It’s September, and we’ve finally arrived at the climax of Marvel Comics’ pioneering crossover event of the summer of 1973, the Avengers/Defenders War. Having realized at last that they share a common enemy, the superheroes of the two feuding teams have united to save the world.
So it’s fitting that, for the first time since the storyline began, the cover of this chapter gives us a group shot of multiple members from both teams — although artists Ron Wilson and John Romita have probably chosen wisely in not trying to cram all fourteen heroes, plus supervillains Dormammu and Loki, into a single shot. Rather, they’ve opted to go with just nine, and it’s interesting to take note of who’s been included. Unsurprisingly, every character starring in their own series — that’s Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Panther (in Jungle Action) from the Avengers, plus Sub-Mariner, Hulk, and Doctor Strange (in Marvel Premiere) from the Defenders — makes the cut. But that still leaves two slots, and they’ve both gone to female characters — the Avengers’ Scarlet Witch and the Defenders’ Valkyrie — which serves to make the cover at least slightly less of a sausage fest. Better luck next time, Silver Surfer, Vision, Hawkeye, Swordsman, and Mantis (the only shero who didn’t make the cover).
Still, if you’re hankering for a big group shot featuring all the heroes from both teams, no exceptions, then have no worries; Marvel’s got you covered on the book’s opening splash page:
Penciller Bob Brown comes in for special commendation in the credits, and it’s not hard to understand why, given the challenges he faced in having to keep sixteen costumed combatants (and some upcoming special guest stars, besides) on model, and going through their accustomed paces in a credible fashion, for the story’s 19-page duration. While I stand by my general opinion that Brown was never especially well-suited for Marvel-style superhero action, I’d say that, for the most part, he rises to the occasion here; I wish I could say the same for his inkers, Mike Esposito and Frank Giacoia, who (to my eye) provide a professional finish to Brown’s artwork, but nothing more than that. (I find myself wishing that Frank McLaughlin, who filled in without credit as embellisher for Avengers #117’s Cap-Subby battle, could have stuck around — not just for this issue, but for the remainder of Brown’s run on the title.)
Dr. Strange readily acknowledges Cap’s concern, but steadfastly holds to his view that the full strength of both teams will be needed for them to have any hope of defeating Dormammu. The exchange provides writer Steve Englehart with an efficient means of demonstrating that just because all the heroes are on the same side now, that doesn’t mean that they’ll all agree on everything, or that their leadership will automatically begin to work together like the proverbial well-oiled machine
The conundrum facing our super-stars seems in fact to be unsolvable; so, it’s a really good thing that the modern Marvel Universe’s equivalent to the cavalry chooses this precise moment to arrive upon the scene: “Wait!” shouts Captain America. “What’s that — swooping in from the sky?”
For those of you who may not have those “recent [as of Sept., 1973] issues of Captain America and the Falcon” lying about, ready to hand: Nick Fury was seriously injured in the Steve Englehart-scripted CA #165 (Sep., 1973), where he suffered a brutal beatdown at the hands of… Captain America, who’d been mentally manipulated into believing he was fighting the Yellow Claw. Yeesh. Good thing the old warhorse didn’t take it personally, huh?
Nick fires a blast that stuns the transformed Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine without harming her, but the incident convinces him that he, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the rest of the world have only one hope of getting out of this mess alive: “We ain’t got a chance if those super-doers don’t come through! But they’ve got to! They’ve got to!”
For anyone who may not already know, Dormammu’s sister Umar is a powerful magical entity who has battled Dr. Strange almost as often as he has (or has at least shown up nearly as frequently, ever since her debut in 1966), so his oath isn’t quite as odd, or random, as it might appear.
Dormammu is highly suspicious of the Watcher’s showing up; the latter’s reputation as a figure who, though supposedly sworn only to observe and record, almost always ends up actively intervening on behalf of the good guys, has obviously preceded him, even here to the Dark Dimension. But there’s nothing to worry about , the Watcher assures the flame-headed Faltine; this time he really is just here to watch, pinky swear. “I have come, in my own way, to view the spectacle of two dimensions shifting their essences.” Alrighty then, responds the Big D; if the Watcher truly just wants to watch, then he should get ready for the biggest show of all time. “Today you will see spectacle enough to justify your entire existence!”
The sound effect in the final panel above is the second plug we’ve had this issue for Marvel’s then-new official fan club, FOOM, aka Friends of ol’ Marvel. (If you missed the first one, it accompanied the arrival of S.H.I.E.L.D. a few pages back.)
