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.]

"But if his face was red, why would the rest of him be any different?" A couple of issues earlier Horton asked Ultron why he wanted the Vision red and he said he wanted to always remember his origins. Why did it matter to Ultron if he remembered the Vision was once the Torch if the Vision didn't? Pretty much anything Ultron said made him seem childish and vindictive, and gave no reason why. Because his "father" rejected him? Everything about his origin shows he was the one that rejected Hank.

Something I always wondered was, why two heroes named Henry, and why do they both go by Hank? We don't have two Steves, two Tonys, or two Wandas.

I'm fine with taking soap opera (originally Betty and Veronica clone) Patsy Walker and making her a superhero, but I still don't think taking a costume and identity from a character that was so unpopular she was cancelled and turned into a monster after just a handful of stories, was a good idea for her. I remember at the wedding Hedy yelled she could see some superhero but Patsy ignored her. "Who cares! I want to see Millie the Model!" A superhero wedding isn't the place I'd think of going to if I just wanted to see models.

Didn't Tuska draw that Space Phantom story that got shoehorned into Avengers?

[Richard Willis]

Ron M. said:

Pretty much anything Ultron said made him seem childish and vindictive, and gave no reason why. Because his "father" rejected him? Everything about his origin shows he was the one that rejected Hank.

It may have been intentional. Ultron was a youngster who never stopped being a brat. He didn't mature because he wasn't reared like a human (should be).

[Ron M.]

Ultron-13 matured. Ultron-12's response was to not only destroy him but erase his files so he couldn't be brought back again.

[Richard Mantle]

As always, thankyou Jeff (I hope to get gback on a more regualr footing aga8in in the new year.

 Jeff of Earth-J said:

STEVE ENGLEHART ON AVENGERS #137:

 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I admit I was beginning to wonder what was going on with this discussion when over a month had passed since you posted #136!

[Richard Mantle]

Yes, very sorry - family illness/crisis.
Normal service in the new year with luck.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

I admit I was beginning to wonder what was going on with this discussion when over a month had passed since you posted #136!

[Jeff of Earth-J]

No need to apologize. I hope everything is okay.

[Richard Mantle]

AVENGERS #138 (08/75)

Writer – Steve Englehart    

Penciller – George Tuska     Inker – Vince Colletta

Cover Art – Gil Kane & Mike Esposito

   “Stranger In A Strange Man!”

Was this cover some sort of experiment. I love Gil Kane but even for him this is a jumbled  mess of perspective and ridiculous positions for his characters.

Why is the Stranger bent over so fully?

Why in his first cover as a member is the Beast’s backside so prominently featured and what on earth is happening to Thor??

Aside from all that the backgrounds are so ornate/alien that they are way too distracting!

I love Kane’s work but I really do not like this cover!

 

Inside and we follow the action of last issue – namely the injury inflicted on the Wasp – by catching up with the Avengers outside a hospital.

It’s raining so you can tell the news is not good.

The crowd react badly once they see the new Avengers but YellowJacket reacts worse as he sums up the critical condition of the Wasp and sets the Avengers off on a revenge search for the Stranger. (They get a taxi. It’s kindof like when they all get on a bus in the Korvac saga-to come!) Hank notes there is no miracle doctore to get this time – harking back to the classic Avengers #14 where the Wasp was first critically injured – remember?

 

The Avengers comment that Hawkeye should have returned from his time-travel-trip to locate the Black Knight, reminding readers of a mystery still to be solved.

Everyone is then hit by a ‘mind-storm’ which indicates the Stranger’s purpose is to find their teammate the Scarlet Witch.

(Knowing what we later find out – I’m not sure how this is achieved,,?)

 The team is split into groups for a two-pronged attack …and Iron man and Thor debate who gets Moondragon on their team – both wanting her because she’s…well, hot.

“It does not please me to be haggled over like a serving girl!”

 

The Beast also ponders his new place among the Avengers,

“Wow! These guys play a lot grander game than the X-Men ever did! They’ve got so much power—and they’ve been in high gear ever since I met them! I hope there’s room amongst the super-stars…for a Beast.”

 

Thor and moondragon arrive at the Florida Keys where Wanda and the Vision should be enjoying their honeymoon and are attacked by the Stranger- who seems to split into two.

Moondragon begins to cotton on to the truth as she wonders why he did not mind-blast them

 

The other Avengers track the Stranger’s power to ‘100 miles in the air’ and race to it – with Yellowjacket getting more and more intense as they go.

 

Thor and Moondragon battle and determine that their Strangers are illusions only.

 

The others reach the Strangers ship in orbit and their battle ensues.

The Beast instantly (how’d he do that then?) changes into his Edward G Robinson disguise (used last issue – surely this is not going to be a regular thing is it?) – this shocks the Stranger enough to drop his ‘thought-form’,

“I dropped my thought-form!”

And reveal his true self to be…the Toad! (Everyone’s favourite-forgotten mutant henchman.)

