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 922: Avengers v.1 #249, November 1984

I will say this of the early 80s Marvel stuff I've been reading over the last little while: the beginnings of the continuity-heavy storytelling that has plagued the industry for decades now definitely gets its beginnings here. I've written elsewhere (and incompletely) about the crossover series , but these days I find myself coming to the conclusion that such "Events" (as they're now called), though epic and possibly even great stories, are still unfortunately disseminated through a model of capital, which means access to the complete story (whatever that might mean) is the province of the wealthy. It's not a new thought, for certain. The relationship between the narrative side of comics (that being the stories and those who create them) and the commercial side (those who own the characters and profit from that ownership) has always been contentious. I often find myself conflicted, because there's little, if anything, that happens outside of the system of capital nowadays, so corporate ownership and control is simply a fact of life. But then there's the argument for the greater cultural value of such works. Comics endure. There have literally been cultural attempts to destroy the medium, but there is something remarkable and powerful about it.

I'm getting off topic.

Today's issue is a crossover with events transpiring in Walt Simonson's Thor. This is, similar to Miracleman, one of those legendary superhero runs about which I have next to no awareness. Thor gets turned into a frog, I think. What I have read of Mr. Simonson, mostly in his also-lauded run on Fantastic Four, tells me that he understands and embraces the madness of the superhero universe. And that's something that I admire immensely in any creator - a willingness to commit to the irrational. It's part of what pushes these stories toward myth, I think.

Tomorrow, we finally get to an annual that was written by Roger Stern. And, I've just read in one of the solicitation pages in today's comic that it's pencilled by Steve Ditko and inked by John Byrne. Promises to be a pretty spectacular comic, I think. To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 918: Avengers v.1 #248, October 1984

Seriously. What did this accomplish. For the most part, I love Roger Stern's tenure on this title. There's a reason this is the only run of the original Avengers series that I tracked down every issue. By the end of the run, I'm convinced he's writing the perfect version of this team.

But, seriously.

The Eternals accidentally(?) kidnap the Wasp and Starfox, apologize, have their supposedly secret city found in moments by three more Avengers, discover a strange link to Starfox (which, I admit, I quite like), then fuse into an all-powerful (but strangely defenseless) "Uni-Mind," only to be taken captive by a single person while the Avengers, somewhat bumblingly, try to save them. Then they break apart, and some stay Uni-Mind and some stay on Earth.

The story really, despite what I just wrote, didn't seem to do anything. I almost feel like someone said "Hey, we haven't done much with the Eternals lately. Wanna write something, Roger?" And he, for his own reasons, said okay.

Anyway, I did not enjoy this little detour to Greece. The Vision's erratic behaviour has been going on too long, and I want answers! To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 917: Avengers v.1 #247, September 1984

I've never really taken to the Eternals. To me, they were one iteration too far of Jack Kirby's attempt to fuse superheroes and ancient mythologies. Like, we get it already, Jack. The superheroes are the new myths. And by the time the Eternals came about, that wasn't really super big news. Some early writing on The Eternals reveals Kirby's inspiration in the form of Erich Van Daniken's Chariots of the Gods, and the concepts, in the form that we meet them in today's comic, are about as dated as Von Daniken's work. A later retcon makes the Eternals much more interesting, questioning their free will. But right now they're creatures that were mistaken for figures from Greek and Roman mythology. Nevermind that there's actual Olympian Gods in the Marvel U. Oh, and just to make it even more clear, the Eternals live on Olimpia. With an "i."

I'm sorry if I'm seeming over-critical of this super-group. I actually have most of their appearances to date. I think what I'm critical of is that, with the possible exception of the Thor mythos, Kirby's creations always seemed a bit more original, less derivative of the mythological antecedents. The New Gods embodied particular archetypes, but didn't directly draw on any one mythology. I find this investigation of it by him far less-inspired than some of his others. But I do like the Eternals themselves. There's this strangely metatextual feel to them with their play-on-words Greek and Roman mythic monikers. Ikaris. Makkari. Given the presence of Hercules and his kin, there's literally no good reason to have these mythological names, especially when they're a species that predates humanity. So this unreality of the characters is, a lot of the time, embraced by writers, though whether willingly or unwittingly, I don't know. The Eternals stand apart in the narrative universe, but also in the characterized universe (?). They are quite a bit more abstract, almost like metaphors that realize and acknowledge that they are metaphors.

