In Defeat, We Stand!

 

Holy Hannah! The Avengers sure look peeved at somebody! What's going ON here?

If you had caught the PPC's review of the 2000 Avengers/Thunderbolts crossover story, you'd have a good idea which poor slob is on the receiving end of all those fists/bolts/arrows and whatever else is being hurled in his direction. And more to the point, you'd know why the reaction this individual is experiencing right now is probably nothing more than... boredom.

But to answer the who and the what, we can give you the rundown that readers received of events leading up to this melee, before all hell breaks loose:

Of course, "all hell" goes by another name, a gent who most of you no doubt recall:

That's right, Count Nefaria, who stars with the Avengers and the Thunderbolts in a blockbuster battle issue clocking in at thirty-eight pages and featuring the closing work of artist George Pérez, sticking with this new volume of The Avengers from the start for nearly three years. So it's a sad day all around--particularly for our heroes, who are in for the fight of their lives!

When Nefaria Commands...!

 

It's the fall of 2000, and Marvel has pulled itself out of its nose dive from the late '90s and making great stories again. And it doesn't get better than artist George Pérez closing out a nearly three-year run on The Avengers in a story scripted by Kurt Busiek. The story's centerpiece turns out to be Whitney Frost, the former Maggia leader who came to be known as Madame Masque when her face was disfigured in a plane crash (where she was rescued by the wealth-obsessed man we know as Midas). Whitney would go on to be involved romantically with Tony Stark, only to break with him following an incident involving her father--and now, the Avengers find that she has resurfaced following reports of her death. Numerous reports, as it turns out, considering that on four separate occasions, four bodies were each identified as the deceased Madame Masque. We readers, however, learn that the bona fide Whitney has been holing up in a hollowed-out butte in the Nevada desert all this time, and gripped in a state of uncharacteristic paranoia.

But then, what accounts for the four "duplicate" Madame Masques? A good word to use, as they were "bio-duplicates" created by the real Whitney so that she could sequester herself in safety and still conduct her operations--the latest of which, "Masque," is even now making an attempt to pierce Whitney's distrust and fear with perceptions and feelings which Whitney herself has repressed.

Ordinarily, we might view Whitney's anxiety and fear here as yet another manifestation of her paranoia. But in this case she happens to be right, as the Grim Reaper, also one of those after Madame Masque, arrives with a strike force to personify her worst fear--an enemy discovering her whereabouts and intending to presumably kill her on sight. Fortunately for Masque, there are others who have been able to track her whereabouts, though their presence wouldn't necessarily put her mind at ease.

As we'd expect, the Avengers do well enough against the Reaper and his goons. But their headway is blunted by the unexpected arrival of another who has unfinished business with Whitney, someone far more dangerous and undeniably powerful--Whitney's not-so-dead father, who has apparently conscripted two powerful heroes who share his goals as well as his own ionic-infused body chemistry.

All of which sets up a crossover with the Thunderbolts title, as both teams are confronted by one of the Avengers' most deadly, near-invincible foes who nearly destroyed them once before and who now schemes to inflict death on a massive scale on the entire planet!

Earth's Mightiest Floating Heads!

 

"I like to goof off now and then, too, you know." - (Mrs.) Young-Ja Kim

Always one to take the sentiments of the redoubtable Mrs. Kim to heart (if I know what's good for me), I've finally gotten around to a little goofing off of my own by exploring a subject we readers of silver- and bronze-age comics are all too familiar with: Those aghast, worried, concerned, taken aback, consternated, and certainly conspicuous floating heads on issue covers which appeared out of nowhere to draw attention to whatever and whoever they were casting their piercing gaze(s) on.

It seemed a rare day when we saw such bodyless faces appear in titles featuring a solo character, since both hero and villain(s) were occupied in full-size poses slugging it out on a given issue's cover--but in group books, they were all the rage, carefully placed on valuable cover space to provoke a reaction in the comics browser that what awaited within was momentous enough to merit spending their hard-earned change on. It also goes without saying that they were also useful in a marketing sense when other characters in the group didn't make it on the cover but rated a head shot in order to let the prospective reader know that whoever they might have been most interested in still showed up in the story.

Both Fantastic Four and The Avengers featured a prodigious amount of floating heads in their first volumes, but it's the latter title which offered more variety when it came to its characters given the sheer amount of different Avengers to choose from. As for the approach we'll take with this, it became more interesting for me to present these "floaters" on their own and out of context rather than blending in with whatever else was on the cover. It turns out that, in just over 400 issues, there were only a mere twenty-five instances where these heads appeared before tapering off around 1990. Nevertheless, they made their mark, and are not to be confused with groupings of other, equally familiar floating heads:

And so let's get to it--though it seems that three of the Avengers have already taken a glance at this collection and are less than pleased with the direction we're headed in. You'll have to take up your grievances with Production, gentlemen!

