Retro Reviews: The Avengers #288-304

The Avengers #288-304 (February 1988-June 1989)

Written by Ralph Macchio (#288-290, 300-303), Mark Gruenwald (#290, 301-303), Walter Simonson (#291-300), and Danny Fingeroth (#304)

Breakdowns by John Buscema (#288-300), Walter Simonson (#300), Bob Hall (#301), and Rich Buckler (#302-304)

Finishes by Tom Palmer (#288-300, #302-304),Walter Simonson (#300), and Don Heck (#301)

I've kind of fallen into rereading all of my Avengers issues, at least from the arbitrary starting point I picked back in the summer.  The collection of books I discussed in the last two columns represent the high point of The Avengers in my childhood, and were the best that comic was until Kurt Busiek came along and fixed the extremely bad choices of the 1990s.  The collection of issues I've picked for this column, however, represent a low point.

This batch was grouped due to the inconsistency in writing that happened between Roger Stern's legendary run, and John Byrne's largely forgotten one.  None of these issues are to ever be considered iconic, and feel very constrained by some of the decisions being made in other Marvel comics (such as Captain America giving up his uniform and taking on the unique new name, The Captain).  The team roster was shifting as often as the writer's credit, and for a couple of issues, the only Avengers team in existence was the West Coast one, not that they appeared all that often in the book.

To examine the main plot points, in bullet form:

• The Avengers deal with the Super-Adaptoid's plans to take over the Cosmic Cube, after recruiting a number of robots to aid him, including Machine Man.
• Namor proves himself to be a very over-protective and domineering husband, refusing to allow Marrina to fight on the team, despite her always being around.
• The Cosmic Cube adopts the name Kubik, and looks really stupid.
• Marrina goes all feral at a party, turns into a gigantic worm, and starts wrecking ships at sea.
• In order to stop his wife, Namor uses the Black Knight's Ebony Blade to cut her, which causes the Black Knight to suffer from a curse (resulting in his having to wear a cumbersome exo-suit, and to become sharp to the touch somehow, as well as immobile).
• Doctor Druid becomes ever more critical of Captain Marvel's leadership, and begins to manipulate her.
• Captain Marvel takes a break after the fight with Marrina, and Druid manipulates (and psychically control) his fellow Avengers into making him chairman.
• We learn that Druid is himself being manipulated by Nebula, who has become part of the Kang Korps.
• Everyone ends up fighting one another at Nebula's behest, while she tries to retrieve a super weapon from a time bubble, or something like that.
• The Avengers basically break up after getting rid of Nebula and Druid.
• Jarvis is the only Avenger left, and he runs into some weird crap during Inferno, when all the payphones in Manhattan become demons.
• The Captain goes to suburban Connecticut to get help with the Inferno problem from Reed and Sue Richards, just to arrive after Nanny and the Orphan Maker (remember them?) kidnap Franklin Richards.
• While fighting these ridiculous villains, Gilgamesh, the Forgotten Eternal shows up to help fight, just cause.
• The Captain (who almost immediately becomes Captain America again) decides, basically in some text pages, to hire a bunch of helpers for his new Avengers team, and we occasionally see some of these people, but their presence is never explained in any story.
• Super-Nova, a very large member of the Nova Corps decides that he's angry at Nebula for destroying the planet Xandar, so he comes to Earth to wreck it (apparently he thinks she's an Avenger).
• Quasar, the Fantastic Four (of which there are only three?) and the West Coast team fight him because the new East Coast team is fighting robot brain leech things in space.
• Captain America, Thor, and Gilgamesh hang out on Ellis Island, where they try to stop Puma from taking a kid from his tribe back home.  That kid opens a portal to another dimension and the U-Foes show up to fight them.

These issues feature the following Avengers, many of whom leave the team for very poor reasons, story-wise:

• Captain Marvel (leaves after losing most of her energy)
• Doctor Druid (lost in the time-stream)
• Black Knight (becomes immobile, left behind in a protective energy field during Inferno, and not seen again)
• She-Hulk (leaves because she's embarrassed at being mind controlled)
• Namor (leaves after killing his wife)
• Thor
• Captain America/The Captain
• Nebula (although I don't think she was technically ever an Avenger)
• Mister Fantastic
• Invisible Woman
• Gilgamesh

None of these line-ups were exactly classic.

