AVENGERS. "And There Came ANOTHER Day..."

[Richard Mantle]

AVENGERS. “And There Came Another Day…”

There are some interesting threads on this forum, already covering issues of Marvel’s early series – ‘re-reading’’ of the Avengers and Journey into Mystery/Thor and so on and there was quite a good issue by issue thread on the Invaders around too, until it caught up with the present.
What is more rarely discussed are the later periods when these series were in full flow and while perhaps less iconic still number among them some classics…

I therefore present to you an issue by issue critique/discussion forum for one of these mainstay Marvel titles.
Not beginning at the very debut – as others have that covered well – but (and I hope I don’t step on anyone’s creative toes here!) – I would like to pick up the Avengers title after a watershed/bookend issue provided an opportune point at which to begin …
Issue #100 featured all Avengers to that point together in one tale and everything that goes before it is pretty well easily contained by then. The next issue launches the title into its second century of publishing and its next phase of greatness…

What has gone before…?
And so there came a Day…

The formation of the team.
The Hulk leaving. Captain America’s return. The Original members giving way to Cap’s kooky Quartet.
Goliath and Wasp returning. Hercules coming and going. The creation of Ultron. The arrival of the Vision.
Yellow jacket Hawkeye as Goliath II and then back again. The Squadron Sinister/Supreme. The Kree-Skrull War and of course…the Lady Liberators!
(I’m sure you’ll have your own highlights!)

And so there came ANOTHER Day…

[Ron M.]

I wouldn't have wanted Avengers to only come out every three months, no matter how many extra pages they added.

Again I only read this one story but Hank definitely didn't take his transformation matter of factly in it. We got several pages of his trying to look like his old self again, ending with him saying something like "I did it! I'm human again!"

[Richard Willis]

Ron M. said:

I wouldn't have wanted Avengers to only come out every three months, no matter how many extra pages they added.

Who said it would come out every three months? Doing three 18-page stories and one 30-page new story (total 84 pages) could have been replaced by three 30-page stories (totaling 90 pages) with the accompanying reprints. Or dump the reprints and charge 40 cents instead of 50 cents. The stories wouldn't have to be book-length as long as they were new stories. They could have done a "Tales of ..." backup to avoid having to pad the stories. Different writers and artists could have been used to avoid burning out the main writers and artists.

Again I only read this one story but Hank definitely didn't take his transformation matter of factly in it. We got several pages of his trying to look like his old self again, ending with him saying something like "I did it! I'm human again!"

I guess they were presenting Hank as a supremely rational scientist. As much as some people decry the Marvel penchant for too much agonizing, I don't think Hank was bothered enough by becoming a hairy monster.

[Ron M.]

I think if they'd had more writers and artists back then they wouldn't have used the reprints. The giant-size comics were cancelled because they were too much extra work. To get more artists they would have probably had to raid Charlton or Gold Key, and I would not want Pat Boyett drawing Avengers.

[John Dunbar]

Richard Mantle said:

At the point of this being published would any reader actually be aware that the Beast was joining the team in the next issue or would that connection only be made next issue…when we are promised “A Whole New Batch of Avengers….

The possibility of the Beast joining was actually out in fandom in some way at the time.  Here's an excerpt from a letter from one William Miles of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in that same issue of Avengers #136:

And how about a new "new face" in the group?  I understand the Beast may come in. You might also consider Sting-Ray or the Man-Brute ...

[Fred W. Hill]

I did get that original Beast story in Amazing Adventures #11 but it was among my comics that wound up getting trashed just before my family moved from Long Beach, CA, to Salt Lake City in 1972.  Otherwise I only had the last of the original stories then the reprint of the Beast's origin which had originally run as part of a back up series in the X-Men.  The original X-Men series lasted from 1963 to 1970 so it had a decent run and had enough of a fan base to be brought back in reprints by 1972, around the time Dr. Strange also made a comeback after his 1st series was cancelled, although Doc got new stories and eventually his first no. 1 issue. 

Amusements -- the week after Halloween, in one of my regular trivia game contests I take part in, one of the questions was to name 6 of the 10 most popular costumes as based on sales.  We picked several Marvel comics characters -- Spider-Man, Thor, Hulk & Iron Man.  Well, Spidey was in there but the only other Marvel character in the top 10 was ... Ant-Man!  The movie must made an impression on a lot of trick-or-treaters.  Hank Pym & Scott Lang can be proud.

[Ron M.]

Man-Brute was a villain. Didn't Stingray very briefly join somewhere in the 80s or early 90s?

Perhaps there was talk about it in FOOM? I know when the new X-Men became popular they had a two page spread showing fans burning Len Wein, Chris Claremont, and Dave Cockrum at the stake, saying that was a description of the letters they were getting when they announced they were making a New X-Men series with new characters. Then people read Giant-Size X-Men#1 and changed their minds.

