitating Zemo, Hawkeye shooting an arrow through Gyrich's hand -- but after # 50, the stories seemed like something inspired by a bad drug trip (and it can't be a coincidence that the decline started as soon as Mark Bagley left.) I wonder what kind of behind-the-scenes craziness was going on?

And speaking of Carol's rude remark...I finally got a chance yesterday to browse through Mighty Avengers # 1. What really makes me laugh is the way that Bendis seems to be trying to make the book all things to all people (so much for his carefully crafted reputation as a maverick. :rolleyes: ) And then the book closes with what appears to be Iron Man being transformed by Ultron into a female cyborg. Not so funny is that all the members of the team are written as one-dimensional sharp-tongued cynics who kill without hesitation. Alan Grant wrote great sharp-tongued cynics in L.E.G.I.O.N. and Peter David currently writes great sharp-tongued cynics in X-Factor (and except for Lobo, none of them were killers -- Lydea Mallor doesn't count, and neither does Guido, as they were both mind-controlled at the time.) Bendis, like that wildly overrated so-called auteur Tarantino, seems to write all of his characters as extensions of his own public persona.

I can't believe that never occured to me! Well, that just gives me one more reason to dislike her.

Yes, even with Perez's art, that's one of the stories I have the most difficulty reading, because of what it foreshadows.

The Claremont/Byrne MTU story is great. It, along with most of their other MTU stories as well, stands the test of time better than their more well-known work on Uncanny X-Men.


Here's the editor-by-editor analysis that I had said I would do:

I'll start with Roger Stern, since he was the first Avengers editor who was not also the editor-in-chief. He started in the middle of the Korvac arc, so I'll absolve him of any blame for that. Once that was over, he edited the first 11 issues of the Michelinie Era, # 181-191. As I said earlier, I think these stories are not bad, but they're too generic and small-scale. Stern did provide the plot for one of the better ones, the Grey Gargoyle two-parter in # 190-191. It's been documented that Stern did not enjoy being an editor, so once other editors started coming into Marvel, he got out as soon as he could, and stuck to what he did best: writing.

Jim Salicrup's first couple issues were in the same mold as what had immediately come before. But the Taksmaster arc (# 194-196) is by far my favorite of this era. I haven't read the remainder of the Salicrup issues, except for # 221, which was his last issue and pretty lame. The stuff that falls between 197 and 220 sounds just awful, full of character assassinations (Ms. Marvel, Yellowjacket), spotlights on characters I don’t like (Tigra, Moondragon) and fill-in issues, and so I refuse to read it. The impression this leaves me with is that Salicrup fell into a situation of Shooter’s ego run amuck (as both writer and editor-in-chief), and all he could do was hang on for his life.

Mark Gruenwald’s first three issues as editor were weak, but then the Steven Grant/Black Knight two-parter steered the book back in the right direction. The next issue, Roger Stern took the wheel and kept the book in the right direction, even though there were some bumps and detours before Buscema & Palmer arrived and the book was the best it had been since the Steve Englehart era. I would imagine that the professional relationship between Gruenwald and Stern was very intense and very complicated. In the end, what really matters is that some of the all-time best Avengers stories came out of this relationship. If not for Gruenwald’s expanding ego (there’s that word again) there would have been more great stories for who knows how many more years (how long was Stern on Superman? 12 years?) The Simonson quotes posted in this thread by Reboot show that Simonson contributed more than I had originally suspected, but it still seems that Gruenwald became too controlling (his last three issues as editor were plotted by...Gruenwald himself.)

Howard Mackie – URGH! The direction he provided was literally no direction at all, because writers kept going in and out of a revolving door after only a few issues each. The only good thing he did was to put Bob Harras & Steve Epting on the book, and then step aside.

Ralph Macchio had a good track record before he became Avengers editor (out of all his pre-Avenger books, I’d have to single out Ann Nocenti’s excellent run on Daredevil.) Harras & Epting were already in place when he arrived, and he seems to have mostly allowed them to do their best work possible (coincidentally, Harras’ first job at Marvel was as Macchio’s assistant editor.) Just as when Macchio was editing Daredevil, he never got in the way of the creators taking chances and trying a fresh new approach. On the other hand, Macchio was still editing the book when it suddenly declined so sharply that I stopped reading it. I would imagine, though, that pressure from the Powers That Be had a lot to do with this decline – by the mid 1990s, Marvel had either tarnished or entirely wiped out everything that had been good about their books. Macchio must be really good at office politics, because he’s the only one of the editorial old guard to have survived all the upheavals and still be working there (he’s currently group editor of the Ultimate books.) I don’t know when exactly Macchio left Avengers or who, if anyone, came in between Macchio and Brevoort, because I didn’t read Avengers for a long time.

