See, when I was a lad in middle school (around 13-15 years old), these were the Avengers: Black Knight wielding a lightsaber, Sersi dressed in red and black, Crystal in white and black, clean-shaven Hercules, and more -- and all wearing matching leather bomber jackets! I didn't read the AVENGERS series, but I saw this group in things like Jim Starlin's INFINITY trilogy, the X-Men's "Bloodties" crossover, and more. And my best friend back then did read the book, so I would peruse issues at his house -- and I liked what I saw! Not enough to start reading the title myself, but that was most likely simply due to the fact that my limited comic budget was tied up mostly with Spider-Man and the X-Men.
Still, I never forgot this run. (I even told Bob Harras how much I had enjoyed what I'd seen of it when I met him at the San Diego Comic-Con in 1999!) And back at the beginning of the year, I used a Christmas gift card to buy the AVENGERS: THE GATHERING Omnibus, which I had regretted passing on when it was first released in 2020. On top of that, I've also picked up digital editions of the Epic Collections covering this run in various Comixology/Amazon sales in recent years. So I'm pretty well armed at this point to delve into the Avengers of the nineties.
I've seen it said that Harras's run truly begins with AVENGERS #343. And it's true that's where the Omnibus starts. But he did write six issues (nos. 334 - 339) a little prior to that, when AVENGERS was on a bi-weekly schedule -- and it is during that storyline that Steve Epting comes aboard as the series penciler. So, since I want to start at the beginning, next week we'll take a look at the first two chapters of that six-parter, "The Collection Obsession". After we finish the bi-weekly saga at a pace of two issues per post over three weeks, I'll check out the invervening non-Harras chapters (though still partially drawn by Epting), issues 340 - 342, in one sitting. Then Harras and Epting will reunite for issues 343 and 344, and we'll look at those one at a time. And at that point, things will get a little weird, with the nineteen-part (!) crossover, "Operation: Galactic Storm", interrupting the run just as it gets off the ground. "Galactic Storm" only ran for three months, but it hit every single Avengers-related title, including solo books of the individual team members who had them, so rather than spend nineteen weeks on a bunch of issues not produced by the creative team of interest, we'll just do one post for each month of the crossover.
Subsequent to that, the Harras/Epting run is pretty straightforward all the way through, and we'll go my usual pace of one issue per week until we're finished, aside from the occasional fill-ins, which we will tackle in combined posts where appropriate. THE GATHERING Omnibus ends with issue 375, which was also Epting's final issue -- but Harras kept writing the series (albeit with a few fill-ins and eventually with a co-writer in Terry Kavanagh) for over a year after that, culminating with the widely maligned "The Crossing" event. I have no desire, at least at this point, to cover "The Crossing", but I'm also not going to stop with issue 375, since Harras resolves a few of his remaining plot points subsequent to that installment, with Mike Deodato Jr. on art. So my plan as of this writing is to go up to issue 389, which is the final issue before "The Crossing".
Anyway, no need to talk about the end of this project when it's barely about to begin! This concludes my typically long-winded announcement post. Next week, we'll jump into a run I've wanted to read since I was in my early teens, and I'm champing at the bit to get going. See you then, for the start of a project which will take a full year to get through!
Available digitally on Amazon:
AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: THE COLLECTION OBSESSION
AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: OPERATION GALACTIC STORM
AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: FEAR THE REAPER
AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: THE GATHERERS STRIKE!
AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: TAKING A.I.M.
Note 1: These above books cover issues 334 - 366 and 378 - 388. As of this writing, there is no digital collection of issues 367 - 377, though they are on Marvel Unlimited, and 367 - 375 can be found in the above-mentioned AVENGERS: THE GATHERING Omnibus.
Note 2: These volumes are, of course, all available in physical format as well, though at varying prices since some are currently out of print.
Note 3: When I wrote this post -- and indeed, every post to follow covering the entire run -- Tom Palmer was still alive. But sadly, he passed away a few months ago. So if it's not too presumtious, I will dedicate these next several months worth of posts to his memory.
"we'll take a look at the first two chapters of that six-parter, "The Collection Obsession""
ReplyDeleteThat was...not a good story.
It's already been several months since I read it, but I proofread my posts on it last week. I remember not liking some of it, though that was mainly due to uneven artwork and kind of a lackluster beginning. I thought it got better as it went along, though.