One thing I noticed is that I'm not the only person revisiting this timeframe lately.  In a recent issue of Avengers World, Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, is seen telling a bartender a story about himself being, basically, in a full-body cast during a battle.  Also, in Mighty Avengers, when a boring mystic type (Kalluu?  Something like that) talks for too long, She-Hulk remarks that he's just like Doctor Druid.

As I said, the writing here was very inconsistent.  I wasn't surprised to find the issues that were hastily written after Roger Stern's departure to be lacking, but I would have expected a lot more from Walter Simonson, with these issues coming between his excellent runs on The Mighty Four and The Fantastic Four.  Perhaps he never really wanted to take this job, as the stories really lacked enthusiasm.  It's weird that even his Thor, the character he knew best at that time, felt forced and unnatural.

The art also began to suffer as John Buscema and Tom Palmer took some breaks (presumably out of exhaustion, after having drawn so many consecutive issues).  A lot of the fill-in artists, such as Rich Buckler, Bob Hall, and Don Heck represent an earlier Marvel era, and they weren't adapting well to the transitional era that moved away from artists like Buscema, Byrne, and Romita Jr. towards people like Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane.

It's not hard to imagine, at a time when the X-Men were at the height of their popularity, that the Avengers were kind of an after-thought in the Marvel offices.  That would explain the general malaise one gets from reading these issues.  Was John Byrne able to turn it around when he came on the book?  Find out next time!

Retro-Reviews: Avengers #255-287 (May 1985 - January 1988)

Written by Roger Stern, except for #280 (written by Bob Harras) and #286-287 (scripted by Ralph Macchio from a plot by Stern)

Breakdowns by John Buscema, finishes by Tom Palmer, except for #280, pencilled by Bob McLeod and inked by Kyle Baker (!)

During the summer, I felt the urge to start re-reading some classic comics, and as the longbox with my Avengers comics was closest to hand, that's where I started (you can read about it here).  I was enjoying myself, and decided to keep reading.  I decided that this particular run of issues are worth discussing for a number of reasons.

To begin with, these are the comics that I still consider to be my personal definitive run of the title, at least until Brian Michael Bendis came along and blew everything up, or perhaps until Jonathan Hickman's current tenure directing the team, where he seems to determined to really examine the mechanics of the Avengers concept on a larger scale.  To me, these are mostly definitive because they were published between 1985 and 1988, which is my own Golden Age (being between the ages of 10 and 13), giving my memories of these comics the same sepia tone that the paper in some of them has yellowed to.

I remember being home sick from school, and my dad bringing me a copy of Avengers #259 that he picked up at a corner store, not knowing I already had it.  I remember reading #273 a few times in a row, as I was stuck on a long road trip, with my grandmother crammed into the backseat of the car with my sister and I, and it was all I'd brought with me to read.  Going through these books brings back some good memories.

This run also stands out because every one of these issues save one was drawn by Buscema and Palmer.  That's thirty-three issues with only one fill-in!  To be more accurate, these two talented, iconic artists continued with the book even longer, but I chose Roger Stern's departure from the book after many years as my point to stop reading for this column.  Imagine an artist team today being able to put out that many issues, and in an era when comics were two pages longer than today's.  They also drew more panels than current artists, although sometimes backgrounds were lacking.  Their work is never stunning, but it is exceptionally good at telling a clear story, and to my mind, their portrayals of Captain Marvel, the Black Knight, the Wasp, and Hercules are classic.