Which is actually pretty cool.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 915: Avengers v.1 #246, August 1984

Starfox is a bad influence. Or, actually, maybe he's a good influence. Taking along the Wasp, Eros crashes a party thrown by one "Sylvia Serisi," actually Sersi from Jack Kirby's Eternals series. Looking ahead, this is just the beginning of an association between Sersi and the Avengers. She becomes a regular team member in the 90s, and still occasionally shows up every few years.

It's nice to see that She-Hulk is at the same party, though not in connection to her fellow Avengers. It kind of makes sense that super-people would move in the same circles, so it's not surprising to see someone they know at the party. This is one example of how Stern and Milgrom use the soap opera of The Avengers to build a huge, intricate world for the Marvel heroes to inhabit. In the 80s, this was the comic that was establishing what the Marvel U looked like, even if X-Men the more popular.

A couple of other interesting things happen. Stern's style of writing is to have a big action even in each issue, for the most part. In the background of that, he plants the seeds of the big story he's interested in telling. For the last few issues, it's been the increasingly strange behaviour of the Vision. Today's meeting, behind closed doors, with President Reagan is enough to get even his doting wife the Scarlet Witch raising a concerned eyebrow. If memory serves, this'll all come to a head soon. The other interesting thing is that Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, reveals to her parents her identity as a superhero. I'm trying to read the race and gender politics of this run of comics with an open mind, but I have to say thus far I'm far more impressed than I thought I'd be. In he the Spider-Woman story from a few days ago, it was an all-female team of Avengers leading the charge. Can you imagine seeing something like that in the MCU? Roger Stern is a writer with definite ideas about things. His firing from this title a few years down the line is proof positive of that. I look forward to being further pleasantly surprised.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 914: Avengers v.1 #245, July 1984

A rocket hurtles through space, orbiting the Earth and having the deadly potential to rain down destruction on everyone on the planet. And the Dire Wraith in command would rather die than return to the planet. The Avengers must move quickly if they are to avert disaster.

Lots of action in today's issue, including the Wasp somehow hefting a regular-sized blaster and holding it to an alien head while the rest of the Avengers try to assist her. Jan must really work out. I don't think her shrinking powers work the same as Ant-Man or the Atom's, where she can draw on her usual strength even when very small. Though, I suppose, since it's basically the same process by which Ant-Man shrinks, that it should work the same way. But Wasp never punches anyone at small size, relying instead on her sting. Perhaps the process isn't quite the same.

Not much else happens in this issue, though the Vision's disappointment when S.H.I.E.L.D. comes along at the end to take over the Wraith investigation is yet another hint that things are not all quite right with him. He thinks a lot about a mysterious "plan" he has, and it's starting to smack of the notion of a superior (or supposedly-superior) intellect doing what it thinks is best, with no regard for those who, inevitably, become pawns for a greater purpose. And I think there's one or two Avengers who are going to balk at being played by the Vision.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 913: Avengers v.1 #244, June 1984

What does one do when one's rocket base is overrun by shape-changing aliens determined to destroy humanity? Call the Avengers, of course! That's what they're for.

A really, really interesting part of this comic is a small, throwaway line that tells us that the Dire Wraiths are actually an offshoot from the Skrull race. This is kind of cool, in that it ties Rom and the Wraiths, who've always seemed a bit separate from the main Marvel U, into that continuity a little more fully. There are a few toy-based comics in this era that actually are fairly securely ensconced in the Marvel U, the other primary example I can think of being the Saga of Crystar series. Jonathan Hickman brings the Rom properties back into view, if only briefly, in his Infinity series, and the Wraiths are one of the races of Inhumans that arrive on Earth during his Fantastic Four run. The Crystar characters rejoin the Marvel U during the 2015 "Secret Wars" series in the pages of Weirdworld. It's nice to see that these properties, though primarily designed to advertise toys, still have some longevity to them.

