The cover of this issue, pencilled by Gil Kane and inked by Frank Giacoia (and maybe Mike Esposito), might fairly be called a bit misleading. Sure, the Avengers fight a big scaly monster inside, but not these Avengers — Captain America, Iron Man, the Beast, the Vision, and the Scarlet Witch — who, setting aside the whole monster business, show up for only two of the story’s nineteen pages, besides. On the other hand, the promises made by the cover’s blurbs are right on the money: these five Avengers do indeed “break loose” from the confinement we saw them trapped in back in Avengers #142; plus, this issue also features “the final battle against the power of Kang!” — or, at least, a final battle, since, then as now, nothing lasts forever in Marvel superhero comics.
Anyway, why quibble? Back in October, 1975, my younger self hadn’t come here for the cover — and I’m not here for the cover now, either. All that really mattered then (and still does) is that when I turned to the comic’s opening splash page, I found the continuation of the storyline that the regular Avengers creative team of longtime writer Steve Englehart and fledgling artist George Pérez had kicked off two issues before…
We do get one significant change in the book’s creative personnel this issue, however, as Sam Grainger replaces Vince Colletta as inker. Grainger’s slicker, bolder line is probably more faithful to Pérez’s pencils than Colletta’s scratchier, thin-line approach had been; but that comes with a downside, in that the weaknesses of the still-developing young artist’s basic draftsmanship are more evident as a result. Pérez himself admitted as much in an interview for the 2003 book Modern Masters Volume Two: George Pérez:
When Sam Grainger started inking Avengers after Vince Colletta, I liked Sam’s inking. Sam’s inking might have been a little too slick and didn’t actually correct any of my flaws, just made them look slicker because he’s so faithful. But I didn’t look beyond the fact that he was faithful. When I look at the work now—two decades after the fact — I think, “Gosh, I wish he would have corrected my chins, or had made my noses better.” At the time I was deliriously happy, because all I wanted was someone to ink me faithfully.
It’s easy to understand where Pérez was coming from in his latter-day regrets; on the other hand, the great flair for innovative page design and decorative flourishes that the artist exhibited virtually from the start of his pro career, as well as his strong storytelling ability, still come through loud and clear in these pages… so, whatever the flaws might be, I’m still very happy with what we got.
As with the previous issue, we’ll be spending most of our time this issue with one of the two plotlines Englehart currently has running in parallel –i.e., with the “Cowboys versus Kang” one, rather than with the “Roxxon/Squadron Supreme” business occupying Captain America and company in the present day. Although, as we’re about to see, this installment is a lot more “Kang” and a lot less “cowboy”, as most of the Western guest stars who took center stage last issue — Kid Colt, Rawhide Kid, Night Rider, and Ringo Kid — take a back seat at this point, leaving the main action to just one of their number — the Two-Gun Kid — and their Avenging allies from the future.
Two-Gun — aka Matt Hawk — doesn’t particularly cotton to taking orders from women who “prance around half-naked, with shaved heads”, but he’s determined to do his best to help the Avengers defeat Kang, and so keeps his ire (mostly) under his hat. In the meantime, we readers are left to wonder about the identity of that yellow-bearded hombre riding between Moondragon and Matt (not that there are that many candidates, frankly)…
Although the Avengers have Ace’s password for access to Kang’s citadel, they’re not at all sure that their enemy won’t have already guessed that the four horsemen at his door aren’t the same guys he’d sent to rob a train last issue. And they’re right, of course; before our heroes have a chance to take any action at all, the front door slides open all by itself. Naturally, the quartet immediately accepts the implicit invitation to enter, and then…
Hawkeye responds to Kang’s pronouncement of doom — first by calling him a “blue-nosed baboon”, then by asking him why he’s even bothering: “Everybody knows you’re going to give up this life in time! Why give yourself so much to regret?” But Kang still refuses to believe that, at some indefinite point in the future, he’s going to repent of his wicked ways, returning first to his old identity of Rama-Tut, then ultimately becoming Immortus. “I’ll regret nothing,” he declares, “least of all, your deaths!”
