Review by Frank Plowright

In 1993 there had only ever been the single Avengers series, opening the year with issue 358, and when graphic novel collections were hardly commonplace The Greatest Battles of the Avengers presented an appealing opportunity, Tom Raney’s appalling cover illustration notwithstanding.

We begin with Roy Thomas having the Avengers’ butler Jarvis seemingly betraying the team to the Masters of Evil from 1968, the villains led by a mysterious cowled presence who several issues later would be revealed as Ultron. It’s a sprightly two-chapter battle, well drawn by John Buscema, if still forced into Jack Kirby’s style rather than letting his classical instincts flourish. This is probably too much of its era to appeal to more recent Avengers fans, with the cast quipping and explaining themselves a little too often.

There’s then a jump to 1977 and the Grim Reaper trying to get to the bottom of his connection to Wonder Man and the Vision. Again, there are elements nailing it to the past, most obviously melodramatic thought balloons, but Jim Shooter wrings the most from the emotional confusion and George Pérez is on the verge of a golden era. His layouts are imaginative, his people are athletic and he’ll noodle away forever on the detail for background machinery.

Jim Starlin concluding his Warlock story stands the test of time, or would if there were a little more contextualising material. Starlin does his best with five pages of flashback synopsis, but in isolation it doesn’t reach to the heart of who Adam Warlock is, instead defining Thanos and his threat extraordinarily well. It begins with Warlock discovering a dying Gamora and ends with an already dead Warlock saving the day. It’s powerful, but has greater resonance for those who’ve read the remainder of Starlin’s time on Warlock, especially the audacious presentation of a flash forward/back scene of Warlock meeting himself that Starlin had supplied from the viewpoint of a younger Warlock a couple of years earlier.

Time has also diminished the final inclusion of 1981’s Avengers Annual. It’s notable for the introduction of Rogue, who would settle among the X-Men, but despite the bulk being the Avengers battling the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the spark for the plot was something else entirely. When Carol Danvers, then Ms. Marvel not Captain Marvel, left the Avengers she was manipulated into a marriage and to Chris Claremont’s mind the Avengers were only too happy to condone coercion and rape. A still powerful scene lays out the grievances. Despite Claremont on form, the abiding allure is 38 pages of immaculate art from Michael Golden. His style of cartoon realism combines dynamic layouts and diligent application of light and shade for a masterclass in comics storytelling.

For the uberfan all these stories have since been reprinted in more luxurious formats, but for the curious this now redundant collection could be an attractive cheap purchase.