Tom Brevoort still edits Avengers today, and later this year will be his tenth anniversary as Avengers editor! That means that he has overseen both the Busiek approach and the Bendis approach – proving that these approaches are flip-sides of each other. Brevoort’s policy seems to be, “Whatever makes the sales go up, no matter how much it damages the book’s legacy,” because I think Busiek and Bendis have both done damage, each in his own way. And as long as Brevoort doesn't leave, the damage will continue.

"Bendis, like that wildly overrated so-called auteur Tarantino, seems to write all of his characters as extensions of his own public persona."

You know, I think I may only have seen one of his films, and after, all I could think was, what a waste of my time that was!


"Yes, even with Perez's art, that's one of the stories I have the most difficulty reading, because of what it foreshadows."

I don't think it foreshadowed anything-- at the time. In retrospect, though... AUGH!! (It's like what I said about GL. I did a 40-page retrospective of GL for KLORDNY shortly after ZERO HOUR, and it was astonishing, considering all the holes in my collection, how MANY scenes I found in earlier issues that were mirrors of bad stuff that came later. Like Steve Englehart's initial 2-part JLA story that brought back Jack Kirby's 1970's Manhunters-- and had Hal Jordan accused of MASS MURDER!!!!)

I guess it was still early in Shooter's run as writer, I wasn't sure what to expect. What I remember mostly was, the issue before, with The Grim Reaper, was the 1st issue George did where I noticed he had made NO drawing mistakes. Funny thing to notice, eh? George did what many only dream of-- he learned ON THE JOB. And those issues were when he finally got good. (Anything inked by Joe Sinnott doesn't count-- he ALWAYS "fixes" things!)


"The Claremont/Byrne MTU story is great. It, along with most of their other MTU stories as well, stands the test of time better than their more well-known work on Uncanny X-Men."

I remember one of the things I liked was having Dave Hunt on inks. I once spent about a half-hour with Chris discussing artists and inkers (but NOT writing!), and he didn't care for Hunt over Byrne. But at the time (and come to think of it, quite a LOT over the last 10-15 years) Byrne's art often seemed "muddy", and it was nice to have someone so "CLEAN" doing the inks. I also enjoyed it when Joe Sinnott started inking Byrne, beginning with MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #50. (I hated Byrne's insistence on inking himself when he started writing the FF-- but by the end of his run, his art had changed so much, an issue inked by Sinnott showed they were no longer a good fit.)

Another story I loved at the time was the 2-parter with Iron Fist and the Daughters of the Dragon, the sort-of link between the last issue of IF and POWER MAN #48. I really wished Chris & John had stayed on PM-IF longer than they did. Seemed a waste to "save" the book like they did and then dump it for other things.


"I haven't read the remainder of the Salicrup issues, except for # 221, which was his last issue and pretty lame. The stuff that falls between 197 and 220 sounds just awful, full of character assassinations (Ms. Marvel, Yellowjacket), spotlights on characters I don’t like (Tigra, Moondragon) and fill-in issues, and so I refuse to read it. The impression this leaves me with is that Salicrup fell into a situation of Shooter’s ego run amuck (as both writer and editor-in-chief), and all he could do was hang on for his life."

Salicrup also took over X-MEN right as the Hellfire Club story began-- but left at its finale. Which suggests to me that as an editor, he was NOT really in control of what was going on in his books! There's been tons of discussion over the years about "lack of communication" between Claremont & Byrne over Jean Grey & Phoenix. SOMEHOW, they got right up to the very point of doing the finale of the story before Shooter suddenly stuck his nose in and said, "UH UH." (I should probably check the dates to see if there's any connection...) On Shooter's 2nd AVENGERS run, it just seems to me he was gonna do whatever the HELL he wanted, and nobody was gonna dare try to stop him. (I sometimes wonder how it might have been if Stan Lee had worked with an editor while HE was writing every book in sight!)

I do wish somebody would pick these issues to pieces. Why should the characters and the readers be the only ones to suffer?


