Back in November, we looked at Avengers #144, featuring the latest (as of Nov., 1975) installment in writer Steve Englehart and artist George Pérez’s “Serpent Crown Saga”.  As readers of that post will recall, despite the comic’s final-page “Next” blurb’s promise that the following month’s issue would present the next chapter in the still-ongoing storyline, when Avengers #145 arrived on stands in December its pages were instead filled by the first half of a completely unrelated, out-of-sequence story scripted by Tony Isabella and drawn by Don Heck.  That issue, together with the fill-in yarn’s second part in the next month’s Avengers #146, pushed the continuation of Englehart and Pérez’s epic out to February, 1976.

According to later reports, both halves of this story had originally been intended for publication in Giant-Size Avengers #5 — a plan that was up-ended by Marvel Comics’ mid-1975 decision to phase out their whole line of mostly-new-material-filled giant-sized comics.  (While GSA #5 was indeed published in September, it was an all-reprint book.)  Given that 30-plus pages of Isabella-Heck material had already been both produced and paid for, it’s certainly understandable that Marvel would want to get it into print sooner or later.  But smack-dab in the middle of a complex, multi-issue story arc?  That hardly seems like an optimal solution.

Per a blurb appearing on the opening splash page of Avengers #145, there had in fact been extenuating circumstances that necessitated running the story at this time:

I hate to disappoint the anonymous Marvel Bullpenner who wrote that blurb, even fifty years after the fact… and, of course, I can’t speak for any other fans… but this particular reader really didn’t “love ’em”.  Oh, I don’t think my younger self hated issues #145-146, exactly — but I definitely didn’t think they were on the same level as the stuff Steve Englehart had been producing with his various artistic collaborators over the last three years or so.  And while I might have shrugged the whole thing off had the “Assassin” serial appeared in a single giant-sized issue, as it had been intended to, having it interrupt Englehart and Pérez’s current story arc for not just one month, but two, was extremely annoying.

Would I have rather had a reprint of a story I’d already read, as had happened the last time Avengers fell prey to the “Dreaded Deadline Doom“?  Probably not.  Actually, if Marvel had asked my opinion as to whether it would have been preferable to simply not print an issue of Avengers until Englehart, Pérez, and company had finished the next chapter of their storyline, I’d have said, “Sure!”.  But, even if the powers-that-were at Marvel had been interested in what 18-year-old Alan Stewart of Jackson, MS thought about this matter, that’s not a question they ever would have asked me, or anyone else, circa 1975-76… for the very good reason that they’d reserved time at their printer for the presses to roll on a new issue of Avengers every single month, and they had to print something, or pay a fine.  That’s just how the business worked, back in the pre-“direct market” days.

We’re going to move on from this unfortunate incident… though, before we do, your humble blogger feels obliged to mention one last little oddity in the historical record.  In his 2014 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — The Avengers, Vol. 15, Steve Englehart offers a few remarks about every issue included in the collection; here’s what he has to say about the only two issues he himself didn’t write:

#145 and #146: The Marvel Age was thirteen years old, and like any teenager, it was beginning to develop mood swings.  With the rapid editorial changes, factions were jockeying for power in New York; out in California, pre-Internet, I was unaware of it until this happened.  I’ve talked about this stuff before, but I’m not talking about it here, because we’re here for the Avengers…

Unfortunately, while I’m happy to take Mr. Englehart at his word that he’s “talked about this stuff before”, it hasn’t been in any of the introductions, interviews, web articles, etc., that I’ve managed to access prior to publishing this post, so what might have been going on here instead of (or in addition to) deadline problems will have to remain a mystery… unless, of course, one of you good people out there reading this has additional information, in which case I hope you’ll fill the rest of us in via the comments section below.

But, really, enough about all that.  (At least for now.)  Let us now proceed to peruse the comic book that, in a more generous timeline, might have been Avengers #145 — but, in our own reality, is known to us as Avengers #147.

We’ll pause long enough at the cover to admire its artwork — an effort by Rich Buckler and Dan Adkins that finds the former of those artists in full Jack Kirby mode — as well as to note that, in its copy, the Squadron Supreme has once again been erroneously referred to as the Squadron Sinister.  Oh, well.

And now it’s on to our opening splash page, where Steve Englehart’s narrative captions do an efficient job of reminding us just what had been going on with the Avengers, their friends, and their enemies when we were all so rudely interrupted, two months before…

The story’s title is, of course, a nod to DC Comics’ classic annual crossover stories between the Justice League of America (upon whom Marvel based both the Squadron Supreme and the earlier Squadron Sinister) and their Golden Age predecessors, the Justice Society of America — many of whose individual installments (though not all) had “Crisis” somewhere in the title, beginning with the very first of ’em, “Crisis on Earth-One!”, way back in JLA #21 (Aug., 1963).