The battle with the Wraiths seems to go well, though the Vision has a bit of a tantrum when it is suggested that the Avengers might need help from the federal government's forces. What is going on with our favourite synthezoid? We'll find out soon enough, I would think.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 912: Avengers v.1 #243, May 1984

Though it seems only a short while since the bulk of the Avengers disappeared in Central Park, but they're back now, no worse for the wear. Or War, I suppose. It's curious that literally none of the events of their disappearance are talked about, though it makes sense from a publishing standpoint, as the Secret Wars series had just got underway when this issue was published. Unlike the way that event comics are structured now, though MSHSW was, as the editorials have said, meant to fundamentally change things in the Marvel U, it did so (well, if it did so) without interrupting the flow of the ongoing stories. This is a fairly significant change. Mr. Stern and Mr. Milgrom obviously have something going on with the Vision and his sudden taking of the reigns of the Avengers, so to have it pause while another adventure takes precedence is actually quite rude to the creative team. Rather, let the event play out in the event comic (and perhaps a couple of specials, if you have to), but don't let it interfere with the natural flow of the ongoing narrative. Events would be so much easier to take if I didn't feel like they were going to impinge upon my enjoyment of the comic I read regularly.

So, yes, the Vision takes command, and the Wasp is happy to relinquish her position, though I think it's all going to play out badly. We'll see, I guess. Today's issue is also a crossover of sorts with Rom, though the spaceknight himself doesn't appear in these pages, only his enemies the Dire Wraiths. Again, this is a cool way to deal with a cross-continuity threat - rather than have constant guest appearances, why not put the villains who are posing a threat to the world show up opposing other teams and heroes? Surely a menace as widespread as the Wraiths means there's more than enough for everyone to deal with.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 911: Avengers v.1 #242, April 1984

A bit of a misleading cover today - the figure who actually strides into the room where the Avengers are partying continues the party, rather than shutting it down. Well, at least until a bizarre energy pulse draws them all outside to investigate.

Today's issue leads directing into one of Marvel's most famous crossovers - Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars. Though initially planned as a marketing promotion for a toy line, the Secret Wars series has had long-lasting ramifications on the Marvel U, not least of which was Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic's masterful destruction of the Marvel multiverse in their own Secret Wars series a few years back. But this particular issue leads me to a dilemma. I was only going to read the Roger Stern-scripted issues of this particular run, but MSHSW is a Jim Shooter-written piece. Perhaps I'll skip over it for now, and get straight back to the actual series. I have to think that there were people at the time who didn't read the event series, and whose knowledge of it was purely based on hearsay in other titles. The series lasted a whole year, but the heroes who vanished into the Beyonder's device at the end of this issue show back up in the very next one. It'll be interesting to see how this is handled by the creative team on Avengers.

Aside from this, not much else happens in today's comic. It really is about the Avengers celebrating weddings, recoveries, and returns to active duty. The Vision is still acting a bit out of character, an ongoing concern since his melding with Titan's I.S.A.A.C., but it really could just be a newfound sense of confidence. The Vision is an interesting character in this way - we see him learning human behaviours. And where our own learning of such behaviours comes naturally through exposure to various others in our lives as we grow up, Vision is trying to play catch-up on a lifetime of such exposure. But I think we all know better than to assume that such a shift in personality is benign...

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 910: Avengers v.1 #241, March 1984

I'll say this for Marvel Comics - when it comes to magic, they're totally willing to be completely psychedelic about it.

Well. Most of the time.

Magic's an interesting thing in the Marvel U. Some of the aspects of it that we might traditionally consider magical, mythical creatures and figures for example, are explained by way of a mixture of the multidimensional and the multiversal. Different dimensions are actually different viable ecosystems hosting various kinds of life. And we can all jump from world to world, dimension to dimension. So some of the things that we might consider magic - Thor's Mjolnir - are actually just different expressions of science from worlds with different laws of physics.

The other expression of magic is that it fucks things up.

This is the one of which I'm a fan. The makers of the Dr. Strange movie came pretty close to visualizing it, I think, in the Dark Dimension sequences. But they still didn't quite get the effect it had on our dimension right. Magic just messes up reality. It makes things squirm that shoudn't squirm, makes things speak that oughtn't. Though infernally-focussed, I think that the "Inferno" event that ran through the X-titles in the 80s did a really great job. Shit just got weird. There was a real body-horror-meets-superhero feel to it. Magic in this way makes us recoil slightly, to recognize something of the utterly, utterly, illogically alien to what is happening.

Morgan Le Fay inhabiting a giant stone body in this issue, for example. Or the strange spiked tentacles that attack Captain Marvel and the Scarlet Witch as they watch over Jessica Drew. Magical dimensions are weirdly-lit. They don't make any sense geographically, structurally. Maybe the best example of a magical landscape from recent memory are the two Weridworld series that spun out of "Secret Wars." Ever-shifting and nonsensical, and very, very dangerous.