That’s a nice tier of mostly silent panels, reminiscent (to me, at least) of the work of Jim Steranko. Pérez immediately follows it with another knockout page, whose long vertical panels recall the sort of thing Jim Starlin was doing around this same time in Warlock:
At this point, our story abruptly shifts over to the parallel plotline for those two pages I mentioned earlier…
While it’s true that Iron Man has fought a “solo battle” against Dr. Spectrum before, it’s not clear from his phrasing in that last panel that he realizes that that guy was in fact a whole ‘nother Dr. Spectrum — i.e., the one who’s a member of the Squadron Sinister, and has been a supervillain from the get-go — rather than the one responsible for constructing the cage our heroes have just escaped, who’s a member of the Squadron Supreme — superheroes from an alternate Earth, who’ve all suddenly begun acting like bad guys for some reason. But you can see how even a guy as bright as Tony Stark might find all that to be confusing, especially since he’s never actually met the Supreme version prior to this storyline.
And here’s our scaly friend from the cover, albeit colored purple for these interior pages, rather than green. (Although neither green nor purple seem an especially likely hue for a monster that Kang claims to have made from a coyote, who usually come in shades of brown or gray.)
The creature sends Moondragon sprawling with one sweep of its tail. Hawkeye and Two-Gun retaliate with their respective projectile weaponry, but to no avail…
C’mon, Steve and George — do you really think we don’t already know who Yellowbeard is?
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, as a major Thor fan in the 1970s I was often disappointed by the stories in the God of Thunder’s solo title, which rarely (to my mind) seemed to utilize the character to his full potential; for that reason, I always got a big kick from Avengers sequences like the current one, where my guy really got to show his stuff.
So much for the big scaly coyote-monster. Meanwhile, Thor continues to violently shift Kang’s protective force field hither and yon to punishing effect…
While I can’t say the final fate of Kang (aka Rama-Tut, aka Immortus) moved my younger self to tears in 1975, the way it did Moondragon, I still found this ending to be pretty damn awesome, in more than one sense of that word. At the time, it really did feel like this was — or at least should be — the last Kang the Conqueror story.
And for a good, long time — all the way until Secret Wars #1 (May, 1984) — it actually was that. Following Avengers #143 (and not counting the occasional flashback to, revisiting of, or What If? take on past appearances) Kang would remain out of sight for over eight years… which might not seem all that long a span from our present perspective; but, considering that in 1975 Kang had only been around for twelve years, is frankly fairly impressive, at least to me.
Since 1984, of course, there have been many, many Kang stories — a few of which should never have come to pass in any timeline, however alternate (yeah, I’m looking at you, Avengers #200), but many more of which have been quite entertaining, and some of which have even been outstanding. So I’m not prepared to say that the storytellers at Marvel Comics should have kept the finale of “Right Between the Eons!” sacrosanct, forever and always. Still, I’m glad that they allowed those of us who were around at the time a whole eight years to at least believe that it might remain so. While it’s certainly true that, when it comes to superhero comics, no one should expect any death to last forever, surely it’s still fair to ask that it last for long enough for a character’s absence to mean something.
UPDATE, 10/25/25, 12:40 pm: As pointed out by reader mikebreen1960 in his comment below, Immortus actually resurfaced a good bit before Secret Wars #1, in a two-part story published in Thor #281-282 (March and April, 1979)… so even if the specific “Kang” persona didn’t show up again until 1984, the guy himself had clearly been shown to have survived the climax of Avengers #143 well before that. Which, alas, takes most of the wind out of the sails of my last three paragraphs, above — but I guess that’s just how the time paradoxes fall, sometimes.
In my Silver Age reread I’ve reached Amazing Adventures #4, which took the Mandarin out of play for two years, and Hulk 135 where Kang got trapped in a time storm for four years (https://atomicjunkshop.com/id-have-posted-sooner/). It does add something to a story when they don’t pop up again immediately after “dying.”
Kang’s long hiatus could have had something to do with Englehart’s near overuse of Kang’s ability to retreat in defeat, prepare for years for a rematch, and coming back to fight again shortly after his defeat. Each story was awesome but damn, that was a lot of Kang there for a while.