Artwork by Gil Kane and John Romita (Prior framing art by John Buscema and George Klein)

Skrull Special Ops: The Attack of the Prime Ten!

 

Written by Doug Moench, the story for the 1980 Fantastic Four Annual would have taken place sometime during the eleven-issue run of Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz on the main title.  Like Sienkiewicz, the annual's artist, George Pérez, would restrict his work to breakdowns for the issue's finishers (in this case, Chic Stone, Jon D'Agostino and Mike Esposito), which gives us some idea of the time-sensitive nature of the creative process on Fantastic Four during this period; indeed, other pencillers on the book such as Keith Pollard, John and Sal Buscema, and Pérez himself (around the fall of '77 until his departure) often did the same. Those who minded the store on inks, taking the layouts they'd been given and subsequently bringing an issue's story to life, weren't responsible for setting the direction or pacing of that story, but for much of Marvel's Bronze Age they contributed a great deal every month to finish the job the layout artist began and meet those deadlines--and, of course, the benefit to the pencil work that greets our eyes is obvious.

Pérez returns to our foursome here after turning in full pencils for the prior year's annual (collaborating with writer Marv Wolfman), the two annuals comprising his final work with the characters following his brief return to The Avengers earlier in the year and, from there, transitioning to DC Comics. As for the annual's contents, which include a backup feature that details the return of Dr. Doom from the fate he met in the FF's 200th anniversary issue, the page count for this annual's FF story tops out at twenty-four--and so the threat the FF and guest-star Captain Marvel face from a "Prime" assault of ten Skrulls may come off as being wrapped up fairly quickly for the primary story of an annual.

Its premise: Reed Richards invents a wireless "gateway" transmitter of energy across virtually any distance which can send power to receiving cells placed in (for example) vehicles, negating the need for batteries. But unknown to Reed, his research parallels the work of Skrull scientists seeking to create a matter transmitter to use as a weapon against their enemies, the Kree--something that the Skrulls learn when Reed's device forms an accidental link between both gateway terminals. The Skrulls come to realize that Reed's successful gateway can be adapted for their use--and so it isn't long before we find a Skrull agent, after disguising himself to get the drop on Reed's three partners, confronting Reed and delivering his demands.

Uh-oh. Who's going to blink first?

You'd Better Shape Up At Camp Hammond, Ladies

 

As my interest in collecting comic books started to wane sometime around the mid-1990s, I found myself beginning to "taper off" the habit of steadfastly sticking with a complete run of a series and instead shifting to a more selective posture in reading new comics, giving a new series a fair chance to hold my attention before cutting it loose when that threshold was reached. No regrets since; in fact, I sometimes wonder if that should have been the way to enjoy a comics habit all along. :) Twenty-five years later, however, I've surprisingly found myself giving a second glance to those books that were dropped from my reading list, a number of them having long since been forgotten but are now proving to be interesting to revisit after unbagging and turning their pages once more. It's something of a mixed bag (heh) laying eyes on them again, since I was hardly expecting them to have any more staying power with me than they did before; yet having diverted from collecting to reminiscing in written form via the PPC, I've found that my perspective has changed quite a lot in the decades since, which makes these old issues virtually new again to the eye. Consequently, for at least a few of these series I've found myself more appreciative of both story and art in certain respects--something which became more apparent as this Easter egg hunt took me from the late 1990s and into the 2000s when Marvel would get its second wind.

Here, then, is a brief rundown of a selection of those books which had a limited run (for Marvel and even more so for myself) as opposed to their mainstream series--and since the notion for this retrospective occurred alphabetically as I was thumbing through the top of my comics shelves, we start with those books which spun off from one of Marvel's most successful franchises. (Synopses are edited from various sources.)

---

Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective - September 1993 (4-issue series, monthly)
Writer: Mark Gruenwald
Issue(s) Collected: #s 1-4

Synopsis: The sequel to "Citizen Kang" guest-stars Thunderstrike, US Agent, and War Machine (with other Avengers dealt in as needed). Terminatrix, who deposed Kang, attempts to expand Chronopolis beyond Kang's seven-millennium boundaries, and discovers a shocking secret about time.

"Citizen Kang" was a crossover event taking place in a number of annuals prior to this series, an event I also collected mostly because I was collecting annuals at the time but otherwise failed to make an impression on me beyond its loose reference to the Orson Welles film. I was intrigued by the fact that Terminatrix is portrayed as both a more-than-a capable adversary while also written as someone who may have bitten off more than she can chew in assuming the role of Kang for all intents and purposes.

Will Of The Serpent!