"the Steven Grant/Black Knight two-parter steered the book back in the right direction"

Boy-- talk about a long-hanging sub-plot! (It's very surprising nobody got to that much earlier in Shooter's run as EIC.)


"the book was the best it had been since the Steve Englehart era"

AMEN! (Took long enough, didn't it?)


"If not for Gruenwald’s expanding ego (there’s that word again) there would have been more great stories for who knows how many more years"

I sometimes feel the same way about Stan Lee & Jack Kirby. Lee's ego blew up in the late 60's, and the only thing that popped that balloon was Kirby's abrupt departure. Kirby quit-- Stern was booted. Sad, either way.


"quotes posted in this thread by Reboot show that Simonson contributed more than I had originally suspected, but it still seems that Gruenwald became too controlling"

Yeah, for ages I had the impression he'd just pulled a "take the money and run" thing. But editorial mandates bigger than even Gruenwald made him lose his enthusiasm for the book.


"Macchio must be really good at office politics, because he’s the only one of the editorial old guard to have survived all the upheavals and still be working there"

This is kinda funny, because it strikes me that he took the longest to become a full editor, spending many years as just an assistant editor, often staying on a series as assistant while other guys replaced the main editor. He's also the guy, reportedly, who spent a lot of time bad-mouthing Jack Kirby-- though, who knows, this could be "simply" trying to be on the good side of upper management.


"Tom Brevoort still edits Avengers today, and later this year will be his tenth anniversary as Avengers editor!"

Holy cow! It's the John Nathan-Turner syndrome!


“Whatever makes the sales go up, no matter how much it damages the book’s legacy,”

Holy cow! It's the Joe Quesada syndrome!!!

This might not be the issue you're referring to, but the FF annual that crossed over with the Avengers annual (it has lots of Skrulls, and it takes place immediately after the Nebula Saga) has Byrne/Sinnott art and IMO it looks great. The reunion that didn't work at all was on the FF issue about Jean Grey's resurrection that crossed over with Avengers and X-Factor -- Byrne and Terry Austin were working together for the first time in five years, and it looked surprisingly bad, probably because of the way Byrne's pencils had changed.

But if they had stayed on the book, we might not have gotten the wonderful Jo Duffy/Kerry Gammill run (the only time I've ever found either PM or IF halfway interesting.)

Yeah, it's a shame that Kirby didn't get to kill off the Asgardian pantheon with Ragnarok and replace them with the New Gods. That would've been cool, and it would have prevented the Thor book from getting stale and repetetive for decades and decades. Sure, we wouldn't have had Simonson's Thor, but instead we would have had Simonson's New Gods (at least we have Simonson's Orion to enjoy.)

Um...who is John Nathan-Turner?

Now that one, I got right away.

The... how you american say... "showrunner" of Doctor Who in the 1980s. The WHOLE of the 1980s.

I don't think the comparison's quite accurate, however - for his last few years in the role, JNT was literally begging to be allowed to do something else, and was told "no" every time [He eventually quit the BBC not that long after Dr Who was cancelled, and died prematurely in the late 1990s.] There's no sign that Brevoort doesn't want to be running the Avengers corner from what I can see [and a chunk of the books he nominally edits are, and have been for a few years, delegated to the lower orders of his office. If he didn't want to deal with Bendis, he could simply arrange for a subordinate to do NAv & MAv.].

Oh, and on Macchio: Cable/Deadpool #36 recap page

"This might not be the issue you're referring to, but the FF annual that crossed over with the Avengers annual (it has lots of Skrulls, and it takes place immediately after the Nebula Saga) has Byrne/Sinnott art and IMO it looks great."

No, I don't quite remember that, but my index still isn't updated. Seems to me it was near the end of Byrne's run, around the time Al Gordon came on as inker. Sinnott did one or two issues, and they just looked odd. I realized Byrne had changed his drawing a lot.


"But if they had stayed on the book, we might not have gotten the wonderful Jo Duffy/Kerry Gammill run (the only time I've ever found either PM or IF halfway interesting.)"

Yeah, but remember, there was about a YEAR in between Chris & John bailing and Duffy-Gammill getting on there. I know they only stayed about a year, really-- but at least I consider it an "era" of sorts, Claremont-Byrne's so short it's more like a speed bump. Duffy-Gammill remains my 2ND-favorite period of PM-- the 1st, always, is Steve Englehart's run, with George Tuska & Billy Graham (Billy alternating between inking Tuska and doing full art).

