The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 973: Avengers Annual #16, 1987

This issue was kind of "meh."

And I'm not really feeling the writing right now.

There wasn't nearly enough made of the Captain Marvels facing off against one another.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 964: West Coast Avengers Annual #1, 1986

When I was entering all the pertinent data on yesterday's comic, I realized that I only bought it a couple of years ago. I can't imagine what I must have thought was going on when I read today's comic back in 1986 when I got it. Or, for that matter, why I didn't pick up the Avengers Annual at the same time.

Ah well.

Today's comic is sooooo much better than yesterday's. Steve Englehart has a nice handle on the Avengers, and Mark Bright is a very gifted visual storyteller. Check out his run on Quantum and Woody if you don't believe me. As the Avengers run from the government, the question on all of their minds is who has betrayed them. Unfortunately, that cover leaves little to the imagination, so there's not really any surprise when Quicksilver reveals himself, and then tries to kill both teams. It's interesting. When I first read it, I wondered why Quicksilver had become such a dick. I mean, he's never been the most personable of the Marvel characters (a trait he shares with Alpha Flight's Northstar), but to completely reverse directions and threaten his comrades with death? And to hold such prejudices against the Vision when he himself is a victim of them due to his nature as a mutant? Not that members of minority groups are somehow exempt from prejudicial attitudes, but given his experiences, you'd think Quicksilver's definition of what constitutes life might be a bit more broad than the average.

Reading it now, I'm struck by how this is an example of the events of someone's life piling up until that person breaks. What we have here is a young man dealing with a remarkable amount of pressure, a remarkable amount of change, and, most likely, a pre-existing mental illness. It wasn't something that was talked about much back in the 80s, but there's definitely an undercurrent of psychological distress playing out here. I still think Quicksilver's a dick, but now I understand that perhaps some of that comes from an inability to properly process everything that goes on around him. I have similar troubles, and all I do is teach. This guy is involved in grand cosmic adventures on a regular basis. I probably would have fallen apart too.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 963: Avengers Annual #15, 1986

One of the things I've been doing as I read through the Roger Stern-scripted issues of Avengers is to skip over any that aren't written by him, regardless of whether or not they were part of the regular story.

I probably should have stuck to my guns. Now, this is not to say that there's anything wrong with Danny Fingeroth's script in this issue. It's a good, full-cast Avengers story, and deals with the current problems in the ongoing title to do with the status of the team vis a vis the American government. But, as with annual 13, the Steve Ditko art in this issue is just abysmal. Even with the inks of Klaus Janson over top, the art is totally stiff and uninspiring - very unlike early Ditko Marvel. I know the guy's a legend, but this is just really poorly done comics.

I'll move on to the West Coast Avengers annual that finishes this story, but thank goodness we're getting back to the regular team in a couple of days.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 924: Avengers v.1 #250, December 1984

Now this is what an inter-team, double-sized crossover comic should be like. Gone is the soap opera, gone the personal angst and/or relationships. This is about a team of some of the most powerful creatures on Earth coming together to stop a world-threatening cataclysm. Each member of the team(s) gets a chance to shine, to demonstrate exactly why they're members of the Avengers (East of West coast), though I'll admit that Mockingbird and Tigra are a bit underplayed in today's comic. That makes sense, as their power sets, such as they are, are much better-suited to close quarters combat, rather than taking on a giant, planet-powered would-be god. And that's all I'll say about today's villain. Today's comic is a wonderful example of how Mr. Stern and Mr. Milgrom can take what is ostensibly a soap opera starring superheroes and turn it into the action movie that we all know and love from the MCU. That juxtaposition is actually something that I find lacking in the filmic versions of the Marvel superheroes. We have attempts at the soap opera-ness of Marvel comics in most of their television series, but that leaves out a very important aspect of the larger team and hero-based properties. We only every see the Avengers as the action heroes, never as the soap stars. And while this elevates them in some ways, perhaps to the more pantheonic level of the Justice League, it neglects a rather wonderful aspect of this team. There are gestures toward the soap opera - the burgeoning relationship between the Scarlet Witch and the Vision (though it's filmic depiction is a bit problematic) springs to mind.

I will offer one criticism here - where the heck has Tigra's tail gone? If you Google Tigra images (warning - there's going to be NSFW pics there), every single one has a tail. But Mr. Milgrom seems to have decided that she doesn't need one. Further, her face lacks any feline properties, making her look like she's been badly-spray tanned, at least when we don't see her striped body. I find it odd that these things would have slipped past an editor, especially one as fluent in the Marvel U as Mark Gruenwald. But, I suppose, we're all only human.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 921: West Coast Avengers v.1 #4, December 1984

Will blog tomorrow. Out to Rocky Horror tonight!