It was a bit like many of Marvel’s early years when particular baddies (solo or groups) would show up over and over again before some sort of cataclysmic story that would put the baddie out of action for at least a couple of years. Well, aside from Zemo, who was permanently put out of action, aside from a fake Zemo — and even he didn’t show up until about 3 years after Avengers #15; and then Zemo, Jr., who waited well over 15 years after daddy’s death to start wearing his mask and crown.
That doesn’t always stop people (“Editors pass around Darkseid like a bong” — Keith Giffen) but perhaps it did in this case.
The only comics cover dated January 1976 in my collection are Brave & the Bold 124 (Batman & Sgt. Rock with Jim Aparo himself on the cover, drawing a comics page), House of Secrets 139, Secrets of Haunted House 5 (both with Wrightson covers), Creepy 76, Eerie 71, Marvel Preview 4 (Star-Lord), and Howard the Duck 1 (which I suspect will be reviewed here soon).
I looked at, but didn’t purchase the DC/Marvel Superman vs. Spider-Man treasury edition and the Super Friends limited collectors edition (which has a great behind-the-scenes feature on the animated cartoon, drawn by Alex Toth).
…and Swamp Thing 20 (Gerry Conway’s “clone” story drawn by Nestor Redondo).
My pleasure in Steve Englehart’s comment on the Two-Gun Kid freaking out before Kang’s monster remains intact after fifty years. Truly, you were Stainless in those days, Steve Englehart. (Mostly, at any rate, but even the Sun has its spots, as an EC war story has it.)
Moondragon would be pleased to know that I borrowed it for something I wrote, in which an ordinary guy encountered a girl he’d once agonized over inviting to a dance and found that she’d changed into, if not a goddess, then at least into what Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op would call “the queen of something.”*
He didn’t freak out, but he was momentarily taken aback.
*
See “Dead Yellow Women” in *The Big Knockover.*
Not a heck of a lot to complain about with this one. Yeah, that cover was misleading, but about half the covers out there in the seventies were, so you can’t say we weren’t used to it. Perez’s artwork looked great, especially for where he was in his career, but instead of worry about correcting chins or noses, he should have had Grainger re-draw most of his cowboy hats.
As for the story itself, it would have been nice to spend more than two pages with Cap and the “present day” Avengers and if we’re going to feature a team-up with Old West Marvel heroes, it would have been nice to keep the cowpokes a tad more involved in the story, but who am I to quibble? My real beef is that, while it is nice to see Thor cut loose and use the Don Blake disguise for a practical purpose for a change, I really don’t expect to see Thor defeat the bad guy all by himself in an Avengers book. I mean, yeah, god vs god and all that, but still, the book is supposed to be “The Avengers,” not “The Mighty Thor” and it would have been nice to see The Avengers (along with their cowboy allies) stop Kang, rather than a solo effort from the Thunder God.
All in all, however, a good issue of a book I totally didn’t appreciate at the time. Thanks, Alan!
So the supposedly ‘great military leader’ (to quote John Connor)… Kang, the Conqueror, the tactical, battle-experienced, strategic genius is taken in yet again by his most powerful opponent… putting on a hat and an overcoat?! Never mind us not working out who yellowbeard is, what was Kang thinking that he didn’t remember GS Avengers #2 where Rama-Tut foiled all his plans by doing exactly the same thing? Even if the character is Don Blake-sized and not Thor-sized, would he not recognize the possible danger and react accordingly?
Alan – Kang may not have reappeared for a while, but didn’t Immortus show up not so long after this in the Thor/Space Phantom story engineered to remove Thor’s time-travel powers?
Thor #281, 1979, and if Immortus survived this story, Kang must have done as well (even if he didn’t show up in person for another few years)
Arrrgghhh! It looks like my research was less comprehensive than I thought. You’re absolutely right, of course, mike. Excuse me while I go shamefacedly update the post…
As I mentioned in the comments section of Alan’s blog post for #141, I read this storyline in the Avengers: The Serpent Crown collection published in 2005. Even though at that point I was very well aware that Kang had survived his apparent death in Avengers #143 I nevertheless still found reading the “final” battle between Thor and Kang and its aftermath to be incredibly powerful. It was a great combination of Steve Englehart’s scripting & George Perez’s storytelling.