DeleteGiven your mention of Tom Palmer, I can't think of a better era that exemplifies what he brought to the Avengers than the 1990s. Keeping the visual fidelity of the Avengers for decades was amazing; Palmer doing it during the 90s, though, is a feat few people can top. It's such an odd situation for an inker to work on a book for so long to the point that he's the creator who you think of when you think of a book. But Tom Palmer will always be the Avengers artist to me-regardless of how many pencillers he worked with. He was so good.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Jack -- Palmer was, as I said above, a mainstay on AVENGERS for over a decade. From John Buscema to Paul Ryan to Steve Epting to Mike Deodato Jr., he somehow made all their different styles look consistent. And when Deodato is part of that mix, that feat is even more impressive than it already would've been!
DeleteWhen Palmer died a few months ago, it really hit hard. I hate to "compare" deaths like this, but I really think I was more bummed over Palmer than I had been over George Perez or even Neal Adams in the months prior.
(And since then we've seen the passing of Tim Sale, Kevin O'Neil, and now Carlos Pacheco! This has been a crummy year for the comics industry.)
ReplyDeletePreviously in Blam’s comments on Not a Hoax! Not a Dream!…
// I suspected from a description here of its length and a comment of yours at Gentlemen of Leisure a while back that I knew what this next Marvel project would be — and I had some very mixed feelings. However, based on a comment of yours there more recently, I was relieved that it probably wouldn’t be that, and now with this likely confirmation I look forward to reading what it (probably) is for mostly the first time. //
And now the conclusion…
You mentioned some time ago over at Teebore’s how, blue-sky, you’d love to do a comprehensive read/re-read of the Heroes Return Avengers, I believe along with other titles in the family. I was not quite all in on those books, only picking up a couple of Thors and the Quicksilver part of “Live Kree or Die!”, but 100% there for Avengers, Captain America, and Iron Man, having checked out a bunch of stuff that preceded them during Heroes Reborn like Thunderbolts, Ka-Zar, Silver Surfer, and Heroes for Hire. Which is all stuff I’m really looking forward to re-reading… eventually. I can get into why doing so would at present create mixed feelings another time. Your announcement of reading this bomber-jacket era of Avengers, largely terra incognita for me, is what I surmised per the latter part of my comment above.
Blam, I still would absolutely love to do that "Heroes Return" re-read. But every time I think about it, it just gets bigger and bigger in my head, and it feels impossibly daunting. Like, I'd love to start with THUNDERBOLTS, then add QUICKSILVER, then add the actual "Heroes Return" Avengers-family titles one at a time as they debuted (I think it went IRON MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, AVENGERS, THOR), plus do all the various assorted annuals, one-shots, and mini-series throughout -- and there were a lot of those, AVENGERS FOREVER being the biggest, but there were also things like AVENGERS INFINITY, the AVENGERS TWO: WONDER MAN AND BEAST mini, MAXIMUM SECURITY, and more and more and more. It seems like every time I look back on that era there's another limited series or one-shot I forgot. Heck nowadays I'm wondering if I would throw in Peter David's CAPTAIN MARVEL series, too, which spun out of AVENGERS FOREVER!
DeleteBut at the other end, I would also taper off of those runs one by one. Obviously QUICKSILVER would go first, as it was cancelled after thirteen issues. I'd stop IRON MAN after issue 25, when Kurt Busiek left. I might stop THOR after issue 25 too, as that's when John Romita, Jr. left (though there's a part of me that would like to go all-in and read Dan Jurgens' entire 79-issue epic). I'd keep going with AVENGERS all the way to the end of Busiek's 56-issue run. And that would leave THUNDERBOLTS, the first series started, as the last one standing, because I would want to go all the way to the end (issue 75) for that series. Then I'd cap it all off with JLA/AVENGERS.
(And then because I'm crazy, at that point I would probably want to cover the AVENGERS/THUNDERBOLTS limited series and the thirty issues of NEW THUNDERBOLTS as well!)
But in any case, I'm glad you're along for this 1990s excursion. Having now read it, this run truly does deserve its reputation as "Avengers by way of the X-Men" in a lot of ways. But I found it mostly very well done all the way through. I was astounded to learn that Bob Harras is actually a really good writer (I already knew Steve Epting was a really good artist)! By the end of the run, I found myself wondering what the climate's like between Harras and Marvel these days. It's been more than twenty years since he was fired at this point, and now that no longer with DC, I'd love to see him and Epting reunite for an Avengers or Black Knight mini-series or something.
