"FIRST ENCOUNTER"
Story: Bob Harras | Pencils: Andy Kubert | Inks: Tom Palmer
Letters: John Costanza | Colors: Christie Scheele
Editor: Howard Mackie | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco
Story: Bob Harras | Pencils: Andy Kubert | Inks: Tom Palmer
Letters: John Costanza | Colors: Christie Scheele
Editor: Howard Mackie | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco
On Earth, the Avengers receive a brief snippet of Quicksilver's signal. Moments later, the Inhuman princess (and estranged wife of Quicksilver) Crystal appears with her teleporting dog, Lockjaw, to enlist the Avengers' aid. The team flies a Quinjet to the moon, where they are greeted by Black Bolt and Medusa outside the force field. The Inhumans attempt to break through, but fail. Quasar and Sersi then make an attempt of their own.
Meanwhile, inside the field, Thane Ector has beaten Quicksilver in an attempt to interrogate him. When Ector turns his attention to Timberius, the Inhuman tells him that Earth is nearby. Ector perpares to execute Quicksilver, but the Alpha Primitive jumps in and is killed instead. Just then, the field disappears and the Avengers and Inhumans arrive. After a brief skirmish, the Brethren teleport away. The Watcher appears leads the Avengers in exploring the crashed ship. Inside, the heroes find a collection of beings from various civilzations, and then they locate the ship's master: the Collector, in agony following a fight with Thane Ector.
"BLOODY ENCOUNTER"
Writer: Bob Harras | Pencils: Steve Epting | Inks: Tom Palmer & Tony DeZuniga
Colorist: Christie Scheele | Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco
Writer: Bob Harras | Pencils: Steve Epting | Inks: Tom Palmer & Tony DeZuniga
Colorist: Christie Scheele | Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco
(Story B) On the moon, Black Panther, Hank Pym, Beast, and Quasar manage to bring the Collector out of his coma, and he agrees to help them find a way to defeat the Brethren. Pym shrinks Quasar, Beast, Black Panther, and the Collector and sends them into the Brethren's miniaturized cell -- but as soon as they enter, the somewhat addled Collector realizes they're in the wrong cell, as a large monster attacks.
Continuity Notes: At this point in continuity, the core Avengers team appears to consist of Captain America, Black Widow, Quasar, Hercules, Sersi, and Rage. At least, that's the group that goes to the moon in issue 334. However Vision pops up in issue 335, and appears to be an active member as well. Then, as noted above, reservists Beast, Black Panther, and Hank Pym pop up in issue 335.
Quicksilver is on the moon visiting his daughter, Luna. When Crystal comes to Earth for the Avengers, Quasar asks why she didn't go to the Fantastic Four, since she used to be a member of that team, and she suggests that she's trying to avoid her ex, the Human Torch. She also expected to find the Scarlet Witch among the Avengers, but Captain America informs her that Quicksilver's sister is a member of the West Coast branch team.
The Avengers bring the Collector around by having Quasar replicate the energy signature of an Infinity gem (still referred to, though not for much longer, as "soul gems" at this point), due to the Collector previously having worn one for quite some time.
Pym mentions that he is no longer able to shrink himself, though he can still shrink others.
For fans of Avengers bereaucracy, it is stated in issue 335 that Captain America currently serves as the team's chairman.
Thane Ector is accompanied in these issues by his right-hand woman, Sybyl Dorn, and by his "fool". However issue 335 suggests there is more to the fool than meets the eye; first Ector tells Sybyl that "he is wiser than you know," and a moment later, the fool nearly strikes back against Sybyl when she kicks him for insolence, before catching himself and putting up a contrite front.
