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Post by Farrar on Apr 24, 2015 8:30:16 GMT -5
Best part about the early X-Men for me? The Kirby-Stone team. Very dynamic. Love the Kirby-Stone art team! I was introduced to Kirby-Stone art in the reprint mags like Marvel's Greatest Comics (FF reprints) and Marvel Super-Heroes (X-Men)...and then as now, I am struck by how clear and distinctive Stone's inking is. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 25, 2015 10:48:37 GMT -5
I have wondered on many occasions why Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch ended up in Avengers, rather than the X-Men... did they just think adding them to the roster was too many characters (That was the 'Cap's Kooky Quartet, era, so, small teams)? It seems like the dramatic tension of early, angry, overprotective Pietro interacting with Playboy Angel and juvenile Iceman would have been awesome.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 25, 2015 10:49:55 GMT -5
Best part about the early X-Men for me? The Kirby-Stone team. Very dynamic. Love the Kirby-Stone art team! I was introduced to Kirby-Stone art in the reprint mags like Marvel's Greatest Comics (FF reprints) and Marvel Super-Heroes (X-Men)...and then as now, I am struck by how clear and distinctive Stone's inking is. I agree! I never really gave much thought to Inkers, as alot of the modern people are not very distinctive (in fact, I think alot of it is computerized now), but they sure did make a difference in the Silver Age. |
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Post by Farrar on Apr 25, 2015 12:55:47 GMT -5
I have wondered on many occasions why Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch ended up in Avengers, rather than the X-Men... did they just think adding them to the roster was too many characters (That was the 'Cap's Kooky Quartet, era, so, small teams)? It seems like the dramatic tension of early, angry, overprotective Pietro interacting with Playboy Angel and juvenile Iceman would have been awesome. I think you're right about the size of the team--adding Wanda and Pietro as regular characters in the X-Men comic would've resulted in too large a team. It also probably ties back to what Rob Allen said earlier in this thread; Stan would "try out"characters as sympathetic villains, with an eye towards later on using them elsewhere. During this same time period Hawkeye appeared in the Iron Man series a few times and he was always presented as a reluctant villain. So Stan may have been thinking of eventually changing Wanda, Pietro and Hawkeye to heroes as soon as the opportunity presented itself, such as the Avengers line-up (Stan felt the Avengers to consist of characters who didn't have their own comics, so as not to cause story conflicts). But I totally agree with you if it would have been great if Wanda and Pietro had continued in the X-Men series for a longer time back then--I like larger casts and as you state, the interactions would have been interesting! Have you read any of X-Men First Class (2007 volume)? It's supposed to be about the original 5 back then. Issue #7 has exactly what you envisioned: Wanda and Warren hook up... and of course Pietro is pissed.  |
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 25, 2015 13:15:34 GMT -5
I have wondered on many occasions why Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch ended up in Avengers, rather than the X-Men... did they just think adding them to the roster was too many characters (That was the 'Cap's Kooky Quartet, era, so, small teams)? It seems like the dramatic tension of early, angry, overprotective Pietro interacting with Playboy Angel and juvenile Iceman would have been awesome. That is a good question!
I have a theory about that.
I think Stan Lee was having trouble with the Avengers line-up.
1) Too powerful. Thor and Iron Man by themselves can handle just about anything. Coming up with a menace that would give Thor trouble but, at the same time, would also leave anything for the Wasp to do - it was difficult.
2) Continuity problems. Notice the new line-up: Captain America, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver. None of them have their own series set in the present day. (Captain America switched over to World War II adventures about the same time as Avengers #16 came out.) Giant-Man and Wasp still had their own series (in Tales to Astonish) even though it wouldn't last that much longer. And look at what happened when their Tales to Astonish series was canceled. They showed up in the Avengers again!
If you recall, they had notes in the comics mentioning what was going on in anybody's regular series when they made guest appearances, and with The Avengers, any major developments in a hero's regular series was noted in the Avengers comic. (For example, Iron Man was missing in Avengers #11 because of - I think - an episodic Mandarin adventure.) With Stan writing more longer storylines in many of the Marvel comics, I think he wanted to keep the characters free from too many entanglements if they appeared in more than one comic. (They also canceled the Thing/Torch stories in Strange Tales about this time - thought that might be because they kinda sucked.)
I think a lot of the Avengers stories from #11 to #14 are pretty bad. Especially #14. just ... ugh! Part of this is just Silver Age goofiness, but there's also a sense that the creators are having a little trouble deciding on where to take the series and what to do with the characters. And Thor and Iron Man and Giant-Man have their own comics, and I think Stan was realizing the lack of direction in these comics and he was trying to focus more on creating a real identity for Thor and Iron Man. I think he might have realized that it would be easier to do this if he gave The Avengers its own direction as well, without the founding members.
So in my theory, Stan took a look at his universe to see what he could do with the Avengers without the founding members. And the only extra characters he had were villains. But Hawkeye was just a guy who had some bad luck and fell in with the wrong crowd (commies!). And the Evil Mutants had pretty much run their course and Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch had never been too enthusiastic about being mutant terrorists anyway. Their membership in the Brotherhood would have strained credulity if it had gone on too much longer, so it was time for them to move on, and they moved on into the Avengers!