The reactions that even 7-foot tall green superheroines have to the idea of magic also tells us how strange it's use is. The Marvel Universe is a very rational universe. All of the big brains (Richards, Stark, etc.) make the claim that magic is simply another form of science that they don't quite understand yet. Only Doctor Doom seems to recognize the difference, one he embraces wholly. But magic, like the stuff Doctor Strange practices, wigs them out. He does things to reality that they can't reconcile, even if they can transform into any kind of energy and fly around at the speed of light.

Part of me wonders if this is because the generation of writers coming up had been so influenced by the aesthetic of the late 60s and early 70s, which would have been their teen years.

This is the issue in which Jessica Drew is depowered. It'll be a little while before Hydra come along and offer to repower her. But that's another Avengers run.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 909: Avengers v.1 #240, February 1984

I read up on Spider-Woman a bit after reading this comic. I was familiar with her mostly from her inclusion in Bendis's run on Avengers/New Avengers, but her earlier appearances were something I just have no experience with. From the sounds of the Wikipedia article, her early adventures were actually pretty good, so perhaps I'll have a look at them some day. The most amusing bit was Stan Lee admitting that they only ever really published her first adventure in order to keep anyone else from copyrighting the name "Spider-Woman." Well, that and that her original origin was that she was a spider mutated into human form.

!

It also turns out that, shortly before this issue came out, Jessica Drew's own title ended with her death. While I've enjoyed the stories featuring the character that I've read, I often think that the propensity for resurrecting characters, especially B-List ones, is very harmful to superhero comics. When Bruce Wayne disappeared, and was presumed dead, we finally got to see Dick Grayson take over as Batman, and it was amazing. Beyond amazing. When the original Doom Patrol died to save a small village, it stood as one of the great moments of 60s superhero comics, referred to with an almost legendary sense of awe. So why not allow such characters to have dignity in their deaths, rather than treating death as simply a shelf from which a character can be pulled down when the need arises?

This is not solely relegated to comics, of course. Sherlock Holmes was never meant to survive his fall at Reichenbach.

So, Spider-Woman was actually dead, though her astral self was separated from her body beforehand, and is now trying to reconnect with her revived physical self. With some help from the Avengers, though they really don't do a lot in this issue. Maybe tomorrow.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 908: Avengers v.1 #239, January 1984

Not a hoax, not an imaginary story. The Avengers (well, a version of them) actually appear on Late Night with David Letterman. They are menaced by a young man who has apparently been thwarted by the Avengers in a couple of earlier issues, though they're not ones I've read thus far.

The Avengers battle strange contraptions while on the show, and in the end, Mr. Letterman himself takes down the baddie.

Not much else goes on here.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 904: Avengers v.1 #238, December 1983

Late night out. Totally forgot to blog this. Will do so in the AM.

Or the PM, as the case may be. I'm off camping this weekend, so this is going to be really short. Starfox helps the Vision regain some of his health using Tritanian technology, which seems to have given the Vision a newfound confidence. Methinks problems are afoot.

That aside, I was wrong about Moonstone and Blackout vanishing until the end of Stern's run. Their capture is the main focus of today's issue, though Blackout manages to inadvertently facilitate their escape - but where they escape to may not be to either his or Moonstone's liking. Not to worry. We'll see them again.

To be continued. 

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 903: Avengers v.1 #237, November 1983

Sort of a "meh" kind of ending to this set-up of super villains taking over a research facility. I suppose that considering there's over 50 issues in this run, not all of them are going to be absolutely stellar.

Spider-Man and the Avengers battle the four escaping super villains, though they only manage to capture Electro and the Rhino. Moonstone and Blackout, as I noted yesterday, will return later in the series, and to much greater effect.

The guest appearance by Spider-Man, much like the earlier Dr. Strange appearance, is in large part due to Mr. Stern's handling the scripting on the Wall Crawler's title as well, and I think it's a good thing that it's a guest appearance, and not a recruitment. Much as Spider-Man wants to join the Avengers, his semi-rogue nature means no government clearance, and thus no Avengers membership. It'll take until the team disassembles, under Brian Bendis's aegis, before Peter Parker becomes a part of the team.

