Last month we took a look at Avengers #147, the cover of which we noted found its penciller, Rich Buckler, operating in “full Kirby mode”. By contrast, the cover of today’s fifty-year-old comic happens to have been pencilled by Jack Kirby himself… and may I just say, ain’t nothin’ like the real King, baby. (For the record, Mike Esposito inked this piece.) Read More
Cover to Avengers #145 (Mar., 1976). Art by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins.
Cover to Avengers #146 (Apr., 1976). Art by Gil Kane and Al Milgrom.
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. Read More
As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, I tend not to talk very much about the covers of the half-century-old comics we discuss here; unless they’re really strikingly good, my tendency is simply to note who drew them — to the extent that that’s known, anyway — and then move on. (And just this week, in writing about Defenders #32, I forgot to do even that much; my thanks to reader Ben Herman for stepping into the breach.) But I’m going to make an exception this time, simply to express my disappointment with this particular job by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia. While there are aspects of the composition that work well, the central figure of Hellcat — a significant new character (OK, technically a new combination of two pre-existing characters) whom readers are seeing here for the very first time — is almost painfully awkward, at least to my eyes. Kane was a great talent, but among the very many (probably too many) covers he cranked out for Marvel in the 1970s, it stands to reason that there’d be at least a few clunkers; and for me, this is one of them. (Naturally, your mileage may vary.) Read More
Last month we took a look at Avengers #141, which, as regular readers of this blog will remember, ended with three time-travelers — the founding Avenger named Thor, the would-be Avenger known as Moondragon, and their temporary ally, Immortus — touching down in the American West of 1873, just in time to be startled by someone coming up behind them… a someone, or someones, whom our travelers could see, but whose identities remained unknown to us readers…
…at least until the cover of the next issue — the subject of today’s post — where the illustration by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia (with a likely assist from John Romita) rather gives the game away ahead of the book’s opening splash page… Read More
The main topic of today’s post is Avengers #141, which kicked off the last major story arc of one of the series’ defining writers, Steve Englehart — and also featured the debut on the series of one of its most celebrated artists, George Pérez. But given that the last issue of the title we looked at on this blog was #137, back in April — and that that one ended on a fairly large cliffhanger, with the Wasp having just been seriously injured by the enigmatic alien known as the Stranger — we’ll have some catching up to do in regards to the three intervening issues before we can move on to the latest doings of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, circa August, 1975. Read More
The fifty-year-old comic book referred to in the title line of this blog post presents the second chapter of a four-part storyline. And, seeing how we didn’t feature a post about Defenders #22 here in this space last month, regular readers of the blog know what that means: we’ll be covering that issue before moving on to our ostensible main topic, i.e., Defenders #23. But wait, there’s more! Because, although the story chronicled in another half-century-old comic, Giant-Size Defenders #4, isn’t technically part of the same arc, its events do preface those of the main Defenders title’s “Sons of the Serpent” saga in some significant ways. For that reason, we’ll be spending a little quality time with it before proceeding even as far as Defenders #22. It’s a three-fer today, folks. Read More
When we last left the Defenders, back in September, the Defenders themselves were, well, leaving. Most of them, anyway. As was the writer who’d been chronicling their adventures since they’d graduated from Marvel Feature into their own title some sixteen months earlier: Steve Englehart.
Just in case you missed it, Englehart had concluded his double-title, multi-issue crossover epic, the Avengers/Defenders War (or, if you prefer, the Quest for the Black Knight’s Soul) in Defenders #11 with a scene that saw four of the six heroes who’d carried the banner of the junior team in that classic match-up — the Hulk, the Sub-Mariner, the Silver Surfer, and even 
raw recruit Hawkeye — departing to pursue other interests. That left only de facto team leader Doctor Strange, as well as the Valkyrie (who had nowhere else to go, really) on hand to say farewell from the window of the Sorcerer Supreme’s Sanctum Sanctorum — and also left incoming new regular writer Len Wein with the challenge either of contriving a way to bring some or all of the wayward members back, or of quickly introducing new members to the mix. (Or of having Doc and Val face down the menace of Xemnu the Titan all on their own, which I don’t think anyone expected — or especially wanted, for that matter — to see happen.) As we’ll soon discover, he ended up employing a combination of those first two strategies… although it would take several issues for that process to be complete. Read More
Some fifteen months ago, I blogged about Avengers #70, which featured the first full appearance of the Squadron Sinister. Regular readers may recall my sheepish confession in that post that, despite how blindingly obvious it is to me now that these four characters were homages to/parodies of (take your pick) DC Comics’ Superman, Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern, in September, 1969 my then twelve-year-old self didn’t pick up on the joke at all.
Nor was I aware that this comic book was one half of a “stealth crossover” of sorts between Marvel Comics’ Avengers and its counterpart title over at DC, Justice League of America. Said crossover apparently had its origins at a party at which comics writer Mike Friedrich suggested to a couple of his cohorts, Roy Thomas (the writer of Avengers) and Denny O’Neil (then the writer of JLA), that they each present a “tip of the hat” of some sort from the super-team book they were writing to its rival, in issues coming out in the same month. Thomas and O’Neil both agreed, and Avengers #70 and JLA #75 were the results. But while the inspiration for Thomas’ Squadron Sinister was all but self-evident (though of course not to me, or to the other fans who chimed in after my September, 2019 blog post that they hadn’t caught on either), the relationship of the supposed Avengers analogues in O’Neil’s story — evil doppelgängers of the Justice League called “the Destructors” — to their Marvel models was obscure to the point of opacity, with the parallels being limited to such bits as having Superman’s dark twin refer to himself as being as powerful as Thor. (Um, sure.) I didn’t actually buy JLA #75 when it came out, but I’m all but 100% certain I wouldn’t have realized what O’Neil was up to with such subtle shenanigans, even if I had. Read More
If you’re a regular reader, you may recall that at the conclusion of last month’s post concerning Avengers #69, your humble blogger unburdened himself of a shameful, half-century-old secret — namely, that upon his first encounter with the brand-new supervillain group the Squadron Sinister way back in August, 1969, he had not the faintest clue that they were intended as parodies of the Justice League of America — who were, of course, the Avengers’ counterparts over at Marvel Comics’ Distinguished Competition, not to mention a team that he’d been reading about regularly for almost four years.
Imagine my gratified surprise when, subsequent to that post going up, I heard from a number of fellow old fans that they, too, had failed to get writer Roy Thomas’ joke back in the day. I’m honestly not sure whether that means that my twelve-year-old self wasn’t all that dumb after all, or simply that a lot of us were that dumb, but either way, I’ll take it as a win. Read More