Essential Avengers, Vol. 2 (Marvel Essentials) [Paperback]

Stan Lee (Author)

Book Description

Grade Level: P and up

Meet Earth's mightiest heroes: Captain America, super-soldier and living legend; Hercules, Prince of Power; The mutant speedster, Quicksilver; his sister, the enchanging Scarlet Witch; Hawkeye, the avenging archer; and Goliath, the team's towering titan. Together they are the Mighty Avengers--forever assembled to protect the world from evil!

COLLECTING:

Avengers #25-46, Avengers Annual #1

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Marvel; 1st edition (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078510741X
• ISBN-13: 978-0785107415
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1.5 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #444,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Avengers---Dysfunctional!, August 1, 2000

By 

Jeffrey A. Veyera "Jeff Veyera" (Matthews, NC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Essential Avengers, Vol. 2 (Marvel Essentials) (Paperback)

Reprinting Avengers 25-46 and King Size Special #1, "Essential Avengers vol. 2" is something of a mixed bag. Stan Lee hands over the reins to Roy Thomas at approximately the midway point in the collection, which is a slight improvement as Thomas injects some fresh blood into a project which clearly held Lee's interest only flaggingly at the end. Don Heck's art looks uniformly execrable throughout, so John Buscema coming on board for the last third or so is a very welcome change indeed.

The scripts themselves are uneven. While the initial bickering amongst the team is fairly interesting (if only to hear Captain America, a product of the 40s, exchanging barbs with Hawkeye in perfect 60s tough-guy patois), the team soon begins to emit affirmations of hero-worship to each other like a couple of natural-born bootlickers at a Promise Keepers rally ("You're the man!" "No, you're the man!" <hug>)

The initial promise of Goliath's being trapped at the freakish height of 10 feet tall is squandered within a few issues, Hercules joins the team in an apparent attempt to bring Stan Lee's lofty dialogue back, the Wasp is her usual irrelevant self, and Captain America, the born leader, fails miserably to control the team and needs Goliath to straighten it out.

The issues do build some momentum, and classic battles with the Super-Adaptoid and the Whizzer rekindle the old magic of the Avengers.

Even with all the aforementioned flaws, this collection of the Avengers still beats most of the stuff on the newsstand and in the comics shops today.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wandering haphazardly, June 10, 2001

By 

"grrreg" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Essential Avengers, Vol. 2 (Marvel Essentials) (Paperback)

The second volume reprinting this comic series is a bit of a mixed bag - the stories are of a fairly variable quality, some great, some quite poor, and the overall impression is of something moving along with no real plan.

I guess what we have here is fundamental proof that Stan Lee, at the height of his powers, had his limits - while turning out great stories in Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, this title suffered. Stan even appeared to realise that as, part of the way through this volume, a new writer was brought in: Roy Thomas.

Roy has shown himself to be a great writer of this form, but his first few stories don't really show him at his best. I believe that this was amongst his first published work.

On the plus side, however, the characterisation improves vastly, with some of the cast becoming easily distinguishable by their dialogue alone, a vast improvement from the period where all the characters spoke the same.

Not a showcase of the greatest Avengers issues, but of a period of transition. Things were better before this, and also improve after.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Avengers keep assembling but not much is happening, December 1, 2003

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Essential Avengers, Vol. 2 (Marvel Essentials) (Paperback)

Volume 2 of "The Essential Avengers" marks the point where the pendulum started to center for the series and Roy Thomas and John Buscema took over from Stan Lee and Don Heck. The Avengers started out as a group of super strong super heroes including the Mighty Thor, the Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man. This proved to be rather problematic with coming up with super villains who could plausibly give this group a stand up fight. So then the group went in the completely opposite direction and came up with a skill quartet of Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. That lasted until issue #28 when Giant Man came back (now called Goliath), bringing along the Wasp. This not only gave the new Avengers some muscle, but with Henry Pym back in the fold the group had its requisite scientist for those times when brains can help brawn and the ability to throw a shield, shoot an arrow, run really fast, or cast hexes. Then for brawn without the brains, Hercules joins the group.

Collected in Volume 2 are "The Avengers" #25-46 and Annual #1, which brings together the "original" Avengers with the Avengers of "today," against the Mandarin, Power Man, the Living Laser, the Swordsman, the Enchantress, and the Executioner. Thomas took over as writer with issue #35 and Buscema takes over as the primary artist with issue #41. The artistic improvement is obvious, especially for someone such as myself who was never enamored of Don Heck's artwork, but the more significant changes are coming from the writing. It was Thomas who brought Hercules into the mix, which upped the ante on the bickering in the group. In other words, with Hawkeye and Pietro vying for the role of the biggest malcontent in the group, always having to be slapped back into place by Cap, Hercules provides a joyful sense of having no regard for teamwork. Consquently, even more so than the Fantastic Four, the Avengers are the group that has to stop fighting itself to be able to fight the super villains.

However, we are still a year or two away from getting to some of the classic issues of "The Avengers." The group starts off fighting Dr. Doom, weathers an attack by the army of Attuma, and Hawkeye falls for the Black Widow. Then there is another giant conspiracy with the Serpents, the attack of the Ultroids, and a visit from the Sub-Mariner. Of the three volumes of "The Essential Avengers" out to date, this is the weakest of the trio, without a really memorable story in the bunch. Again, part of the problem is that we are dealing with characters who were considered strong enough to only carry half a comic (e.g., Captain America with "Tales of Suspense"), if even that (e.g., Giant Man as the former Ant Man), and a couple of ex-members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (Wanda and Pietro). It was really not until the Avengers created their own characters (i.e., the Vision) that it really made it up to the next level in the Marvel Universe.