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Post by brutalis on Aug 14, 2021 18:14:59 GMT -5
Felt it was time Earth's Mightiest Heroes in ALL their various iterations had a thread all of their own. Whether to discuss their multitude of comic series (team or individual), television shows, cartoons or big screen epics then here is the place to be. Jump in your quintet and fly over and pull up a chair at Avengers Mansion, enjoy some eats and drinks courtesy of Jarvis, mind you don't step on the ants and as Hercules might say: I bestow upon thee the gift, so have at it!
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Post by brutalis on Aug 14, 2021 18:15:48 GMT -5
I will begin by reminding that Avengers has always been MY TEAM SUPREME. So many terrific superstars in heroics and villainy all in one series, perfect reading for a youngster learning to LOVE comic books. From Titanic Trio, to the Kooky Quartet and into the overflowing cut down to size by the government and all their myriad group break ups and reuniting's you just can't keep an Avenger (or wanna be members) down for very long.
It amazes me that my favorite team comic is now a giant money making machine mega hit movie series. Child to teen to young adult and middle aged me never dreamt to seeing Avengers becoming so huge. Never did I dream of seeing them say Avengets Assemble in a blockbuster movie. Especially when I remember the difficulties of Stan Lee back in the 70's with his attempts to bring such comic book heroics to life as television shows in Prime Time.
Avengers was the ONE comic I managed to build my hobby around. Once I started with current issues, then I was searching every month for the next newest issue. I spent endless hours of hunting affordable back issues until I had them all beginning with issue 1. From Kirby to Heck to the Buscema brothers to Adams to Buckler to Colan to Tuska to Perez to Byrne to Epting and the fill in artists I was hooked. Writers like Lee, Thomas, Englehart, Shooter, Stern and so many others I would follow into their other gigs.
Avengers was pure gold even when there were less than stellar stories. My team could not fail to deliver the best entertainment value for the change in my pocket.
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Post by tarkintino on Aug 15, 2021 10:20:23 GMT -5
While The Avengers started off strong with Lee's leaning heavily on team dysfunction, and Captain America carrying the "man out of time" / survivor's guilt weight on his shoulders, the title reached its zenith as a concept between issues #36 (when Roy Thomas begins as a solo writer on the book) through #97, with some of the most well-developed, "individuals are the team" stories ever written. That, and such staggering art by legends such as John Buscema and Neal Adams, and one would be hard-pressed to find a team book with that many creative peaks.
Thomas was one of the greatest creative "gets" ever enjoyed by Marvel, being a worth successor to Lee, yet taking the characters forward through the lens of his own generation's perceptions about the anything but black and white concept of heroism. The aforementioned period of The Avengers was damn near flawless.
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Post by brutalis on Aug 16, 2021 17:10:40 GMT -5
While The Avengers started off strong with Lee's leaning heavily on team dysfunction, and Captain America carrying the "man out of time" / survivor's guilt weight on his shoulders, the title reached its zenith as a concept between issues #36 (when Roy Thomas begins as a solo writer on the book) through #97, with some of the most well-developed, "individuals are the team" stories ever written. That, and such staggering art by legends such as John Buscema and Neal Adams, and one would be hard-pressed to find a team book with that many creative peaks. Thomas was one of the greatest creative "gets" ever enjoyed by Marvel, being a worth successor to Lee, yet taking the characters forward through the lens of his own generation's perceptions about the anything but black and white concept of heroism. The aforementioned period of The Avengers was damn near flawless. Quite agree as Thomas provided quite a bit of what has become Avengers lore. I mean, off the top of my head he gave team growth in Hercules, Black Panther, Vision, Black Knight, more development of Wanda/Pietro, Hawkeye becoming Goliath, Pym as Goliath becoming Yellowjacket (and marrying Jan) and the introduction of Red Wolf. Roy provided villains to amp up the fights with Red Guardian, Grim Reaper, Man Ape, Masters of Evil, Ultron, Grandmaster, Arkon, Lethal Legion and the Squadron Sinister. He delivered the Kree/Skrull war, along with the team's Quinjet for zipping around the world and space. So yeah, the Thomas/Buscema years truly are a tremendous stand out in a great series.