I say all this because I want to make clear that it's hard to judge this story as anything other than a six-chapter fill-in. Does that make it bad? No, not yet, at least. Thane Ector and the Brethren (great name for a band) are definitely an Avengers-level threat. Indeed, the idea in this story isn't dissimilar from the "Kang War" storyline that closed out Kurt Busiek's AVENGERS run about a decade later: a bad guy with an army at his command comes to Earth and begins laying waste to its major population centers, and only the Avenges can stop him. Though as with the "Kang War", one wonders what everybody else is up to while this is going on. The Inhumans couldn't be bothered to come down from the moon with the Avengers and lend a hand? Beast is here, but he didn't invite the rest of the X-Men to act as backup? What about the Fantastic Four, or even the West Coast Avengers? Mind you, it's possible all these factions are fighting back against the Brethren in various locations, but if that's the case, a bit of lip service on the subject would've been nice!
The second installment is split between Jeff Moore penciling the "A" story (though he is mistakenly left out of the credits; his participation is confirmed by Comics.org), with incoming regular penciler Steve Epting (misspelled as "Eptig" in the issue's credits) on the backup. Let's first say that Moore's work is pretty awful. His pages are inked by both Tom Palmer and Tony DeZuniga. The DeZuniga pages look sloppy and borderline amateurish, but the Palmer pages aren't half bad. It seems Palmer did an awful lot to clean up Moore's pencils, while DeZuniga reproduced them more faithfully, warts and all. (I have a hard time imagining DeZuniga could've made the pencils look worse, given he was an absolutely outstanding artist in his own right.)
As for Steve Epting's art... well, we've got about forty or more issues left to discuss that, so I'll save him for another day!
ReplyDelete// Does that make it bad? //
“That” doesn’t, but… 8^)
I don’t love Andy Kubert’s work at its best, so the art in #334 isn’t to my taste. Jeff Moore’s pencils on #335’s lead story, though, are more dire by orders of magnitude. I’m not a Ron Lim fan, either, and even for him #335’s cover is amateurish.
What’s up with Quicksilver’s pointed ears, by the way?
You said in a reply to my comment on the intro post that this run has been considered “Avengers by way of the X-Men”; I can already see why. I don’t care much for the story thus far, but any tale with a scene at the Avengers’ headquarters, mansion or compound, automatically gets raised by half a letter grade in my books if Captain America is working out on the rings. Kudos also for the moment between the Henrys and the general idea behind the backup.
I got “Kang War” vibes, too, when the story picked up in the second issue with Earth well into its siege. You’re right that we should’ve gotten some mention of other heroes, even villains ranging from the street-level to, you know, monarchs who don’t want aliens enslaving the world, involved in the resistance.
The last Avengers issues that I’d bought prior to this were a half-dozen around #300 in 1988, unless you count John Byrne’s West Coast run through 1989. Judging from a look at the covers, I hadn’t read the series even semi-regularly before that since about 1980-1981, only picking up an occasional issue during the intervening years, and I wouldn’t buy it again until the relaunch in 1997; I realized just before publishing this, however, that I did get all four issues apiece of the original Vision and Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and West Coast Avengers limited series from 1982 through 1984, which are certainly Avengers-orbiting/adjacent. After I’ve read this stretch along with your coverage, though, I’ll still have significant gaps in my experience.
Huh -- I somehow didn't notice Quicksilver's ears. That's bizarre!
DeleteI've always liked Ron Lim since I first encountered his work in INFINITY WAR in 1993... but I'm surprised that at this early point in '91, with very little work of note behind him, he was (I can only assume) considered enough of a draw to do covers for issues by other artists!
I never read AVENGERS at all until "Heroes Reborn" (yes, I admit that I bought into the hype and picked it up... I was a teenager of indiscriminate taste at the time!), but I then stuck around for the "Heroes Return" run -- and I have subsequently gone back and read a swath of the later seventies -- mainly the Korvac and Transia stuff drawn by George Perez and John Byrne -- but aside from those chunks, my gap is similar to yours. Never read the much-lauded Roger Stern run or anything after, until finally sitting down for this Harras/Epting run a few months ago.
There were of course some random flirtations now and then, though -- I've read the "Acts of Vengeance" issues from Byrne's writing run, for example, and I've also read his WEST COAST stuff that you mentioned. Plus at one point I read Englehart's "Celestial Madonna" and "Serpent Crown" stories -- but for the most part, that's it. Oh, and I read the first ESSENTIAL AVENGERS volume way back when I was in high school. But otherwise, my AVENGERS knowledge is quite gappy, especially in terms of the sixties and the eighties. And anything post-2004 or so, though I'm familiar with the broad strokes of a lot of it.
