I've now figured out what it was about this storyline that was bothering me: the Avengers were completely ancillary - they weren't really needed at all. It's likely that Immortus could have carried out his plan against Kang without ever involving Earth's heroes. What this means is that the story, in the end, really has no lasting effect on the team itself, nor on any of its members.
There's an interesting comparison to be made here between The Avengers and the recent run of Prophet I've just finished. In Prophet we see a conflict between powerful beings before which our heroes seem to be meaningless - and it's played that way. Once Badrock and Troll engage in whatever it is they engage in, Old Man Prophet and Newfather fall by the wayside of that particular conflict. We follow the Prophets back into their own stories and the god-beings continue in theirs. In Avengers, though, the Avengers are made to hang around and fight while Immortus lets his plan unfold. We follow the story of the god-beings, essentially, while our heroes are just set dressing. Much better, though probably not in keeping with Marvel editorial policy at the time, would be to have the Avengers as initial threat to Kang, but once the Immortus connection is made, have them whisked back home, never to really know the outcome of the story they played a tangential part in.
Ah well. They can't all be amazing.
To be continued.
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