TPBs, HCs, Absolutes, Omnibuses… discuss them all here!
The Trades Thread: Collected Editions
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It’s a really misleading cover though. I can understand why they thought to use it, but it doesn’t represent the series at all.
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Wonder Woman Volume 3 Fury
Writers engaging in deconstruction, tearing status quos apart, engaging in character dismemberment are very old tricks. Reconstruction though? Rarer and harder. King tends to be a writer I place in the former, but with this volume he shows he can do the latter.
In a final bid to break Diana, the Sovereign has Steve Trevor ordered to him for slaughter. We’re talking superhero comics here, deaths are rarely final, yet King gives this one both weight and finality.
Then he spins an immensely entertaining tale of vengeance that even Khan would respect. First, the Sovereign’s finances are obliterated on multiple fronts. Then he is exposed by Detective Chimp and Jimmy Olsen. Following up on their finance blitzkrieg, the Wonder Girls take out the Sovereign’s remaining property and bodyguards.
Finally, Diana walks through the defences surrounding the White House, including demonstrating again to the perpetually vile Sergeant Steel how outclassed he is, to defeat the Sovereign. This includes having him self inscribe liar across his chest in blood.It all makes for an immensely satisfying volume. Plus it has superb art from Sampere, page after page of briliant imagery. Of course, this is far from the end. King uses the final issue to set up various ominous omens for the future. Maybe this time he will pull off a long form story.
Absolute Wonder Woman Volume 1 The Last Amazon
Temporally fractured narratives are not new and can be confusing. If read month by month, with gaps between, I doubt this would work. A few too many strands to keep track of and remember. But read as a trade of seven issues? Yeah, it works.The story is pretty good, with a different spin on the character. Though, like in the new 52 version Azzarello did, Apollo remains a bastard in any continuity.
The art is what really makes the book sing. Sherman and De Julis both provide great art, with distinct styles, which Bellaire then boosts with superb colours.
Huh, the Absolute line, something I was not at all sold by its marketing, is now two for two.2 users thanked author for this post.
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update on the SpeedyHen weirdness: I ended up ringing them this morning, because I didn’t get any explanation about the technical issues and my open pre-order is out on Tuesday and there’s a bank holiday weekend between today and then. Turns out the issue is something to do with case sensitivity. It wasn’t letting me log in without capitalising the first letter of my email address. Which is bizarre because email addresses aren’t case sensitive. I guess that’s maybe something to do with why it then let me open another account with the same email address (because I wasn’t capitalising it, so it thought it was entirely different) and possibly why password resets weren’t going through, because it would presumably reference the given email address with its own list to send the email and it’s thinking C and c aren’t the same letter.
All of which is a very weird error to spontaneously develop. I’m fairly sure I haven’t started changing how I type in my email address (I never capitalise it) so…
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But they only want to be helpful to you Martin.
Absolute Superman Volume 1 Last Dust of Krypton
Wow, with this DC have landed a stunning starting trio. Along with demonstrating that concept is nothing without skilled execution. And I didn’t care about the concepts, but the execution of them won me over.
Paralleling Earth and Krypton is a very clever story device, especially the generative AI, where it’s not about understanding and thinking, only obediance. The other strands Aaron throws out are social hierarchy and climate change for both worlds.
Both the Klerics on Krypton and Lazarus Corp in Earth embody a lack of compassion and empathy, with a focus only on themselves and controlling everyone else. That in turn leads to a violently enforced hierarchy, one scornful of anyone outside of it, or worse, refuses and rejects it.
Which brings us to a Superman who will keep doing exactly that. One who has memories of his home and parents, of what happened to it and can see far too clearly that Earth is on the same road.
On the other side, Sam Lane has what he considers to be the perfect daughter. A conditioned, compliant, obediant Lois Lane who can’t see how caged she is. Who initially sneers at Superman’s lack of a body count, but can’t quite maintain it.