I dug out the first few issue of HERO FOR HIRE last year (the ones Archie Goodwin wrote) and after all this time, it suddenly hit me just how much of a "Golden Age" feel the art and writing on that book had! Most early-70's Marvels got dark, gloomy, depressing... HFH was violent, but somehow FUN! I didn't realize back then just how long Tuska had been in the biz-- he really was another one of those Golden Age artists Stan liked to re-hire when Marvel got back up and running in the 60's. Graham was something else-- he was one of the "young turks", but his style looked even "older" than Tuska's! He was also one of the most interesting inkers Tuska had around then, when most of the time it was either Esposito or (God help us) Colletta. Those issues are SO good it almost hurts to look at 'em-- because I'm always reminded that for MOST of its 125 issues, PM was usually 3rd-rate, if that.

Avengers Volume Three # 41-56 & Annual 2001

To say that Busiek took a kitchen sink approach to the Kang arc is an understatement. Almost all the plot threads he had hanging around get tied up here, whether they’re relevant to the main plot or not: Triunes, Carol, Hank, Templar, Pagan...you name it, it’s there, awkwardly shoehorned into a not-particularly-engaging story of Kang invading 21st Century Earth with intent to conquer. Kang spends a LOT of time posturing and pontificating before attacking Earth. Until then, there’s awkwardly-structured battles against the Atlanteans, the Deviants, the Presence, and the Master of the World; there’s also the American governement stupidly launching a Sentinel attack against Kang, and if you guessed that Kang ends up controlling the Sentinels, you’re absolutely correct. It’s also ANOTHER case of a disaster occurring under Jan’s leadership! Hank overcomes his identity confusion and settles on being Yellowjacket – as we’ve all already agreed, that was a bad idea with terrible repercussions; the resolution of the Triune thread aspires to the kind of borderline-esoterica that Engelhart pulled off so seamlessly way back during the Celestial Madonna Saga, but Busiek doesn’t even come close. Kang commits mass murder and other atrocities, but the story is so cold and so unfocused that I don’t feel any sense of sadness or horror – just numbness.

As it has been for most of Busiek’s run, it’s Carol who suffers the worst – first, her confrontation with Kang’s “son,” the Scarlet Centurion, triggers a flashback to her rape during the Michelinie era (one of the stories I refuse to read) and there’s a long, tasteless, creepy conversation between Carol and the Centurion that has NO POINT being in this story or any other story – what the &^)(((*& was Busiek thinking?? And then later, Carol KILLS the Master of the World! For a story written by a guy who constantly criticizes the Harras era (I maintain, out of secret jealousy), this scene has more than a few echoes of Operation: Galactic Storm – the difference is, the morally dubious event in that story was carefully built up and presented from different points of view, whereas the morally dubious event in the Kang story is completely arbitrary and seems to be there only for shock value, regardless of how it taints the character of Carol.

(And speaking of Operation: Galactic Storm, it’s rather telling that the Kang Dynasty Saga is 15 issues to O: GS’s 22, yet it feels LONGER...and slower, much slower.)

Then there’s the art: Davis & Farmer do the first three issues (# 41-43) with their usual high quality; Ivan Reis & Scott Hanna do Annual 2001 – it looks pretty good, even though Reis has improved a lot since and Hanna’s inks are not a good match; Manuel Garcia and Bob Layton do the next four (# 44-47), and Layton’s inks are surprisingly bad, doing no favors to Garcia’s mediocre pencils; Kieron Dwyer & Rick Remender (# 48-50 and # 53-54) do the crudest, smudgiest, most amateurish Avengers art since Milgrom & Sinnott; in between Dwyer & Remender’s double-your-displeasure, Brent Anderson & Tom Palmer do one issue (# 51) and it’s okay, but not as good as they’re both capable of, and Reis returns for one issue (# 52), this time with Randy Emberlin inking – as with the annual, it’s okay but Reis has gone on to do better; Patrick Zircher & Scott Koblish do the epilogue (# 55) and once again, it could have been better.

To reiterate something that Prof said earlier in this thread, Kang really should have died at the end of this arc. That he didn’t is a cop-out which renders the whole mess pointless, and it shows that Busiek didn’t really have it in him to do a dark and hard-edged Avengers story.

Busiek’s final Avengers issue (# 56), is a lightweight stand-alone (drawn by Yanick Paquette and Ray Snyder) with the Avengers flashing back, one by one, to a battle against D-list villains the Elements of Doom during an accounting. It pretty much sums up the Busiek era: derivative, redundant, unfocused, and soft-edged.