Sure, having all of the beam-shootin’ heroes lining up to fire at the Mindless Ones in unison is kind of silly… but it’s also fun, so why worry? (Though it’s something of a shame that the artists failed to render any kind of energy emanating from the Swordsman’s weapon, suggesting that his blade failed to, er, perform.)
The preceding page is, for your humble blogger, the most memorable of the entire Avengers/Defenders War — the page that almost always comes first to mind whenever I see, hear, or make a reference to the event. And I rather suspect I’m not the only old geezer of a fan who feels this way.
In an era in which both Marvel and DC routinely launch multiple crossover events every year, usually built on a core miniseries accompanied by a number of tie-ins, the notion of the majority of a company’s superheroes (and some of its supervillains) all fighting the same menace, though on different fronts, may seem commonplace. But in 1973, it was unheard of. If you weren’t there at the time, I’m not sure it’s possible to convey how thrilling it was to see the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Inhumans, Luke Cage, Ka-Zar, Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Doctor Doom, Dracula, Adam Warlock, and Thanos, all on the same comic-book page. If you were into the Marvel Universe as a universe at all, this couldn’t help but count as a Really Big Deal.
I seem to remember feeling a bit miffed about Dormammu taking out all the Defenders at once with a literal hand-wave, back in the day. That’s because while I was a big fan of the Avengers, no doubt about it, deep down I probably preferred the Defenders, if only by a little. Perhaps that was due to them not having been around nearly as long, and thus seeming to me to be underdogs… or maybe it was more a matter of them having been around for such a short time that I’d actually been there for their beginning and had followed all their adventures to date, which in some inexplicable way made them “mine” in a way the venerable Avengers could never be.
That said, even in 1973 I could come up with several reasons why Steve Englehart might have decided to handle things this way, none of which involved dissing the Defenders. One was that the Avengers were the senior team, and thus due some deference; another was simply that this scene was happening in their book. The third, and the one I still think today is the most likely, is that the final “official” chapter of the crossover, coming later the same month in Defenders #11, barely features the Avengers at all; so giving the Avengers more of a chance to shine here could be an attempt to redress the balance for the Defenders having more “screen time” in the event overall.
But you know what? Whatever Englehart’s reasons might have been, this really wasn’t that big of a deal to my younger self half a century ago, and (as I’m sure you’ll all be relieved to hear) it’s even less of one now. So, moving on…
In my post about Avengers #116 a couple of months back, I groused about the way Steve Englehart completely sidelined the Scarlet Witch in her and the Vision’s battle against the Silver Surfer in that issue; afterwards, I was rightly (though gently) reminded by several readers that Wanda Maximoff would have ample opportunity to shine before the Avengers/Defenders War reached its conclusion. While I’m still not completely convinced that Englehart was playing a long game here (as was suggested by commenter Bill Nutt), there’s certainly no question that the writer did right by the Witch in the end.
Is the Watcher’s explanation for how Wanda’s hex caused the Evil Eye to hoover up Dormammu’s essence a little, well, hand-wavy? Perhaps, but probably not any more so than most other plot resolutions dependent upon the Scarlet Witch’s always ambiguous ability to “alter probabilities”.
Well, sure — you don’t need to worry about the Vision’s unexplained malfunction, Dr. Strange. He and his Avenging teammates, however, have good reason to be concerned not only about why it happened, but whether it’ll happen again… though, naturally, further explanation of that mystery will necessarily have to wait until later issues.
Sigh. It seems to have slipped Englehart’s mind that he himself had established a mere five issues back that Thor and Iron Man already knew each other’s secret IDs, and indeed had for quite some time, so there’s absolutely no need for Dr. Strange’s action here. And, indeed, in Avengers #121, a mere three issues later, Don Blake and Tony Stark’s relationship would be back on a first-name, no-secret-ID basis (see right; art by John Buscema and Don Heck). So, either Englehart forgot what he’d done (or undone) in issue #118 almost immediately after it happened… or he was hoping that we would. Your guess is as good as mine.
For all practical purposes, this concludes the Avengers/Defenders War — and in the humble opinion of your even humbler blogger, Englehart and his collaborators have stuck the landing in every way that counts. Half a century after its creation, this multi-issue event remains a highly satisfying superheroic saga.