In the story’s sharper, satirical edges there’s a sense of humour that would not be out of place in 2000 AD. Like a Lazarus tank-copter firing missiles with ‘peace at all costs’ painted on. And what would a company with weather control drones do with them? Use them in hostile takeovers of course.
The art team of Sandoval and Di Giandomenico are backed up Arreola’s colours. Like the other two, this book has a distinct colour palette that it uses well.
It’s nice to be pleasantly surprised.
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The Night Eaters Volume 3 Their Kingdom Come
There are some creative pairings that work brilliantly, like Brubaker and Phillips, Liu and Takeda. Each are very good on their own, but together they create excellent stories. The Night Eaters is a smaller story than Monstress but no lesser for it.
This final volume wraps up a story of both immigration and generational debts. It’s also a tale of the need for succession planning, that power has to be handed over rather than taken and prised out of unwilling hands.
The finale might be read as unsatisfying in how matters resolve. But their parents had already walked the expected road and look how that turned out.
There’s a sharp sense of humour running through the volume. How would our world handle an apocalypse? Short answer – not well. Also people fail to heed a warning, so they and their dog get eaten by coyotes in a park.
I was, when buying this volume, annoyed by the £5 price increase, but it does justify it. And not only by its 300 pages, but by the careful use of them.
It’s also a conclusion for an independent, creator-owned book and those don’t always get go happen. As numerous Image Volume 1 trades attest.
Very smart, very fun, very good.
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There’s not many new releases that I’d make a special lunchtime trip to my LCS for, but this is one of them.
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Booksellers list it as 9 Sept, comic shops get it now.
Best price online so far is SpeedyHen at £18.08.
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Booksellers list it as 9 Sept, comic shops get it now.
Best price online so far is SpeedyHen at £18.08.
I didn’t even know they were making it, let alone when it was due out. Although I dimly recall something announcing this alongside the TV commission. is that still happening?
It was filmed in summer 2024, no updates on when it will be released.
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Not only have things gone a bit quiet on the Criminal TV series front, but this latest OGN is about the comic creator from the earlier volumes, Jacob Kurtz, going to Hollywood and being dismayed at how a TV adaptation of his work is so terrible and bland and knocks the edges off a distinctive comic strip to turn it into a generic crime drama. Hmmmm.
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There’s not many new releases that I’d make a special lunchtime trip to my LCS for, but this is one of them.
I really tried with this one. I tried to space it out, not read it all in one go, to pause and think and come back to it. And somehow I still got through the whole thing in under 24 hours.
It’s excellent even by Criminal standards, which are crazily high these days – I’d maybe even put it on a par with Cruel Summer which has been my favourite ever since it came out.
I won’t discuss details until more of us have read it, but I came away very happy with this one.
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I just got my copy of The Nam Omnibus in. I very much like that it doesn’t have a “volume 1” on the spine (because this has all the good issues, so I would not be buying a volume 2). I’ve not actually taken the shrink wrap off yet but I just noticed it says “printed in Turkey” on the back. That’s new, right? I guess a way to dodge the Trump tariffs.
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Pearl Volumes 1-3
This collaboration by the Alias team of Bendis and Gaydos is an interesting one. The first trade is quite confusing in places, with somr poor colour choices that get in the way – yellow and white for text to read is never working, but it sets enough in play for the second volume.
That is easier to follow and far more assured. The third volume is another step up. Across the set you can almost see them working out the characters and world. If there is a Pearl IV I’d read it.
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My copy of the very-long-awaited Sandman Mystery Theatre Vol. 2 showed up!
One annoying thing is that this is the second item I’ve pre-ordered from the new Amazon.ie, and both times they haven’t applied the pre-order price guarantee. I had to get onto customer services to get refunded the difference, rather than being charged the lower price at dispatch.
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Superman Adventures Compendium Two – June 2nd 2026
Paperback – 984 pgs.
… collects issues #29–66
New X-Men Modern Era Epic Collection: Planet X – June 2nd 2026
Paperback – 336 pgs.
