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

He Who, I wouldn't exactly say you touched a nerve. If you liked the Larry Hama issues, I don't have any problem with that. I was just throwing in my two cents.

Perhaps "struck a nerve" was too strong.

I re-read half of Hama's short run last night and skim-read the rest. I'll have some things to say about it later on.

Reading #334 for the first time...

- I'd forgotten how much I disliked the ridiculous steroid males and painfully posed, under-dressed, female characters in '90s art.

- I didn't forget how much I dislike Quicksilver. He's an arrogant git, so having him preach to anyone rings false.

- The scope of the setting on the moon is reduced by the slightly pompous narrative. The Watcher should set up a gift shop, so many Marvel characters have visited...

- Nearly all of the dialogue is also vigorously over egged.

- The only black character whose name is Rage. Hmmmm.

- Having Hercules nearly cripple/ kill a teammate doesn't say a lot for him, not to mention his lechery. It's not like he has a history or anything.

- Oh dear, Qicksilver is taken out despite his super-speed, just like so many other speedsters. Gosh, another foe who is conveniently faster than fast.

- The Watcher yet again becomes the Yakker. "Yak, Yak Yak..oh, I have told you too much already." Yawn.

- As they explore the collection, I reminded of Brainiac's collection of things - Kandor etc...

It's a plot by the numbers with any flourishes lost to clunky narrative and dialogue.

The Avengers look like a collection of strangers who met by chance in the mansion's Gym at the start of this issue.

Hercules comes across as the worst - arrogant, careless, lustful.
Sersi is seemingly vain
Cap shows no tactical awareness throughout, possibly due to steroid abuse in the art.
Rage looks like he's being allowed to tag along with powers duplicated by a lot of the others.
Vision is in his personality free stage? If so, he's not going to save the team in this department.
Quasar is the bland character who vision's new personality could well be taken from.
Widow doesn't really get to do anything.

In fact, no one gets to really do much except face off against some convenient minions of the Collector's former captives in a free for all.

Still, it's off to Earth next issue...

One person's "over-egged" is another person's "exquisite".

". . . slightly pompous narrative . . . plot by the numbers": Good way of putting it, thoth.

I hadn't mentioned Hercules's abandonment of Rage while the latter was lifting weights. This, unfortunately, is what passes for character development in too many Marvels, both before and during this era. Characters behave in ways that would get real people in a lot of trouble, yet we're supposed to think it humanized them. Sheesh!

The twists and turns of the later issues in this arc are not "by the numbers", in my opinion.

Perhaps "over egged" was the wrong phrase. More imaginative Legion Worlders can post how anything can be egged at all with both hands firmly on hips posturing.

I cringed at "the Avengers take care of their own" or words to that effect. Lots of pontificating, aided by the art but not much to back it up. As a new reader, I only picked up a few negative things about the team, and not much else.

I'm looking forward to the twists and turns...

No, "over-egged" was the perfect phrase. If something so sinfully overrich is wrong, I don't want to be right.

As for the team members coming off badly and indulging in behavior that would get them in trouble in Real Life, firstly I reiterate that this was a new writer getting a feel for the team, and secondly I don't think ALL superheroes need to be paragons of virtue or role models, and thirdly I was in my late teens when I first read these stories, so bad behavior was right up my alley.

Well, speak of the devil!

Good article that defends Cobie and Fickles' beloved Avengers era!

We should ALL get bomber jackets!!!

There's getting into trouble and then there's...

Cap; To the Quinjet! Where's Rage?
Vision: He is in a wheelchair after the spinal damage from the Gym incident.
Cap: Ah yes. I was there doing my Over Aggressive Poses class. Is Sersi visiting Rage in hospital?
Vision: No, she left after you dismissed Hercules' attempted assault as a minor incident. Authorities are still hunting Hercules after he refused to be taken into custody claiming that he could do what he liked as the son of Zeus.
Cap: >sigh< I thought that was the Hulk rampaging yet again. Quasar?
Vision: Something else else Cosmic...and yet utterly bland at the same time...
Cap: Ah well, you and me against the Moon old buddy.
Vision: That was my old personality. This personality is going to suggest a few changes to the Scarlet Witch in the other, better written, book. Who knows what she'll do with them later...

Hm.

Thanks for posting that, Lardy, even though I have mixed feelings about what the article's writer said.

I was reading Avengers and X-Men at the same time back then, and I much preferred Avengers. X-Men was a bit too much in every department, and the Avengers was just right. As for love triangles, this guy has obviously never read the Celestial Madonna Saga.

But, yeah, otherwise this person is speaking my language.

Now, my thoughts on Hama's run.

