Avengers in the 1970s

The 1970s, in my opinion, is a mostly perfect decade of the Avengers the likes of which could not be matched for quite some time. It has an almost consistent run of great writers, amazing artists, and some of the most memorable story arcs that still resonate to this day.

Continuing from the last decade issues #72 through 104 was written by Roy Thomas with art (mostly) by John Buscema. Buscema, in my opinion, was fast becoming Marvel’s go-to replacement after Jack Kirby quit and ended up going to DC Comics over not getting proper recognition for his work creating the Marvel Universe with Stan Lee. Stan Lee was a big piece of shit who took credit for the work of others, but I digress. There were a lot of iconic stories here in the tail end of Roy’s run.

Issue #72 introduced a new team of villains, the Zodiac Cartel, beautifully rendered by Buscema (more on that later). Issues #73-74 saw the return of the Sons of the Serpent. This time, the racist group was being run by two media personalities — one black and one white — that were trying to create racial divisions and civil unrest so they could take over the United States. While this story kind of misses the boat when it came to honestly talking about race relations, one thing it really nails is how easily people are manipulated into adopting xenophobic and/or divisive attitudes against their fellow citizens. This is not such an outlandish idea if you’ve ever bothered watching the news throughout Donald Trump’s presidency. A lot of the dialogue the Sons of the Serpent use in this story sound eerily similar to the type of bullshit that comes out of the mouth of your average Proud Boy dipshit. As the French would say: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Another milestone were issues #80 and 81 which introduced the first Marvel superhero that was a Native American, Red Wolf. However, the story has some warts since it uses some language and references that are problematic by today’s standards. Still, it can be used as an example that Marvel has always been a progressive comic book company, even if poorly executed they were still well-meaning. This was followed by the introduction of the Lady Liberators in issue #83, an all-female team that was supposedly formed to fight the patriarchy, but it turns out they were being tricked by the Enchantress because she was mad at men. Again, it was an attempt to highlight the Women’s Liberation Movement of the era, but not getting it to quite right since it was written by a guy who supported it without fully understanding it. It also hasn’t aged very well.

Yet another milestone of Roy Thomas’ run were issues #85-86, which introduced the Squadron Supreme. Adapting from the Squadron Sinister plotline the year before, Thomas created this team of heroes from an alternate universe to be a pastiche of DC Comics’ Justice League of America. Even back then, the big dream was getting the two companies’ flagship super-teams together in an official cross-over. While individual characters crossed-over and fought one another over the years a full-out Justice League/Avengers crossover wouldn’t happen until 2001.

Also worth mentioning is issue #87, where Thomas expanded upon the Black Panther’s origins introducing the heart-shaped herbs that are now integral to all retellings of his origins.

Issue #188 is a weird one. They were able to bring in noted science fiction author Harlan Ellison to do a two-parter about the Hulk getting sent to the microverse and attacked by a villain named Psyklop. The second part of the story was told in Incredible Hulk #140. This is an odd story in that the Avengers don’t really get involved much in what was going on with the Hulk, the cross-over seems like an excuse to shoehorn the Avengers into a plot that could have carried itself just using the Hulk.

This was followed by what I think is the crowning achievement of Roy Thomas’ run on the Avengers: issues #89-97, which was the first introduction readers had to the Kree/Skrull War something that would have reverberations and carry on in the Marvel Universe for decades to come, most recently (as of this writing) was the Empyre storyline in the 2021 runs of both Avengers and Fantastic Four. In it’s humble beginnings it told an epic storyline. The art duties during this period were split up between John Buscema and Neal Adams, during his brief tenure at Marvel in the 60s. Adams delivered some of the most visually stunning work of the decade. He was by far one of the best artists to work on the Avengers next to George Peréz, but we’ll talk about him a little further below. The only disappointing thing about Adam’s run is that it was so short-lived and often Buscema had to fill in between issues. Both great artists, but also two very different styles. I presume that Buscema had to fill in because Adams style took more time to draw and deadlines being deadlines they had to get other artists to assist. The final chapter of this story arc featured Rick Jones using what will be called the Destiny Force to halt the war, a power that will play heavily decades later in the Avengers Forever series. It’s also interesting to note that Thomas uses this as an excuse to shoehorn a lot of 40s era superheroes, something that becomes something of a habit during his work in the 70s. It becomes enough of a trope of Roy Thomas as Jack Kirby’s constant use of eugenically created science gods became a trope.