Concluding acclaimed writer Grant Morrison’s revolutionary NEW X-MEN run!
COLLECTING: New X-Men (2001) #142-154Thor Epic Collection: The Surtur War – March 3rd 2026
Writer/artist Walter Simonson’s groundbreaking Thor run starts here!
COLLECTING: Thor (1966) #337-3561 user thanked author for this post.
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I just read the latest Saga trade, and that book can still make me cry a little.
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Where are we up to?
I have the first Compendium.
I (weirdly) buy my best friend the HC’s for X-mas and birthdays, etc.
He needs a fix.Or I could just go a find that Saga Book 4 (issues #55 – 72) comes April 28th.
And then admit I pre-ordered on July 30th.
Yeah, the trade I read contains 67-72, so that’s the story up to there. #72 was also the last issue to come out, in March this year, so they’re apparently taking a longer break before the next storyline. If those books weren’t so brilliant and beautiful, this would be annoying, but whatever time they need to keep up this quality is fine for me.
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Just saw a Near Mint Condition video on the Archive Edition of Secret Wars (first one from the ’80’s).
Good looking book and frickin’ huge.
I woukd be all over that but just got the last HC omnibus in 2023.
Not going to double dip on this one.However, it has now drawn my attention to the Archive Edition of Spider-Man: The Black Costume Year One.
And just ordered as I type…Someday I’ll have to reign in my spending, just hopefully not for a long while.
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Got the first two W0rldtr33 trades. Tynion continues to be on fire.
Also, second Power Fantasy is out. Fuck yeah!
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Judge Dredd: One-Eyed Jacks
This was a lot of fun. It starts off with Dredd sidelined to light duties after an accidental fatality, due to one of his bionic eyes going awry.
Of course, no one is buying that Dredd will passively ride a desk. And so it proves. Rico offers him an advisory role, which counts as “light duties”.
Cue a time jumping plot, involving a body-hopping psi aimed at a 1970s ancestor of Dredd, Eartha Fargo. Turns out Fargo is working with a 70s cop by the name of McBane. Think Dirty Harry and you’ll be on target.
After the initial resolution, there’s a brief follow-up to wrap it all up. Then there’s a 70s cop thriller homage with McBane and Fargo. McBane is framed and legs it, there’s a corrupt politician, all the pieces you expect. There’s a particularly neat bit where a hit squad is sent after Fargo’s family, only to encounter her nazi-killing, marksman father, who’s minding her kids.
That last story is also the debut for a new artist, Anna Redman. I like her style, clear, detailed when called for, good sense of flow.
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Welcome to the Maynard Volume 1
I haven’t read Robinson’s work for a long time so this buy was a total punt, resulting in me getting a charming tale of a magical hotel. It’s also a tale to which Bone’s cartooning style is perfectly suited to.
As an opening shot, and I hope its successful enough to do more, it has a lot to do. Introduce the world, its characters and magic rules do that all within a story. The story is a well-executed conspiracy of theft and revenge. The only duff note is from Pip’s non-magic girlfriend Ronnie.
Overall, this is a great start to what I hope is an ongoing series of minis. That Bone designed Sam Flynn as a tribute to Darwyn Cooke is a neat touch too.
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Spectators HC
I absolutely loved this. What starts as a fun but twisted ghost story ends up becoming something much bigger, with two narratives simultaneously playing out on two different planes of existence, and addressing all sorts of ideas around sex and violence and what we look for in entertainment – and why things that are distasteful in reality can be enjoyable in fiction and vice versa.
BKV’s writing is sharp and layered (even if it does spell out some of the subtext a bit too explicitly by the end) with some lovely characterisation of the leads, and Henrichon’s art is fantastic, employing a dual black-and-white/colour approach to separate realities and never shying away from the more explicit parts of the story – which is important if it’s to make its point.
It all comes together beautifully by the end as a great little self-contained graphic novel that actually has something to say alongside the more surface-level fun.