Overall, I thought it was a hoot. Hama clearly wasn't taking the Avengers too seriously as there is a sense of humor pervading this run, and sometimes it borders on the absurd, such as the demon-like aliens using urban dialect. However, there was a good in-story reason for this: Ngh (the name of the head alien) was seeking to adopt the vernacular of the place in which he found himself. The irony is that the drug dealer he interacts with, L.D. 50, speaks in such a faux educated way that he, too, borders on the ridiculous. I found it amusing to read the scenes in which they were conversing as both Ngh and L.D. 50 were pretending to be something they were not.

By contrast, however, Rage speaks in an eloquent and straightforward manner throughout. I think Hama did intend for him to be a positive depiction of a black character, although there were missteps along the way. In one egregious scene, Cap and crew seek to restrain Rage after a protester has thrown something in his face. They don't wait to see if Rage is actually going to go berserk--no, we can't trust a black man to stay in control of his emotions! Rage, predictably, puts everyone to shame in his response to the protester.

In a way, though, the idea that black people are misjudged by super-heroes is a recurring theme throughout Hama's run, and I imagine he envisioned Rage as a character who would undercut our complacent assumptions about super-heroes and how they relate to "ordinary people." Rage, for example, is introduced in a down-to-business approach: demanding that he be allowed to join the Avengers and challenging them because they spend all their time fighting super-villains and doing nothing to help ordinary people, such as shutting down drug houses (which he does later in that issue).

This sort of relevance in super-hero comics is as old as the vaunted O'Neal/Adams run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow back in the early '70s. Stories of this nature have varying degrees of success. I think Hama's approach is mostly successful in that it adds a new slant--satire--to the mix. However, it could have gone further and might have if he had stayed on the book longer.

(Another telling scene is when Sue and Reed Richards spot a burst of energy coming from the ground and Reed decides not to get involved because the Avengers will handle it. On one hand, his comment seems to be a vote of confidence in his fellow super-heroes; yet, it also comes off apathetic and dismissive. This is not the sort of comment we're used to our heroes making.)

The main plot of the first few issues focuses on a Russian officer who has been irradiated at Chernobyl and who unwittingly causes havoc in Manhattan. This part reads straight out of Cold War melodrama, which seems outdated even in 1991. Both the female Russian agent and the female American doctor who tries to help him make questionable decisions to further the plot along. But, hey, you can't trust women, right?

There are other missteps--I don't get the Nixon reference, either. I can only assume Hama meant it as a joke, but it just comes off as stupid. (In fact, the depiction of Cap throughout seems off. About to have his head bitten off by one of the aliens, he threatens to bite its head off instead. Really?)

On the other hand, I laughed out loud while reading 329's changing of the guard issue. All of the Avengers gather to debate their new charter and vote on members of the primary team and the reserve teams. This is pretty much how organizational meetings go, and they are often as boring and contentious as depicted here. This issue affords us a glimpse of a side of the Avengers we rarely get to see, but which, of necessity, must exist--they are an organization with national and global responsibilities, after all. Again, Hama is having fun with it.

I also have to mention that the art in these issues is by Paul Ryan and the ever faithful Tom Palmer. As good as the Epting/Palmer team eventually becomes, it can't hold a candle to Ryan, who depicts things in a more straightforward, classical Marvel style but whose artwork is always clear, well defined, and energetic. This is an attractive Marvel Universe, with characters whose faces look distinctive (Reed in particular).

As I said, I only skim read the last half of the run, but one image which stands out is Rage hitting Dr. Doom with a cupcake--yes, a cupcake! Rage, I think, was intended to shake things up by doing and saying things the other Avengers wouldn't do. If Hama had stayed with the book, I imagine that's how Rage would have developed. Harras, unfortunately, does not seem to have had a feel for the character.

So, yes, after re-reading this run I came away liking it even better than I did back then. I imagine that I liked it then because, in 1991, I had been reading Marvel Comics for nearly 20 years and was getting a little jaded with them. When a writer came along who poked fun at super-heroes and cast them in a decidedly different light than the all-heroic, all-knowing Mensches we're used to, it seemed fresh and fun. (And, yes, the 40 or so issues since Stern's departure weren't much fun, either.)

I respect the fact that this run isn't everyone's cup of tea--what run is?--and I find it fascinating to read comments from those who see it differently than I do. It could be generational thing, though. If I had read these issues without the previous 20 years of Marvel experience, I might have wondered how I was supposed to take it. There are aspects of Rage's origin, for example, which are blatantly stereotypical--he's drenched with toxic waste while running from racist boys. Yet Hama also provides twists to that stereotype by giving him a positive family role model (Granny Staples--who isn't afraid to stand up to demonic aliens), by making sure that he is well-read and well-spoken, and then by revealing he is only 14 or so years old (a boy in a man's body--an odd twist on Captain Marvel). Hama seems to have chosen to work with stereotypes for the purpose of saying, "Ah! Ah! You think you know where this is going, but you're wrong."