I think it makes a lot of sense. Maybe Stan was looking at the dynamism of the early issues - with all the line-up changes in the first few issues - and he realized it was actually something that could become a tradition.
(I think about Kap's Kooky Kwartet a lot. Avengers #16 to about #50 is my favorite era of the series. (There's quite a few in the #50 to #130 issues that I haven't read, I must admit.)
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 25, 2015 13:26:46 GMT -5
I've heard that before, Hoosier, but Stan not wanting Avengers to be in their own book (my, how times changed!), but that doesn't explain why Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch went there, rather than the X-Men. I've always though that era of Avengers, while entertaining, was a little silly. They called them 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes', yet most Marvel characters with their own title could probably defeat them single handedly. I think that's one of those things where real-life publishing and sales needs takes precedence over logic. I mean, really, in the framework of the MU, the Avengers should be like a club, where you go an hang out there once a week to pitch in. Other than Cap, the rest all have full lives outside the Avengers. Yet, we are given to believe they have all those meetings, and training, and monitor duty and the like. I think thats one thing the JLA did better in the Silver Age.. it really WASa club. That said, your point about being able to write better threats with less powered heroes is a good one.. interesting they took this root instead of de-powering the others... I guess they really felt like Thor was their Superman, and Iron Man was their Batman. Is X-Men: First Class worth reading? I remember looking at it when it came out in the store and being Underwhelmed. Is it supposed to be taking place around this time in history? Or before? It might be fun to look at that side by side with the actual silver age  |
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Post by the4thpip on Apr 25, 2015 13:36:54 GMT -5
I thought the X-Men: First Class comics were good, whimsical fun. Got them in trades for cheap.
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Post by Farrar on Apr 25, 2015 13:46:28 GMT -5
re X-Men: First Class: I'm not a fan in general of new comics (read: after 2000), but I just picked up a few issues a few years ago, including the one with Wanda and Angel on the cover (I'm a major Wanda fan). As pip says, they're "whimsical fun."
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 25, 2015 13:50:32 GMT -5
I just took a stroll around the internet to check it out... looks like it's kinda a team-ups and cross overs that never happened sorta book... almost every issue in the 1st 8 involves a non-X-Men character of some sort. Might be fun, and it's cheap enough.
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Post by Farrar on Apr 25, 2015 14:04:57 GMT -5
They called them 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes', yet most Marvel characters with their own title could probably defeat them single handedly. I think that's one of those things where real-life publishing and sales needs takes precedence over logic. I mean, really, in the framework of the MU, the Avengers should be like a club, where you go an hang out there once a week to pitch in. Other than Cap, the rest all have full lives outside the Avengers. Yet, we are given to believe they have all those meetings, and training, and monitor duty and the like. I think thats one thing the JLA did better in the Silver Age.. it really WASa club. At that time, Stan's focus was different. He wanted human drama, which to him meant in-team squabbling, unrequited romances/tortured love triangles, plus humor (basically, similar to the types of dialogue/scenarios he'd done pre-FF when he was writing teen comics, gal comics, humor comics, etc.). This formula had worked well for him with the FF, so (IMO) he sought to recreate it with the Kooky Quartet. Then when Hank and Jan returned to the team, Wanda and Pietro leave soon after, so we're left with Hank, Jan, Cap and Hawkeye as official Avengers. It's as if Stan wanted to stay with a 4-member team (again, a la the FF). When Roy Thomas takes over the writing some issues later, he's more comfrortable with a larger cast (in keeping with his fondness for the old Justice Society) and he brings back Wanda and Pietro and also features Natasha and Hercules prominently. As mentioned, I liked the larger team of Avengers and I think this cast--Hank, Jan, Wanda, Pietro, Hawkeye, Cap (who didn't appear regularly after a while), along with Natasha and Herc--was my favorite iteration of the team, basically the timeline cited by Hoosier X). Sorry, I know the above is not X-Men related. But regarding Wanda and Pietro, I do feel the X book went downhill after they left (#11). When you get up to that issue I'll be very interested in seeing others' opinions. |
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Post by Farrar on Apr 25, 2015 14:07:19 GMT -5
 Here's the one with Wanda and Angel. I believe it is in the X-Men:First Class Tomorrow's Brightest collection. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 25, 2015 14:45:11 GMT -5
Why Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch? Mostly because, I think, the options were limited.
Other than Hawkeye, Pietro and Wanda, I can't think of any other "reluctant hero" types that were available. Medusa had very recently been introduced in FF, but she was still in the Frightful Four. I was going through the FF rogues gallery and the Spidey rogues gallery and so on. And I just can't find anybody! Maybe the motives of somebody like the Matador (from Daredevil #5) are vague enough that he could be a reluctant hero, but I am just not seeing it.