 

We've come to Part Two of the PPC's review of the seven-issue Avengers tale which preceded the closing months of writer Steve Englehart's 1972-76 run on the book. Here, with artist George Perez, he brings back the Squadron Supreme, heroes of a parallel Earth who are now hired guns of not only the Federal government but corporate figures who at one time or another have all fallen under the sway of their world's Serpent Crown. Currently, the Avengers remain trapped on the Squadron's Earth which is under the insidious control of a cadre of industry executives who, under the Crown's guidance and in tandem with the U.S. President, are all on the same page, even as the Crown begins the same takeover plan for us!

As is apparent, the members of the Squadron are oblivious to what's been happening right under their noses, as they once again begin to track down the Avengers who have become separated on the streets of the capital city. And if we're to believe the symbolic penultimate issue cover of this issue as well as the symbolic splash page, their moments of freedom are numbered!

Earth's Mightiest Heroes vs. Earth's Mightiest Heroes!

 

Towards the end of his distinguished four-year run on The Avengers, writer Steve Englehart put together a plot which spanned seven issues and somehow manages to include and involve a virtual grab bag of story elements.  To name a few:  the Roxxon Oil conglomerate... Kang the Conqueror... a new super-heroine... a parallel Earth last seen in the book in 1971... two new prospective Avengers... the Serpent Crown... the heroic gunslingers of the old West... the return of Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, and Immortus... and a former Sub-Mariner foe that takes out the Avengers with a single swing of his mammoth fist. (There's a free comic book for anyone who correctly guesses who it is! Not really!)

Oh yes, there's also the Squadron Sinister... CORRECTION, there's the Squadron Supreme, despite two of this story's covers trying like hell to convince us otherwise!

(The same bait-and-switch was resorted to for the cover of Avengers #85.)

Even the heroes themselves have to put their collective foot down and spell it out for us!

What is the big deal, Mr. Cover Captioner? Did you run the numbers and somehow conclude that "Sinister" would sell tons more comics than "Supreme"? Aren't the Avengers supposed to be selling this book?

There are more cover shenanigans at work here, but try this one on for size: A giant coyote-monster sicced on Cap's team by Roxxon, even though in the story our monster is really turned loose on Thor's team by Kang in the year 1873.

Slapping the word "Kang" on the cover in order to render it, in some twisted sense, symbolic. Smoothly played, Mr. Cover Captioner.

We know from a previous post how this story got rolling. The Beast is attacked in broad daylight by goons from the Brand Corporation (a Roxxon subsidiary) out to kill him, when Captain America shows up (while investigating Roxxon). When the two send their attackers packing, they return to Avengers Mansion to gather teammates to confront whatever is going on at Brand, while Thor and Moondragon investigate Kang's scheming in the past with the aid of Immortus.

The latter story, as well, has been covered previously in the PPC, and so we pick things up at Brand just after Roxxon President Hugh Jones has unleashed on the Avengers the Squadron Sinister Supreme (in their second story appearance, taking place nearly three years after their introduction). Sharing the danger with the Avengers is Patsy Walker, who has accompanied the Beast--their association going back to when Hank McCoy worked at Brand, but Patsy herself going back much further as a former devil-may-care teen romance character who had her own bimonthly comic series from 1945-65.  Patsy's ex-husband, Buzz Baxter, happens to be Jones's partner in crime--but more pertinent to the story, it's Patsy who inadvertently makes it possible for the Squadron to capture the Avengers.

Beware The Rising Of... The Kaptroids!

 

Before writer Doug Moench rolled up his sleeves to tackle the first Inhumans mainstream series in 1975, there had been other attempts to explore this unique race in depth. The island of Attilan as well as the Inhumans' connection to the Kree were touched on in a backup feature written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby to supplement the pages of Mighty Thor while also providing focus to Black Bolt and his family. The feature lasted for seven installments, and ended with the decision of Black Bolt (at the advice of Triton) to seek a new home for their Great Refuge.*

*The story was left to be continued indefinitely, and wouldn't be picked up again until thirteen years later by Peter Gillis and Ron Wilson (with Joe Sinnott) in the pages of What If, of all places (the Watcher would smooth things over in that regard), where the Eternals would offer their help in finding a suitable new site for the Refuge.

Just a little over two years later, the Inhumans would take up bi-monthly residence in Amazing Adventures (splitting the book with the Black Widow), their adventures helmed by scripters Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, and Gerry Conway for ten issues before the book shifted gears to introduce and feature the new Beast.

Which takes us forward over three years to October of 1975 and The Inhumans, another bimonthly run for the group which lasted only twelve issues (eleven if you're not counting a reprint issue consisting of Kirby's initial Amazing Adventures story).

