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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132133
Posted: 24 March 2023 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Took out my bound volume of the first year of THE AVENGERS this morning, and started rereading the first issue.

So wonderfully simple! Naïve, even. Characters think and speak almost entirely in exposition. Seven and eight panel pages are common, with the art often vanishing behind captions and balloons.

This issue also contains one of my all time favorite scenes, where Iron Man flies cross country standing up!

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Michael Penn
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Posted: 24 March 2023 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

I love that the Hulk can hold up a speeding train and yet only just barely. And intentionally to save people!
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Doug Centers
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Posted: 24 March 2023 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Nostalgia is a powerful drug!

Also the perception that Ant-Man was an Avenger a lot longer in that era, yet this his only appearance in that iteration. 
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Bill Dowling
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Posted: 25 March 2023 at 4:48am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I was amazed at how the Wasp was treated in those early Avengers days. I grew up reading the era where Wasp was a respected member (and sometime leader) of the group and considered a founding member. 

Reading those early issues, though, she’s just Ant-Man’s sidekick and not a member in her own right. She and Rick Jones have an equal standing on the team in those early issues. 
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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 25 March 2023 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

I get a nostalgic rush anytime I see a comic book with your art from the late 1970s' and through the 1980s'. It's strange, but since I didn't discover your work until about roughly 1978, the art prior to that does not give me the same degree of nostalgia, even though I still came across that earlier work while i was still fairly young.

Your "Iron Fist", "Marvel Team-Up", "Captain America", "Avengers" and "X-Men" work of the 1970s particularly kicks in the nostalgia for me.
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 27 March 2023 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

There was definitely room for improvement but the foundation was very solid and it became more so over time. I have to admit I don't know the origin story behind the title, nor about the creation of The X-Men about the same time. How much Jack and how much Stan roughly, their thoughts on the book complementing the solo character titles.

About the only weak era of The Avengers that I know of would be brief and circa #300 when they had some of the Fantastic Four in? I decided to start at #305 when I explored those years of Marvels (and went all the way to #351). I have a few reprints of early issues, #1, 2, 4, 5, 8 (and used to have #7, 9, 11-15, 20-on) so other than two I guess I've read all the ones where Kirby did or might've had input. When I 'came back' to wanting back issue comics around again it was the run of #181-196 which was the first 'got to get' and it got my stoke on for more (now at #121-200 plus Annuals #6-9 with just a couple missing early numbers)!

I definitely prefer the mansion as base by far (with Jarvis) to the island and the other ones, and that little detail of the ID cards having real authority and a west coast branch lend extra weight. Meeting in some generic cave (way outside any town?) was about the least dignified scenario to me, Rick Jones (like Snapper Carr) brought no gravitas and usually felt out of place or shoe-horned in, and worse any kind of 'teen brigade'. Those teen appeal characters may've been more a Kirby thing? Stan may've been more behind the teens actually being the heroes ala Spider-Man and the X-Men? I'm going to see what I might have access to that has been written about the mid-1963 creations! :^)
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Craig Earl
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Posted: 27 March 2023 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

The Marvel run from the early to mid sixties is like catnip to me. I love those simple, often quirky tales (in the late seventies, Marvel UK reprinted Lee and Ditko's entire Spider-Man run in a monthly B&W pocket book. I read those stories along with a weekly comic that reprinted the more recent Ross Andru issues).

I recall sitting outside on the iron steps outside my house, blown away by the first appearances of The Vulture, Doc Ock & Mysterio etc, 

Much like songs of an era evoke memories, so do the comics of the time!



 
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 27 March 2023 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

I have fairly distinct memories of where I first read those early Marvels. In part it’s because we moved so often when I was a kid, so I can practically tell time by where we lived.
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 27 March 2023 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Those Lee & Ditko Spider-Mans in pocket-sized colour paperbacks is what got me really into superhero comics... from enjoying two of them I started with then current (October-November 1979 cover dates) issues of Spider-Man and The Hulk (including their reprint titles of the same dates) as they were the two most familiar to me Marvel characters. First Avengers was #189 traded for at school. I was well and truly hooked!
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Andrew Hess
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Posted: 29 March 2023 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Coincidentally, I'm currently reading (for the first time!) The Avengers starting with #1, using Masterworks and Essentials.

A different age!

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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 30 March 2023 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Without the powerful narcotic of nostalgia, I wonder how I would respond to those old comics, so often crudely written and drawn.
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Vinny Valenti
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Posted: 30 March 2023 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

I do remember where I bought my first comic books (the first Green Goblin reprint in MARVEL TALES and X-MEN#171), at a local newsstand. A month later, I took my first trip to the local comic shop, where I bought X-MEN#172 and ALPHA FLIGHT#1. I bought it simply because of the X-Men mention on the cover - see, marketing works! Even though I was a bit annoyed that it was only 2 X-Men that appeared (and only in 2 flashback panels at that), clearly I liked what I saw from this Bryne* guy enough to continue with it. I remember skipping #2 for some reason - probably that I hadn't yet figured out the concept of Direct Market release schedules - and buying #3 because of the Aurora cover.

*yes, in my head I misread his last name for the first year or so of my comic cook collecting.
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