Anyway, Thomas run winds down with two final arcs. The first, from issues #98-100, saw the Avengers going up against Ares the God of War. For the 100th issue it was the first time that every Avenger to date reunited to help fight a common foe, even the Hulk, who would be absent during many other such reunions. It also features art by Barry Winson-Smith, who is probably best known his runs on Conan the Barbarian, various issues of Uncanny X-Men, and the excellent Weapon X saga in Marvel Comics Presents. However, his work on the Avengers was pretty early on in his career and his detail is not quite of the caliber of work he would crank out in later years. He also has the distinction of designing the worst Hawkeye costume ever conceived. It was one piece skirt with an open chest and a headband. It was fucking awful. Thankfully, saner minds prevailed and Hawkeye was put back in his classic costume by issue #109.

Issue #101 was a story adapted from the works of Harlan Ellison, about a man given the powers and ordered to kill five people who are indirectly linked to a future nuclear holocaust. Again, and with due respect to Ellison, the story feels like an otherwise unrelated science fiction story that had the Avengers shoved into it. The story was interesting enough on its own and finding means of including Earth’s Mightiest Heroes into the plot seems like an effort to do.

Then came Roy’s final arc, with art by Rich Buckler. Issues #102-104 involved the Avengers battling the Sentinels who have come back to Earth (following their last appearance in the pages of the X-Men) to make the sun give off radiation and make everyone on Earth go sterile so no more mutants could be born. There was a lot going on here. There was a subplot about the Grim Reaper offering the Vision a human body, while Wanda was captured by the Sentinels. Quicksilver gets injured, paving the way for him ending up in a romance with Crystal of the Inhumans after her relationship with the Human Torch ended — a plot that would be resolved in the page of Fantastic Four. Also this was one of the X-Men-adjacent plots that went into trying to figure out what happened to the mutant team since their series went into reprints following issue #66. The culmination of these plots ultimately would lead to the X-Men’s rebirth in Giant-Size X-Men #1.

After Roy Thomas left the book, writing duties were passed onto Steve Englehart. He wrote his share of iconic Avengers stories, but there was a lot of drek in-between either due to poor story telling or horrendously bad artwork. On the shitty artwork side of things, early Englehart stories were accompanied by art by Don fucking Heck. If you’ve read any of my previous primers you know how much I loathe Don’s artwork. Here it is sloppier than ever and the few issues where it is decent is when he had a more capable artist, like Dave Cockrum, doing the inking. Following Heck’s embarrassing work was Bob Brown who was just as sloppy in his work. In Bob’s defense, the dude was dying of leukemia (Brown died in 1977), which makes you wonder what Don Heck’s excuse was. However, the quality of artwork does a complete 360 when George Perez was brought onto the book with issue #163.

However, Perez’s run on the book had breaks where other artists were hired to fill in between issues. This was probably due to the time it took Perez to render his dynamite work working against deadlines. Fill in issues were usually by Sal Buscema, but they also weren’t against shitting the bed with more Don Heck scribbles.

Englehart’s run on the book is also full of iconic Avengers moments. His most notable additions to the team were Mantis and reintroduced the Swordsman to the book. This also saw Hawkeye quit the team because he was upset over being cock-blocked by the Vision over the Scarlet Witch. Englehart has gone on to say that he turfed Hawkeye because he didn’t find him interesting and hence why he was replaced by the Swordsman. However, Swordy was such a pathetic character who was constantly getting his ass kicked and getting emasculated when Mantis lost romantic interest in him and started favoring the Vision. This created a really annoying love triangle between Mantis and Swordsman and the Vision and the Scarlet Witch. It was so much unnecessary drama.

Still, Englehart was writing both the Avengers and the Defenders and used this to the advantage of his first major story arc, the iconic Avengers/Defenders War which ran from issues #116 to 118 and Defenders #8-11. It was your typical “bad guy tricks the good guys into fighting each other over a McGuffin that will help the bad guy conquer the world” in that it featured Dormammu and Loki pitting the two teams against each other while collecting the Evil Eye.

Issues #120-124 wrapped up the on-going Zodiac cartel plot thread started by Roy Thomas. However, what Englehart did with it — combined with the awful Bob Brown artwork — makes it a low point. This was also used as a vehicle to tell part of Mantis’ origins revealing that she was trained in martial arts by a bunch of Kree pacifists called the Priests of Pama and that she was the daughter of the Zodiac’s Libra. It’s kind of the crunchy zen bullshit that you would expect a writer who enjoyed kung fu epics and LSD in equal measures. It was the 70s after all.

While Steve was working on the main title, this was also the period when Marvel was pumping out their Giant-Size books. Giant-Size Avengers #1-4. The first issue revealed that Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were the children of wartime heroes the Whizzer and Miss America. A fact that has been walked back as Marvel regularly tinkered with the origins of the Maximoff twins well into the 21st Century.