I picked up a lot of those Avengers projects — Avengers Two, Maximum Security, even Domination Factor. While Avengers Forever is by far the best in memory, and oh my did we just lose a great talent and special human being in Carlos Pacheco, I was big on the Marvel Universe at that time in a way I hadn’t been since, and possibly even including, the early to mid 1980s. I don’t remember Avengers Infinity for some reason and couldn’t make it past the first issue of Celestial Quest but, hey, exceptions prove the rule.
DeleteI'm totally with you on that era of Marvel. I know I've mentioned it many, many times before, at Gentlemen of Leisure and of course here as well, that the "Heroes Return" period was one of my all-time favorite stretches for Marvel; certainly my favorite period during my life of reading new Marvels in "real time".
DeleteI certainly don't think Bob Harras deserves all the credit for Marvel's output at that time, but as he was the editor-in-chief then, I used to call 1996 - 2000 the "Harras era" -- but more recently I started calling it the "Comicraft Age", when I realized that it coincided pretty much precisely with Richard Starkings & Co. lettering practically the entire Marvel line, giving the books a very unifired aesthetic across the board (which I realize is not an aesthetic for everyone, but I like it).
But you could almost just call it the "Heroes Return Age" or something similar. In my mind, the whole "Heroes Return" mentality started a few months prior to that event, with THUNDERBOLTS, a series I have long felt had a very Bronze Age feel to it. That Bronziness expanded with Busiek's AVENGERS and IRON MAN, and before long the feel had permeated, to varying extents, the Spider- and X-books as well -- among many other Marvel titles.
(Ooh, wait -- maybe we should call it the "Neo Bronze Age"!)
Not sure where I'm going with this, other than to say that I was, by far, more invested in Marvel on a linewide basis during that period than pretty much any time before or after. I tend to consider this "Comicraft Age" a part of my "Personal Golden Age", even though it was much later in my life than where most people would identify something like that (I was a senior in high school when THUNDERBOLTS launched, and a freshman in college when the "Heroes Return" stuff started).
Thank you for mentioning DOMINATION FACTOR, Blam -- I've wanted to re-read that for years, but my single issues are hidden away in storage. I can't believe Marvel has yet to reprint, or simply put up on Marvel Unlimited, an Avengers/Fantastic Four project by Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway! I don't remember anything about the story, but based on that pedigree, I feel like it should be readily available.
Marvel reprinted Kurt Busiek's full AVENGERS run -- including AVENGERS FOREVER -- in the two AVENGERS BY KURT BUSIEK & GEORGE PÉREZ Omnibuses a few years back. I would love to see some kind of "Companion" to that book assembling (no pun intended) all those various odds and ends. It feels like an easy sell to me, but what do I know?
Of course the inherent quality is what recommends it most but I think a considerable part of the satisfaction of that era for me was how great it felt to be genuinely excited about such a wide swath of Marvel’s output and general zeitgeist again. The Comicraft aesthetic definitely played into that; I’m very glad to have collected editions ranging from Avengers Forever and The Kree-Skrull War to Masterworks volumes, Captain America: The Classic Years, and The Golden Age of Marvel Comics from the late-’90s period when they were handling the company’s book design.
DeleteFond memories of this run - well, the Harras/Epting/Palmer issues at least. I recall a large number of fill-in issues with poor artwork spoiling the flow frustratingly, but it was still my favourite Marvel book at the time, so looking forward to your posts!
ReplyDeleteYeah, there are several fill-ins throughout this run -- owing in large part, it seems, to Marvel's decision to celebrate the Avengers' thirtieth anniversary with four double-sized issues -- one per quarter -- in 1993!
DeleteAnd you're right; I will observe when we get to those issues that Harras seems to be one of those writers who sinks or swims based on the quality of his artistic collaborator. His plots and scripts are just better when Epting draws them. When there are fill-in artists -- or at least, when the fill-in artists are not very good, which is the case a few times here -- his scripts feel "phoned in".
Plus, in the various collected editions of this run, there are a number of contemporaneous interviews and spotlights on the creators, and there's one that goes out of its way to mention how closely Harras and Epting worked together at the time. So I would suspect that in the classic Marvel manner, Epting probably co-plotted the series with Harras, even if he did not receive a formal credit for doing so -- which might also help to explain why Harras's stories are better when Epting is present.
Anyway, thank you -- I'm happy to have you along for the ride!