I wonder if there was a mistaken carryover from Starfox to Quicksilver since both had essentially the same head shape and hairstyle in that era, although I’m not sure that Starfox consistently had pointed ears himself…!
DeleteThe 90s for the classic Marvel team books of the Avengers and the FF-or at least the early 90s-were pretty rough, not going to lie. Both titles were books I loved as a kid, though they were not necessarily good, in hindsight. The Avengers, in particular for most of the 1970s found themselves getting the crap kicked out of them by individual villains of a wide variety of power scales. (The Avengers getting obliterated by the god-like Korvac was one thing. Getting obliterated by the brand new villain Graviton or Attuma was another matter. Or for that matter the Taskmaster.) Like the FF, the Avengers was a book I only read if a good creative team was on it as the 80s progressed, which meant, basically, Stern and John Buscema on the Avengers, and Bryne and Walt Simonson on the FF.
ReplyDeleteThe early 90s on both books was an absolute mess, since the Avengers were turned into another version of the X-Men, and the FF turned into every bad idea Image ever had twice over. Based on this post, it feels like, to me, that Harras was going with something that feels like he wanted to have the spirit of the 1970s book, but updated to the feel of the X-Men of the present day. It also seems to prefigure the Marvel of the later 90s where books were put together in families under editors and little crossover seemed to happen. The Avengers fighting a world beating threat with no one helping, as you said, feels a LOT like Kang War to me!
As most of my Marvel reading in the 90s was X-book related, at least until Busiek turned up on Avengers, this is a period I know little about, so this should be fun.
I’m not sure I picked up more than a sample issue or special project from Marvel between the end of Byrne’s second year on Namor in ’91 and the start of Waid & Garney’s first run on Captain America in ’96. For a few years there I worked at a comics shop and could read stuff off the racks but the only thing I recall buying for myself beyond, like, Marvels was the short-lived Megazine reprint line just to literally vote for that quality of material with my wallet.
DeleteI'm a week late, but Jack, I wanted to comment on your note about the Avengers feeling "weaker" in the 70s. I feel like this happened to Spider-Man as well during that period. He went from going toe-to-toe with super-strong powerhouses like the Green Goblin and Dr. Octopus, to barely holding his own against guys like the Kangaroo and the Tarantula. It got to the point where, when Roger Stern started writing Spidey in the early 80s, he made it part of his official mission statement to remind readers of how strong the web-slinger was supposed to be!
DeleteI'm curious whether this issue afflicted other Marvel characters during the decade, too? The X-Men were almost the reverse, becoming more powerful in many respects -- but what about the F.F. or the individual Avengers in their solo titles? I haven't read enough from the Bronze Age to know.
Blam, the Megazines were how I collected much of the afore-mentioned Stern run on AMAZING in the late 90s. Those back issues were way cheaper than the originals!
Delete(Though I did eventually pick up all the original back issues of that run as well. Then I bought it all again in the SPIDER-MAN BY ROGER STERN OMNIBUS... and I've purchased it digitally in the two most recent AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Masterworks, even though I could also read it all in Marvel Unlimited if I wanted...)
"At this point in continuity, the core Avengers team appears to consist of Captain America, Black Widow, Quasar, Hercules, Sersi, and Rage."
ReplyDelete"Appears" being the key term. The series had been in a mess ever since Roger Stern left in the #280s, with a high turnover of writers and a very unstable line-up as characters came and went. To make matters worse not every Avenger departed in the series - Sandman springs to mind.
Harras's permanent arrival and lasting power did a lot to improve the series although he still had the problem of a few characters coming and going in other titles - Eric Masterton as Thor and then Thunderstrike is particularly noticeable.
Tim, I think I have a comment on Thor's disappearance in an upcoming post. I chalked it up to Harras not knowing what to do with him, since even when he was around, he often felt poorly utilized.
Delete