Essential Avengers (Essential Avengers)

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Summary: The Avengers assembled and do their first reassembling
Review: Volume 1 of "The Essential Avengers" represents the weakest stories in the history of Marvel's answer to DC's Justice League of America. Collected in this volume are the first twenty-four issues of "The Avengers," which overs up the first two lineups to answer the call, "Avengers Assemble!" These two lineups represent the strongest and weakest Avengers lineups. Originally we have Thor, the Hulk, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and the Wasp, with the Hulk being replaced by Captain America and Ant-Man deciding being Giant-Man is more interesting (In other words, you basically have all of the Marvel superheroes who were not Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four). The initial problem is coming up with somebody to fight that could actually provide some sort of challenge to that particular group. The three issues offer Loki, the Space Phantom, and Namor the Sub-Mariner. After finding and thawing out Captain America in issue #4, the Avengers go for multiple enemies such as the Lava Men and Baron Zemo and his Masters of Evil. But even then, it is really hard to pretend that these are even contests.

After a year Stan Lee retooled the Avengers. At the end of issue #16 all of the original members leave and Captain America becomes the leader of the new quartet made up of Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. The radical change is twofold, because not only do the Avengers trade an over abundance of strength for skill (the original group had four membes stronger than the new group combined), but except for Captain America, none of the new Avengers have their own comic books (or time-share comic books in the case of Captain American and "Tales of Suspense"). With the new lineup emphasizing skill the villain can be super-strong (e.g., the Minotaur) or super-skilled (the Swordsman) and it works a lot better.

Jack Kirby does the pencils on the first eight issues of "The Avengers," and then Don Heck takes over (except for #16, done by Dick Ayers). Since I was rather unimpressed by the new lineup and the contest between Pietro and Hawkeye to see who could be the bigger malcontent, having Heck, my least favorite Marvel artist, draw "The Avengers," made it my least favorite Marvel title during this period. To be fair, the three issues inked by Wally Wood are the best Heck drawn comics I have seen, and the one inked by John Romita, Sr. is pretty good as well. There is only one really classic story in these first two-dozen issues, #4 "Captain America Joins...the Avengers," but #23 "Once an Avenger," is the first appearance of Kang, who tends to become important now and then down the road.

These stories are so weak in comparison to what comes afterwards that I picked up volumes 2 and 3 of the "Essential Avengers" before I picked up this first one. But you know how a hole like that in my collection of black & white comic book reprints is going to drive me crazy. Volume 4 is out and it is the first of the "Essential Avengers" volumes to be supersized (more issues and more Avenger fun). But all things considered "The Avengers" just never clicked the way "The Fantastic Four" and "The X-Men" did when it came to Marvel supergroups.