Marvel Masterworks : Avengers (Vol 1) [Hardcover]

Stan Lee (Author), Jack Kirby (Illustrator)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Marvel Enterprises (June 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871354799
• ISBN-13: 978-0871354792
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #294,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stan Lee is a man who needs no introduction. Nevertheless: Having begun his career with wartime Timely Comics and staying the course throughout the Atlas era, Stan the Man made comic-book history with Fantastic Four #1, harbinger of a bold new perspective in story writing that endures to this day. With some of the industry's greatest artists, he introduced hero after hero in Incredible Hulk, Amazing Spider-Man, X-Men and more -- forming a shared universe for rival publishers to measure themselves against. After an almost literal lifetime of writing and editing, Lee entered new entertainment fields and earned Marvel one opportunity after another. He remains one of Marvel's best-known public representatives.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thor! Ant Man! Hulk! Iron Man!, February 5, 2003

By 

Psychedelic Cowboy "psychedelic_cowboy" (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marvel Masterworks: Avengers, Vol. 1 (Hardcover)

Thor! Ant Man! Hulk! Iron Man! Earth's Mightiest Super-Heroes! The cover to AVENGERS #1 screams. Marvel comics was promising a teaming up of four of its biggest heroes (leaving out Spider-Man and Dr Strange who worked best as loners and the FF who were already a team) and putting them all in one book to create the ultimate comicbook.

Did it work?

You bet!

Spider-Man and Hulk were amazing and incredible characters. The Fantastic Four was the world's greatest comicbook. But the Marvel Universe began with the Mighty Avengers. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby took some of their new characters and put them together in one book. This is where you could really feel that these stories all happened in the same world and the characters were all tied together somehow.

There are two prominent characters not mentioned, the Wasp and Rick Jones. The Wasp is the hopeful girlfriend of Henry Pym (who is both Ant Man and Giant Man). She is a relentless flirt and lone cheery voice in the ranks of the solemn Avengers. She didn't get much respect at first, but she slowly evolved into one of the most valuable members of the team. Rick Jones is the teen-age side-kick of Hulk and the leader of a teen group of short-wave radio enthusiasts (this was the sixties) the Teen Brigade.

The fourth issue is a milestone in and of itself because it reintroduces one of the greatest golden age heroes back to comics-- Captain America, whom Kirby had created in the `40's with Joe Simon. Captain America lent an aura of legend to the group and would quickly become the heart and soul of the team. The fact that Iron Man and Thor and Giant Man were ultra strong and had an variety of powers at their disposal made them truly grand, but the fact that Cap with nothing but a shield and war-honed skills could always seem to outdo them made him seem even more wondrous than all the gods and monsters that filled the book.

And they did indeed fill the book. In these ten issues we are transported beneath the sea to the realm of the Sub Mariner the Prince of Atlantis. We are taken under the Earth to meet the Lava Men, flown up to Asgard, home of the Norse gods-- and no less than three of them become enemies of the Avengers! We meet an alien from Limbo who can steal the body of anyone he chooses. We are introduced to an alien who can turn the Avengers to stone. Not one but two separate time lords assault the team. An old NAZI enemy of Cap's comes out of the past-- and an almost non-stop line-up of classic villains come after the team, one at a time, and then banded together.

In addition to Captain America, there is also the first appearance of Wonderman (a character that would have to wait over ten years to be seen again). There are new villains like Baron Zemo, the Space Phantom, and Immortus who calls up from across time the legendary figures, Paul Bunyan, Attila The Hun, Goliath, Merlin and Hercules to take on the Mighty Assemblers only to be bested of course! But Stan and Jack mostly pulled villains that had already been used in their comics like Loki, The Enchantress, The Executioner, Kang The Conqueror, The Lava Men, Sub Mariner, Black Knight, The Melter, Radioactive Man and in a reversal one of their own members, the Hulk, becomes one of their greatest threats! These previously used villains added weight to the concept that the Avengers were independent heroes with a history of foes who would come from every corner of the Marvel Universe to match up against Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Here is the first, and only appearance of Iron Man's image projector that sends his transparent image all over New York. Captain America gets "sub-miniature transistors" in his shield that enables him to control it magnetically (something not used too often). Thor's hammer is revealed to control "cosmic magnetic waves"-- a trick I don't believe he ever used again. Evil Baron Zemo wields a "vibra gun" and the time traveling tyrant Kang lounges in a "transparent anti-gravity seat!"