And what has come since then...

I haven’t read the Geoff Johns issues because they sound like nothing special, and I haven’t read the Chuck Austen issues for obvious reasons. When I was first getting back into comics in early 2005, I browsed through the Disassembled trade at a bookstore, and I think the layouts and atmospherics are good, but the actual drawings are ugly and scratchy, while Bendis’s script is like something a ten-year-old on a sugar high would write. I gave New Avengers two chances, and both times I thought it was horrible. I gave Young Avengers a chance, I thought it was well-drawn but the characters and stories did not engage me. I’ve browsed through both of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes minis and they both came across to me as insincere nostalgic mush, no real surprise to me because Joe Casey is one of my least favorite writers with one of the most annoying public personas in the world (shame that Tom Palmer wasted his talent on the second EMH mini.) I already posted my impressions of Mighty Avengers # 1, and will continue to browse through it at least through the end of the Ultron arc, but so far it’s in the “so bad it’s funny” category. :rolleyes: And I'll browse through Avengers: Initiative and the "second season" of Young Avengers (whenever THAT finally reaches the comic shops.)

Cobie will be continuing the chronology up to the present day, and also, I really hope more people start contributing their thoughts on both the current Avengers and the classic Avengers. I'd like to see this thread go on and on and on.

"Kang commits mass murder and other atrocities, but the story is so cold and so unfocused that I don’t feel any sense of sadness or horror – just numbness."

That's about right. I think it was the concentration camp issue that really got me. There's just so many times writers can go "too far" and expect to be able to go on later as if it's "business as usual". Maybe that's why I prefer "smaller" stories. "Big" ones too often just go against the whole concept of long-running series.


"As it has been for most of Busiek’s run, it’s Carol who suffers the worst – first, her confrontation with Kang’s “son,” the Scarlet Centurion, triggers a flashback to her rape during the Michelinie era (one of the stories I refuse to read) and there’s a long, tasteless, creepy conversation between Carol and the Centurion that has NO POINT being in this story or any other story – what the &^)(((*& was Busiek thinking??"

My impression is it took this potentially interesting character out of the realm of conqueror into the area of deviant serial whacko.


"And then later, Carol KILLS the Master of the World!"

I don't know what anybody else thinks, but from his 1st appearance, I thought John Byrne's "Master of the World" was just one all-powerful world-conqueror too many. The whole thing with those collossal walls shooting up that he built was so far beyond believability for me, rather than being awe-inspiring, I just kept thinking, "Are you kidding?"


"yet it feels LONGER...and slower, much slower."

Yeah, I got that feeling. I'm surprised (without looking at my index) that this story wasn't much longer, because it seemed like it was.


"Davis & Farmer do the first three issues (# 41-43)"

See, that's the part that pissed me off right from the word go. If Davis was gonna leave the book, he should have done it BETWEEN stories, not 3 issues into a long-running serial! That's just B**S***! Carlos Pacheco managed to make it through all 12 episodes of AVENGERS FOREVER, which served as possibly ther longest "prequel" in comics history.


"Reis has improved a lot since"

Has anyone seen his work on GREEN LANTERN ? Wow. he's "doing" Neal Adams-- and BETTER than Adams!


"Kieron Dwyer & Rick Remender (# 48-50 and # 53-54) do the crudest, smudgiest, most amateurish Avengers art since Milgrom & Sinnott"

Oh, come on-- that's an INSULT to Milgrom & Sinnott! (At his worst-- which I tend to think is when he relies mostly on assistants-- Sinnott STILL looks better than 90% of the stuff out there.) Milgrom WAS doing the worst work of his career in the 80's during Shooter's run. What was Shooter, anti-art? Of course, he hit rock-bottom with SECRET WARS 2. I was pleasantly shocked to see Milgrom's inks on Starlin in recent years, and to find he'd gotten good again. (Of course, Shooter's not around anymore-- it makes me wonder.)


"To reiterate something that Prof said earlier in this thread, Kang really should have died at the end of this arc. That he didn’t is a cop-out which renders the whole mess pointless, and it shows that Busiek didn’t really have it in him to do a dark and hard-edged Avengers story."

