Avengers Assemble Indeed.

Afternoon Readers,

Avengers Assemble!

Indeed.

The name of the Avengers isn't a name that was well known a few years ago. It recently became wide spread thanks to Iron Man and now Iron Man 2. The team, and name, will see even more exposure in the years to come with the releases of Captain America, The Avengers (obviously) and (maybe) Thor. But before it became a Marvel/ Hollywood endeavour it was simply a Marvel endeavour. The Avengers was published in 1963 and was created by Stan Lee and Jack 'The King' Kirby. It was a team book consisting of many of Marvel's popular characters, who at the time were starring in their own books. The initial line up consisted of Ant-Man, The Wasp, The Hulk, Thor, Iron Man and soon after, Captain America. Pretty soon after it's launch Marvel decided to mix things up by introducing a new line up for the team. The new roster included ex-X-Men villains Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, along with sort of villain (?) Hawkeye. The only member of the original team to stay on was Captain America (although technically he wasn't a founding member, but I digress).

Now that the history lesson is out of the way I'll say right now that I couldn't stand reading through the early issues right after the roster change. Compared to now a lot of the characters behaved out of character. Cap was kind of a jerk and Scarlet Witch seemed to lack any sort of character at all. Hawkeye was completely unlikeable and Quicksilver was, shockingly, the one character on the team I didn't dislike. Also, reading an Avengers book with only four Avengers on the team got really old, really fast. Thankfully Avengers 28-29 turned that around for me. Bringing back Giant Man (now Goliath, the third name change for Hank Pym already.. yikes) and the Wasp was a great move. It allows for more interaction with the characters and just more interesting stories.

Avengers 29 in particular was really good stuff. It had everything the book had been lacking for months. Black Widow was finally back and being brain washed by some pretty stereo typical villains, she recruits the Swordsman and Power Man to take down the Avengers. It deals with Hawkeye's feelings towards the Widow, making him more likeable and also has a nice moment where Cap doesn't come across as a jerk when he tells Hawkeye he understands his motives for letting the Widow escape.

All in all it was a really good story and I'm looking forward to the next issue to see where the book goes. Even though these issues were written over 40 years ago.

As a side note my brother recently pointed me towards some fantastic Power Rangers retrospectives. I grew up watching the original and I'm interested to see how they are. Here's the link to that: http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/hopr

This is what I'll be reading next and the cover to Avengers #29, in case you were wondering what that looked like:




I just noticed that the Widow's costume is green on the cover of the issue, but a dark blue in the actual comic. I will also be glad when the costumes get a little less ridiculous.

Until next time,

Jeff