An excellent review of one of my favorite Avengers stories from my youth! Yeah, this George Perez isn’t the George Perez whose art would scale stellar heights. But for every bland expression or face, the guy more than made up for it with stellar panel arrangements, exciting poses and dramatic energy sizzling throughout the issue. Likewise, I was also quite pleased to have Kang removed from the scene for some time following this issue – and kudos again to Perez for manner of his dissolution! Although I couldn’t wait for the Squadron Supreme story to take center stage – and it would take much longer than I liked due to a couple of horrid fill-ins – I had zero complaints about this one! (Well, one quibble – I had waded through Iron Man’s 63-66 and knew that was most certainly not the same Dr. Spectrum. And that’s a compliment!)
The cover was a bit silly. Appears there was some big mix-up in whatever plot details were given to Kane. Also, despite having been the main baddy in so many Avengers issues from 129 to 143, he only appeared on the cover on 129 (and GSA # 2). Anyhow, given Kang’s voiced threat to slaughter all the Avengers, I can understand the impetus for Thor to eliminate Kang once and for all, albeit, in the grand tradition of comicbook final faceoffs with a real bastard of a baddy, Kang inadvertently eliminated himself, just as with Zemo in Avengers #15 and the original Green Goblin in ASM # 122 (never mind that Norman “got better” much later, just as Kang did. When and wherever it was that Kang finally made his genuine comeback, I missed it and haven’t been inclined to fill in that gap in my collection (and neither have I gotten any of those featuring the resurrected Norman Osborn).
One little mystery comes to my mind about this story is that given that as far as I know, Hawkeye had no idea that Thor had a human alter ego, what’s the story behind Thor taking the disguise. If Hawkeye did know, it would make perfect sense. Maybe Thor just informed Hawkeye that he had a “godly” power to alter his appearance in a manner that would fool Kang without necessarily letting Hawkeye know that he had a human identity as the mortal Dr. Donald Blake. Or maybe Clint figured it out on his own just as Tony Stark was shown to have done back in Avengers #113.
I did find the mutated purple coyote monster bit rather silly too, but it had already been well-established in Marvel Comics at least since FF # 1, that science works in very mysterious ways in the Marvel universe, so if Ben Grimm can be converted by cosmic rays into an incredibly strong “Thing” with orange rock-like skin, then why not a coyote converted into a huge purple monster with a mohawk and a tale that looked nothing like that of any mammal that ever lived?
Anyhow, overall, this was a fun, momentous conclusion to this era of multi-Kang epics and a breather before getting back fullbore into the latest Squadron Supreme/Serpent Crown saga. But, after the next chapter, in which Patsy is transformed into the Hellcat, there would be that weird two-part fill-in that seemed to take place in yet another world (it struck me as an Avengers story written more in the DC style, and as best as I can tell, the story was never even referenced in any later Avengers story.
“One little mystery comes to my mind about this story is that given that as far as I know, Hawkeye had no idea that Thor had a human alter ego, what’s the story behind Thor taking the disguise.”
Ooh, good catch, fred!
This particular issue of the Avengers is a favorite of mine and left quite an impression on me at the time. The battle between Thor and Kang was amazing and dynamically illustrated by Perez. It’s hard to believe this was early Perez since it was so good. Of course seeing Thor fully unleashed this way led to the very interesting confrontation between Thor and Moon Dragon in issue 149 and of course the consequences of that confrontation which I expect you’ll discuss next year (hopefully).
It should be noted that the Kang that appeared in the Secret Wars limited series was plucked out of time by the Beyonder so it is not clear when he came from. It was clearly stated in the Avengers in 1986 that when Kang did actually return in Avengers 267, it was his first time back in over 10 years. While Avengers 267-269 were quite entertaining and Roger Stern is an excellent writer, this storyline introduced the concept of the cross-time Kangs, an interesting but unfortunately very confusing concept, better left forgotten.