Scripted by Moench (and sporting a cover masthead style that's almost a dead ringer for that of the new Champions book launched the very same month), the series offered some noteworthy talent in artists George Perez, Gil Kane, and Keith Pollard, as Moench took a two-prong approach to the book--giving us glimpses of the Great Refuge and the ways of its people as well as the Royal Family, but spending the bulk of its time focusing on the Kree as they sought to re-establish their leash on this race which, on a whim, they had created during an experiment to evolve a tribe of primitive humans when landing on Earth millennia ago.

And guess which villain they picked to begin their plan to enslave the Inhumans?

The Revealing Of... The Enemy!

 

The story of Korvac--or, rather, the character we're most familiar with from a ten-month string of Avengers stories in 1978--began following his emergence from a conflict in the 31st century and into our own, where he stumbled upon a source of power that would pave the way for a greater conflict to come.

As we've learned, "Michael," as he refers to himself, had now set out to make himself the universe's benefactor and the savior of all who live by freeing all beings from the chaotic cruelty and injustice of life throughout the universe, while bringing all existence under his own "sane and benevolent rule"--words which for any reader of comics ring familiar as those spoken by many would-be oppressors who felt similarly entitled.

Like other sagas in Marvel's titles which have slowly unfolded over stretches of time (the story of "They" being one such example), this plot winding its way through the Avengers book managed to stay relevant even through shifts in the book's creative talent, as well as the turmoil which can often be found in the team's adventures--sandwiched as it was between their desperate battle with Count Nefaria and their showdown with the deadly Ultron, where the they learned that another threat was now stalking them.

More disappearances occurred both before and after the Avengers (joined by Ms. Marvel) went on to deal with the menace of Tyrak--yet unknown to them, one of the Guardians of the Galaxy, travelling from the future to head off a suspected attempt on the life of one of their members, Vance Astro, had already managed to sense the true nature of their enemy and decided to confront him. It would be a meeting which would cost Starhawk his life.

Starhawk was then sent on his way, oblivious to what had just occurred and no longer a threat to Michael. As we've also seen, Michael had been joined by Carina Walters, a fashion model he coerced to come with him but who in reality is the daughter of the Collector--sent to spy on Michael, but who had instead fallen in love with him.

In dealing with Starhawk, Michael had, in his own words, drawn first blood in the war to come--but as we backtrack and assemble the pieces of this conflict taking shape, how will even the Avengers come to know of this threat before it's too late?

Scintillating Selfies From Seasons Past!

While there are a number of self-portraits of comics artists, it seems a lost art when the artist would surround his image with those comics characters he or she was best known for. The first time I became aware of such portraits was when Marvelmania--Marvel's licensing arm in California which absorbed the old M.M.M.S. and sold fans a variety of memorabilia in the early '70s--grouped together a number of such portraits and advertised them for sale in books published circa 1971:

In those early days of my Marvel Comics acclimation, I was thrilled to see portfolios of those artists whose work I was just getting to know. (Jack Kirby, of course, had departed Marvel by that time, but I was starting to devour reprint titles featuring his art.) I remember being a little disappointed by John Buscema's offering, which featured only a sampling of his work from a single title, Silver Surfer:

Yet there later appeared an offering from him that showed what might have been in a more comprehensive rendering, while other outlets have adapted his pose to create their own portrait of the artist and the many characters which benefited from his style.

Buscema's brother, Sal, who also has a rich portfolio of work at Marvel, was a little more difficult to track down in this respect, but one such drawing turned up:

Though given the sheer number of characters Buscema has brought his style to, the artist himself might have been a bit lost in the crowd if they had been included.  What we see here is quite satisfactory--and Buscema's positioning of himself is an interesting choice in comparison with other such portraits.

I would have expected a similar throng of characters in a George Perez portrait, but the drawings which turned up were surprisingly reserved.

There are no Daredevil images in Wally Wood's selfie, but perhaps a takeaway panel from one of his stories explains why (though the breadth of Wood's work with other subject matter would be more extensive than the pigeon-hole he establishes for himself here).

Several of Gil Kane's offerings focused on his work at DC, though at least one of them included some of his renderings of Marvel characters:

Finally, the portraits of John Romita and Herb Trimpe round out this assortment nicely.

(If you can identify the character posed in front of the Glob in Trimpe's portrait, there's a free Trimpe-rendered Incredible Hulk comic in it for you! (Well, more like my sincere thanks, instead!)


I was surprised at the dearth of such character-based portraits for Rich Buckler, Neal Adams, Jim Starlin, Barry Smith, Bill Everett, George Tuska, Don Heck, and other notables, all of whom had a hand in building Marvel into the brand it became. If you're curious to see other self-portraits not featured here, do check out the PPC's prior posts on the subject, where you'll find those of Jack Kirby, Marie Severin, et al.

BONUS!

Renditions of the ideal Marvel Bullpen, as conceived by Marie Severin and Bob Camp.