Customer Reviews

Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers (Volume 1)

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4 star:		(6)
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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!

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 ?

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.

The idea of the Avengers as Marvel's answer to DC's Justice League of America was pretty much a no-brainer, but it was the execution of the concept that proved problematic. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby came up with the original line-up they basically went out and collected a group of characters who only had "half" a comic book each, with Thor in "Journey Into Mystery," Iron Man in "Tales of Suspense," the Hulk and Ant-Man/Giant-Man in "Tales to Astonish." The problem was that if you have Thor AND the Hulk AND Iron Man, and then you go and turn Ant-Man into Giant-Man, you are talking about some serious brute strength. Who are these guys supposed to fight? Well, the answer was Loki, the Executioner, Namor, and the Lava Men. In other words, troublemakers form Asgard, the Sub-Mariner, and raw numbers of violent humanoids.

The first ten issues of "The Avengers" are collected in this Marvel Masterworks volume, with all of the stories scripted by Lee and Kirby doing the pencils for the first eight issues with my least favorite Marvel artist, Don Heck, then taking over. Beyond the historical importance of the first issue, the only true classic tale in this collection is #4, where the Sub-Mariner has a hand in reviving Captain America. In issue #16 Cap would be the only one to remain as the strength of Thor, Iron Man, and Giant-Man was replaced by the skills of Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch, which was only taking the pendulum too far the other way. It was not until the Avengers finally had a truly original member with the Vision that it really found its legs as a comic book. This was never a favorite of mine during the Sixties and seeing this issues again only reminds me why. Still, for Captain America fans there are a couple of reprinted issues worth having in color.

This volume is a new reprinting of the first ten issues of The Avengers. Reexperience the formation of the group, the reintroduction of Captain America and the introduction of Wonder Man, early chapters in the Kang/Immortus saga, and the first attack of The Masters of Evil. This isn't high art here - it's really a collection of slugfests - but if the nostalgia factor runs high for you this will probably be an essential collection. (One of the most amusing things to me was an editor's note in issue #4, suggesting that the reader save the issue because it may become a collector's item!)

This Marvel Masterworks volume contains the first 10 issues of The Avengers, and from the start it seems Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were determined to throw everything into the series but the kitchen sink. The membership began changing in the second issue, a tradition that has continued until today. Each adventure veers wildly from scene to scene, with the characters always racing off somewhere and the fights being over-the-top in the Kirby style. Ant-Man becomes Giant-Man, Iron Man changes his suit, the Hulk leaves and then is chased down by the other Avengers, causing the Hulk to ream up with the Sub-Mariner. And that's only the first three issues! In issue 4, they bring back Captain America, a character Jack co-created back in the 1940s. One gets the sense when reading this books that Stan and Jack were having a lot of fun, and that joy is evident throughout every issue.
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This is a great collection for anybody who loves old comics!

Once again amazon has mixed up reviews. we get several bad reviews of the black and white essential editions which is a paperback! This is a in color hardcover and it's a well made book. And with the crammed essentials you get what you paid for , no color , and it's not as well done as a masterwork. Even the tpb is alot better than the essential books. I disagree as well with the complaints about the characters or stories these are wonderful stories! Written by stan lee and drawn by King Kirby himself. Marvel was unleashing this book on the world and of course it's not going to be as sophisticated as a book from the 80's onward! So to complain about old movies or comics is a waste of time. And in my book this stuff is better than the ulitmates in which giant man is a wife beater and you don't have many great villians. I am glad they put this stuff out in color reprint. It's what you'd wish d.c. would do again instead of their now awful scanning old comic books! they started that last year and it's horrible. these are remastered! And they did a great job with the volume. It's well worth owning.

Avengers Vol 1 Masterworks (Avengers#1-10) is a must have book! this amazing Hardcover features the orginal avengers team! Thor,Ant-man, the Hulk, and Ironman. later The Avengers get a new leader, Captain America! and then Namor, the Submariner is introduced! this book also has Loki the God of Evil, Enhantress, Kang the Conqueror, the Lava Men, and Wonderman! This Hardcover reprints Avengers 1-10 by Marvel comics originally published in 1963! Marvel comic greats,Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, were classic creators of this wonderful Marvel Comic book featuring Earth's Mightest Heroes, The Avengers! I Love this book! It is so good I am giving it five stars! Highest possible Recommendation! Make Mine Marvel!

This reprints the Marvel Comics title, Avengers, issues 1-10. This collection of 1960's nostalgia reprints the first Silver Age team comic book that consists of many of the super-heroes that have or had comic books of their own. The Hulk, Thor, Ironman, Ant-man, and the Wasp team-up to defeat the Norse god of mischief, Loki, in the first issue. Other highlights include Captain America joining the Avengers and the first death of Wonder Man.

What a beautiful package. I must say, this reprinting of Avengers 1-10 is absolutely gorgeous. I was hesitant to buy masterworks hardcovers, because I had heard terms like "Garrish Colors" and "Poor Reproduction", and let me say, nothing could be farther from the truth. This a beautiful representation of classic Marvel. I originally had a softcover version reprinting 1-5 and the reproduction job on these are far, far superior. If you are a fan of vintage marvel as I am, you will be more than pleased with your purchase of this hardcover, if however you live in your mothers basement with a 1 week beard reeking of B.O. and you love nitpicking, then don't buy this!