“Officially”, however, there’s one more full chapter in the saga still to come — and though I’m inclined to see it as more of an epilogue, who am I to argue not only with the powers-that-were at Marvel in 1973, but the folks who’ve been running their reprint program ever since? So I hope you’ll join me in two weeks for the fully authorized and completely certified wrap-up in Defenders #11 — “A Dark and Stormy Knight”.
thanks so much for all of this cool stuff. I bought em all off the spinner rack myself.
some of the original art from these issues is here: https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?Piece=1669905
You’ve got an incredible collection. I enjoy seeing scans of the original black & white artwork. Sometimes there’s subtle details that were lost when they were printed back in the 1970s.
Hello, Alan,
I’ve been wanting to post for a while now, but the end of summer/start of school year grind has been getting to me. At some point, I do what to go back and revisit the other recent posts, but I feel compelled to write here, partly because I’m name-checked in this post. (HAH!)
First of all, I stand by what I wrote and what you cited. Englehart was very much into the Long Game back them, and he was big into detailed continuity and characterization. I have little doubt that Wanda’s secondary role in #116 was a deliberate set-up of the events of #118. Englehart knew, not only how he wanted the Avengers-Defenders Clash to end, but also where he wanted to take Wanda on the rising and advancing of her spirit with her apprenticeship under Agatha Harkness.. Plus, we’re only talking two months from #116 to #118. Look at the Vision’s paralysis, which first started here in #118; that subplot wouldn’t be resolved until around #133!
As regards to the Thor/Iron Man secret identity thing: Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but in the letters page around this time, Englehart wrote that someone else (an overly enthusiastic proofreader? An assistant editor? Roy Thomas??) added Dr. Strange’s line about wiping their memories, and Englehart himself was rather nonplussed when he saw it in the printed issue. I always suspected that Englehart deliberately added that brief scene in #121 for the specific reason of correcting the error in #118.
One of the great things is the way the dialogue has little grace notes of characterization – bits that you might not get if someone with a lesser understanding of the characters might miss if someone else had dialogued the story. I especially like Thor’s line comparing the large group to the early in-fighting of the Avengers. I loved Stan for a lot of things, but I always felt that his AVENGERS stories were weakened by having SO MUCH bickering. (I could understanding with the Fantastic Four, since they’re a family.) It’s one of the ways Roy and later Steve were better for the group.
Finally, I agree with you about the art. Giacoia and especially Esposito went a little light on the details that such an sweeping story needed. Can you imagine if Tom Palmer had inked this, like he did the finale of the Kree-Skrull War? That would have been something. I do remember being grateful that Don Heck didn’t ink it. Bob Brown certainly held up his end of the storytelling, though!
Around the time the letters for #118 were published, someone wrote to say that if Marvel suddenly stopped publishing any more books, it would be OK, because “To the Death” stood as a superb sum-up of what made Marvel great: an epic storyline with superb character touches. I agree with that sentiment then, and I think I agree with it now. (I felt that way about AVENGERS: ENDGAME, too.)
Thanks for preserving these memories, Alan!
You’re welcome, Bill! “The proofreader/ass’t ed/RT did it” explanation for Dr. Strange’s unnecessary memory reconstruction on Thor and Iron Man makes all the sense in the world. I had actually figured that this gaffe would have come up in the letter pages, but I didn’t see it in the batch of issues I checked. Either I missed it, or it was included a little later (or maybe even earlier). Anyway, thanks for the additional info!
Soooo goood. Random thoughts:
1)The first chapter of Kurt Busiek’s Astro City: Dark Age has the world recovering from being plunged into a worldwide hallucination by the LSDeviant. The scene was inspired by this issue.
2)The fact most of the universe will never know what this is about struck me as a great detail. For that matter, parts of the world with minimal communication will probably not get it either.
3)I don’t see the Strange mind-wipe as a problem. They’ve already freely revealed their identities so it just didn’t take.
4)Conversely, I do think it’s odd Dormammu would swear by his sister — that seems to acknowledge her as a more powerful entity, which isn’t in character for him.
5)Someone in a later letter Acomplained about the Watcher staying passive — after all, isn’t his homeworld also affected? Englehart explained he was sick and tired of Uatu’s “I never interfere … but this time, what the heck.” over and over so he made him stick to his guns. Later the Trial of the Watcher in Captain Marvel would lead to him swearing never to do it again, ever … though that didn’t stick, natch.