And with the Wasp gone, the Avengers would need a woman, and there are very few woman super-types of any kind in that era. Wanda was such a great fit for the Avengers at that time that I wonder if Stan and/or Jack had something like this in the back of their minds when she was created. So Pietro had to come along.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 25, 2015 17:57:30 GMT -5
I had forgotten about the token woman part...yeah I think Wanda was the only one available... She-Hulk didn't exist yet, and I'm sure a Russian good guy was still a little unthinkable in '65 or whatever year that was.
It's funny that the X-Men were everywhere in the MU early on... then nothing. I don't think they appear anywhere but their own book past a couple cameos until the big Avengers Crossover in '68.
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Post by Farrar on Apr 25, 2015 19:13:16 GMT -5
It's funny that the X-Men were everywhere in the MU early on... then nothing. I don't think they appear anywhere but their own book past a couple cameos until the big Avengers Crossover in '68. They do pop up in a couple of pages in FF Annual #3 (Sue and Reed's wedding). I had forgotten about the token woman part...yeah I think Wanda was the only one available... She-Hulk didn't exist yet, and I'm sure a Russian good guy was still a little unthinkable in '65 or whatever year that was. Ah, I think you have just shed some light on something I've wondered about for years, namely why didn't Stan have the Black Widow join the Avengers in #16 (aside from the sexist notion that a superhero team could only have one female member). She's Russian, and Stan was still writing about "beating the Commies" back then. Again, I have to point to Rob Allen's comment earlier in this thread. It seems to me that it was planned from the start that Hawkeye, Pietro and Wanda were being groomed to be heroes. In a span of 8 Tales of Suspense issues Hawkeye appeared in 3 of them, not to mention for his debut issue he appeared 4 (!) times on the cover (Tales of Suspense #57) with cover blurbs making him sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread--not very typical for a villain. And as we're seeing in this thread, Wanda and Pietro were everywhere and were hyped up in the letter columns (IIRC in a letter col Stan wrote "Aren't they something?" when referring to them). So the these three characters were consistently receiving a lot of exposure, unlike, say, the Matador. Another clue--and a big one, IMO--that Wanda, Pietro and Hawkeye were being "groomed" as heroes (and potential Avengers) is the fact that they all looked like good guys--from the get-go they were all drawn as physically attractive (Hawkeye's shown without his mask several times in the Suspense stories). They were never creepy or unattractive like the Toad or Mastermind or the Mandarin or the Sandman, etc. The only other esatablished, frequently-appearing attractive nemesis I can think of from back then is the Enchantress, but she was too important to the Thor stories. So I think Stan --who took readers' letters about the conflicts of the events in Thor or IM's mags vs. what was happening in the Avengers mag seriously (based on his responses to the letters back then, as well as in subsequent interviews)-- had been planning for a while to use Wanda, Pietro and Hawk for the Avengers comic.
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Post by Hoosier X on Apr 25, 2015 23:04:15 GMT -5
It's funny that the X-Men were everywhere in the MU early on... then nothing. I don't think they appear anywhere but their own book past a couple cameos until the big Avengers Crossover in '68. They do pop up in a couple of pages in FF Annual #3 (Sue and Reed's wedding). I had forgotten about the token woman part...yeah I think Wanda was the only one available... She-Hulk didn't exist yet, and I'm sure a Russian good guy was still a little unthinkable in '65 or whatever year that was. Ah, I think you have just shed some light on something I've wondered about for years, namely why didn't Stan have the Black Widow join the Avengers in #16 (aside from the sexist notion that a superhero team could only have one female member). She's Russian, and Stan was still writing about "beating the Commies" back then. Again, I have to point to Rob Allen's comment earlier in this thread. It seems to me that it was planned from the start that Hawkeye, Pietro and Wanda were being groomed to be heroes. In a span of 8 Tales of Suspense issues Hawkeye appeared in 3 of them, not to mention for his debut issue he appeared 4 (!) times on the cover (Tales of Suspense #57) with cover blurbs making him sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread--not very typical for a villain. And as we're seeing in this thread, Wanda and Pietro were everywhere and were hyped up in the letter columns (IIRC in a letter col Stan wrote "Aren't they something?" when referring to them). So the these three characters were consistently receiving a lot of exposure, unlike, say, the Matador. Another clue--and a big one, IMO--that Wanda, Pietro and Hawkeye were being "groomed" as heroes (and potential Avengers) is the fact that they all looked like good guys--from the get-go they were all drawn as physically attractive (Hawkeye's shown without his mask several times in the Suspense stories). They were never creepy or unattractive like the Toad or Mastermind or the Mandarin or the Sandman, etc. The only other esatablished, frequently-appearing attractive nemesis I can think of from back then is the Enchantress, but she was too important to the Thor stories. So I think Stan --who took readers' letters about the conflicts of the events in Thor or IM's mags vs. what was happening in the Avengers mag seriously (based on his responses to the letters back then, as well as in subsequent interviews)-- had been planning for a while to use Wanda, Pietro and Hawk for the Avengers comic. You make a lot of good points! The Enchantress was one of the characters I thought about when I was thinking about characters who might work in the Avengers and there was just no way.
The only other female I can think of from early Marvel Comics that we haven't mentioned is Kala, Queen of the Netherworld (Tales of Suspense #43). I don't really see her as Avengers material.
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