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Post by Graphic Autist on Aug 16, 2021 17:17:08 GMT -5
The first issue I bought of Avengers after I started collecting comics: I probably bought this because Spider-Man was in it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2021 18:40:00 GMT -5
This was the first issue I ever read with an Avengers story in it... I got a handful of Marvel Triple Actions before I got an issue of Avengers proper, my first was this one... which ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, nd I even managed to get the next issue, a rarity in my early days of buying comics... but it had absolutely nothing to do with the previous issue-a different story, a different roster of Avengers, which left 7 year old me completely confused about how Marvel Comics was supposed to work and how you were supposed to get the rest of the stories they left incomplete in an issue you bought and read. -M
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 16, 2021 18:56:03 GMT -5
Avengers 144 was my first issue and I didn’t miss an issue until around 290 when I just couldn’t deal with Marinna anymore.
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Post by badwolf on Aug 16, 2021 19:00:11 GMT -5
I think this might have been my first Avengers read:
because this lineup remained the "definitive" one in my mind for a while. I know my friend in 4th or 5th grade had it and I read his copy. Eventually had to hunt down my own.
Still one of the greatest periods for the series.
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Post by brutalis on Aug 16, 2021 21:14:05 GMT -5
Some of my best memories are from reading Marvel Triple Action during summer stays with my retired grandparents in Payson. I would spend my evenings curled on the sofa reading as the adults played penny poker all night long. This is when Cap's Kooky Quartet was being reprinted and I really fell in love with that iteration of the team. Reading those issues over and over for endless summer nights was pure joy.
These issues as also helped make Hawkeye for being my FAVORITE Avenger. Always the smart aleck, quick to anger, first to dive in without thinking, often doubting himself, always fast with the mouth as with his arrows and never failing to give his all for his partners. The Movie Avengers got it right in that Clint Barton is the heart and soul of what it means to call yourself an Avenger.
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 16, 2021 22:12:25 GMT -5
As a DC fan for the most part, I was always struck by the vast difference between the Avengers and the JLA. The JLA was closer to a Pantheon of DC's heroes, which at its inception and for quite awhile afterward, was a most exclusive club, complete with a constitution, a specific process for bringing in new members, a scroll created for such occasions, and an overall tone of formality and stability, perfectly in keeping with the DC ethos.
The Avengers, meanwhile, which I first bought with #50 in 1968, when I first saw an issue of it on the stands, at that point had been whittled down to Giant-Man, the Wasp and Hawkeye. This would have been equivalent to the JLA's being reduced to maybe J'onn J'onzz, the Atom and Green Arrow... never would have happened back then.
It didn't seem to me that the Avengers had any vetting process for new members; members seemed to bunk at the mansion because they had nowhere else to go, and were often simply a way-station for new characters, characters who were being shown off as stars of potential new features, and old regulars who hadn't been in print for awhile. In some ways it seemed to fill the role at Marvel that the Brave and the Bold and Showcase did at DC. I enjoyed it for those reasons, but I soon lost interest in it because of the constant reshuffling of the line-up.
The JLA didn't usually feature all ten of its members in a story; as with the Legion, there was a roll call at the start of the story that provided the line-up, and the reader simply accepted the fact that some members simply couldn't make it to that mission. The Avengers, no matter how many were on the roster, all seemed to be in every issue, and that could make for a crowding problem. By the time I made it into the early 60s of the run, I became a bit bored with the overly frequent roster shake-ups, which soon became an expected event at least every year.. It seemed Marvel's writers were bound and determined to make every single Marvel character into an Avenger, interesting storytelling be damned.
This is not to say that there weren't stretches I enjoyed. The Kree-Skrull War and the issues from 50- 58 are the two that jump immediately to mind.
I realize much of this was because Marvel was organized differently than DC. There was no Superman/Batman/ Wonder Woman triumvirate. The DC heroes' "brand names" had all been around since the 40s. The Golden Age heroes from Timely with the exceptions of the Human Torch, Namor and Cap, had no counterparts in the Marvel Universe, and thus, Marvel had fewer recognizable name brands to use as building blocks for its own hero group. Plus, they had "loner" heroes like Spider-Man and Daredevil who didn't really fit into a group setting, and one of their flagship titles was already a group.
Still, I wish that the Avengers roster could have been more stable over more issues and that not every Avenger on "active duty" had to be present in every issue. It was a cue I thought they could have taken from the JLA and the Legion.
