The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 888: Avengers v.1 #190, December 1979

The second issue of Roger Stern's early co-plotting of The Avengers takes on some issues that have been constant throughout the team's history.

(Oh, and just for completion's sake, I found out that Mr. Stern also co-plotted #167, but I don't have it. We'll have a look at it when I finally find it.)

The Avengers are summoned to a special tribunal to determine if they are a threat to national security, and whether or not more rather than less government oversight is necessary for the team. If you're thinking that this has echoes of Civil War, the comic or the film, you're not wrong, and it's certainly been an ongoing factor in the Marvel U for a number of decades. As with the Civil War series, it's really up to the reader what side you're on, and there's no easy answers as to which side is "right." We might, at this juncture, want to side with the Avengers because the person opposing them, the interminably obnoxious Peter Henry Gyrich is just so terrible that siding with him is virtually impossible. That said, he's not entirely wrong about the sensitive information the Avengers have, and the relative ease of access to said information. Superheroes aren't always the most reliable creatures, so entrusting them with potentially very damaging information or, often, technology, might seem like a bad idea.

But it's the way that Gyrich goes about it that is infuriating. Or is it? The more I think about it, the more I see this interfering with the Avengers as a demonstration of exactly the kind of "big government" that the American experiment (failed now, BTW) works against. Much conservative rhetoric in the US cries out against the interference of government in the day to day lives of its citizens (unless those citizens are not straight and white, in which case the government must keep a tight rein), so to see the government interfering with the ostensibly noble work of the superteam is decrying the overarching power of that government.

Or am I reading too closely, and from too contemporary a viewpoint?

Oh, and a giant stone creature impacts in Manhattan and crashes about downtown. As they do.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 887: Avengers v.1 #189, November 1979

I'm going to attempt another long-form reading over the next little while. We'll see how it goes, I suppose. One of my favourite runs of comics, and one that got me into the Marvel U in a big way, was the end of Roger Stern's run on The Avengers. The siege of Avengers Mansion by the Masters of Evil still ranks as one of my favourite superhero stories, full of drama and epic battles, and told in such a way that there really did seem to be high stakes involved. The aftermath of that story still resonates in the Marvel U, or did for a long while. So I've decided, since I'm pretty sure I have all of Mr. Stern's Avengers material, to read through as much of it as I can before getting (inevitably) cranky.

And we start here, about 40 issues prior to his taking over as regular writer. The regular run starts with issue #227, but Stern is given co-plotting credit on today's comic and the two that follow it. I'd initially thought it was because he was in the process of setting up stories for his own run, but a three and a half year lead time seems like a lot. Plus, he's the editor on the title at this point. More likely is that the story over the next few issues was the result of a conversation or collaboration between Stern, writer Steven Grant, and, according to the little credits box, Marc Gruenwald and David Michelinie. I suppose in an office-style environment like what the Marvel Bullpen claimed to be like at the time, such collaborations were more than possible.

What we're getting is the aftermath of a large battle, from Avengers Annual #9, and a restructuring of the team. This is also at the point that there was tight governmental oversight on the Avengers, an aspect of the story that continues to plague the team for at least the next decade or so. At least contemporary versions of the team have had S.H.I.E.L.D. for oversight, no less bureaucratic, but at least a little more understanding of the minutiae of superhero life than Peter Henry Gyrich.

The big part of today's comic is that Hawkeye, now a reserve member of the team, gets a job as a security guard, and faces off against Deathbird, a Shi'ar warrior.

There's one other interesting bit: at one point Hank "Yellowjacket" Pym gets a phone call from the Wasp, who is stranded in Las Vegas, in the aftermath of the end of the Omega saga, which we looked at a few days back. If there's one thing I can really thank this era of The Avengers for, it's for introducing me to the shared Marvel U. While such titles as Secret Wars or West Coast Avengers might have demonstrated the breadth of the universe, it was Avengers that was always best, like X-Men, at demonstrating the interpersonal interactions that show that it's not just a shared physical space, but a shared social space that the heroes inhabit.

So we'll make our way for a few days through comics that Stern collaborated on, or that were one-off writing assignments, until we get to the beginning of his run proper near the end of the week. To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 879: The Defenders #77, November 1979

This is the way the world ends...in the story, with a bang. But for Omega the Unknown, it's more a whimper, I'm afraid.

Now, don't get me wrong. The way that Steven Grant finishes off this tale is a wonderfully epic superhero tale. It's just that, in a lot of ways, Omega wasn't a superhero story. When I went to pick this up at Purple Gorilla Comics, Michael, the proprietor and THE guy to go to to find the comics you're looking for, told me it wasn't the ending I was hoping for. We chatted about the weird vibe of the Gerber series, and I fell back on my oft-repeated thought that Gerber would have fit late-80s DC so very, very well. He was simply writing 15 years ahead of his time.

SPOILERS AHEAD

While we'll never really know what Mr. Gerber, Ms. Skrenes, and Mr. Mooney had up their sleeves, the revelation that this entire time Omega and James-Michael have been the danger was actually a very cool way to finish up their tale. Thinking about it a bit, it's really the sort of thing that one could have wrapped a pretty epic Summer event around - run the Omega series for a bit, build things up, and then have the finale be a Summer event revealing that James-Michael has the power to destroy the world. Imagine the epic moral struggles of people like Captain America and Mr. Fantastic. Maybe I'll pitch it to Marvel.

So the Grant/Trimpe ending was a pretty great superhero story, with a nice twist, and some interesting moments. What's really great about these issues is that the Defenders are all women. Moondragon, Hellcat, Valkyrie, and guest-Avenger The Wasp. It was cool to see this configuration of the team, and gets me thinking about the Fearless Defenders series, which I really want to track down.

I know I've missed a couple of magazines and graphic novels, but I'm trying to catch up. Eventually I'll read the rebooted Omega by Farel Dalrymple and Jonathan Lethem, and have another think about the enigmatic man in blue.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 878: The Defenders #76, October 1979

Grabbed the two issues of Defenders that finish Omega, so I'm gonna get into them.

But got a horrendous sunburn today, so I think I'll talk about them both tomorrow. It'll work better as an ending of the Omega series that way anyway.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 754: First Adventures #5, April 1986

You might be forgiven, considering the cover of today's comic, for thinking that its a comic aimed at younger audiences. I think perhaps it's the propensity to add the word "adventures" to titles over the last few years when marketing kid-friendly comics. But let's remember that this was published by an indie publisher in the mid-Eighties. It's not a comic for kids. Though the "Dynamo Joe" feature very well could be, the death of one of the main characters of the series in today's final installment speaks otherwise. And the installment of "Whisper" is just dark. Really dark.

I've noted before that I have a soft spot for anthology titles, though one usually has to contend with a couple of bad stories packaged in with the good stuff. It seems to me, however, that First Adventures had a couple of really great features all along. The art is excellent, the writing top notch. The proof is in the fact that this is the final issue of the anthology title, and each of the constituent series moves to its own title after this one.

One thing that happened today that rarely happens is that I read the end of a couple of stories, without having any context for those endings. It's an interesting thing, to end a story. Both endings felt strangely satisfying, even though I have no clue what led to those endings. There's something about an ending, that slide down to the end of Freytag's Pyramid. The two installments in today's comic basically started at the climax of the story and then gave us falling action. Is this evidence that I don't need to read complete stories, just climaxes and endings? Probably not. I'm just tired this morning.

To be continued.