6)As you say, seeing everyone in Marvel engaged in this took my breath away. Having just the one page is way more fun to read than the modern Big Event where every character would be busy with this for three or four issues of their own series.
Yes, I remember the comment where Englehart said he wanted to have the Watcher simply Watch, rather than backslide. And yep, the Trial of the Watcher raised the issue again. I think maybe if Englehart had stuck around Marvel longer, we might have seen the more passive Watcher. But Steve left in mid-1976 and almost immediately everything he had done was undone. So it goes…
I love your comparison of the Avengers-Defenders Clash to the prolix Big Events that DC and Marvel trot out every couple of months. Part of me sort of wishes that this had been an extra-long issue, which might have had room for cool little character beats. But as it is, you had a terrific issue that wrapped up (almost) everything and still managed to make it feel like an event that truly affect the Marvel Universe.
Great moment with the Thing: “I guess we did it. Wha’d we do?”
The Trial Of The Watcher also established the Watchers can bring themselves back to life, one of the many things Original Sin ignored in order to tell its awful story.
There is no Original Sin. Just a shit ton of comics Marvel put out with blank pages for some reason.
That’s how I choose to remember it.
For me, this was the first big multi-issue Marvel epic which I obtained mostly complete, having only missed Defenders #10, off the racks when it was all new. A rather satisfying conclusion in which many of the characters, even the Swordsman, got a moment or two to shine, but the crowning glory went to Wanda, even caked in mud, being able to defeat Dormammu while everyone else had been rendered unconscious or otherwise helpless. Maybe apt that a mutant “witch” beat a god-like creature of magic.
It was a bit thrilling to see much of the rest of the Marvel universe also taking part, doing what they could in the face of potential universal catastrophe. Having in the decades since this epic read quite a few more such tales, from Marvel’s past as well as those to come and still in progress, such as the still ongoing Thanos War I, it was typical in this era that after an event in which so much damage was done in the world it would all be hand-waved away at the end, everything put to right and most everyone made to forget it had happened at all. In more recent decades, perhaps inspired by Moore’s conclusion and aftermath to the calamitous battle between Miracle Man and Kid Miracle Man in MM #15 & 16, writers seem more inclined to let the damage and incidental deaths stand and everyone having to deal with what happened. I do recall my 11 year old self being a bit bothered by Dr. Strange just magically restoring everything even though I well understood the necessity as otherwise, to maintain consistent company-wide continuity, every other Marvel title set in the then present would have had to deal with massive reconstruction efforts. That certainly wasn’t going to happen in 1973!
Another note regarding Thor’s & Iron Man’s alter egos revealed, nearly 100 issues later, in Avengers #215, Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter himself has the Miracle Man repeat Dormammu’s trick of taking away the heroes’ powers and showing their alter egos for everyone present to see, which at the time was otherwise Cap, Tigra and the guest-starring Silver Surfer. And so, roughly 17 years after Thor & Shellhead helped revive Cap after his 20 year icy nap, he finally learns the big secrets of the other sides of the Avengers’ Big Three. Really, though, although he likely had no reason to even suspect that Thor had a mortal alter ego, he should have figured out that Iron Man was Tony Stark long before. Cap may not specialize in detective work, but still he should’ve have wondered why he never saw Iron Man with his supposed boss who also happened to be the Avengers’ big financial support, without whom they wouldn’t have their mansion or quinjets or high-tech gear, etc. As it was, in Avengers 118, all six of the other Avengers present would have seen the transformation — Wanda was still in action and the others wire mired in the quicksand, not unconscious. So the words put in Dr. Strange’s mouth maybe should have been better rephrased to reflect his spell was to protect their IDs from everyone else.
Funny that when the original Avengers got together, they all had secret identities, but when they rescue Cap, he’s unmasked and helpless and although the name Steve Rogers wouldn’t have meant anything to them, no big deal was made about trying to keep it secret from his teammates, even the newbies he as put in charge of in issue 16. Then, when Hank & Jan came back, they revealed their IDs without too much fuss. Hulk’s alter ego was revealed to all the world in his own series, albeit long after he’d left the Avengers. Tony & Don were shown to have simply figured it out without any big reveal, just a passing wink, joke and a nod. Wanda & Pietro never had alter egos, just their code names and costumes that didn’t cover their faces. As for Hawkeye, not even readers were in on his real name until over 4 years after he’d joined up; whether in costume or civvies, he was always just Hawkeye or the new Goliath before he finally let everyone know that his real name was Clint Barton.