Okay - hopefully I'm back to a semi-normal schedule, though I'm teaching 4 days a week this term, so there may still be occasional delays, or perhaps an evening post or two every now and again.

I decided to finish off the WCA series before moving on to the parent series again. This issue sort of feels like an Avengers story, though really I feel like this team could perhaps be seen as a precursor to the Secret Avengers (do they still exist? Who knows? It's a secret!), in that their powers seem to be a little more geared toward stealth (for the most part), rather than shutting down demon invasions of New York (talking about the next Avengers issue, not "Inferno"). The proof of this, I think, is in the pudding: rather than simply pummeling Graviton, the WCA execute an infiltration of his operation, drug him, and take him down. It's much more subversive than the usual Avengers tactics.

Checking my database, I only have 3 issues and a couple of annuals of the regular series that follows this one. I'm not sure why, at the time, I didn't follow the adventures of the WCA, but, even in my 10 year old form, perhaps I could see that these adventures were not quite on par with the stuff I was seeing in the main series. Or, more likely, I was a little kid and couldn't afford ALL THE COMICS!

Things haven't changed much.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 920: West Coast Avengers v.1 #3, November 1984

I'm really not enjoying this series as much as I thought I would. The characters, with the possible exception of Hawkeye, are all a bit emo for my tastes, and that's weird given that the series came out long before emo was a thing. Everyone's struggling with whether or not they're suited to being Avengers, and, honestly, in issue 3, it's been a bit much.

At least we get a good, scene-chewing villain like Graviton this time around.

West Coast Avengers does something interesting in this issue, though, that's a bit of a rarity in limited series such as this one. It makes reference to events happening in the greater Marvel U in a way that involves it in the shared narrative in a way that few limited series are. I think the impetus for this isolation must be that if the series is unsuccessful, it's easier to disavow and retcon if there were no explicit links to the main continuity. But because it stars some relatively big names, and because Jim Rhodes is appearing as Iron Man in the eponymous title, it's hard to be telling a story that separates them from the rest of the Marvel Universe, especially as the Vision and Hawkeye have been setting this team up for a while now in the pages of the regular series.

Maybe it's the team itself. I'm just getting the feeling of Avengers-lite, though with Graviton leading the charge now, issue 4 promises to be a bit more...feisty. To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 919: West Coast Avengers v.1 #2, October 1984

The trouble with a villain called "The Blank" is that he's exactly that - blank. Marvel villains, and especially of this era, were flamboyant and mad. They stood out and gnashed their teeth at the world. Hence the response of the brightly costumed hero. But when you've got a villain whose whole schtick is that he fades into the background, and is unidentifiable, you take away a large portion of the fun of the super villain. The only time this dude even remotely shows personality is when he recharges his force field belt. We get a little bit of monologuing, but then he "blanks" again, and it's done.

I loved this series when I first started reading comics. It was one of the first ones I ever collected. But in contrast to Mr. Stern's other Avengers book, it's a bit bland. We'll see if that continues with the introduction, or reintroduction, of Graviton at the end of the issue. Now he's an Avengers-level crazy.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 916: West Coast Avengers v.1 #1, September 1984

We're going to follow Hawkeye, Mr. Stern, and Bob Hall over to the west coast for a few issues, interspersed with the adventures of the New York team. One of the criticisms of the Marvel U, more in previous decades than now, is that pretty much all of their superheroes were based in New York. They must have just been hanging out on street corners and in coffee shops, given the number that routinely had cataclysmic adventures in the city. Today's comic is an early attempt to not only spread out the characters and include more of the United States in the Marvel U, but also an early attempt at expanding the Avengers publishing franchise. Of course, in 1984, Marvel didn't have a string of extremely profitable films to use as a backbone for this kind of expansion, so the limited series format fits nicely. A short run, but long enough to give some good feedback as to whether or not the series merits an ongoing. About a year after this issue, the WCA gets its ongoing.

Hawkeye has always been a favourite of Avengers writers, and, I'll admit, I'm not entirely certain why. He's cocky and headstrong, he unpowered, and, at least in the last little bit of Avengers that I've read, he's more than a little chauvinistic. But I think what he really epitomizes in Marvel lore is the redemption arc. Hence his leading of the Thunderbolts for a long while in the early 2000s. But Hawkeye starts off as a villain, and then basically bullies his way onto a team of super powered heroes. He shows determination and a genuine belief in changing to the side of the angels. And, as far as I know, he's never slipped back into villainy. Redemption is a powerful idea, one that, even for the smallest infractions, many of us seek.