Giant-Size issues #2-4 crossed over with Avengers #128-135 telling a winding story about Kang the Conqueror coming to the past to try and claim the so-called Celestial Madonna as his bride. This was such a landmark story because it revealed that Rama-Tut, Kang, and Immortus were all the same guy at three different stages of his life. It also looked into the origins of Mantis and the Vision. Mantis’ origins are particularly bland, but it did flesh out the Kree/Skrull conflict. While the Vision’s origins were expanded to reveal that he was actually built from the remains of the original android Human Torch. This massive story arc ended with a double wedding between the Vision and the Scarlet Witch and Mantis and a member of the Cotati. While the Celestial Madonna non-sense has never really been explored with much zeal the whole Kang/Immortus thing would become a major part of Avengers history. The plot points laid out here would later play a key role in Kurt Busiek’s landmark series Avengers Forever.

The 70s was also the decade of the missed deadline and the Avengers, like many other titles in the Marvel line, would often have to rely on reprints or filler issues. The first time this happened would come with Avengers #136, which reprinted a Beast story that Englehart wrote for Amazing Adventures to act as a teaser that the Beast was going to become a member of the Avengers, which happened in the following issue.

Issue #137 began possibly one of the most drawn-out Avengers roster changes in the history of the book. It also began a story arc that tried to do a lot but, somehow, didn’t really accomplish much if that makes any sense. Issues #137-140 featured sub-par artwork George Tuska. It featured some weak stories that involved the Wasp getting injured and the Toad posing as the Stranger. It’s all kind of stupid.

Issues #141-144 and 146-149 was the final epic story arc by Englehart and Perez. It involved yet another battle with Kang, this time in the old west, which guest-starred Marvel’s line of western heroes and an attempt to springboard the Two-Gun Kid into the 20th Century. At the same time Englehart also used this to bring Patsy Walker — Marvel’s long-running teen romance character — into the world of superheroes by having her become Hellcat. On top of all of this, it also featured a sweeping story where the Avengers investigate the Roxxon oil company and get in a massive brawl with the Squadron Supreme which involved interdimensional travel and the Serpent Crown. As I said, there was a lot going on, but at the same time there also wasn’t a lot going on. The Squadron Supreme story was not really fleshed out and progressed literally by the Avengers just walking around before there was some kind of conclusion.

Englehart used this opportunity to really lean into the fact that the Squadron Supreme was a nudge-nudge-wink-wink pastiche of DC Comics Justice League of America. He took pains to make the similarities even more overt, such as changing the Squadron’s archer, Hawkeye, to the Golden Archer. This was partially so there weren’t two characters named Hawkeye in the same story, but also so his name and appearance were more similar to the Green Arrow. There was also a lot of comments about how the Squadron prefers simplistic cases where the good guy’s always won and there were no loose ends. This was a critique of the differences between the way Marvel and DC told superhero stories at the time. Comparing the differences between the two franchises was handled with a lot better executioner decades later when Kurt Busiek and George Perez worked together on the long-awaited JLA/Avengers crossover. When Englehart does it here it comes off a little more meanspirited which is ironic as you’ll soon see.

See, issues #145 and 146 was a filler story by Tony Isabella and more garbage art by Don Heck. It featured the Avengers going up against an uninspiring foe called the Assassin. According to legend, this story was supposed to be Giant-Size Avengers #5, but a missed deadline resulted in the story being broken up in two parts right in the middle of the above-mentioned Squadron Supreme storyline. Depending on who you ask, this led to Steve Englehart leaving the Avengers. Englehart has gone on record as saying he had the book stolen from him by then-editor-in-chief Gerry Conway. Conway remembers it differently that it was over a missed deadline and when he was told there would be a fill-in story in the middle of his Squadron Supreme epic, Englehart rage quit. He would later go to write for DC Comics, which, as I said above, was kind of ironic since his last stories for Marvel at the time were shitting on DC’s style of story-telling.

With Englehart gone, other writers had to scramble to wrap up the still ongoing Avengers membership change. Issue #150 and 151 really tell how abrupt Steve Englehart’s departure was. What was supposed to be a single-issue story was broken up into two parts. Issue #150 was all Englehart with art by Perez but halfway through they stuck in a flashback of the last major Avengers switch over and reprinted half of Avengers #16. Issue #151 finished the story with Gerry Conway and Jim Shooter adding to what was already written by Steve Englehart. It was pretty clear that Englehart intended for Moondragon, the Beast, and Hellcat to become Avengers. However, the last-minute writer change saw the departure of both Moondragon and Hellcat, which was fine by me particularly with Moondragon who is always an insufferably arrogant character. The story ended with new team basically being the same as before: Cap, Iron Man, Yellowjacket, the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Vision, and the Beast. Other than the surprise return of Wonder Man, this was one of the most underwhelming roster changes given how much effort went into the reveal.