Fun stuff! And I look forward to seeing the explanation of the Vision’s claustrophobia unfold over the next year and a half. (Not to give anything away to newbies in the audience, but it’s a real doozy!)
I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The plot is fairly tight, though the dialogue is typical in it’s 1973-clunkiness. Why in the world would you choose the Watcher to ask about Vision’s ailments when Wanda could have easily pulled him aside and asked what was wrong in a way that not only set up the storyline, but also built character beats for both? Different times…
The thing that surprised me most is that once Wanda obliterated Dormammu (and yes, that was good to see after the way she was ignored before), all that was left behind was Big D’s costume. I was somewhat surprised that Dormammu wore actual clothing; I think I just surmised that his duds were a creation of his own power and should have disappeared with him. Why else would you wear a purple onesie, dude? Seriously.
This issue definitely featured Bob Brown at the pinnacle of his creative talents. Yes, the inking is unfortunate, but having some experience with how picky Marvel (and DC) were both back in the day about having their heroes faces look “just so,” it truly is a feat that he was able to juggle that many heroes and their “company” looks without mishap.
Englehart’s writing really hit it’s stride here as well as he also did an excellent job balancing and juggling all the heroes and trying to give them all something to do. He didn’t succeed with everyone in this issue, but for the most part, everyone got a chance to shine somewhere in the D-A War and it’s to Englehart’s credit he was able to pull that off. Thanks, Alan!
Seeing the splash page again brings back very happy memories of buying this 50 years ago. I had missed Defenders 10 so was surprised to see the teams working as one. I agree with others that Bob Brown did a really good job on handling all the characters and deserves huge credit for his achievements. I remember the tingle of excitement in seeing how the other heroes were reacting to the events but I did wonder why they hadn’t been changed into monsters like everybody else in the universe, it seemed a bit odd that they were the only ones who were able to resist.
This was also the first time that I had seen Dracula in a Marvel comic. I wasn’t into horror comics so hadn’t come across him. You may have covered this in one of your earlier Dracula posts, Alan, but was this the first time that Dracula was shown to inhabit the same universe as the marvel superheroes?
I remember being very pleased that it was Wanda who finally defeated Dormammu and, for me, this was the start of her rise to greatness and I looked forward to how it would be developed in the future issues of the Avengers. Alas this was not to be! I managed to get issues 119 and 120 when they came out in the following months but thereafter couldn’t find any subsequent issues. Around that time Marvel UK started publishing a black and white weekly Avengers comic that reprinted the original series from issue 4, the reintroduction of Captain America. This meant that Marvel stopped shipping newly published issues of the Avengers to the UK. I had to wait 3 years until I was able to purchase my next issue (after the weekly Avengers comic had been cancelled, it was issue 153) so I totally missed all the revelations and retrospective continuity that Engelhart would create, only catching up with them many years later when I purchased the Marvel Essentials volume that dealt with this period.
Regardless, this spurred me on to seek out other Marvel comics, I was a through and through DC guy but they had cancelled so many of their titles that I was down to reading about only 8-10 a month which just wasn’t enough superhero goodness to satisfy me. I would dip in to some titles but still wasn’t ready to go full in with Marvel, that would have to wait almost another year.
“…was this the first time that Dracula was shown to inhabit the same universe as the marvel superheroes?”
As John Minehan points out in his comment further down the page, Marvel had already made a couple of same-universe nods from the superhero side of the line to the horror books by having Werewolf by Night and Ghost Rider appear with Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up. But I’m pretty sure that this was the first unambiguous linking of Dracula himself to the greater MU, although the previous month’s issue of Marvel Premiere (featuring Dr. Strange), also written by Steve Englehart, had strongly implied it by having a character in Transylvania refer to both Baron Mordo and Count Dracula as though they were equally real.
Thanks Alan
Dormy sidelining the Defenders may have also been Englehart’s way of balancing the scales a bit. As I pointed out in a previous comment on a previous post, the Defenders won this “war” with the Avengers in a near rout, defeating all their Avengers counterparts and retrieving every segment of the Eye before Thor fought the Hulk to a draw.
Excellent point, crusty!
Englehart had done a bit of this already (in the Your Young Men Will Slay Visions story) with the Avengers clearing away the damges from Ka-Zar’s battle with Gog. It’s a nice touch. In Marvels, Busick and Ross talk about most people not believing Galactus existed after his first attack.
