Alright, we’ve hit the sixth day of
the Avengers 2 Theme Week. Having covered all of the new players, and the movie
itself, I felt that it was a good idea to jump back and see where it all
started. To do that we’ll be going all the way back, to the 1960s. The Avengers #1, for me, was lifted from the “Essential Avengers” Volume 1. It’s a black
and white reprint of the original comic, along with the two dozen issues that
followed the first release. Without further ado, Let’s get to it.
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| Twelve cents for a comic. Man I wish they could have kept those prices. |
The Avengers starts out with Loki.
No, not the cool Tom Hiddleston version of the character. This guy’s more like…Starscream
from the Transformers. He’s always shouting about how awesome he is, right
before he gets his butt thoroughly kicked by big brother Thor. The most recent
butt kicking landed him on the “Isle of Silence” a lonely Asgardian prison
dimension. He’s stuck there, sort of. He can’t physically leave because of Odin’s
enchantments but he could project his consciousness out into the cosmos. He
sees Thor at his day job (yes at one point Thor had a day job) in his secret
identity (yes at one point Thor had a secret identity) of Dr. Donald Blake.
Loki gets super angry and starts searching the globe for something to take down
his brother. He spots the Incredible Hulk out in the desert. He uses his
illusion magic to trick Hulk into tackling a railroad bridge, just as a train
was rounding the bend. Hulk, realizing his mistake, gets under the bridge and
supports it as the train passes. (Yes, at this point in comic history, Hulk is
actually a thinking, reasoning being) But nobody but Loki noticed the saving part
of that little misadventure.
Police and Army guys start
scrambling to try and find the Hulk, while Hulk’s old buddy Rick Jones and his
friends try to get help from…other sources. They use a radio and try and get in
touch with the one hero team that they think is capable of stopping the Hulk,
the Fantastic Four. Unfortunately for them, or fortunately depending on who you
ask, Loki predicted this and diverted the distress signal to Thor. Thor receives
the call, transforms and flies off. Unbeknownst to Loki, however, super
scientists Tony Stark (Iron Man) and the Hank Pym (Ant-Man) also pick up on the
signal as well. Thor, Iron Man, Ant Man and Wasp converge at Rick’s house. Loki
is understandably upset by this. He had planned for Thor verses the Hulk, not a
super team verses the Hulk. So he switches to plan B. He creates another
illusion of the Hulk and draws Thor’s attention. Thor throws his hammer at the illusion,
realizes Loki’s connected to this business and flies back to Asgard to get some
answers.
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| From a team where the lone female doesn't get her name in the credits, to an all Woman Avengers. Yeah, I'd say we've made some steps forward. |
Meanwhile, Iron Man Ant-Man and
Wasp track the Hulk down to a Circus. He was working there as a clown/strong
man. They try to capture that Hulk, but the big lug keeps breaking out of
whatever they try to ensnare him in. They chase him pretty much around the
entire tristate area. In Asgard, Thor gets permission from papa Odin to see his
brother on the Isle. He travels there and is almost immediately attacked by a
Troll. Loki explains that the Troll’s grip is nearly unbreakable, and that his plan
was to use the Troll’s superstrength to trap his brother and drag him down into
the depths where he’ll be the Trolls’ slave forever. This rather stupid plan
was foiled by Thor, who uses Mjolnir’s other function to shoot bolts of
Lightning. The Troll bails. The brothers fight some more, Loki using illusions
to keep the upper hand. Thor ends it by using the magnetic properties of his
hammer to snatch his brother. Beaten by a Magnet, that’s a low point for Loki.
Back on Earth, the heroic trio had
cornered Hulk in a car factory. Remember when America had a lot of those? They finally
get the Hulk pinned down, just as Thor returns with Loki. They have their, ‘Whoops
what a big misunderstand’ moment just as Loki uses his magic to make himself
radioactive. I guess his plan was to force Hulk and Iron Man out of the room so
he and Thor could keep fighting, which again, kind of a dumb plan since Thor is
within Hammer hitting distance from his littler bro and immune to radiation. But, before Thor could put that hammer down on
Loki’s head, Ant-Man, Wasp, and a legion of ants fly in. They push Loki through
a trap door and into a lead lined tank. Why he can’t escape from this I’ll
never know. After that, on the suggestion of Ant-Man and Wasp, the heroes
decide to start their own super team to handle situations that one hero alone
couldn’t solve. Thus the Avengers were born.
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| When your master plan involves having a monster hug your bro to death, you aren't thinking hard enough. |
Later issues would include such
villains as the Space Phantom, that sow discord among the Avengers and make
Hulk decide to bail on the team concept, Namor the Sub-Mariner, planning on
destroying the surface world, Baron Zemo and the first incarnation of the
Masters of Evil (Anti-Avengers), and baddies like the time-traveling Kang the
Conqueror and even occasionally Doctor Doom. They also thaw out Captain
America, so yeah, the Avengers is kind of a big deal.
Why is this issue essential? Duh,
it started it all. The TV shows, the movies, modern comic team ups, can all
trace their roots back to this story. Much like how the Flash saved comic
superheroes by recreating interest in the genre, and how Fantastic Four was the
first story of comic titan Marvel, the Avengers is the one that brought these
radically different heroes together to make the radically unorthodox team of
heroes work. Which has kind of always been Marvels business model, really. To
think, we owe the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Loki. To Loki throwing a hissy fit
and accidentally creating a team of the world’s Mightiest heroes. The best laid
plans, am I right?
Fair warning to anyone that picks
up the Essential Avengers or look up Avengers #1, it is very sixties in terms
of writing. Characters explaining their plans and motivations while they’re doing
enacting said plan, characters poorly narrating their own fights, the hammiest
of hammy dialogue, Wasp being a very unashamed flirt with little to no other
personality, and so on. Also, Iron Man is flying around in his Mark One armor.
You know, that big tin can he threw together after being a prisoner for months?
So yeah, there’s that to. Overall, it’s a decent story and one that I think any
fan of Marvel should check out at some point. Next time, Update on Ultron.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/84/Avengers-1.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Force
http://comicsbulletin.com/main/sites/default/files/mondo/images/0911/Avengers001trollhorror%20copy.jpg
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