I remember being disappointed at
the big shake-up in the Avengers line-up in issue 16 (May 1965). How ironic it
was, as the comic books used to say, to learn from Stan Lee, decades later,
that it was only what readers like me had asked for.
“(U)sually when those things happen it’s because you want to
give the book a shot in the arm as far as sales go,” Stan told David Anthony Kraft’s Comics Interview
in 1990. “I may have figured, “Maybe it’s getting a little dull. It’s the same
thing all the time. Maybe I’ll see if I can try to stimulate more interest by
getting new characters.
“And it may also have been …
because I was finding it too difficult to seem to be realistic. For example, in
his own book, Thor might have been trapped in Asgard somewhere, and yet in the
Avengers book, he’s here attending a meeting.
“I seem to remember, I did get
mail from a lot of readers about that point, and I felt, ‘Maybe it’s destroying
the pseudo-realism of the stories, where a character is dying in one story and
in the other story, he’s chairman of the Avengers meeting.’ I think that had a
lot to do with it, as a matter of fact.”
Stan paid serious attention to
readers’ wishes, as best he could discern them — one of the secrets of Marvel’s
early success. But it was clear to me from the first issue that the Avengers,
rather than the Fantastic Four, had been intended as Marvel’s direct answer to the Justice League — a
team composed of preexisting superheroes who had their own features. So I was
disappointed to see that conception change with the 16th issue. Disney
Marvel wisely replicated that pattern with the movies, establishing all the
separate franchises before combining them into the spectacularly successful
Avengers movie series.
But had I paid more attention, I
would have seen the advantages to the new line-up of Captain America, Hawkeye,
Quicksilver and his sister, the Scarlet Witch. The team was now well balanced
in terms of both powers and drama, with dramatic conflicts built right into the
mix.
First, the three new members were
former criminals, inherently hard to trust (Hawkeye had fought Iron Man, and
the siblings had been Magneto’s pawns against the X-Men).
Quicksilver’s temper was as fast
as his speed. And Hawkeye both resented and admired Captain America, and was as
eager to replace him as a jealous younger brother might be. Over the years, Clint
Barton would evolve, naturally and realistically, into a great friend and
admirer of Cap. Cap himself, noble as he was, was on the verge of chucking the
whole business and going to work fighting Hydra for Nick Fury.
The lack of the raw power of a
Thor, a Hulk or an Iron Man made for potentially more suspenseful fights that
necessarily relied on Cap’s experience in strategy. Hawkeye brought his supreme
skill and versatile trick arrows to the table, and Quicksilver brought his
genuinely impressive super speed.
Odd that the lineup change made
the Avengers more closely resemble the JLA, in a way, now with their own “Green
Arrow” and “Flash.”
The Scarlet Witch was the weak
sister of the bunch, literally, with powers that were irritatingly unpredictable
and minor. Early Marvel had a regrettable tendency to saddle women with
relatively ineffectual abilities — invisibility, shrinking, mild telekinesis
and “sort of maybe making something happen” (the Scarlet Witch’s power). They
were super-second-class citizens. All that smashing-through-walls stuff was to
be left to the men.
A review of those early issues also
shows how, with the spotlight off the more powerful members, the title came to
function as a Captain America comic in many ways. Some older fans particularly
wanted to see at that time (Stan Lee included, presumably).
And — now without a feature of
their and therefore without a continuity conflict — Giant-Man and the Wasp would
soon return, revamped and streamlined, to provide fresh interest in the ever-shifting
and expanding line-up.
That, too, became an angle that
gave the Avengers their own distinct identity, as the super-hero team without a
fixed membership. They weren’t a family like the FF or a besieged minority like
the X-Men. They were a team of crime-fighting champions united solely by their
interest in protecting the planet.
All that, and the glorious art of
Wally Wood for a time. Wood was as good at portraying pure stalwart power as
Jack Kirby. His superheroes always looked as if they were made of some sort of fluid
granite.
I didn’t know what I was missing.
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