Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,919
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Post by Crimebuster on Aug 17, 2021 12:36:17 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?) 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. A very handy trick to remember is that Thor's numbering was exactly 100 issues ahead of Avengers, while Captain America was exactly 50 issues ahead of Avengers. So this issue came out at the same time as Thor 336, the last pre-Simonson issue. Thor wasn't really available for much of this era. This was also the point where Tony had been replaced by Rhodey due to drinking issues - Tony vanished around #229 because of this, so Iron Man was off the table as well. I'm not sure what Stern had in mind for Starfox, but I don't think it ever went anywhere as he wrote the character out not too long after Hercules rejoined the team. Stern had to scrap a whole year's worth of plots when Shooter sprung WCA on him without warning though so Starfox might have been part of that as he scrambled to rework everything.
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Post by badwolf on Aug 17, 2021 12:36:57 GMT -5
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. IIRC he got deactivated trying to pass through the expanding barrier that Annihilus had put up around the Baxter Building.
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 17, 2021 13:06:21 GMT -5
My first Avengers was this one: I learned a lot about the Marvel universe from this book. Two months earlier, I'd chosen X-Men #4 instead of Avengers #4. Both were pivotal issues, but I wish I'd had another 12 cents back then. Not too long ago, I re-read the introduction of the Vision, and I got the distinct impression that Ultron was originally sort of a throwaway character. He was there just because Roy needed somebody to build the Vision, and he was destroyed at the end of the story. Maybe reader response convinced them to bring him back.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 17, 2021 13:40:33 GMT -5
For whatever reason, and I don't know what it was, it was quite a while before I bought any issues of The Avengers. The first I bought was issue 157 almost a year and a half after I started buying my own comics. The first issue I owned was a copy of issue #126 that I got from a cousin for some reason. Avengers was never a book I bought very regularly. A few times I bought it for eight months or so. I've since read most of the first 200 issues in various collected formats.
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Post by Graphic Autist on Aug 17, 2021 14:25:12 GMT -5
I really like seeing which issues were our member's first...maybe we should do it for other titles?
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Post by Mister Spaceman on Aug 17, 2021 15:55:23 GMT -5
Great thread! The Avengers is the quintessential super-team title (for my money, better than the JLA in the Seventies). I would buy the occasional issue (#161 is a particularly memorable one) and became a regular reader for a bit with #181 b/c of the Byrne art. Before that I was the very proud owner of this binder in the 5th grade (1976-1977). I still don't know who the Squadron Sinister is, but boy that was a cool thing to keep my school work in.
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Post by berkley on Aug 17, 2021 15:58:44 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure this was my first issue of the Avengers: As several posters have mentioned, it's hard to be really sure about anything that happened at such an early age - say from around 4 to 6 years, when probably many of us started reading - but I feel more certain about this one than I do my first issues of other series like the FF, Thor, Spider-Man, and others, because I remember not knowing anything about the Avengers when I read this comic, while when reading my "first issue" of, say, the FF, I seemed to be familiar with the characters already, which makes me think it probably wasn't my first issue after all, just the earliest one I can pin down in my memory with any certainty.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2021 16:42:37 GMT -5
Shortly after I got my first issues mentioned in a post earlier, I found a bunch of earlier issues of both series at a local drug store that had bins of comics 5/$1 (I think they were returns that fell off the back of a truck so to speak as the owners of this regional chain of drug stores I later learned had a rep for shady deals and being connected). Among them were Marvel Triple Action 19 and Avengers 124, so I owned issues earlier than my first issues. I got a couple of batches of comics from those 5/$1 bins, some I remember coming form there, some I don't ( I know there was a Marvel Adventure #6 in there coming form those bins, and I think some of the Marvel Double Feature and Marvel Spectacular issues I had also came from there, but I am uncertain; the result is that I am a little uncertain on some titles which issues I got first, and which I got later but were released earlier. etting stuff from the 3 pack polybags s a kid also contributed t that fuzziness of what was first vs. what was the earliest issues I owned.
The series I know for certain what was the first I owned were:
Amazing Spider-Man 146 Captain America #187 (though I had #163 as a hand me down around the same time) Defenders 29 Conan 78 (I got 76 from a polybag shortly after though) FF #163 (drawn to the hockey goalie imagery on the cover) Hulk 199 Invaders 2 Iron Man 79 Marvel Team-Up #40 (though I also had #10 as a hand me down from a neighbor) Thor 240 and 241 I remember coming home with 2 consecutive issues for the first time as both were on the spinner rack
I also got a copy of Son of Origins around that time too, and it was my first issue/exposure for X-Men, Silver Surfer, Daredevil. Nick Fury and some others.