I’m already looking forward to rereading it and picking up on stuff I missed first time around.
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Got the first two W0rldtr33 trades. Tynion continues to be on fire.
Also, second Power Fantasy is out. Fuck yeah!
I think W0rldtr33 started well but rapidly turned into something less interesting. I was getting it in singles and dropped it after the third arc.
Power Fantasy is great though. Loving it.
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Oo, I hadn’t heard of that, but I’ve been wanting to read something from Henrichon since seeing his Dr Strange a while back. Thanks Dave.
This was serialised digitally on Substack previously.
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Oo, I hadn’t heard of that, but I’ve been wanting to read something from Henrichon since seeing his Dr Strange a while back. Thanks Dave.
Yeah Henrichon is good. The Pride of Baghdad graphic novel is old now, but was big in its day and is another decent BKV collaboration.
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Green Lantern Volume 1
Whoever writes a GL book is kind of up against it because, well, there’s no way around it: Hal Jordan is, at best, a cocky arse. Sure, he can be more than that, but he is that a lot. So, somehow, writers have to make him fly for me despite that.
Does Adams pull it off? He does! He’s a new writer for me, don’t know his prior work. But yeah, this works. I’m trusting the story will give me the various pieces too. Something went down on Korugar, don’t know what, Oa is gone, Jordan quit the Lanterns. Lots of pieces in the air but Adams keeps them swirling nicely.
He also does a couple of other things well. First, he spins a twin track tale, using two time periods but it’s always clear what is happening where. Second, and this is an essential skill for a Big Two comics writer, he uses the Knight Terrors event to bolster his book, weaving it in seamlessly to the ongoing story.
Art is pretty good too across the issues collected here. Onto Volume 2!
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Aliens vs Avengers
On the face of it, this should be an impossible story. If this happens, it likely ends only one way, and it isn’t with the Avengers. So it is Hickman and Ribic lean into that and really run with it. To the point that I’d be up for a follow-up, due to how this plays out.
It’s kind of amazing how much better Hickman’s post-X-Men work has been. Freed up to tell his own stories without any wider responsibilities, he’s back to the writer he was.
It doesn’t hurt that both Ribic’s art is superb and that it has a larger stage in these four substantial issues. The decision to set this in its own pocket continuity allows him to have fun with both character and tech designs.
In a lot of ways, this is a depressing read, but it’s a brilliantly executed one.
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Aliens vs Avengers
In a lot of ways, this is a depressing read, but it’s a brilliantly executed one.
Thanks for review. Kindle issues are super expensive, but the collected edition isn’t badly priced. Picked up and reading.
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Green Arrow: Fresh Water Kills
Chris Condon’s opening arc has a similar feel to his That Texas Blood work, with an art style from Montos to match.
A well-executed story of hierarchy and corporate evasion, with others paying severe prices, Condon plays fast and loose with chronology but without losing clarity. It’s also a story where Queen also has sins to atone for.
On the one hand, if Condon is doing this then it stops him doing more That Texas Blood. But that also needs Phillips, who is also in demand. Plus, this is a good, fun, smart read.
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James Bond 007: Your Cold, Cold Heart
I’ve mostly lost interest in this line from Dynamite, cost went up, issue count went down. But Ennis writing Bond? Well, that gets my attention. Ennis writing Bond and clearly having a lot of fun? Even better.
A labyrinthine tale, of many twists and turns, plus Bond, and others turning the tables on their adversaries, in very creative ways. The opening few pages demonstrate this well with Bond doing unto a drug cartel family the very least they would do unto him, if granted the opportunity.
Lobosco is a new artist to me, but their work here is good. The visuals keep Ennis’ story flowing from issue to issue. Overall, this was a great read.
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Out in April:
https://www.comicsbeat.com/exclusive-dark-horse-announces-nerd-inferno-the-essential-evan-dorkin
You too can own the David Byrne Gets Alzheimers comic srtip.