More Avengers tomorrow. To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 902: Avengers v.1 #236, October 1983

You know those lazy Summer days when Spider-Man shows up at your house, and then you're called away to an emergency at Project Pegasus, which you avert, but there's another crisis brewing there that you don't know about yet?

Well, the Avengers have one of those days in today's comic, which opens with the line "Avengers Mansion on a lazy Summer day..."

Having heard about the pay cheque from She-Hulk, Spidey decides to take the Avengers up on their offer of membership, but things have changed in the interim (15 issues), and the Avengers aren't so sure anymore. It doesn't help that the Web Slinger broke into their house and disabled some of their security contraptions. But Spidey just rolls like that.

This is a pretty good little standalone issue, again, though it seems to be rolling into a major confrontation of some more characters who will reappear in the assault on the Mansion story years down the line. We see the return of Blackout (from where, and because of what, I have no idea), though he's certainly less-mentally damaged than he appears in the later issues. What happens to him might well be the subject of the next couple of issues. And his connection to Moonstone is an interesting one too. She's one of the villains who, by the issue's end, has rallied to face off against the Avengers. I find Karla Sofen fascinating - she comes across as a highly educated, highly powered sociopath, though once we hit Thunderbolts territory, her sociopathy seems to recede a bit. Maybe. I think the notion of a villain who's not only really powerful but also really intelligent is a cool one. And she's not over the top intelligent like a lot of the tinkerer/inventor types who populate the Marvel U (I'm thinking of yesterday's Wizard, or Doctor Doom, or the Fixer). No, Dr. Sofen is a very, very smart psychiatrist, so not only is she capable with her powers, but also with understanding human (and mutant, and alien, etc, etc.) motivation. This makes her tricky in both fisticuffs and battles of the will. I'm going to keep an eye on her, and perhaps, after the Stern Avengers run, look into reading through at least some of Thunderbolts.

We'll see.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 896: Avengers v.1 #232, June 1983

A comic of little stories. Thor, Captain Marvel, and the new Avenger-in-Training Starfox pursue Plant Man's submarine, assisting the US Navy in capturing the criminal. Things don't work out so well for Plant Man, but it's a good, and relatively simple, first mission for Starfox. Cap and Wasp discover a very drunk Tony Stark...and Iron Man at one of Stark's apartments. That means that this particular era of The Avengers is taking place during the "Demon in a Bottle" storyline, one of the most famous of the Iron Man title. I don't have any of that stuff in the collection, but its reputation and influence speak for it, I think.

And afterward, She-Hulk and Wasp go apartment hunting for the newly displaced (from the West Coast) She-Hulk, only to run into...something. And neither they, nor I, have any idea what it is.

This final mystery leads me to a bit of a conundrum. I'd set out to read Roger Stern's tenure on the title, but there's a lot of crossovers and events that happen during this time (Secret Wars II being the biggest, I think). The next issue is a crossover with Fantastic Four, and though I quite like John Byrne's run on that title (one of the only runs of a comic he's done that I really enjoy), I wasn't planning on taking breaks from Avengers. But, the story in the next issue is part 2 of the crossover. I guess, since I have the comics, I'll read them, but I was really getting into the Avengers, investing in the drama, and since I only read one comic a day for this project, I was looking forward to more of them tomorrow morning. Ah well. Maybe they'll have a cameo in FF.

To be continued. 

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 895: Avengers v.1 #231, May 1983

Today's comic gives us a nice look at the sorts of things the Avengers really should be dealing with, through the metonym of a kidnapped President (wish someone would kidnap 45, tbh). We were given a small hint as to the identity of the mastermind behind this kidnapping a couple of issues ago, but if that wasn't enough, the silhouette of Plantman's absolutely ridiculous costume gives it away. Well, that and the reveal later in the issue.

A nice standalone story to establish the new status quo of the Avengers, one that, if memory serves, actually remains pretty stable for the 6 or 7 years that Mr. Stern is shepherding them. It's a nice mix of old and new characters. In fact, there's a definite reflection of the original Avengers. Of course, Wasp and Thor were original members, and Captain America joined shortly after. In the Hulk's place we have She-Hulk, a much more amicable powerhouse than her cousin. Hawkeye is one of the first wave of replacement Avengers, but Clint Barton also doubled as Goliath for a little while, so our Hank Pym/Ant-Man/Giant-Man stand in is also present. Maybe the new Captain Marvel stands in for Iron Man, at least from the point of view of a flying, distance-based character, while Starfox replaces the brute strength of the Golden Avenger. In much the same way that Morrison's run on Doom Patrol attempted to emulate the original make-up of the team, so too does Stern and Milgrom's Avengers. There's a reason that particular comics are successful, and paying attention to those reasons is the mark of a good creator.

