shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,548
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Post by shaxper on May 27, 2024 13:47:28 GMT -5
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Post by Hoosier X on May 27, 2024 16:18:04 GMT -5
The basic story of the Avengers finding Captain America frozen in an ice block was retold in Captain America #100. I think it was a dream sequence … he had been knocked unconscious and he comes out of it and he finds himself captured by the bad guys. It’s been a while since I read it. It seems to me that AIM is involved, and the Red Skull eventually turns out to be the villain behind it. But I could be wrong.
Captain America #100 was reprinted in Marvel Super Action #1. And this is the first place where I ever saw or knew that Captain America had been rescued from the ice by the Avengers. It’s pretty cool. Art by Kirby, inked by Syd Shores.
A few years later, the full story from Avengers #4 was re-printed at the beginning of a paperback book that reprinted the first ten or so Cap stories from Tales of Suspense. This would’ve been about 1980, I think. I was 16. The beginning, where the Avengers rescue Cap, is always great, but I’m not really a big fan of the issue as a whole. I’ve read it a bunch of times because I love The Avengers and I read the early issues a lot. As a matter of fact, I include the first four issues of The Avengers with Fantastic Four #25 and #26 and I call the story arc “GET THE HULK!” I sometimes read those issues once a year or so.
Aside from “the return of Captain America” material, that issue’s pretty dumb. The alien is a very silly broccoli man who seems to figure out the hardest way to do everything. Also the bit where everybody just assumes that the Avengers put statues of themselves in weird poses and then ran away is pretty damn dumb.
I’ve grown to appreciate it a little bit more over the years, but as a kid, I thought it was pretty much unsalvageable. I much preferred reading the opening segment of Captain America #100, and I bet I went 10 or 15 years before I read Avengers #4 again after the first time I read it.
Which doesn’t mean it’s not an important comic book!
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Post by Hoosier X on May 27, 2024 18:13:53 GMT -5
Now that I’ve bagged on #4 a little bit, I have to come back and admit that I love the first three issues! Loki and the whole “Hulk dressed up as a clown juggling circus animals” bit and the Space Phantom and Hulk and Thor trading quips like “out of my way, stupid” and just about every weird Wasp comment about how handsome everybody is and the Teen Brigade and the fight with Namor at Gibraltar and so on and etc.
It frequently makes no sense, but it just doesn’t bother me that it makes no sense.
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Post by Icctrombone on May 27, 2024 19:27:21 GMT -5
Now that I’ve bagged on #4 a little bit, I have to come back and admit that I love the first three issues! Loki and the whole “Hulk dressed up as a clown juggling circus animals” bit and the Space Phantom and Hulk and Thor trading quips like “out of my way, stupid” and just about every weird Wasp comment about how handsome everybody is and the Teen Brigade and the fight with Namor at Gibraltar and so on and etc. It frequently makes no sense, but it just doesn’t bother me that it makes no sense. That's right, learn to accept the SA goofiness.  |
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Post by Hoosier X on May 27, 2024 21:16:35 GMT -5
I saw the first two issues of Avengers pretty early on when I was collecting comic books. I had Son of Origins less than a year after I started picking up new comics off the stands in the summer of 1975. Avengers #1 is reprinted in that volume.
And I’m sure within the next year I had Giant-Size Avengers #3, as a somewhat beat-up back issue. It reprints Avengers #2. My eyes almost popped out of my head. It’s weird and wonderful and at the time, one the greatest comic book stories I had ever seen! Why, it was almost as good as that looney Solomon Grundy vs. JSA reprint in Super-Team Family #4!
20 years passed before I read Avengers #3.
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Post by Ricky Jackson on May 27, 2024 21:30:49 GMT -5
My intro to these early stories was Marvel Saga circa 1985-86 (panels taken from various early Marvels and arranged to tell a chronological story--loved that book). Got the first Avengers Marvel Masterworks a few years later, and yeah, love those first 3 issues. Number 4 is legendary but the alien story was a miss
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Post by Cei-U! on May 28, 2024 6:04:34 GMT -5
Great episode, guys, covering one of my all-time favorite single issues! My brother used to scour the piles of comics at the local St. Vincent de Paul thrift store for me. A tattered Avengers #4 was one of the first treasures he found (it cost him a whole nickel). This would've been the summer of 1967, if memory serves.
