Review by Tony Keen
In 1992 Marvel had been publishing their hardback Masterworks series for five years. They had a sudden wheeze, and decided to publish cheap trade paperback Masterworks. The big difference would be that these cheap editions would only have half the content of the hardback Masterworks. Hence Avengers Masterworks Volume 1, which contained the first five issues of Marvel’s premier super-team.
The Avengers were created as the equivalent of DC’s Justice League of America, bringing together various heroes who had their own series, though with a few twists. The Human Torch was omitted for obvious reasons, as already being a member of the Fantastic Four, but Spider-Man was also left out, whilst the Hulk had lost his own series earlier in the year. And writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby kept the line-up fluid, with the Hulk leaving almost immediately, and then 1940s hero Captain America being found in the Arctic ice. After an encounter with the Lava Men, this collection ends, thus missing out on the introduction of Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil, and subsequent episodes. And like all collections of early Avengers, it omits a Fantastic Four story that leads directly in to the final tale here.
Sadly, the stories here are not great. It isn’t just that they seem crude to modern readers, as all early 1960s Marvel comics do. Even by the standards of what Marvel was producing at the time, these are substandard, certainly in comparison with contemporary Fantastic Four or Spider-Man. Instead there is a feel of a comic neither of the creators are really interested in, with dull fights, boring villains, and all too many committee meetings. The best story here (much reprinted) is the revival of Captain America, and even that is arguably one iconic page with the rest being filler, Avengers would become a cornerstone of the Marvel Universe, and vital to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the series’ best moments are in the future here. Indeed, Lee and Kirby’s best material on the title is yet to come.
These comics have been collected multiple times, and perhaps the best way of owning them, if you really must, is in the Marvel Epic Collection: The Avengers – Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The volume under discussion here can really only be of interest to collectors, and even they don’t seem terribly bothered, to judge from the low prices it commands. The collection is optimistically labelled as ‘Volume 1’; of course, no second volume ever appeared, and Marvel soon gave up on the whole idea , not returning to paperback Masterworks until 2002.