There was an episode of the old Q-M TV show The Invaders in 1968, where one of the Invaders is killed in an accident on TV and combusts and David Vincent, the local authorities AND The Invaders spend the rest of the Episode covering it up to prevent a panic. I always assumed that was how alien insasions and the like are usually handled in the DC and Marvel Universes
Making the “Marvel Monster Boks” part of the regular Marvel Universe was apparently a big question in 1973. They took “Baby Steps to the Door” with a Spider-Man /Werewolf by Night and Spider-Man/Ghost Rider team ups in MTU and then a Spider-Man/Dracula team-up in Giant Sized Spider-Man #1.
Marvel did not seem to give Brown the inkers DC did, at least early on. He would get Klaus Jensen and Paul Gulacy on DD (eventually), but he had Wood, Anderson, Giordano and Cockrum at DC. I liked Brown better on Batman, Daredevil and the Lilith solo stories in Teen titans than on The Avengers.
Dormamu has never been as interesting since his initial appearance, Even his second Lee/Ditko appearance seemed to diminish Dormamu, making him less the evil but honorable being the first story presented him as (despite everything else in the story being great).
I wounder if Ditko’s increasingly Randian views influenced that? A malevolent being, who is also devoted to his particular followers, is as interesting as it is outside the Objectivist World View.
I agree about Dormammu and the way he was played in his first appearance — alien more than outright malevolent.
Disagree about everything being covered up: I prefer the idea that people in Marvel and DC are used to this (the first story in the It! The Living Colossus series shows the Colossus’ previous history is public knowledge). In my head canon, books like Strange Adventures and House of Mystery should be part of the DCU whenever possible — as I put it elsewhere (https://atomicjunkshop.com/yes-the-dcu-should-be-like-this/) it’s hard to believe superheroes monopolize all the weird goings on. My generation grew up with the seeming certainty of nuclear war — i imagine the MU and DCU residents can live with their nightmares.
That said, IIRC when Xemnu pitted the Hulk against clones of the pre-FF monsters (Taboo, Blip, Groot) he referred to the government covering events up.
Good point about the old Schwartz edited-Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space.
I would also say that Schiff actually bought some good stories. Wizard of the Diamond World from Unexpected #93 in 1965. A good, well thought out short SF adventure story, with an elegic little twist at the end.
It had no writer credit (maybe John Broome or a TV writer doing a bit of moonlighting?) but it reads like on of te better pre-John Campbell SF stories, ambe an Ed Hamilton or a Charles Tanner
Schiff was (like Mort Weisinger) an old Standard Magezines Pulp guy, who was part of the CPT Future Brain Trust. Despite his unfortunate collision with Jack Kirby in NY County Supreme over Sky Masters of the Space Forces, Schiff had a rep as a good guy who wrote all those PSAs DC used to run . . . .
Did he really? That’s cool.
I agree with you, it’s great that the Scarlet Witch is the character who ends up playing a pivotal role in defeating Dormammu, which does help to make up for Englehart giving her such an earlier poor showing. He did seem to then consistently build up Wanda’s powers & abilities from this point forward in his Avengers run.
Uatu the Watcher is the worst non-participant in the history of everything. The guy could easily observe everything from his home on the Moon, but so often he insists on showing up in person, even when he swears that this time he, absolutely, positively isn’t going to interfere. I really wonder if Uatu is deliberately carrying out his own version of “the observer effect” wherein, in physics, the simple act of observing something causes it to change its behavior. I mean, Uatu appearing somewhere instantly alerts everyone that this is a Really Important Event and the fate of everything is at stake, especially if he starts doing his dramatic, ominous commentary from the sidelines, meaning the heroes are going to be trying that much harder to stop the menace they’re facing. Maybe he figures that’s how he can help the heroes without actually doing anything, since he can then argue he’s technically just watching.
Who do you feel was Bob Brown’s best inker? I really liked Joe Giella’s inks over his pencils on Detective Comics. Batman as a non-powered “street level” hero was probably better suited to Brown’s style & sensibilities, and Giella’s inks gave his work a nice, polished finish. I also liked Brown’s work on Daredevil, another hero who, radar senses aside, was basically an ordinary human athlete, although on that series he did get assigned a hodgepodge of inkers, with mixed results. But I do rather like Brown paired with a young Klaus Janson on a few of those issues. Don heck also inked Brown on Daredevil, and that was a nice collaboration.