AMEN. To have gone to such absurd lengths, first with AVENGERS FOREVER, and then the Kang invasion, and NOT done the proper conclusion... OY. Someone once said the same thing about The Kingpin. That, at the end of "Born Again", he should have been killed, because you just DON'T do what that guy did to Matt Murdock and get away with it. When I saw what followed, I dropped the book. Permanently. I could put up with Frank Miller's S*** at that point-- just barely. But not the S*** from the people trying to follow him. (And of course, that story just opened the floodgates, didn't it... Like what followed in the wake of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN, when dozens of people with far less talent & imagination all said at once... "HEY! I can do something like THAT!")


"I haven’t read the Chuck Austen issues for obvious reasons."

You know, I keep having a very hard time relating this "Chuck Austen" I keep reading about and whom so many seem to despise so much with the guy who did those wonderful, fun X-rated comics I loved so much 15 years ago. I can't shake the feeling that during his extended hiatus from comics that he suffered some kind of nervous breakdown & complete personality change. The only recent thing of his I've actually read was the WAR MACHINE mini that was part of the MAX line, which was one of the nastiest F***s of a comic I've ever run across.


"I'd like to see this thread go on and on and on."

Like the Kang invasion story?

I just did a long post for this thread, but its not showing up

Will get back to it when I get a moment!

Basically, I pretty much agree whole-heartedly with Stealth and Prof's assessment (but had some additional words on Busiek's run).

The reviews shall continue! I want to say thanks to Stealth for making this one of the most enjoyable LW threads for these last few months, but I don't want it seem like this thread will be ending anytime soon! There will always be Avengers comics to review, and we'll always have our two cents to throw in

I've never read an Avengers comic but I'm *really* enjoying this thread about them!

It's like taking a History class at school, except FUN!

Has Byrne ever created a memorable villain? And why would Busiek have thought the Master was worth plucking out of obscurity?

He sure is. He’s one of the main reasons I read Green Lantern.

Sinnott is a great talent, but Milgrom’s Avengers pencils were so bad, they dragged Sinnott (and Sinnott’s assistants) down to their level.

I guess I’m lucky that I never read Born Again. I’ve always thought Miller was overrated. I love the work of the first writer who followed Miller after Born Again, Ann Nocenti. Her first year suffered from the lack of a regular artist, and then after the arrival of John Romita Junior (not my favorite artist by any stretch, but at least the book had a regular artist), she did some pretty cool stuff with her creation, Typhoid Mary, but it was still basically the same old crime stuff. When she had Daredevil leave New York, the book got great, and I really wish her Daredevil versus Mephisto storyarc would be reprinted in a trade. The most underrated Daredevil arc of all time, IMO.

Heh.

I was more than happy to do it, and I look forward to reading yours and others contributions and to keep making contributions myself. Plus I've got a new review thread in the works and I'm planning to bump up a thread I've neglected. So everybody keep watching the Dr. Gym'll board.

Glad you’re enjoying. And it just gets more fun from here. I mean, really – She-Ultron? It is to laugh.

"Sinnott is a great talent, but Milgrom’s Avengers pencils were so bad, they dragged Sinnott (and Sinnott’s assistants) down to their level."

I guess compared to everything else Milgrom did in the 80's, it just looked stellar. His 70's work was MUCH better. This reminds me of the last 3 Wally Wood issues of DAREDEVIL, when Stan had him team up with Bob Powell. 2ND-RATE. Wally, THE greatest inker in the history of the biz, being dragged down like that. Not right! (Of course, that was nothing to when Wally worked over Keith Giffen layouts on JSA.) From comments I've read recently, Powell was at his BEST when he inked himself. But "the Marvel Method" didn't usually allow for that. So much easier (more convenient) to have one guy do pencils, then Stan would write the dialogue, pass the pages to the letterer, THEN, pass them to WHOEVER THE HELL was available that day to ink them. (Look at the early Mike Ploog GHOST RIDERs-- a different inker every freakin' issue!)


"I guess I’m lucky that I never read Born Again. I’ve always thought Miller was overrated. I love the work of the first writer who followed Miller after Born Again, Ann Nocenti."