Gerry Conway took over as writer for issues #151 through 157. Perez continued to do the art with the occasional break for a fill-in. There’s not really much to say about this brief run. They bring back the Whizzer who runs around and has heart attacks all the time and did a cross-over story with Super-Villain Team-Up, rounded with a really sloppy story about the Black Knight’s statue becoming animated and attacking the team and you guessed right if you figure such a boring ass story also had crap art by Don Heck. It’s also interesting to note that these issues also featured covers by Jack Kirby, who had just returned to Marvel after some time away from working for DC. As iconic as Kirby is, I feel like he was really phoning it in with these covers as a lot of them were usually floating heads looking down at some action scene or characters knocked out with their mouths wide open.

Starting with issue #158 through 177, Jim Shooter came on the title and his work was one of the most ambitious story arcs of the decade. Perez would continue his work on the title until he was replaced with John Byrne took over with issue #164, making this stretch of Avengers having a near-constant string of great artwork other than the odd fill in issue.

During Shooter’s run he explained how Wonder Man came back from the dead, created the villain Graviton and the robotic Avenger Jacosta, and made Count Nefaria a serious threat.

However, the most iconic story of Shooter’s run was the Korvac Saga. This saw the Avengers team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy to stop Micahel Korvac who had obtained god-like powers and was going to take over the universe. For such an iconic story, reading it now and the story is kind of underwhelming. Most of the story arc involved the Avengers battling other unrelated threats like Ultron. Also, there was a long-drawn-out story about the Collector snatching the Avengers one-by-one. While this eventually explained why the Collector collects it was tedious. When the Avengers finally learn who their real foe is, the story is quickly wrapped up in a single issue which was an excuse to show the Avengers getting slaughtered only for these deaths to be reversed by the end of the story, making it almost a tale of zero consequence. The involvement of the Guardians of the Galaxy was also underwhelming. They were basically hanging around in the background not doing much until the final battle. Still, the arc had some interesting wrinkles to it. Such as having the Two-Gun Kid decide the 20th Century is too much and gets sent back to the old west. I suppose the Shooter failed to see the value of having a cowboy from the 1800s on the Avengers. Having Two-Gun in a modern setting wasn’t handled well until Dan Slott tackled the subject during his run of She-Hulk.

Shooter’s run also introduced readers to Henry Peter Gyrich who would spend his time in the pages of the Avengers finger fucking the team’s ability to function properly. First by stripping them of their security clearance in issue #168. Which lead to one of the most bizarre and stupid points of the whole Korvac saga. In issue #176, the Avengers have to get to Forest Hills but cannot use their Quinjets because their FAA clearance was revoked, in order to get the entire team to Korvac’s home they ended up commandeering a bus, because that makes a whole fuck of a lot of sense.

Anyway, the deadline bug struck again mid-Korvac saga with issue #169 being a filler story by Marv Wolfman and Sal Buscema about Captain America, Black Panther, and Iron Man trying to stop a man from blowing up the world. It’s your typical rule-of-three deadly McGuffin plot that involves the team splitting up and going to different exotic locations. After Korvac there were a few more filler stories. #178 was story by Steve Gerber and Carmine Infantino featuring the Beast. It’s the typical Gerber pap full of angst and characters being depressed. Bizarre characters such as the two-face Manipulator and the tattered wearing Man With No Name, characters with bullshit nihilistic motivations that were so typical of Gerber of the era. While Howard the Duck and Man-Thing were great, Gerber is such a one-trick pony. Issues 179-180 was a two-parter by Tom DeFalco and Jim Mooney about a stolen idol, a birdman named Bloodhawk, a stone alien, and a lame-ass foe called the Stinger. It suffered from too much going on and not enough story.

Issue #181 saw the book get back to form with David Michelinie taking over writing duties. His first job: Whittling down the Avengers to a more manageable team. When Jim Shooter was doing the book he played it fast and loose with the Avengers, having their number balloon out of control during the Korvac saga. Using Gyrich as a foil, Michelinie had the team whittled down to a core team of seven members. Gyrich would have the Falcon forced onto the team for a racial quota. Even though Gyrich was placing limitations on the team, there were always excuses to have other characters hop on when the story needed it.

The most memorable story that closed out this decade would have to be issues #185-187 that saw Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch going back to Transia to learn more about their origins. This is because a lingering plot thread that was started during Korvac, introduced a man named Django Maximoff who would claim to be the twins father in issue #182. This plot would walk back the Whizzer/Miss America parentage and set the stage for the next character who would be misidentified as their parents: Magneto and his late wife Magda. This story also tied the twins even harder into the history of the High Evolutionary and the demon Chthon, which also created ties to Spider-Woman among other things, which creates some issues with continuity when the histories of he Maximoffs and Spider-Woman have been changed over the years with conflicting origin stories. As of this writing (May 2021), it’s still a tangled mess that Marvel has yet to untangle.

But this concludes my look back that 70s Avengers, a fairly strong decade for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. From here things reach their zenith in the 80s before a decade of crap that was the 90s, but as usual that’s a story for another time.