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Out in April:
https://www.comicsbeat.com/exclusive-dark-horse-announces-nerd-inferno-the-essential-evan-dorkin
You too can own the David Byrne Gets Alzheimers comic srtip.
I own the parts I want in hardback. I might buy it in digital to throw a few dimes in the jar though.
I really want Pirate Corp$ / Hectic Planet collected, but I’m guessing it likely doesn’t stand up.
(I wonder if there are digital/CBZs somewhere on the shadier sides of the net for now)1 user thanked author for this post.
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Out in April:
https://www.comicsbeat.com/exclusive-dark-horse-announces-nerd-inferno-the-essential-evan-dorkin
You too can own the David Byrne Gets Alzheimers comic srtip.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.
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It Rhymes With Takei
Following on from Takei’s account of his childhood, They Called Us Enemy, this covers the rest of his life to date, while examining the times he has lived in. Not a short story either but it has 6-7 decades to cover.
It’s telling that the case for legal recognition of gay relationships still has to be made, that it’s about the civil rights. Being able to visit in hospital, to inherit, and so on.
Overall it’s a good account and gives a very useful explanation of why the term closet has been used to describe gay identity when kept out of sight.
The Power Fantasy Volume 2
Gillen has a tendency to spin tales of a group of individuals who are interesting, but not particularly likeable, with the fun resulting from the messy, explosive collisions between them. This is one of those.
There’s also more info on what happened in 1989, which ended with Europe getting exploded, as the cost for stopping a hell rift. I’m not sure how long this’ll run for, but it feels like a finite tale.
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I’ve embarked on a big Avengers read through thanks to having a big run of epic collections. Over the past year or so, I’ve picked up v5-11 (though I already had 9). Read one issue of v5 and immediately went “I have no memory of this team status quo” so ended up re-reading v4 first. So that means I’ll be going from #57 (first appearance of the Vision) through to #209.
Anyway, I’m halfway through v5 at the moment and I was thinking as I read it “this is a bit sexist. Thomas always finds ways to minimise Wanda and have her end up a damsel in distress.” There’s one moment where she can’t defend herself because her “hex power needs to recharge” or some such nonsense and you don’t get Quicksilver going “hang on, I can’t be quick at the moment, I’ve got a stitch”. Literally the issue after the one that had me thinking that: the Lady Liberators, where Valkyrie brings together Wasp, Medusa, Scarlet Witch and Black Widow to take out the Avengers. It really felt like it was addressing those criticisms I had, while also belittling them. Impressive how it managed to have its cake and eat it too without really making any actual kind of statement or change.
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What collections are those?
No matter really, you said the issue numbers.But I am so looking forward to the 6th omnibus (issues 150 – 188, plus annuals 6-9), although you’re making me a bit nervous.
Haven’t read in so long, and in batches, out of order, at a friends house long, long ago.
I may have built it up in my head a bit too much, Ill have to have a grip on reality.Although, check out this line-up.
Written by Gerry Conway, Jim Shooter & David Michelinie With Steve Englehart, Stan Lee, Scott Edelman, Bill Mantlo, Jim Starlin, Roger Stern, Marv Wolfman, Roger Slifer, Steve Gerber, Tom Defalco, Mark Gruenwald, Steven Grant, Mark Evanier, Gil Kane, Roy Thomas & Don Glut
Penciled by George Pérez, Sal Buscem & John Byrne With Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Herb Trimpe, Jim Shooter, Don Heck, George Tuska, Jim Starlin, Dave Wenzel, Carmine Infantino, Jim Mooney, Don Newton, Michael Netzer, Gil Kane, Jim Craig & Alan KupperbergNow thats an all-star cast!
I’m reading along with the Marvel by the Month podcast, and they’re up around the start of that era now (Early 1977, #158, Shooter’s first issue).
It’s a mess, mostly due to Marvel’s editorial woes at the time. #150 is supposed to be the big anniversary issue reveal of the new lineup, but because the book is running late, 75% of the issue is a reprint, and they have to do the reveal in #151, along with an apology for the chaos and the multiple writers.
