Review by Tony Keen
Marvel’s repackaging of the first Avengers run reaches 1979 to 1981. The main writer is David Michelinie, though there was a lot of plot and script input from the likes of Steven Grant, Roger Stern, Jim Shooter, etc. This volume mostly covers the same material as Essential Avengers 9, but both starts earlier and ends a little later (and, of course, is in full colour). As with Essential 9, the first few stories of Michelinie’s run are omitted, being instead in Marvel Epic Collection: The Avengers – The Yesterday Quest. It might have made a more coherent package had those stories been included here, but at least the inclusion of all of ‘The Yesterday Quest’ in the previous book means this one starts at a slightly more natural point.
The first half isn’t operating on the same level as Steve Englehart’s earlier Avengers, but it’s mostly solid superhero fare. A thoroughly forgettable story set in Pittsburgh with a menace called Inferno proves not everything works, but the volume kicks off with a nice solo story for Hawkeye, and there’s a good encounter with the Grey Gargoyle, in which Michelinie resolves tensions with the US government. The lasting legacy is the well-handled introduction of the Taskmaster, a very different character from that recently seen in the Marvel cinematic universe.
The art is mostly excellent, barring a few fill-ins. The end of John Byrne’s Avengers run begins the volume; then George Pérez returns, doing his best work to that point on the title (see sample image).
And then it all goes very, very wrong. In a story intended to ‘celebrate’ Avengers 200, for which Pérez drew the cover used on this volume. Marvel’s most overtly feminist late 1970s hero, Ms. Marvel/Carol Danvers, is abducted, brainwashed, raped, impregnated, and then abducted again, and effectively removed from the Marvel universe. Her fellow Avengers cheer all this, on the grounds that Ms. Marvel’s ‘in love’ with her abductor. Lovely art from Pérez can’t disguise the story being an abomination.
Fortunately, unlike previous collections in Essential 9 and Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Volume 19, this volume also includes the response of an evidently incensed Chris Claremont, who wrote most of Ms. Marvel’s solo adventures. Drawing on plans for Ms. Marvel before her title was cancelled, Claremont wrote an Avengers Annual published a year later. He brings in the X-Men and Spider-Woman, both of whom he was writing at the time, and ends the story with Carol berating the Avengers for how they treated her, and by extension, criticizing the creators of the original story. Being Claremont, the story also has wider ramifications, bringing Carol into the X-Men’s supporting cast, and introducing Rogue, who would eventually become an X-Man herself. The friendship between Jessica Drew and Carol Danvers begun here would become significant decades later. Art is by Michael Golden, at the top of his game.
There’s a nice story for Jarvis, the Avengers’ butler, then Pérez and next Michelinie leave. The remainder of the volume is nondescript, with unmemorable villains. Gene Colan draws a few issues, but his impressionistic pencils, soon to be so appropriate for Night Force, don’t fit, partly due to editorial constraints placed upon him. The collection is rounded out by dull Wonder Man and Vision solo tales.
Almost all the good stuff here can be found in Heart of Stone, except the Jarvis story, in Avengers Visionaries: George Pérez, and the Claremont story in Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men 7, where it sits rather better.