As for DC, I've mentioned Batman #250 as my first comic I remember owning at all.
For other DC books that I can recall Superman 287 G.I. Combat 193 JLA 123 All Star Comics 62 Flash #240 (though I may have had #218 as a hand me down earlier)
I got a handful of DC when I was younger, but became a bit of a Marvel Zombie early on and JLA was the only DC book I had more than 1 or 2 issues of as a kid. That didn't change until high school when I got into DC big time just as Crisis was being lead in to.
But as a kid (to bring this back to the topic) Avengers was always my go to book. It was the only book I had anything close to a run of (I had most of the issues between 156 and 176 plus the Annuals (and the Marvel 2-in-1 annual; and the Super-Villain Team Up issue that was part of the Attuma/Doom storyline with only a few holes) and the only other series that rivalled the number of issues I had was Invaders, but it was a distant second).
When I started collecting comics seriously. Avengers was the first book I started buying back issues of (#101 with the Harlan Ellison story was the first Avengers back issue I bought, at a flea market, and #177 was the first I sought out in a comic shop so I could finally read the conclusion of the Korvac story that I was never able to get as a kid).
So Avengers were pretty central to my comic reading and comic collecting foundational years. Not so much any more, but for those foundational years, it was my book of choice.
-M
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Post by SJNeal on Aug 17, 2021 18:50:15 GMT -5
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 17, 2021 21:26:05 GMT -5
The first issue I read was this one, and although I wasn't quite into superheroes at the time (my parents frowned upon the genre in those days), I thought Kang was amazingly alien-looking... kind of like the Flatwood Monster : The first single issue I actually bought was this one, and I didn't understand how the team could have changed so much. That's because the early issues of this French-language series had been using a UK version as their source (slightly oversized, with grey tones, and starting with the early days of The Avengers), before skipping roughly a hundred issues and translating the then-current American comic.
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 18, 2021 9:15:20 GMT -5
I love this thread. No time to join in yet.
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Post by String on Aug 18, 2021 13:53:26 GMT -5
In my youth, probably when I was around 9-10 years old, my first Avengers issue was: I don't recall from where I got the issue though (and yes, still have it). The first Avengers issue I bought with my allowance money was #227. Within two months, I had convinced my mother to pay for a subscription to Avengers which started with #230. I kept that subscription up through #337 (around 8 years or so) wherein I had moved out of state and had to drop it. So yeah, Avengers was a lynch-pin Marvel title for me along with X-Men (with FF being a close third). Back then I knew of the JLA but they always seemed to be more rigid, the Avengers had more drama, the team members didn't always get along but when it came to duking it out with the major bad guys, they assembled! Besides I don't recall the JLAers ever having such great nicknames, right Goldilocks? Plus, the book allowed for a broader snapshot of the MU which was great for any new reader. Atlantis, Savage Land, Negative Zone, outer space with the Skrulls, Kree, and beyond, it was exciting to see new and different corners of this vast universe. After I dropped my subscription, there was period of about 3-5 years where I read very few comics. When I decided to come back, it was around the time of Busiek/Perez run and that helped reignite my passion for the team. Unfortunately, that passion soon hit a brick wall with the arrival and tenure of Bendis. I didn't read a main Avengers title for a decade, even going so far as to check out Marvel Adventures Avengers just to get a dose of the team I remembered. Fortunately Bendis eventually moved on and the book (and team) recovered. Been reading it ever since.
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Post by Farrar on Aug 18, 2021 14:06:45 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure this was my first issue of the Avengers: ..... This was my first Avengers comic too! That summer I'd seen the Kooky Quartet in one of those Captain America TV cartoons, my first exposure to the Avengers. So when I came across this (and FF #68) at the candy store I begged my mom to buy these for me and my sibling. Of course both comics were really for me!
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Post by badwolf on Aug 18, 2021 16:09:18 GMT -5
After I dropped my subscription, there was period of about 3-5 years where I read very few comics. When I decided to come back, it was around the time of Busiek/Perez run and that helped reignite my passion for the team. Unfortunately, that passion soon hit a brick wall with the arrival and tenure of Bendis. I didn't read a main Avengers title for a decade, even going so far as to check out Marvel Adventures Avengers just to get a dose of the team I remembered. B&P's Avengers was one of the series that brought me back to superhero comics after many years hiatus. Collected it through Geoff Johns' run and Chuck Austen's first story arc.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2021 18:07:31 GMT -5
what I've gotten out of this thread? Wanda sure does like to lay down on comic covers
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