X-Men continuing in reprints until they got the new series started was very strange, since other reprints (Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk) were of series still running. Were old issues that popular but the last several flopped and they couldn't figure out what the problem was?

Dr. Strange of course didn't just get cancelled, he basically got erased for about a year until the same guy that got rid of him suddenly brought him back. There's definitely an untold story there of why Roy Thomas flip-flopped on Doc.

[Fred W. Hill]

What was really bizarre was Doc's retirement story in an issue of the Hulk Roy wrote -- in which, if I recall correctly, bouncing from his own cancelled series to Sub-Mariner for the next chapter in the Nameless Ones story, Strange starts out trapped in another dimension and after the Hulk gets involved and dukes it out with a character called the Nightcrawler (no resemblance or relation to Kurt Wagner) and then a sane but not too bright Barbara Norris winds up taking Strange's place in captivity and then, back on Earth after several months trapped in that dimension, Strange declares he's retiring from the Sorcerer Supreme business and going to resume life as a normal man, showing no concern whatsoever for Barbara's plight, as if his old utterly selfish pre-sorcerer persona had taken over his mind.  I read that story perhaps 20 years after it first saw print a, in the Marvel Super-Heroes Hulk reprints, and it boggled my mind -- that was not Dr. Strange as I knew him!  But when I got the Essential Dr. Strange volumes 1 & 2, which included the entire run in Strange Tales and the first self-titled series as well as the run in Marvel Premiere, and finally read Roy's initial run on the character, while I mostly liked it, there were several bits that seemed really off.  What most struck me was when Clea first takes up residence on Earth, rather than give her a room in his Greenwich mansion, Strange puts her up in an apartment of her own -- that is, this woman from another dimension who knows next to nothing about her new home, and the only person she knows at all on the entire planet is Dr. Strange himself and he essentially sends her off to fend for herself.  To be honest, I far preferred Dr. Strange as portrayed by Ditko, Englehart, Gerber (in the Defenders) and Stern, to Roy Thomas'.  Yeah, Colan's art was fantastic, but Roy's writing didn't quite live up to what I had expected.

[Ron M.]

What's sad is the first two chapters of that story (in Dr. Strange#183 and Sub-Mariner#22) were both great, atmospheric, Lovecraftian horror stories, but Hulk#126 was so...well, stupid. Unbelievable they were all written by the same person. While it was Steve Englehart that got Barbara Norris out of there, it doesn't agree at all with why Strange left her there in Roy Thomas' story. He's trapped in some weird thing that won't let him go unless someone takes his place, which she does. Doc can't free her and doesn't even try, he and the Hulk just run away. Yet when they accidentally turn up back in Defenders#3 he can free her easily even though she's been absorbed by the Nameless One. She only goes crazy because she had willingly bonded with him/them and can't stand being away from him/them (and years later she's still just as crazy because Doc has done nothing for her all this time but made sure Valkyrie's personality completely controls her mind). Doc didn't think to go after her and try to save her before? Even though they fought a servant of the Nameless One in Defenders#1, and more servants in #2? And he doesn't even go there in #3 to save her, even though he knows the Undying Ones have just attacked him twice in a row, he honestly wasn't paying attention to where he was taking the Defenders and just happened to teleport to his dimension by accident?

Perhaps Roy (or the Code) decided Clea shouldn't live in Doc's house because they weren't married?

I think it was Englehart that wrote the story where Doc has to face himself from four time periods, the first the stuck up doctor he used to be, and the last the masked version that he says was when he again became full of himself. I've only read a few of the stories from when he had that blue face, but I don't remember him being full of himself during that time.

I believe Nightcrawler is now called Darkcrawler (because Marvel can't have two characters with the same name) and has become much less powerful than he was back then.

[Fred W. Hill]

Ah, I hadn't realized the character was ever brought back, but not surprising.  Roy was usually a very good, occasionally great, writer, at least once he got past his first year or two of being a professional comics writer when it was painfully obvious how new he was.  But even as a seasoned pro he came up with duds now and then.

[Ron M.]

Like the issue that started this thread.

Dark-Crawler teamed up with Torgo (a robot that fought then worked with the Thing when they were both captured by Skrulls in Fantastic Four#91-93) and Amphibion (I think he's the monster on the Watcher's world in Tales to Astonish) in Hulk#269-270. The three of them force the Hulk to fight a villain they can't defeat that turns out to be the Abomination. Then Abomination turns out to be working for another monster, the Galaxy Master, who restored his original twice as strong as the Hulk strength.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Marvel Feature #1 (the same comic that introduced the Defenders), also told the story of "The Return!" of Dr. Strange (by thomas and Heck, IIRC).

[Ron M.]

The artwork in the main story looked incomplete, like they'd printed the rough pencils without inking them.