Back to the east tomorrow, but we'll his sunny California again soon. To be continued.

Giant Box of Comics presents "Stories from the Comic Life" - "My Mum" by Tom Miller

A little while ago, I sent this message out to some of my friends and colleagues who are, in my opinion, very interesting people with whom to talk comics:

"I'd like to invite you to guest-post a short piece on an important, influential, however you might put it, piece of comics or comics writing that you've read. It doesn't have to be your favourite comic or anything, and it certainly doesn't have to be rigorously researched and academized. But I think it would be interesting to know what pieces of comics culture have impacted you deeply, and then to disseminate those thoughts to a wider audience."

Over the next few weeks, I'll post what they sent me, which I hope will provide an interesting picture of the ways in which comics, and comics culture, in all their myriad forms, have an effect on those who love them. 

I'll start with a short story about my Mum.

I blame her, you know. It's all her fault.

When I was 9 or 10, we lived in Mississauga, Ontario (Canada for you non-Canadians). At that age, I was getting to the point where I felt relatively comfortable walking to the local convenience store by myself. It was about a five minute walk from our house, but far enough that it made me feel pretty big getting to do it. It was there that I discovered comics. I'd read Archies, and Richie Riches, and had a stack of old Doctor Who Weekly magazines. But it was in that store that I discovered those curiously-coloured items that would come to, in large part, define my life. Superhero comics.

The first three comics I bought were Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars #7, West Coast Avengers v.1 #1, and Transfomers v.1 #1. (Also, can I just say, that Sienkiewicz cover is amazing!) I still have them. For some, the most expensive comics, or the extremely rare ones, are the crown jewels of their collections. For me, it is these. Only one other one has any greater stature.

When I discovered comics, much to her credit, my Mum encouraged my brothers and I to read them. I still, to this day, meet people who would never do that with their kids, people who think that reading comics will lead to some Wertham-esque delinquency and illiteracy. I may admit to a bit of healthy delinquency over the course of my life. But I'm pretty sure it's not because of comics.

At that time, for some reason that perhaps my Mum can clarify, we decided to take advantage of a subscription service at a comic shop in Burlington, a couple of towns over. The reason I say I'm not sure why we did this is because at that time I'm sure there were comic stores in Mississauga. Though, thinking back on the chronology, we might have been living in Oakville by this point. Anyway, we each got to reserve a few comics per month, and my Mum did too. She'd read them as a kid (her stories of her old Superman collection that is long vanished still fills me with sadness. Seriously, the first thing I'm going to do when I invent a time machine is go back and rescue them from wherever they ended up. Maybe it's already happened....), and she started getting two series that not only fundamentally changed the way I saw comics, but the way the industry did. One was the first issue of The Dark Knight Returns, and one was the first issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths. I guess there's arguments for which one changed the industry more, but the stronger argument is of course for DKR. It literally changed the way that that hero was defined forever. We will never see a mainstream Batman free of the influence of that series. Miller's series reinvented a myth.

But that's not the one that's the jewel of my collection. I still have it, but I don't love it, don't look so fondly on it, as I do the first issue of Crisis.

I should point out that, to this point, I was pretty much a Marvel kid. This was my first real exposure to the DC Universe...um....Multiverse. There were two Supermen? Two Green Lanterns? There used to be two Batmen, but one was dead? I had no idea what was going on. But my Mum continued to buy the title, and I continued to read it, and bit by bit I started putting together the idea of infinite parallel dimensions filled with superheroes, vast cosmic events that threatened the very fabric of reality, multiple futures that diverge from one particular Earth....in short, the series introduced me, in a way that I think Marvel comics are only just getting to, to the vast, mythological potential of the superhero.

More the point of the story, however, is that I will never, ever be able to read that comic, that crown jewel of my collection, without thinking about my Mum. It's intrinsically linked to her now.

It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my blog that the superheroic myth is very much what I am still wrestling with as an adult, albeit, hopefully, in a more sophisticated manner than my 11 or 12 year old self. I have wrestled with it, in some form or another, for most of my life. For me, teasing out the ramifications of fictions like these has become an almost religious, or at the very least spiritual, calling.

And I blame it all on my Mum. If she had never bought this comic, I may never have found that purpose that has driven me my whole life.


Tom Miller is the guy who writes this blog.