I sometimes forget that Ron Wilson was working in comic books this early on. He’s another good, solid, underrated artist. I’ve always liked his depictions of Ben Grimm aka the Thing on Marvel Two-in-One and the solo Thing series that followed.
Ben, I do like Joe Giella over Brown on Detective — but Dick Giordano is even better, in my humble opinion. 😉 I also like what I’ve seen of Janson’s inks over Brown on DD, although I’d stopped buying that title well before he came on board, so I’ve really only seen some reprinted excerpts.
Elsewhere at Marvel, I appreciate that single chapter of the Avengers -Defenders War (Can vs. Subby) that Frank McLaughlin inked more every time I look at it. I don’t know if the two of them ever worked together again, but it’s a pairing I’d have liked to see more of.
I was born in 1976, so *everything* I’ve ever seen by Bob Brown is from reprints and back issues 🙂
I did not realize that Giordano had inked Brown, but I have no doubt it looked great. Any specific issues you can point me towards?
At the risk of repeating myself yet again, I feel McLaughlin is one of the best, and most underrated, inkers from the Bronze Age. I agree, it’s too bad he didn’t have other opportunities to ink Brown’s pencils. I also wish he had been paired with Sal Buscema much more often.
Giordano inked Brown on a handful of Batman stories in Detective between issues #411-417 (though not *every* issue in that run). I posted about the first of those (the introduction of Talia al Ghul!), if you want a free and easy peek 😉 : https://50yearoldcomics.com/2021/03/31/detective-comics-411-may-1971/
Oh, good grief! I really cannot believe I forgot that Giordano inked Brown on the first appearance of Talia, considering it’s probably the most famous story he ever drew!
You must be getting old, Ben! 😀
There’s a later story where the Watcher does exactly that: after the Fantastic Four have apparently saved the day, him standing around alerts Ben that something still needs fixing.
Kirby conceived the Watcher as unique, rather than a race — he had to rewrite and draw one story which specified that as there’d already been a story showing otherwise. I think if Marvel had stuck with that, his fudging wouldn’t be as annoying as it got.
(Incidentally the Hulk’s visit to the Watcher’s homeworld in one Silver Age story does suggest it’s unoccupied other than Uatu).
Yeah, that was the Marvel Two-in-One Annual with the Liberty Legion, which starts off with the Thing and te Watcher basically playing charades.
I always thought it was odd that Uatu asked Vision why he panicked. He is the Watcher after all. Wouldn’t he already know the Vision’s backstory or, if not, easily look into it? I think it would have been better is Wanda or someone else had asked. Unless Uatu was trying to be subtle and give Vizh a hint to look into it.
That’s a good point, though it’s plausible he missed a few things watching all of history.
Or it could be he doesn’t make the connection between the Torch’s entombment and the Vision’s phobia. It’s not intuitively obvious and even with all his watching, Uatu may still have trouble with human psychology. The ending implies he’s still bemused by our humanness.
I’m curious as to whether the Watcher was conceived as somehow capable of seeing everything that happens on Earth or just those things that he happens to find of interest, of potentially global or even galactic consequences. If so, seems he and Galactus are sort of two variations of concepts of “god” — the Watcher as one who has incredible powers but mostly observes events and only occasionally makes himself visible to others and makes subtle or overt interventions. Galactus, on the other hand, is a conception of god as a destructive force of nature, who destroys worlds not out of malice but simply because it’s what he needs to do in order to survive.
I’ve never quite bought that argument for Galactus — after all, vampires kill people to survive but that doesn’t make them beyond good and evil.
It completely fails after his first appearance. The point of Reed not using the nullifier on him was that once he gave his word not to attack Earth, it was a done deal — he never breaks his oath. Then a couple of years later he broke his oath.
Squirrel Girl figured it out. It’s like take out to him what happens. He shows up, there’s a slight kerfuffle, and Earth finds an alternative snack for him.
Fraser, you missed the fine print on that oath. The fine print said, “The purpose of said oath is to provide an exciting and provocative ending for this story. Oath will be null and void just as soon as Stan decides that Galactus was too good a character for a ‘one and done’ story and that he needs to bring him back. See Doom, Doctor. See Annihilus. See every villain Stan or anyone ever created.”
