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Marvel Masterworks: Avengers Vol. 2
I go to the archives for this one. I had this one sitting on the shelf collecting dust and realized I never read nor reviewed it! This collects the second 10 issues of the Avengers, spanning from December 1964 to September 1965. This entire collection was written by Stan Lee (with co-plotter credits given to Jack Kirby (#’s 14-16) and the team of Larry Lieber and Paul Laiken (#14)). The pencils were handled by Dick Ayers (#16) and Don Heck (the rest), with Kirby getting breakdown credits for #’s 14-16.
Spoilers Ahead
-Avengers #11- The Avengers meet Spider-Man, not realizing he’s sent from Kang and is really just a robot luring them into a trap. Luckily, the real Spider-Man shows up to clear his name and stop Kang.
-Avengers #12- Giant-Man hears from his ants that something is amiss and he goes investigating when the rest of the Avengers laugh at him. Turns out he was right! He finds the Mole-Man is ready to destroy the world and he’s captured. The Avengers show up to save him and stop the Mole-Man (who picked up an ally in the Red Ghost towards the end of the issue).
-Avengers #13- The Avengers are tricked by Count Nefaria and imprisoned by the Maggia mob leader. He sullies their good name and then frees them. The Avengers are hounded by the military and they return to Nefaria and put an end to his evil scheme. The Wasp gets severely injured in the firefight.
-Avengers #14- The Avengers need one doctor to save the Wasp and they look for him. Turns out he’s actually an alien. Of course, the ONE doctor they need has been kidnapped by aliens. Thor and the rest of the Avengers lead the way and rescue the doctor and the Wasp is saved. The aliens kidnapped him to avert a war between two alien races but the Avengers really don’t give a crap about that.
-Avengers #15- Weird that in this edition of Masterworks (this is one of the first prints from the late 80’s) the cover image has some of the word balloons completely blank. So the Masters of Evil show up again and they use Cap’s desire to work with Fury as a trap. This leads to a battle between Cap and Zemo in some foreign country as the rest of the Avengers battle the rest of the Masters in New York. Baron Zemo wouldn’t make it out of this issue alive, though, getting crushed under a ton of rocks. It’s a shame we’ll never see Zemo again in comics.
-Avengers #16- The Avengers make very quick work of the Masters of Evil and afterwards the Avengers decide to take a sabbatical. Just as this happens, Hawkeye breaks in to try and prove himself. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch also show up at the Avengers’ door, too. With this turn of events, the three are inducted as Avengers after some training and the rest of the core members head out, leaving only Captain America to lead these three former villains. This was a big change for the Avengers and it started the trend very early in the title’s career that the Avengers line-up would be a fluid one.
-Avengers #17- The first mission for our new crew is to find the Hulk so they can have some muscle. The in-fighting starts immediately, with both Hawkeye and Quicksilver gunning for the leadership role that Cap holds. They fight a Minotaur, who was sent after them by the Mole Man, and the Hulk does get involved, albeit indirectly. The Avengers are able to tackle their first mission together.
-Avengers #18- We head from one silly foe to another. This time it is in the form of a Commie robot. The Avengers are able to defeat the robot, obviously.
-Avengers #’s 19-20- We start this two-parter with the Swordsman wanting to join the Avengers for his own nefarious purposes. He attacks them and is warded off. So he captures Captain America, who throws himself off a building at the end of 19. The Avengers save him but can’t defeat the Swordsman, who is brought away by Mandarin. This leads to the always cliché, “villain ends up finding a conscience and saves the heroes from yet another villain,” story.
-The Bottom Line- I know it may be heresy to say it, but I didn’t think that this collection was all that good. The stories were generally very basic (here’s a villain, fight the villain) with no real connecting subplots to string these issue’s together. The real downside is that the villains were lousy, too. The Mole Man is here twice? A Minotaur? Another thing is I didn’t care for the art either. Maybe it was just me but Heck’s art over Kirby’s layouts didn’t mesh well. I always think of the Silver Age and the beginning of Marvel as can’t miss stories, but sometimes you look at these stories through rose-colored glasses and when you really evaluate these tales they are sub-par, even compared to other Marvel books that were being released at the time. Recommendation to Avoid.
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