Meanwhile, per the first page credits: after three issues away (or five, if you want to count #145 & #146), veteran inker Vince Colletta has returned to embellish the pencils of young tyro George Pérez.  It may just be me, but I feel that the two artists’ styles mesh a little better in this issue than they did in their earlier collaborations (#141 & #142) — though whether that’s more a matter of Colletta taking greater care, or of Pérez getting a little better with each new effort, I couldn’t tell you.  Maybe some of both?

Descending from the heavens are U.S. Army helicopters — which are recognizable to the Avengers by their markings, given that, as Captain America observes, “This whole world is a near-replica of Earth.”  To which the Golden Archer replies, “Or your world is a copy of ours, eh, Yank?”

For my fellow geezers who may need a memory refresher (as well as for those youngsters among you who may have slept through their American History class on one or more days), while the real-world Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979) ran for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination on three separate occasions, the closest he ever came to taking the big seat in the Oval Office was as the appointed vice-president under Gerald Ford, following the resignation of Richard Nixon from the presidency.  It’s probably fair to assume that the “Rocky” of Other-Earth earned his office via the normal electoral process, since — as will be strongly implied, if not overtly stated, just a few pages from now — this world seems never to have had a Watergate scandal… or, for that matter, a “Secret Empire”.

As for the Serpent Crown — even though Steve Rogers’ attention was justifiably elsewhere at the time, we readers of Captain America #182 had seen the thing slipping through an open manhole into a Seattle sewer… although, as it happens, that fact isn’t actually all that relevant to our current saga, as the following statement by the Scarlet Witch suggests…

Panicked at the thought the Serpent Crown could be damaged, President Rockefeller does just as Wanda Maximoff has bid him, and orders both the Squadron and the Army to back off…

Gee, do you suppose that “Lois” and “Lonni” actually work as reporters on this world, or are they just talking about calling the cops?  I don’t suppose we’ll ever know…

The footnote in that last panel — attributed to editor Marv (“M.”) Wolfman, but more likely to have been written by Steve Englehart — might well have been prefaced with the comment, “Let me tell you that the Secret Empire ‘s ‘Number One’ was Richard Nixon without telling you that the Secret Empire’s ‘Number One’ was Richard Nixon”…

Evidently, Steve Englehart was really looking forward to writing about the exploits of Hawkeye and theTwo-Gun Kid in the 20th century — although, based on recollections he shared for a retrospective on the Kid that was published in Back Issue #42 (Jul., 2010), neither of the characters would have been hanging around out West for quite as long as their dialogue on the page above seems to imply:

My basic idea, which I still like and have never been able to do [since], was to bring this guy who was the master of his small, contained Western world, to New York City in the modern age.  He’d be alongside a god and guys with various superpowers, in a world with cars and planes and Quinjets, and his great power was … he could shoot pistols well.  I was intrigued with the culture shock and the heroism involved in adapting to the new world and succeeding with such a limited power — i.e., seeing the hero in him shine through.  Certainly, a good way to ease into that was to work with Hawkeye, whose powers were not so much better than his, really.  In this pre-West Coast Avengers era, I thought I could explore Hawkeye as a friend and mentor better than Hawkeye as #5 or so on the Avengers roster. The cowboy and the arrow-guy made sense in and of itself.

As things turned out, Englehart would leave Marvel Comics before he could get around to scripting a planned Hawkeye/Two-Gun Kid series pilot for Marvel Spotlight (see below).  And though he would eventually get around to writing the character again via his West Coast Avengers run, by that time a number of other writers had already had a go at chronicling the adventures of Matt Hawk in the modern world.

If one didn’t know better, one might believe that Englehart was already gearing up to write Justice League of America (as he would in fact be doing before the year’s end), as his dialogue for Lady Lark and Golden Archer in this scene would work just as well for Black Canary and Green Arrow (assuming you correct for the Other-Earth GA’s alleged English accent).

By contrast, Englehart’s Hyperion is clearly a broad parody of Superman, rather than the same guy with a different name and visual…

The Vision becomes intangible, so that the Golden Archer’s arrow passes harmlessly through him prior to detonation; he then turns solid again, just in time to stop Lady Lark from singing by stunning her with his solar eyebeams…

“…my arch-foe, Burbank…”  This is, I believe, the first mention of Hyperion’s greatest enemy — the Other-Earth analogue to Lex Luthor (the name is a play on that of the famous real-world botanist, Luther Burbank).  We’d have to wait until Thor #280 (Feb., 1979) for writer Roy Thomas and veteran “Superman” artist Wayne Boring to bring us Emil Burbank’s actual on-panel debut, however.

And that is that for this episode of the Serpent Crown Saga… though, as that final panel’s “Next” blurb suggests, there’s still plenty of Justice League of America-inspired fun yet to come.  Thankfully, “20,000 Leagues Under Justice!” would appear in the very next month’s issue, just like it was supposed to… though, alas, this run of Avengers issues wasn’t done with scheduling problems — not by a long shot.  But that’s a story for another post, another day.