NB: Remember, some of what I'm writing here may have changed over the many, many years I did not read the title regularly, and is based on my inconsistent interest in the title. But I still think that there have been too many damned Avengers, just as I thought that the JLA got way too bloated as well. Zatanna? Elongated Man? Nothing against either character, but really? And it's not like either had a book, a back-up strip or even a whiff of one when they were inducted.
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Post by brutalis on Aug 17, 2021 1:59:09 GMT -5
There is a touch of realism to Avengers as the "original's" all choose to "take time off" so to say. Where the team was sort of Marvel's main name stars that weren't the "loners" Stan was having a more difficult time connecting their separate adventures versus their Avenger stories. Where DC simply chose to ignore any attempt for the placing of JLA into context of the heroes individual series, Stan was attempting to build a cohesive and continuity driven universe.
So the bigger name "stars" leaving made sense based upon that concept. How did you explain Thor being with the team when at the same time in his comic he was in space or in Asgard? Cap was constantly off with Falcon and S.H.I.E.L.D. missions. Shell head was jet setting all over as Stark and constantly near death every month with his weak heart. How were these busy guys able to meet, hang out, and face villains as a team? Easy answer, write them out and keep Cap as the "figurehead" leader and create a new CORE team of heroes with no regular series of adventures for conflicting story problems.
That was sheer genius and allowed for more sense of characterization and growth and change. Which you cannot have with major stars like Bats, Supes and Wondy Woman. It was that sense of "family" created of more or less Second Stringers and social outcasts striving to live up to and proving themselves worthy of the name Avengers. A sense of camaraderie and personal connection that was more "believable" with Clint, Wanda, Pietro and Vision that was more interesting for me.
That CORE with the addition of the Pym's was there through the 60's, 70's and into the 80's with other's coming and going. It was after Roy Thomas left that every "new" writer felt the need to constantly keep the team in a state of flux adding or deleting members until the team expanded into being seemingly "every" hero in the MU. Busiek, then Bendis made the team into the Marvel version of JLA with all the good and bad that went with such an idea.
The constant team changes with the search for new members became a standard theme in Avengers same as the annual JLA/JSA teaming that fans awaited with glee. It was like following your favorite sports team and seeing each season who would remain, be traded or brought onboard. Much more fun and exciting with a sense of change rather than the JLA or LOSH where it was j the st a question of which group or combination would be utilized this month?
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Post by dbutler69 on Aug 17, 2021 6:08:43 GMT -5
Good timing for this thread, as I have started re-reading through all of my Avengers. I'll go from #1 through about 350. I'm up to #9 right now. As far as I'm concerned, there aren't really any notable bad stretches for the first 299 issues, until the Avengers jump the shark. Anyway, this was my first ever issue of the Avengers:
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2021 10:46:29 GMT -5
The first issue I bought of Avengers after I started collecting comics: I probably bought this because Spider-Man was in it. I LOVED this version of the team, but always felt that Starfox was way out of place, and they needed a Male Powerhouse to offset She-Hulk being the only reason he was there. (this would have been a better team if Thor had been on it instead. or better yet, Vision.. tho I think Byrne had dis-assembled him at this point over in WCA, right?)
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Post by Graphic Autist on Aug 17, 2021 10:59:10 GMT -5
I LOVED this version of the team, but always felt that Starfox was way out of place, and they needed a Male Powerhouse to offset She-Hulk being the only reason he was there. (this would have been a better team if Thor had been on it instead. or better yet, Vision.. tho I think Byrne had dis-assembled him at this point over in WCA, right?) The disassembling happened 6 years later. However, Vision is a part of the team in this issue, but is injured and recuperating in some tube in the Avengers' infirmary. After he recovers, he tries to take over the world's computer systems and also has Hawkeye put together the West Coast Avengers. This is what ultimately leads the governments of the world (led by John Byrne) to have him taken apart years later.
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Post by Bronze age andy on Aug 17, 2021 10:59:30 GMT -5
The first issue I bought of Avengers after I started collecting comics: I probably bought this because Spider-Man was in it. I LOVED this version of the team, but always felt that Starfox was way out of place, and they needed a Male Powerhouse to offset She-Hulk being the only reason he was there. (this would have been a better team if Thor had been on it instead. or better yet, Vision.. tho I think Byrne had dis-assembled him at this point over in WCA, right?) This was well before Byrne's WCA. I believe Vision was out of action at this point after a battle with Annihilus but before his dealings with ISAAC. Not sure about Thor but the list of heroes available to the Avengers seemed quite thin at that point.
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