Rage was written out in 341-342. I hope you're going to read those issues.

Paul Ryan's pencils made me yawn. Again, to each their own.

Finally, there's satire and then there's ham-fisted farce. I think the Hama run (and for that matter, the great majority of the Giffen/DeMatteis JLI) is the latter. But, as we keep telling each other, your milage may vary.

Yeah, it was a little deprecating, but I think he gets across the point that while its influences were seemingly clear, it was a very enjoyable run.

WEIRD timing for the article, though!

There is no such thing as coincidence.

Certainly. But you have to get through my review of 335-339 first.

Synchronicity: It's not just a Police album.

I do want to make it clear that I'm enjoying yours and Thoth's challenges. It's a healthy thing, it's what makes the world go 'round.

I think Sting sings like Scooby-Doo.

I want my MTV...and a scooby snack...

"Riff roo rove romebody
Riff roo rove romeone
Ret rem ree."

Because I'm on a roll, here's the next installment of my Harris/Epting re-read:

Avengers 335 (Early August 1991)
"Bloody Encounter"/"Collect and Proceed"

Summary
The issue opens with clunky exposition as Vision, Black Widow, and Captain America each record logs to get readers up to speed. Among other things, we learn that the Avengers have called in some familiar faces—The Beast, The Black Panther, and Hank Pym—to assist Quasar with trying to revive The Collector on the moon.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Avengers return to earth to engage the Brethren in Paris. The team fares badly, and Cap is left for dead. However, Thane Ector becomes enamored with Sersi and kidnaps her, much to the consternation of Sybyl Dorn.

On the moon, Quasar, T’Challa, and the two Hanks succeed in reviving the Collector, but the old guy seems quite befuddled. He guides most of the team (miniaturized by Hank Pym) through the various receptacles of his menagerie until they can find some clue to the Brethren’s origins. The issue ends with the Collector leading the team on an unfortunate detour into an alien paramecium.

Thoughts
This was published during the years when Marvel put out two issues a month during the summer (hence the "Early Aug" date). This meant you got to read more issues featuring your favorite heroes. Unfortunately, it also meant that a lot of these issues were rushed into production. Case in point: 335.

Upon reading this issue the first time and two days ago, I couldn’t help feeling I’d missed an issue. The story jumps so quickly into the Avengers’ confrontation with the Brethren that it feels like Harras was in a hurry to get the ball rolling. There’s no build-up, and the pacing of the story suffers for it.

The battle itself goes pretty much as expected—the Avengers can’t win this early but they put up a helluva fight. The fight scenes are for the most part well choreographed; however, there are few surprises. Even Ector’s infatuation with Sersi seems familiar. (It reminds me of Arkon’s similar claim on the Scarlet Witch back in # 75-76.)

Steve Epting debuts as Avengers penciller here (though is name is spelled “Eptig” in the credits). It’s not a very impressive debut, in part because he is saddled with Tony DeZuniga as inker during the first part of of this two-part story. I’ll leave it to those who are more knowledgeable than I am to discuss the merits of particular inkers; however, it is clear that DeZuniga did little if anything to adjust Epting’s awkwardness. See, for example, Vision’s face at the bottom of Page 9, which just looks horrible, or Cap’s face in the second panel of Page 14. Things pick up when Tom Palmer inks the second part of the story ("Collect and Proceed"), chronicling the moon team’s efforts to revive the Collector.

However, the entire issue has an amateurish feel to it, as if a very green writer and a very green artist had chanced upon a big break. If that is the case (I don’t know what Harras and Epting’s previous credits were), it’s laudable for Marvel to give them a shot; however, one would expect a somewhat tighter editorial control in the process.

Again, no real argument from me. DeZuniga did a horrible job even by rush-job standards.

Epting's previous credits were issues of Dreadstar, Whisper, and Nexus for First Comics. It's a mixed bag of work, but some of it (particularly Dreadstar 59) shows how good he already was when he had the proper time to do his best. To this day, he's never been good with deadlines.

Harras' previous work included a fill-in issue of Avengers during the Stern era, 280 to be exact, where Jarvis reminisces as he recovers from his injuries sustained during the Masters of Evil arc. He also wrote Iron Man Annual 7, where Erik Josten becomes Goliath. Also a very witty fill-in issue of Thor (356) where Hercules tells tall tales to a group of children. His other previous work...well...there's the Nick Fury vs. SHIELD mini-series, which a lot of people understandably hate -- it was sort of "SHIELD Disassembled" -- but I had no problem with it, and think it's good for what it is. There's also the first arc of the Nick Fury ongoing that spun out of the mini-series. That one starts off well, but gets really bad. So Harras has never been reliable as a writer, but when I like him, I like him a lot.