I appreciate the shout-out referencing my Alter Ego article on Avengers history. Here's what I had to say therein about the story arc #4 was an integral part of:
"This six-part story cycle [Avengers #2-5, plus Fantastic Four #25-26] epitomizes the sprawling multi-title action and operatic bombast of the Lee/Kirby school of super-heroics. The plot feels organic and spontaneous, driven by the larger-than-life emotions of its characters. The art is stark and dramatic. The inkers on these issues, Paul Reinman (#2-3, 5) and George Roussos (#4, FF #25-26, credited in all as “Geo. Bell”), capture the raw power of Jack Kirby's pencils in a way more polished embellishers like Dick Ayers (#1, 8) or Chic Stone (#6-7), do not. It is the right look for this story."
By the way, I have my own tin foil hat theory as to why Captain America was revived when and how he was. It was at about this time that Joe Simon began looking into reclaiming the rights to Cap, a character whose origin story he had completed before he and Kirby went to Timely (it was, incidentally, the only Cap story that featured Simon pencils and Kirby inks rather than the other way around). The faux Cap appearance in Strange Tales was intended to reestablish the trademark. Later, someone on Martin Goodman's legal team may have suggested that they bring back the actual Steve Rogers version just to nail things down more securely. That a great and historic story resulted was a bonus from Goodman's POV.
Cei-U! I summon the food for thought!
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,548
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Post by shaxper on May 28, 2024 14:56:07 GMT -5
Gotta out myself on two inaccuracies I stated in one fell swoop at the 56 minute mark: Robin (Jason Todd) died in late 1988, not 1989, and Batman punched Superman in a grief rage afterward, not Guy Gardner. The Guy Gardner punch came a year prior to Jason Todd dying. I'm more than a little embarrassed, as Post-Crisis Batman is kind of my thing. Guess I had too much Bucky on the brain.
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Post by Prince Hal on May 28, 2024 15:50:54 GMT -5
Gotta out myself on two inaccuracies I stated in one fell swoop at the 56 minute mark: Robin (Jason Todd) died in late 1988, not 1989, and Batman punched Superman in a grief rage afterward, not Guy Gardner. The Guy Gardner punch came a year prior to Jason Todd dying. I'm more than a little embarrassed, as Post-Crisis Batman is kind of my thing. Guess I had too much Bucky on the brain. Thou art forgiven. But don't let it happeneth again.  |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 29, 2024 8:33:54 GMT -5
Gotta out myself on two inaccuracies I stated in one fell swoop at the 56 minute mark: Robin (Jason Todd) died in late 1988, not 1989, and Batman punched Superman in a grief rage afterward, not Guy Gardner. The Guy Gardner punch came a year prior to Jason Todd dying. I'm more than a little embarrassed, as Post-Crisis Batman is kind of my thing. Guess I had too much Bucky on the brain. Thou art forgiven. But don't let it happeneth again. The Prince has taken up the selling of indulgences. |
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Post by Prince Hal on May 29, 2024 10:34:19 GMT -5
Thou art forgiven. But don't let it happeneth again. The Prince has taken up the selling of indulgences. Line starts on the left. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 29, 2024 10:50:00 GMT -5
The Prince has taken up the selling of indulgences. Line starts on the left. I knew there was something sinister about you. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on May 29, 2024 11:03:03 GMT -5
I knew there was something sinister about you. How gauche. |
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Post by MRPs_Missives on May 29, 2024 11:21:16 GMT -5
I knew there was something sinister about you. How gauche. We're drifting slightly off topic. Maybe we should port this into a different thread? -M |
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Post by MDG on May 30, 2024 7:28:03 GMT -5
Great episode, but I'm holding a big posting until I re-read Avengers 1-4. Have the first two in the bag.
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