Still, it’s better than most of the books Marvel were putting out at the time, especially the issues with George Perez on art.
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When I think of Marvel in the 70s being a mess, I always think of that one issue of Iron Man that just stops at page 14 or so because that’s all they had done before the deadline for the printer.
Sean, the issues that had me despairing at sexism are around #80 or so.
Which also has the debut of Red Wolf, which is handled a bit oddly. They go to all this effort setting up a new hero (who I quite like) and then at the end of the second issue with him have him kill off his heroic identity. I would have had him join the team to be honest. They launched a Red Wolf solo series not long after but it was initially set in the Old West with the first Red Wolf (he was created as a character with a legacy). He got binned off after half a dozen issues to be replaced by a modern Red Wolf who is completely unrelated to the one in Avengers and makes no mention of him. Weird.
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1970s Marvel before Shooter and the late 80s/early 90s are great examples of why the editorial and writing duties need to be separate.
The 1970s era lacked any discipline so you get nonsense like Martin spells out above of half finished issue and no direction. The later period has assistant editors taking over writing duties who otherwise wouldn’t have enough talent to get the job. Terry Kavanaugh and Michael Higgins’ awful Excalibur issues especially but there are many more.
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Green Lantern Volume 2
<span style=”font-size: 20px;”>This is an OK continuation, but suffers from having to weave in crossover events House of Brainiac and Absolute Power. It’d have been better for the three part Guy / Lobo back-up to be collected in one chunk too.Still, despite the flaws, it moves things along well enough. Once it’s past Absolute Power, it’ll probably get back on track.
The Serpent in the Garden
This is an intriguingly quiet finale. Sure, it has a big fight in it, but even that has an odd, muted sense to it, as if everyone knows it is all over and what remains is to exit the stage.
Stenbeck’s art is excellent, as is Mignola’s epilogue, though I couldn’t link it to the main story. Whatever it was about was too subtle for me, but it looked good.
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The Knives: A Criminal Book
This was superb.
Part of the brilliance here is that you could, if you wanted to, start here then dive into the other 10 stories. Or you read this as the 11th entry, noticing the little refs to and characters from earlier stories.
Told across six chapters and a decade, Brubaker and Phillips do a masterclass demonstration of how to spin a story. Criminal lairs, neighbourhoods, the soulless nature of Hollywood, the Undertow, the tale expertly moves across time and space, characters moving in and out of it.
And they’re working on the next one, which hopefully means, at some point, another, very nice OHC edition collecting both.
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I’ve finished Avengers Epic Collection v5 which means I have now finally read the Kree Skrull War. I’ve read various stories related to it (Operation Galactic Storm, Avengers Forever) over the years and it’s this foundational, keystone story to so much MU lore and man it’s not just very good, is it?
Lovely art by Neal Adams, sure, but Roy Thomas’s writing has nosedived in quality since the previous volume. His narration is getting increasingly purple and second person, so he’s essentially directly taunting characters in syntactically abstruse sentences that are just hard to parse for the most part. Maybe it didn’t help I was reading most of this late in the evening. Also, considering he’s a former English teacher, he’s got a terrible understanding of when you should use me rather than I in a sentence (as Stan Lee did before him), which also doesn’t help.
But on top of that the plotting is just crap. The actual Kree Skrull war doesn’t really consist of a war between the Kree and Skrulls, it’s just each taking turns to kidnap people off Earth. There’s an entire digression to involve the Inhumans which adds nothing but over-complication. He tries to pull it all together at the end by having the Supreme Intelligence claim he mentally pushed people into taking their otherwise arbitrary actions, but that does not hang together at all. And it’s not just the plot making sense, the characters act really inconsistently, not just between issues but within the same issue. Hawkeye says he’s run out of Growth Serum (he’s Goliath II at this point, which is a bizarre decision, especially as Hank and Jan were both still on the team when he made it) yet a few panels later, he’s grown a bit (“just enough left in him for a few minutes growth” or something). An issue later he’s saying he made the decision to stop using it. In one issue, the team splits up, half to go with Triton to rescue Black Bolt in San Francisco, the other half to go to space to rescue Quicksilver, Wanda and Captain Marvel. Yet the latter team hang around fighting mandroids and then they’re just “actually, let’s go save Black Bolt” so meet up with the others at the Great Refuge. And I think that’s just Thomas not managing to understand and convey the plot Adams has drawn really. It seems to me the intention was “we’ll stay here hold off the Mandroids while you three escape to find Black Bolt and we’ll meet up later” but it’s been twisted into something that makes less sense.