As is true of many of the classic Lee/Kirby comics more heroes, more vile villains and more fantastic places and concepts are introduced in ten issues than you would expect to find in years worth of comics!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Original Avengers . . . In Color!!!, July 9, 2006

By 

K. Nelles (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Marvel Masterworks: Avengers, Vol. 1 (Hardcover)

Yes, for anyone who has been looking between Essentials and Marvel Masterworks, and can't see why the Masterworks series is so much shorter and more expensive, that is the reason: it's in color and hardbacked, versus the Essentials, which are black and white and paperbacked. If you're into plot and characters' speeches, you probably should steer more toward the Essentials series. If you like admiring the artwork and action packed battles of the early Marvel universe, and don't mind forking over a little extra dough for it, Marvel Masterworks are probably for you. Action sequences are generally harder to see and interpret in black and white because everything sorta gets mixed together.

Anyway, these early Avengers issues have their pros and cons. Most of the time, a comic book series gets weirder and weirder as time goes on, and this is certainly the case with the Avengers. So, if you are a fan of good ole' superhero comics, where the original members are still together, each issue has a new villian, and the good guys always win, then these early issues are ideal. True, the narration of the villians and the avengers is somewhat cheesy at this point in time, but you can choose to see it as classic or outdated depending on how you like your superheroes.

The villians faced in these 10 issues are as follows:
1. Loki, brother of Thor
2. The Space Phantom
3. Namor The Sub-Mariner and The Hulk
4. Sub-Mariner and his Elite Guard
5. The Lava-Men and The Hulk
6. Zemo, The Melter, Radioactive Man, The (original) Black Knight
7. Zemo, The Executioner, The Enchantress
8. Kang The Conqueror
9. Zemo, The Executioner, The Enchantress, Wonder Man
10. Immortus, Zemo, The Executioner, The Enchantress

Issue #3 is, in my opinion, one of the Avengers' best ever. Hulk and Namor team up to take on the Avengers in one of the longest regular Avengers issues to date: 25 pages of action. This is also the first issue where Iron Man ditches the old suit that made him look like some cheesy 50's sci-fi robot, and gets in his traditional red and gold. The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and The X-Men all make brief cameos in this issue as well.

Other odds and ends:
-The artwork is not so sophisticated at this point in time, and backgrounds are even left out entirely sometimes.
-Rick Jones and the Teen Brigade can begin to annoy you.
-Iron Man's suit gets progressively better looking.
-Wasp doesn't seem to have the ability to make a non-flirtatious comment.
-Iron Man has a brief soliliquy about his secret identity/heart problem virtually every issue.
-The original Avengers' costumes are entirely composed of Red, White, Blue, and Yellow.
-Zemo's massive ego, incessant whining, and cowl may remind you of . . . Cobra Commander ?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Avengers assemble for the first time in Marvel history, August 21, 2005

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Volume 1 of "Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers" represents what I would consider the weakest stories in the history of Marvel's answer to DC's Justice League of America. Collected in this volume are full-color reprints of the first ten issues of "The Avengers," which covers 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 first generation of Marvel superheroes who were not the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man.

The initial problem with these stories is simply coming up with somebody for the Avengers to fight who could actually provide a challenge to the lineup. Remember that Marvel did not have the decades long accumulation of supervillains that DC could throw at the JLA. The first three issues offer Loki, the Space Phantom, and Namor the Sub-Mariner as the opponents. After finding and thawing out Captain America in issue #4, the Avengers start going up against multiple enemies in each issue, such a whole bunch of Lava Men (#5), which were followed by Baron Zemo and his Masters of Evil (#6), with the Enchantress and Executioner joining the fun (#7). But even then, it is really hard to pretend that these are even contests when you have Thor and Iron Man running around (either one of them should be able to defeat most of these opponents without help). Completing this first volume you have the first appearance of Kang the Conqueror (#8), Baron Zemo's creation Wonder Man (#9), and Immortus (#10). So there was a definite bent towards gods (from Asgard anyway) and god-like mortals for the Avengers to fight.

It was not until the end of issue #16, which you get to in Volume 2 of the Marvel Masterworks collection, when all of the original members leave and Captain America becomes the leader of a new quartet made up of Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch that you have a shift from strength to skill in the group that helped with the storytelling. Stan Lee does the scripting with Jack Kirby doing the pencils for the first eight issues of "The Avengers," and then Don Heck takes over, which I never considered a good thing because he was my least favorite Marvel artist (although to be fair when Wally Wood and John Romita, Sr. did the inking in issues #20-24 they were the best Heck drawn comics ever. There is an improvement in the issues of "The Avengers" over the years, but for me you do not get to the real Avengers until the Vision comes along. Still, everything starts here as the Avengers assemble for the first time.