At the time I was fine with how issue 143 ended, but now I find it incredibly confusing. It really does not make sense. If Kang ceased to exist now, then he couldn’t become the Rama-Tut who helped stop Kang in Giant Size Avengers 2. Anyone have any explanations? I certainly don’t. And we were told we would get an explanation for Immortus’s origin. We didn’t learn much or how he became Lord of Limbo. It was kind of..well I got bored of being Rama-Tut so I became Immortus. Hmmmm..Ok.
I remember that a few issues later in an Avengers letters column there were complaints about Kang’s (seemingly) permanent end. It was explained that there had previously been complaints about Kang’s being used so much over the past year so Steve decided to get rid of him for good. He thought that would satisfy the readers..but maybe not.
Immortus did indeed return and appear in Thor 282 and admitted that he lied in Avengers 143. This was in 1979, but it did not lead to Kang returning for a long time. In fact Immortus would go through a lot of changes and would not be the benevolent entity he appeared in the various 1975 Avengers stories when he did return. It would turn out that Immortus lied a lot and would sometime be an out and out villain and sometimes not.
Also at the time the cover of Avengers 143 didn’t bother me it does now. The wrong Avengers on the cover and Wanda looking helpless (which is completely wrong). It seems to me a cover of Thor v. Kang
with Hawkeye, Moon Dragon and Two-Gun Kid in the background, or even one of those floating heads covers with Cap, Vision and Iron Man in the background would have worked well. This cover was just disappointing. Too bad.
Thanks for the review and looking forward to more Avengers. Hopefully you will get to some of Perez’s fine early work on the FF.
Even at this early stage of Perez’s career, I already loved his artwork in the Avengers and Fantastic Four and wherever else I found it.
I’ve never been a fan of George Perez, and though I had seen his mid ’70s Marvel work it wasn’t until the late ’70s in National Lampoon that I really took note of it. When he became a superstar in the early ’80s on Teen Titans I still wasn’t a fan, but recognized that he drew characters who genuinely emoted which resonated with his readers. He was also friendly and approachable at the cons in those days. He said he kept coming back to DC every week, camping out in the halls, until the editors gave him work. Unorthodox, but successful ploy.
I THINK this was my introduction to Perez’s artwork in the Avengers and still recall reading this issue as the final story in the UK Avengers Annual 1977 which I received for Christmas 1976.
Having had no way of accessing the preceding parts of this tale, I can remember lying abed on Christmas morning reading and then re-reading it, trying to figure out what the heck was going on… and wallowing in the artwork.
By the time Christmas dinner came around, I had my my sketch pad, pencils and erasers strewn all across the soon-to-be dining table as I vainly tried to copy Perez’s work.
Mark Gruenwald did a good job in the Citizen Kang annuals establishing that despite the Council of Kangs, it was always the same Kang who battled the Avengers. Kurt Busiek then fudged that in Avengers Forever.
I recall that Kang’s disintegration near the end of the story was a disturbing image for me in 1975–as bloodless as it was, thanks to the Comics Code.
A good comic with some nice touches from Englehart here, especially on Two-Gun’s reaction to MoonDragon. Somehow though for me the story lacked something… it did not feel epic enough, in spite of showcasing the might of Thor. Moondragon obviously thought otherwise, but those ending tears from someone who Englehart had so far portrayed as distant and arrogant must have caused lots of head scratching amongst the readership ( mine too, but more understandable now…I think!)
Artwise I could not agree more with you Alan. Colletta, the great leveller, must have previously painted over a lot of the surface cracks in Perez’ s pencils. At the same time it was nice to see Grainger back on the inks. He must have suddenly found favoured status at Marvel, with 2 inking gigs (Avengers and X-Men). I believe Grainger’s previous inks on the book were back in #89 in 1971 and before that #68-73. His inks on Sal’s work then were good ( Avengers # 71 being a particular favourite of mine) and fantastic over Giacoia in #73. I looked up Grainger on Wikepedia, and sadly saw that he passed away in 1990, at age 60. Time unfortunately is enemy of us all…unless of course you are Immortus.