Tomorrow's comic is all about Starfox. Let's get into this, shall we? To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 894: Avengers v.1 #230, April 1983

I was talking with my son yesterday about Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol, and how a couple of stories in that run fit into the overarching conceit of the series at a whole. Trying to figure out "Crawling from the Wreckage" was interesting because, in a lot of ways, it doesn't fit the celebration of weirdness that is the rest of the series (we couldn't figure out the Red Jack story, either, but we're going to keep thinking about it, I'm sure). One thing I suggested is that the story is a bridge of sorts, to take the characters from the C-grade superhero adventures of their previous 18 issues back into the hyper-strangeness that's characterized the team from the very beginning. There's more to the story than that, but in any ongoing series that switches writers without a significant publishing break, these kinds of bridge stories are vital.

Today's issue marks what I think is the end of Roger Stern and Al Milgrom's bridge story from the previous run on the series. The issues surrounding Hank Pym's trial have been ameliorated, Pym himself, a problematic character for many years, departs, Monica Rambeau/Captain Marvel is firmly ensconced as our focal character, and things look set to move ahead. This was a good story, though likely would have been more resonant for me if I'd read the previous run of comics. But I didn't, and I have to say I'm happy to move on to see what Mr. Stern provides, unencumbered by the plot threads of the past.

Though today's comic also re-introduces Starfox, who becomes a regular member of the Avengers shortly. He's a very, very, difficult character, whose powers basically make him a living date-rape drug. I anticipate problems.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 893: Avengers v.1 #229, March 1983

Egghead is a very interesting villain. In a lot of ways he's indicative of the simplicity with which comics were conceived in the early 60s, labouring under the Comics Code and, ostensibly, for kids. But the intervening years, 20 or so to be exact, have turned him into an actual villain, one that conceals beneath a ridiculous exterior a deep and abiding evil. Though not nearly as charismatic or important, there's something of The Joker to this character, the outwardly ridiculous, hearkening back to childhood nursery rhymes, but inside a dark, dark pit.

What's most interesting, then, is that he's defeated not by one of his counters in ridiculousness, a costumed hero with a heart of gold, but instead by a broken man, one clambering back up the slopes of depression and mental illness, who manages to find his heroic side only after removing the costume and being the man.

Henry Pym is a very interesting character. He's best known, these days, as being the superhero who completely fell apart, the cautionary tale. He's donned numerous guises, and states of mental health, over the course of his existence, and for that reason I come to think of him as something of a metaphor for the constant rearrangement of creative teams that goes on in comics. The reason poor Henry couldn't keep his head together is because he kept getting new storytellers and, in the end, it's tough to figure out what to do with Ant-Man. But moving forward from this issue, at least for a few years, writers and artists realized that Pym was much better off being Pym, that it was in his research and his scientific knowledge that his heroism is able to properly shine through. Hopefully, again at least for a little while, that'll work out for him.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 892: Avengers v.1 #228, February 1983

As the tensions mount, and Stern and co. deliver on the treason trial of Henry Pym, one of the great superteams of all time takes shape. I hadn't realized that the Masters of Evil showed up quite so early on in Mr. Stern's tenure on the title, and it's in many ways the same team that will trounce the Avengers in about 50 issues, and who will go on to become founders of the Thunderbolts.

That aside, this comic is pure, unadulterated soap opera Avengers. Inter-team disputes (between She-Hulk and a suprisingly sexist Hawkeye), domestic problems (for Pym/Van Dyne and Vision/Scarlet Witch), and Tony Stark seemingly getting closer to a backslide. The only action in the title really comes at the end when Egghead, Pym's oldest nemesis, hatches (get it?) a scheme that seems like it's going to ruin the former Ant-Man for good.

And, if you think I'm complaining about the soap opera, I'm not. Really, though X-Men of this era is considered one of the soapiest comics around, Avengers puts it to shame. This comic is really full on daytime television sometimes. And it's wonderful.

To be continued.