Oh and then there’s Rick summoning loads of Golden Age heroes to fend off Ronan and the Kree which is the ultimate self-indulgence on Thomas’s part. They have no plot significance at all. Rick could have summoned anything as constructs to fill that purpose, or nothing at all. It just bogs the story down by introducing all these old characters (most of whom are passed off as being fictional) who disappear immediately after saying their names. What a waste of time and effort.
So yeah, that was pretty disappointing really.
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I am reading some random Vertigo trades (on kindle umlimited) and Tim Seeley’s “Imaginary Fiends” (2018) was pretty good – bit of a shame it only got one storyline (I think it was a mini, but clearly set up to become an ongoing if successful).
It also has some elements quite similar to Something Is Killing the Children, interestingly. Not saying Tynion ripped this off, it’s stuff that’s been around in other places, too. Just interesting that one series takes off while the other didn’t.
Also in there: New Romancer, a Pete Milligan book from 2015 in which Lord Byron comes back to life as an AI in a replicant-style body. It’s fun, but I’m always a bit disappointed with Milligan’s stuff these days (and with these days, I mean like the last twenty years or so) because it just isn’t quite as good as he was in the nineties.
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I’ve been steaming through these Avengers epic collections. Some thoughts, broken down by writer rather than volume.
Roy Thomas
It’s weird, the quality of his work is on a bell curve. He starts out as a Stan Lee tribute act (which isn’t a terrible thing); then develops his own style a bit, matures and gives us things like the Vision and the Yellow-Jacket story (which has issues, but you wouldn’t have seen Stan do it); and then absolute power goes to his head and he’s putting out over-written self-indulgent dreck.
Steve Englehart
This is a nice change of pace. I really like the addition of Swordsman and Mantis to the team early on, with Swordsman’s redemption being surprisingly good. It is a bit weird that Mantis is with the team, full participating and yet they keep saying “you’re just the Swordsman’s girlfriend, not an actual Avenger”. They only make her a full member when she leaves. The series does start to get bogged down in complicated lore and stories though. The Celestial Madonna story drags on waaaay too long. It involves at least three multi-part stories fighting Kang, which – even as a Kang fan – is too much. The triple hit of Englehart a) having Kang fight against his future self Rama-Tut (which is also his earlier identity) and also turn out to be Immortus b) delving into the background of the Vision and making him the original Human Torch repurposed and c) going through the backstory of Mantis, all threaded together, is rough going. Mantis’s backstory is so complicated that it isn’t worth it. It’s so complicated that, if you didn’t know, you’d swear it was a later writer (like John Byrne) retconning someone else’s earlier work, but it’s seemingly all planned out by Englehart that you get one backstory for her, which is later contradicted at length and then comprehensively explained at ever great length. An explanation that also requires explaining the history of the Kree empire and its enmity with the Skrulls. And after all that, whatever good bits the Celestial Madonna story might have had along the way, it’s impossible to get past the fact that Mantis ends up marrying a guy she’s known for ten minutes, who is possessing the corpse of her ex-boyfriend and, crucially, is a tree.