This is with many years of retrospect, but... When Miller started pencilling DD, it looked cool. Nobody had ever "clicked" with Klaus Janson so well-- those dark, UGLY inks that just wouldn't go away, year after year! Also, since Bob Brown passed away, the book had not had any artistic stability. And the Gene Colan fill-ins were awful. (I blame Jim Shooter's constant harrassment of Gene for this, to be honest.) When McKenzie suddenly left Marvel & Miller got a shot at writing, it was pretty impressive. Not Elektra-- I always HATED that bitch and still do. His 3-part Kingpin story blew me away, though. The problem-- as I see it-- is Miller is a ONE-TRICK PONY. He does dark & nasty. That's ALL he does!!! To me, DD was NEVER meant to be dark & nasty. Heck, if you look at DD's early rogues' gallery, it seems he was intended as Marvel's answer to The Flash! What's wrong with having a "fun" book???

"Born Again", of course, could be looked at as Miller's "grand finale" on DD-- if you ignore the fact that Denny O'Neil dragged the book thru the mud for 3 years between issues. Those 2 guys are like bookends-- they're not happy unless they're destroying the happiness of every character they write-- or destroying the characters themselves. (I've never forgiven them for murdering Heather Glenn. I LIKED Heather!)

Ann Nocenti's track record made me drop the book (on top of everything else). Her issues of SPIDER-WOMAN somehow made Mike Fleisher look like he knew what he was doing. I've heard a LOT of good comments about her work after that-- but the stuff of hers I did read was so bad, I just avoided her as if she was the next Tom DeFalco.

Long post from elsewhere on the Harris run that I think is worth linking: http://www.comicboards.com/avengers/view.php?rpl=070401081253

The Avengers V.3 #57-76

There are many people who feel that Geoff Johns can do no wrong. There are also a smaller group that hate everything he touches. I’m neither extreme, but I do lean more towards the ‘no wrong’ side of the pendulum. Honestly, I think Geoff Johns has revitailzed a bunch of comics that need it, and he brings a love of the medium and enthusiasm that has been sorely missed for some time. I feel that 95% of his DC work is pure genius. What he’s done with JSA and Green Lantern are mind-blowingly phenomenal, and I thought his Flash run was as good as Waid’s, making it the only other run to ever be as good as the early Silver Age Flash. But that can all be argued until the cows come home and that’s not what this thread is for.

I feel his run on Avengers was with the best of intentions and had potential, but ultimately fell quite flat. Now, I don’t have the insight to what happens behind the scenes at Marvel like Prof or Reboot, but there’s obviously something that was going on with the editors and Geoff, in that the finished product was not what he wanted. It didn’t help that this was when Bill Jemas headed Marvel, and it was the peak period of ‘write to the trade’ policy on ALL of Marvel’s comics, so that each story dragged out and there was often a disconnect b/t stories. I certainly feel a great deal of blame lies on Marvel’s editors and upper-management. But Geoff of course isn’t innocent of all charges (again, I didn’t *hate* this run).

Geoff came in following Kurt Busiek’s monster story and attempted to get the Avengers back on track again, and in doing so, came up with a very large cast of what he saw as essential Avengers: Cap, Iron Man, Black Panther, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Vision, Ms. Marvel, Yellow Jacket, the Wasp, She-Hulk, etc. There are others I’m forgetting. Sub-Mariner and Thor were there at the start, but left shortly after. The problem was this line-up looks great on paper, but is simply too many Avengers. Sure, most of them ‘belong’ in the Avengers, but at the same time it means with a line-up of 10-12+, the comic book loses focus and direction and we thus the emotional impact of what’s happening to the characters. And like Busiek’s previous run, it relegates too many Avengers to ‘dog-piling on the rabbit’ in battle, in other words, being there in large panels as four or five heroes attack. By not doing anything ‘awesome’ or unusual’, there basically setting the pattern of Hero-A being there but not doing anything. In other words, too much of that means Hero A will soon be a B Character, and then be cannon-fodder. Which is what happened.

Geoff added Ant-Man II (Scott Lang) and Jack of Hearts to the Avenger’s roster. I happen to like both characters quite a bit, though they have struggled to stay out of limbo for 20 years. I’m not quite sold on either person being an ‘Avenger’ per se, and unfortunately, I never had the chance to see much to convince me other wise (unlike, say, Crystal). The ongoing plot of the two of them not getting along was ‘okay’ in that at least we had some characterization, but it ultimately never really got me interested. It matters little now, as Bendis came in and killed them both off in Dissassembled, in an almost ‘last ones in, first ones out’ fashion. Slap in the face to Johns? Probably.

The actual storylines were alright, and the trouble with this run was that there isn’t so much that I remember of it. I’ll be quick:

- the Initial storyline – which I thought was a dud. It ultimately ends up with all of the Avengers, including Thor, Sub-Mariner and other big guns, dog-piling on the villain of the piece. It was unfortunately, very unmemorable.