This run is notable for a number of reasons in terms of story as well.  Let's run through some key moments in bullet-form:

• Captain Marvel becomes trapped on Thanos's vessel, the Sanctuary II, by Nebula and her crew (this was Nebula's first appearance).
• The team fights Terminus in the Savage Land, and the whole thing gets destroyed and covered by ice (I'm not sure how it ever came back).
• Firelord joins the team in travelling to rescue Captain Marvel, and gets all angry when he has to help Skrulls.
• The Beyonder shows up a few times, as Stern had to make the ridiculousness of Secret Wars II work in his storyline.
• The Avengers lease Hydrobase from Stingray after losing their security clearance, and receiving notification that they can't fly their Quinjets out of their mansion anymore.  Eventually, they move the whole mansion to Hydro Base (I don't remember when it was moved back to Manhattan).
• Namor joins the team, which makes a lot of the general public very angry, because of his status at that time as a villain.
• The Avengers discover the weird pod-thing in Jamaica Bay which eventually turns out to be holding Jean Grey, in a tie-in to the new title X-Factor.
• Baron Zemo gathers his Masters of Evil in the slow set up to an epic story.
• After vanquishing the Beyonder, the Avengers and Fantastic Four need Molecule Man to fix the entire Earth so it's not destroyed.
• Kang embroils the Avengers in a complicated plot to eradicate his other selves.
• Alpha Flight and the Avengers help Namor fight off Attuma, who has kidnapped his wife and taken over Atlantis.
• The Masters of Evil infiltrate Avengers Mansion, beating the hell out of Jarvis and Hercules in the process.  Eventually they are taken care of, but it's a pretty dark tale for that time.
• Dr. Druid joins the team, Thor wears some truly hideous armour, and Captain Marvel becomes the leader after the dust of the Masters of Evil story settles.
• We get to see some of Jarvis's history with the team as he contemplates leaving, after recovering from his injuries.  This is the fill-in issue, and it's really weird to see Kyle Baker inking an artist as straight as Bob McLeod.  You can see hints of where he has ended up as an artist.
• Zeus gets angry with the Avengers for allowing Hercules to be hurt (he's in a coma), and brings them to Olympus (by way of Hades) for revenge.
• The Super-Adaptoid, in the guise of the Fixer, starts gathering robots and artificial beings to help him with a plot.

The team's line-up is interesting during this time, consisting of:

• Captain Marvel
• Black Knight (these two are the only ones to be in almost every issue in this stack)
• Captain America
• Hercules
• The Wasp
• Starfox
• Namor the Sub-Mariner
• Thor
• She-Hulk
• Dr. Druid

Stern's writing during this period became less focused on the mechanics of running a team, although he did show that both the Wasp and Captain Marvel suffered a number of doubts and self-recriminations over their decisions.  Hercules is portrayed as being a little misogynistic, as he keeps complaining (if only to himself) that the Wasp should not be giving him orders, mostly because she is a small woman.  From the beginning, Stern shows that Dr. Druid has designs on taking over the team, but does almost nothing else to develop his character aside from taking every opportunity to show his arrogance.

I noticed that the Avengers get attacked in their mansion or on Hydro Base a lot in these issues.  They almost seem to be sitting around waiting for the bad guys to come to them, and they don't ever appear to be very proactive in their work.  It's interesting that the issues around their security clearance are just left dangling for ages, but, unlike the last pile that I reviewed, there are no subplots that never really go anywhere (like the Quicksilver storyline I talked about before).

One last thing that I found notable about these comics came in the issue after Stern left (wherein Ralph Macchio is given only a scripting credit, but no credit is given for the plot), in the form of a column by series editor Mark Gruenwald.  In it, he talks about why Stern left the book, citing irreconcilable differences about where the editor wanted to take the book, especially in relation to two other series, Thor and Captain America (which Gruenwald was writing - this was the era of The Captain and John Walker in the usual Cap uniform).  There is a fair bit of hubris in Gruenwald's description of events, and it made me wonder what plotlines Stern had planned that were left abandoned.

I did notice that, after the Masters of Evil storyline, my enjoyment of these books took a bit of a down-turn, with the Olympus and Super-Adaptoid stories running a little too long, and being a bit dull.  Still, that Masters of Evil story is a classic, and one of the best Avengers stories ever told (might make a good plot for movie #3 or 4).