AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!!!!!

This first post will be covering issues one through five, and is no way meant to be comprehensive. I encourage everyone to read these great old comics for themselves and get your own takeaways. Please feel free to post with any comments, corrections, respectful disagreements, and marriage proposals (un-requited as I’m already hitched).
The first thing of note when delving into these old adventures, especially when accustomed to reading modern comics, is the level of exposition, amount of dialog, and relative brevity of story lines. The exposition is nearly constant throughout this first series of comics we’ll be looking at. Characters are almost constantly announcing what it is they are doing and how their power works. When Captain America comes up with a plan the reader is explicitly told what is happening as the action takes place. The characters exposition pulls double duty as a running narrative to the action. Thought bubbles are also used liberally in service to exposition. In the same vein as the exposition, our characters talk to each other constantly, reinforcing team dynamics. It is likely that Stan used these tools as a way of cementing in the readers head who these characters are what their powers are and how they relate to each other. The comic book as an individual story is a bit jarring for the first bit of the series as well. We have grown used to multi-issue crossover events they take months, years, or in some cases even decades to reach payoff. These first few issues have few multi-issues stories at all. In the first 15 issues we see basically none, with the masters of evil being a loose connective tissue between each story. Kids picking up the first two years of the book could expect a full story start to finish and for the most part able to understand what is going on very quickly.
Issue one is the story of Loki attempting to use the Hulk to destroy Thor. We get a basic introduction to the principles and our founding Avengers: Hank Pym, Janet Van Dyne, Donald Blake, Tony Stark and the Hulk (not really much mention of Bruce Banner). Loki uses his magic to frame The Hulk for trying to destroy a train. The Avengers assemble for the first time to take down The Hulk, they eventually find out it isn’t him and take down Loki. This issue also introduces another team, the Teen Brigade, who are led by the Hulk’s friend Rick Jones. The Teen Brigade is a group of Ham Radio Operators who turn to Support the Avengers. This issue also contains the phrase “Unbreakable Thong,” which I reproduce here intentionally out of context.
Issue two is another one-off story, this time our team takes on the Space Phantom. The villain’s power is to “replace” a member of the avengers acquiring their appearance and powers. Confusion ensues as the avengers attack each other a bit unsure of who is who. The most noteworthy things about this issue are internal conflict and Hulk leaving. The primary distinguishing factor between The Avengers and their Justice League peers was almost constant internal conflict. Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man constantly have words with one another and the team seems perpetually on the brink of disbanding. This paradigm will continue for this entire section (and presumably long after). This Issue also marks the end of The Hulk’s brief tenure with the team. After feeling betrayed by how the way the team treated him during the confusion, the Hulk strikes off on his own.
The third issue tells the story of the avengers searching for The Hulk and we get short cameos from The X-Men, The Fantastic Four and of course our friendly neighborhood Spider-man. Eventually the heroes find their target and after a battle The Hulk ends up in the ocean where a certain be-speedoed Atlantean sees opportunity. Namor teams up with The Hulk and they fight the Avengers on a tiny Island. The Hulk changes back into Banner and runs away and Namor escapes back into the water. The Teen Brigade appears again along with their leader Rick Jones. This issue also marks the first appearance of the more modern Iron Man suit.
Ironically enough it’s in the fourth issue that “The First Avenger” finally makes his debut in this series. After Namor’s battle with the Avengers he happens upon a group of primitive ice tribesmen worshiping the frozen form of our star spangled hero. Namor smashes the block of ice and the body is discovered by The Avengers in their Stark designed Submarine. After he awakens and does a brief battle with his future team mates Cap tells us the story of how he fell into the freezing water and how Bucky riding a remote controlled bomb died (not to mention the first appearance of Baron Zemo’s Hand. Cap meets Rick Jones for the first time, with Cap being shocked at Rick’s resemblance to Bucky (Can we say new sidekick?). After dealing with a criminal den Cap meets up with The Avengers who are on an island looking for Namor. Curiously enough Thor uses his hammer as a powerful magnet to pull Namor’s Submarine out of the water, where a battle between the Antlantean’s forces and our heroes ensues. The issue closes with Namor and his men being routed.
In the final issue we’ll be looking at for this blog we see the team battling The Lava Men. The Avengers are called in by General “Thunderbolt” Ross about a large green radioactive mass of rock pushing up through the surface. Our heroes meet and have battle with The Lava men who are revealed as the ones responsible for the intrusive and apparently deadly rock formation. Bruce Banner arrives, transforms into The Hulk and attacks. After a short battle Cap comes up with a plan to end the threat, having The Wasp trick Hulk into striking the mass at just the right location to destroy it and remove the threat. Banner escapes alongside Betty Ross and The Avengers head back to their headquarters at the mansion of Tony Stark.
This first five issue set introduces us to this iconic team, their powers, personalities and some of the villains which will be either menacing them in the future or being lost into obscurity. One thing that can become a bit disheartening from a feminist perspective is the clear secondary role that Janet plays in these early books. While it is important to understand that values were different in this time, it also shouldn't excuse this shortcoming. Janet is clearly not an equal partner in this team, and the situation isn't helped by her dialog which is consistently about her hair, how cute Thor is, or some romantic overture about Hank. Overall these issues are great, if a bit jarring for the modern comic book reader. Reading these is a labor of love and educational both in comic book and cultural wisdom.

I'm writing a fair bit ahead and will be posting a new one of these every Saturday, however they are getting rather long so I'll simply post my introduction here and if it interests you, you can read the full entry on my blog

thanks and see you all on Saturday

comicdork.wordpress.com/

Accidentally published 2 this week so there you go

actually he popped up first in #8 (though that first appearance is questionable since imortus appeared in an FF book earlier and I guess thats actually kang too). Check out the recap f4rom that era for a little info, he basically creates a copy of spider-man to attack the team. However his first "important" story is coming up in my next re-cap. He has a two issue arc in 23-24 where he pulls the avengers into the future, it has kind of an ending, shows how kang can be a multi-layered character.

As I said these recaps got pretty long so I'm just posting them on my blog now (2000 words seems a little long for a forum post).

comicdork.wordpress.com/