Yep, we're hopping into the Wayback Machine for Marvel 1971 Week!! An in depth look at what was going on in Marvel 40 years ago!! And we start with...the Avengers!!Join us as the Avengers, just having returned from an adventure with the Squadron Supreme in another dimension...sit around and wait for lunch!!
And our creators??
Giacoia drawing and Buscema inking? That's a bit of a reversal...but that's the way the credits list them, and GCD concurs, so who am I to say?Anyway, the way you can tell that this is a 1971 version of the Avengers, and not 2011, is that the Avengers just sit around talking all issue. Oh, wait...
Yes, because Iron Man has never been one to brood about his problems...
And, as always, Clint Barton is a jerk, and Thor is pompous...hey, are we sure this isn't 2011??Anyway, this is all just a set-up for:
Oh, yes, we're going to get an issue-long flashback. Really!! Can somebody prove to me that Bendis wasn't involved???While we had had the bare bones of T'Challa's origin before, Roy Thomas fleshes things out here with quite a bit of detail. But, this is Roy, so he's respectful of the Lee/Kirby/Sinnott classic from Fantastic Four #53 (1966)...which means he and Giacoia and Buscema give us plenty of direct homages to that story. Compare and contrast---FF #53:
And Avengers #87:
FF #53:
And Avengers #87
FF#53:
And Avengers #87:
OK, enough of that. Roy quickly shifts to new information, such as suggesting that someone else besides Art Buchwald should have been suing Paramount over Coming To America:
Upon returning home, T'Challa is taken to the secret sacred Panther Headquarters (again, pure Kirby):
He's given the costume there, but there's one more teensy detail...
So, T'Challa has to go find the (story idea: when do we find out that Dr. Erskine found some of this herb and used it in the Super Soldier Serum?? Marvel, you can use this idea if you give me 5 bucks and some tacos...)
But after eating the herb, T'Challa makes a startling discovery:
A.I.M.!!! Hot damn!!By the way, we shouldn't be too harsh, because Roy was producing a prodigious amount of material. But sometimes, stuff ended up on paper that must have made sense in his head, but not in the real world. Example:
Ummmm....errr...I completely don't follow this non sequitur. "Our name may be AIM, but we wish we had been assigned to Europe, not Africa"?!?!?!?! Someday, someone will explain it to me...Well, after an obligatory action scene:
...the Panther is captured. But he does find out who the traitor who has been helping AIM pilfer Wakanda is:
Why?
Fact...it doesn't pay to have friends. Fortunately, though, B'Tumba goes through his Darth Vader At Endor moment:
Of course, being super evil, AIM expected this betrayal:
And while the Black Panther jumps on someone's head so hard it dissolves into speed lines:
...poor B'Tumba kicks the bucket:
And thus concludes our full-issue flashback...hey, the issue did consist of literally nothing but people sitting around talking!!But why did this story come up now?
Oh, Clint, you doofus!!
Well, not very hard, actually, as T'Challa left with so much as an on-panel "goodbye." Next issue, he was just gone!As if there was any question that, when push came to shove, T'Challa would abandon Wakanda to battle crime in inner city New York and leave his heritage. Why, the very idea...
Never mind...ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:
If you weren't fond of issues where the heroes did nothing but sit around and talk the entire time...
...then this action fest was more your style!! Stan! John Buscema! Thor versus a possessed Odin! Infinity devouring the cosmos!! Balder and Sif versus trolls!! Loki and Karnilla freeing an enchanted Warriors Three!!! The Odinsword!!!! The end of everything!!! AIEEE!!!!!!!!!And, most importantly, 26 years later Onslaught would completely rip off this storyline, and not for the better.
Ah, but unlike a Bendis issue, this was a self contained issue, with a point to make (to give the Panther a reason to leave), and most importantly actually involved an Avenger, rather than a character who has nothing to do with the Avengers at all, but is shoehorned in anyway during some mega-crossover.
ReplyDeleteWhile the Thomas era may not be my favourite Avengers period, when I was a kid reading these reprints in the UK, I loved the heck out of these stories; they were always action packed epics that took one or two issues to tell, or they were more personal stories, like this issue, where you learned the back stories of the characters. I'm pretty certain if it wasn't for Roy Thomas and his peers of the time, I wouldn't be reading comics now.
Obviously Bendis is very popular now, but I just don't get his Avengers - not only the plots, which I find a confusing muddle with bad continuity, but the characters involved as well. I still don't get Wolverine being included, let alone Spider-Man (his marriage was never a bigger problem to him than inclusion in the Avengers)
Elementary, dear Nicholas -- Wolverine and Spiderman sell. ;)
ReplyDelete"(story idea: when do we find out that Dr. Erskine found some of this herb and used it in the Super Soldier Serum?? Marvel, you can use this idea if you give me 5 bucks and some tacos...)"
ReplyDeleteThe timing of this, of course, converged with Howard Stark's first contact with Vibranium. The adventures the two of them had getting out together led to Stark helping Erskine defect to the USA, and to his being taken seriously by the US government. It was also a result of their actions, of course (again), that T'chaka later gifted the sample of vibranium used to forge Captain America's shield.
mmMMMmm... tacos