I strongly suspect that Kirby intended characters like Galactus & Mangog to be once and never more threats to Earth or Asgard in the latter case. But Lee, as editor, dictated otherwise with Galactus, deemed too good and popular a character to just leave in limbo. Appears Kirby was more interested in exploring Galactus’ origin in Thor and to my understanding had other plans for him in that mag that wound up getting scuttled due to disagreements with Lee. In Galactus’ last appearance in the FF written by Lee & drawn by John Buscema, Galactus struck me as wildly out of character, fuming and rampaging like never before. Kirby’s Galactus occasionally appeared exasperated but otherwise fairly sedate, just going about his business.
Then it was Gerry Conway who brought Mangog back in Thor and Len Wein brought him back a 2nd time, each about 3 to 4 years after the previous appearance. I’m not aware of anyone bringing Mangog back after that appearance in issue 250.
I agree Galactus was probably conceived as a one-off.
In Thor, Pluto’s first story arc with Hercules should have wrapped him up as a villain, when he realizes that far from wanting to leave the underworld, he’s proud of what he’s built there. In his second appearance, he’s just Generic Evil God/Powerful Entity.
Just for the record, fred, Mangog has been brought back several times since the 70s — most recently in 2018, at which time Jane Foster-Thor tossed his ass into the sun. 🙂
Thanks for the update, Alan! Expect someone now’ll come up with a story about how he’s spent the last 6 years eating up the sun and will become the solar-powered Mangog!
Way back in 1963’s “Super-Exiles of Space” (*JLA* #19), the Justice Leaguers had to reveal their civilian identities to one another in order to fight Dr. Destiny’s dream duplicates.
At the end of the story, Superman proposed using the Amnesium in his Fortress of Solitude to erase this knowledge…and the team agreed.
In the letters column, a reader objected, but noted that previous shared knowledge of civilian identities (Flash and Green Lantern, the Batman and Superman) would stand because it was revealed prior to the use of the Amnesium.
For my money, Dr. Strange’s magic would leave Iron Man and Thor aware that they were, respectively, Tony Stark and Don Blake, because they knew it prior to the events of “To the Death.”
By *JLA* #100, the members of the JLA knew each other’s identities. The circumstances of that come out of “The Great Identity Crisis” in *JLA* #122.
I think that there is a very simple solution to the “mind wipe” issue regarding Dr. Strange’s spell and I must give Anonymous Sparrow whose post gave me this idea. Dr. Strange’s spell only wiped the memory of the Avengers (and/or Defenders) seeing Thor and Iron Man revert to their secret identities during the time of the battle. Thus, it only applied to that particular incident and earlier memories, such as Tony Stark and Don Blake figuring out each other’s secret identity, would remain intact. One would think that Dr. Strange would use a scalpel approach here (ha ha) instead of a machete anyway when tampering with people’s memories.
Count me in with those of you who were excited seeing the page with various entities of the Marvel Universe dealing with the situation. I vividly remember seeing it the first time in 1973 and being very impressed and intrigued, and I don’t have a positive recollection of many things that happened that year in the comics. In fact, to be honest, at this point, when it came to Marvel, only Steve Engelhart stories really got my positive attention. (Not that I told Jim Starlin this last weekend of course, but I never really got into his Thanos sub-universe back in the 1970s).
Regarding the Watcher, I agree with those of you who wish that he had remained a one-time character or at least one that was used sparingly and did not otherwise interfere. I honestly think that his constant interference wound up becoming a Marvel in-joke along with things like making sure that everyone that fought the Trapster would make fun of him at some point for being called Paste Pot Pete. Kudos to Engelhart for trying to change that and one of my favorite stories of the era was “The Trial of the Watcher” because it showed that there were consequences to the Watcher for his actions. On the other hand, the Watcher did make a perfectly logical narrator and host for the What If series.
I found the notion of Dormammu being a constantly regenerating being of evil from his worshippers as a fascinating concept back in 1973 and still do. In my opinion, it made him a unique character at the time and poignant that one could not permanently destroy him because there always will be evil to revive him. Of course, that doesn’t explain how he could have a sister. . .
I haven’t had a chance to respond to other chapters of the Avengers/Defenders Clash (sorry, that’s my choice of wording) as I would like, but suffice it to say that I found it excellent as you all did. With regard to the art work in this installment and how difficult it was to maintain all of the different heroes on model, I do appreciate Bob Brown’s efforts here, but don’t forget what Barry Windsor Smith and his fellow inkers did in Avengers #100. That was remarkable.