 

Yellowjacket shrinks to four-feet, the height of the Toad, to adequately chase him through the ship and he and the Beast stop the little mutant.

We learn the Toad was fed up with being sub-serviant to everyone and had over hios many appearances been planning on stealing the Strangers ship and power so that he could become a force to be reconed with…and ask his secret love the Scarlet Witch to marry him once he had proved worthy.

 

This is a nice thread through continuity that actually works and makes sense. Clever.

A little less convincing was that once he had discovered Wanda had already wed an Avenger he decided to fight all the Avengers. I would have preferred he not be aware of the marriage and discover it here – thus ending his attack.

 

Anyway, as the Vision and the Scarlet Witch continue their homeymoon uninterrupeted the Avengers return home to the still injured Wasp…and Yellowjacket is shown secretly in great pain due to using his size-changing agfainst medical advice…

 

There is no resolution here to Jan’s injuries, making the whole battle seem a distraction and kind of pointless.

Yellowjacket is shown driven and determined but not very sympathetically, it’s a sign of the biased writing against the guy we’ll see for some time…

 

The ending, revealing the Toad is okay but the fact that he has a silly tantrum adds a comedic ending to this issue which completely robs the Wasp’s critical condition of any drama.

 

The artwork, Tuska and Colletta is functional and fair enough, but in my eyes it is one of the main reasons why these issue’s do not excite me much at all and continue to feel dull and flat…until Perez arrives.

 

Moondragon and Beast have nboth played their part in an Avengers battle then but the Beast is by far the more dominant character in the team at this point.

Wasp remains injured/ill throughout this issue and beyond – a curious use of a newly-returned-to-the-fold teammenber.

 

Come back…

[Ron M.]

This seems like Englehart was using the Stranger and in mid story was told to turn him into the Toad. We've already seen the team split up and everybody fights the same villain in Giant-Size Avengers#1.

Never got the concept that you can "prove yourself" to win a woman's love by killing her friends. And would you really want somebody that found that attractive.

I can see Iron Man chasing a woman, but Thor is kind of supposed to be engaged, isn't he? It seemed the idea was Thor hung out with Moondragon because they were both gods on Earth and everybody else was beneath them (leading to her talking Thor into quitting the team.) But Moondragon isn't a goddess, she just thinks she is, and you'd think Thor would realize that. I don't recall bald heads being considered irresistible back in the 70s.

[Dave Elyea]

I don't know, this particular story makes a lot more sense with the Toad being motivated by his long-standing crush on Wanda than it would have been if it had just been the Stranger being strange.  Usually, editorially mandated changes make little to no sense at all (The Monarch can't be Captain Atom now, so let's make him the only current day hero that we saw actually fighting the Monarch in any of the possible futures we've shown so far!), so this story always felt to me like it was meant to be the Toad all along.  As much as I complained before about the many ill-conceived reboots and redesigns that would afflict the Toad after this point, I thought that this story was a logical development for him, it's just that he (and all of the misguided creative teams to follow) should have realized after it that "The Terrible Toad-King" was just not going to happen.
As for irresistible bald heads in the 70s, I think Star Trek's Lt. Ilia came after this, altho it did seem to work for her.  Other than that, I can't see Telly Savalas having much of an impact on Moondragon's appeal.  Of course, considering all the cut outs in Moondragon's costume, Tony Stark might not have noticed whether she had hair or not...
Ron M. said:

This seems like Englehart was using the Stranger and in mid story was told to turn him into the Toad. We've already seen the team split up and everybody fights the same villain in Giant-Size Avengers#1.

Never got the concept that you can "prove yourself" to win a woman's love by killing her friends. And would you really want somebody that found that attractive.

I can see Iron Man chasing a woman, but Thor is kind of supposed to be engaged, isn't he? It seemed the idea was Thor hung out with Moondragon because they were both gods on Earth and everybody else was beneath them (leading to her talking Thor into quitting the team.) But Moondragon isn't a goddess, she just thinks she is, and you'd think Thor would realize that. I don't recall bald heads being considered irresistible back in the 70s.

[Ron M.]

Cut outs wouldn't affect Donald Blake though. Did somebody decide to get Thor off Earth back then? Didn't he go into outer space for a multipart story in his own title after this to look for Odin? Then it turned out he was on Earth the whole time with amnesia.

In the Gregory Peck western Mackenna's Gold there's a scene where Telly Savalas shaves his head. Never got why they felt it important to show he wasn't actually bald, or why somebody in the Old West would shave his head, unless he thought it would keep him from being scalped.

The only bald woman I can think of before this would be the one in THX 1138, and apparently she gave up acting after that film.

[Richard Willis]

Richard Mantle said:

We learn the Toad was fed up with being sub-serviant to everyone and had over hios many appearances been planning on stealing the Strangers ship and power so that he could become a force to be reconed with…and ask his secret love the Scarlet Witch to marry him once he had proved worthy.

Was Toad’s appearance his first since The Stranger kidnapped him and Magneto?