Englehart does a bit of a reset after that and it’s a nice clean slate with interesting changes. Beast is brought in, to essentially pick up and finish off storylines from his solo series (I didn’t realise before that was why he was brought into the Avengers) and also sees the introduction of Moondragon, which is less successful. She just doesn’t really do enough and is ultimately used to come up with a reason to take Thor out of the book. This era has the story about Kang invading the 19th Century, forcing Hawkeye, Thor and Moondragon to team up with some of Marvel’s Western heroes, which is something I’ve wanted to read for ages. Shame it’s not very good. Just not very much happens in it, really. Kang’s plan seems to be just having a building and, off panel, hypnotising people to mine uranium. It needed more going on. Lovely George Perez art though. Perez is a highlight through much of these volumes. He’s so good that even Vince Colletta inking him doesn’t ruin his art.
This latter Englehart period also has the Serpent Crown story with the Squadron Supreme, which is a lot of fun. That introduces Hellcat (with some very shonky plotting of “oh, look, The Cat/Tigra’s old costume happens to be in the storehouse of this evil company we’re infiltrating. I’ll take it”) and it’s clear that Englehart plans to use her on the team.
Unfortunately his end runs messily. As he tells it, he was fired because Gerry Conway, then editor, wanted to write Avengers himself. As Conway tells it, Englehart kept missing his deadlines. It’s probably a bit of both, I think. Certainly it’s not a good look that #150, which promises to be a status quo changing anniversary issue basically peters out after about 10 pages and becomes a reprint of #16. When the story is picked up again the next issue, you can feel the abrupt change of direction as Conway takes over from Englehart’s plot. Yellowjacket walks out of the meeting, saying he doesn’t want to be an Avenger, then suddenly walks back in and goes “uh, I arbitrarily changed my mind!”. Hellcat is dead set on joining the team, but then Moondragon suddenly demands that they go off together to train instead and Patsy agrees (head canon: Heather is mind controlling her, but jeez, it does not read smoothly). It’s not a pretty transition. Still, having muscled his way on to the book, Conway’s got to have some bold ideas, right?
Gerry Conway
Not so much. After the series had promised an exciting shake up of the team, Conway ends up with a line-up of basically all the same people who were there before. He then adds in Wonder Man, brought back from the dead with no real explanation (yet). I’ve no problem with Wonder Man generally, but I do not understand the obsession 70s Avengers writers had with him. The most interesting thing about him was that he died. I think we probably would have all been better off if the Vision’s brain patterns hadn’t been based on him, because when Wonder Man comes back, it just sets up the Vision going back into the same “I’m not a real man, only a machine” stuff he’s been through several times already.
I only read Conway’s run in the last week or so and Wonder Man coming back is literally the only thing I can remember from it. So let’s move on to…
Jim Shooter
Who fills in for Conway a few times before taking over (ironically). I’m not all the way through his run yet. I’m a few issues into the Korvac Saga (which I’ve read before). Shooter’s issues are quite strange, and they remind me of his time as EiC, in that there’s a strange duality to it. As EiC he made Marvel less dysfunctional than it had been in ages, perhaps ever. Loads of seminal series and runs occurred in his tenure. And yet he was also hated by a lot of his staff and accused of ruining titles with stupid suggestions (eg wanting to kill off Shang-Chi). As Avengers writer, the book is pretty damn good. The characters are sharply written, the stories are good and yet… so far they’ve faced three villains and they’re all prety much the same. First is Graviton, an ordinary man who gains incredible power, tries to force a woman to love him and then seemingly dies. Then they face Count Nefaria, an ordinary man who gains incredible power and then seemingly dies (while, as an aside, grabbing a random woman to possibly take with him). And then there’s Korvac, a weird cyborg guy who somehow gains incredible, almost godlike powers and uses them to kidnap a woman to make her his wife and then seemingly dies. It’s all a bit repetitive. If you’re being charitable, you could say Shooter’s working with recurrent themes and escalating them in stakes, but it does just kinda feel like he’s got the one idea and is rehashing it in quick succession. And like Chris Claremont, it really feels like you’re reading about his own kinks and desire relationship dynamics in how the villains treat women. There’s just bad vibes to it.
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