- Red Zone – now, I realize I’m skipping ahead, but I’m too lazy to recall what came between these stories because well, I just wasn’t that interested. Red Zone is probably the peak of the John’s run, and was the one complete, good story he was able to do. That being said, it reeks of editorially driven ‘fit the trade’ mentality. It does have some good moments with the Vision and Ms. Marvel, The Falcon and Cap shine when the Red Skull is revealed as the enemy, and the Black Panther has a good seen at the end. There is also an ongoing Black Panther/Iron Man subplot, as it appears that John’s is trying to restore their friendship after Priest showed a very real tension between the two characters in his Black Panther run. Personally, I thought Priest was very unfair to Iron Man (similar to JMS and everyone else at Marvel right now), but I actually did kind of like the tension between the two characters. John’s intentions are noble, but it feels forced and awkward and Johns goes too far. It would have been nice if he showed them being ‘okay’ with one another, rather than being buddy-buddy at the end.

- Hank/Jan stand alone issue – Its no secret I love these two characters, and by all accounts I should like this issue. But I don’t. And here’s why. Johns, like Busiek, likes the characters too, and its obvious he wants to ‘restore’ Hank and Jan to their proper glory. The problem is that Stern and then Harras already were able to move Hank past all the crap that Shooter put him through and return him to his truly glorious Silver Age self. Johns, like Busiek, referred more to his Yellowjacket days, which was a mistake. And after Busiek screwed Hank up again, Johns came in and attempt to show how Jan and Hank are back together and firmly in love once more. But it still felt too forced. I love Hank and Jan as a couple and I want them to be together. But what happened needs to be addressed somewhat in a logical way that does not dwell on what Shooter did. And both Busiek and Johns still wrote Hank as a weakling, while Stern and Harras wrote him as a strong, confident man. John’s also did an outrageous ‘use the shrinking for sexual pleasure scene’ that I was shocked to see in a comic book that I would expect pre-teens to be reading, and ended up making Whirlwind seem like a sicko rapist/stalker which was too creepy for my Marvel’s Mightiest Super-Hero team. It reminds me of an earlier issue in John’s run where he implies that Scarecrow was raped in prison. I don’t want that in an all-ages comic book about super-heroes. I’m sorry. I just don’t.

- She-Hulk/Hulk story – again, above all, this suffered as it was fit for a trade, when it could have been told in two issues max, possibly one issue. She-Hulk is relegated to rampaging and uncontrollable, which was annoying since at the time Dan Slott was breaking ground on her solo title. Cap, Iron Man and the rest don’t do much but talk and then ‘dog-pile’ on the Hulk who shows up. Considering the Hulk’s history with the Avengers the stage is always all set for maximum drama when the two interact, but this fell somewhat flat. Bruce Banner having the Hulk take the blame is noble, but it’s a plot point left untouched and ultimately Slott had to address it in his run, along with other stupid things writers were putting She-Hulk through (I’m looking at you Chuck Austen, having her sleep with Juggernaut—no worries, I’ll lambaste your Avenger’s run next Monday).

I’ll let others talk about the art, but I remember Copiel coming in and doing Red Zone, which helped make it much more enjoyable. By now Marvel had stolen him away from DC’s Legion, where he was sorely missed, and it was cool to see him on Avengers. But he didn’t remain a consistent Avengers artist, which only made it worse when they had other people come in. I forget who started John’s run, but I know it wasn’t quite up to snuff. I suddenly forget the artist’s name who was on Flash with John’s and did the She-Hulk/Hulk story, but I remember not liking the art there as much as I did on Flash. Honestly, I’ll let someone else talk about the art if they want to.

All in all, Geoff John’s followed up Kurt Busiek’s in much the same vein as Kurt. I thought it was good and well-intended, but it ultimately was very flawed. Both runs, combined with Austen’s upcoming horrific run helped pave the way for Dissassembled, which was disastrous. John’s run further relegated many Avengers to being members of the team that did little, which would lead them to be cannon-fodder. And unlike Busiek, John’s was saddled with Marvel’s right to the trade format policy that further hurt his stories. I can easily see why after twenty issues, John’s immediately wanted to be exclusive to DC, given the level of quality his Avenger’s run has in comparison to his other comics.

Up next: Austen! Perhaps the worst thing since Shooter?