I have been bouncing some ideas around for this blog. One of them is doing quirky reviews for stuff. I’ve seen them done on other sites and thought “I can come up with snarky rants about my comics too! Maybe then Blair Butler will notice me and mention me on AOTS!”
Or just notice me at all. Ah, Blair Butler. Sigh.
Anyway, I‘ve decided to develop “RetroRants”. What I’d do is go through my comic collection and do reviews about them. The serious ones would get serious reviews. The campy ones, snarky reviews.
Since I own all of the Avengers, I decided that I would start there first. So, if people like these and I don’t grow tired of them, I could conceivably RetroRant about the whole series. And after that, if I am still alive, perhaps move on to Captain America or the Defenders or another title I own all of.
But now, the first issue of my favorite comic of all time, Avengers #1.
We start with a splash page of a wistful Loki looking out over the cliffs on to the sea. For a second, we think were going to get an Asgardian version of Wuthering Heights or something.
The peace is broken on the next page as Loki starts whining about his lot in life. I’m banished here in the wastelands, wah wah wah, Odin banished me here, wah wah wah, all because of Thor, wah wah wah, I hate Thor.”
Loki has decided to get his revenge on Thor. So, since he can’t leave the section of Asgard, he sends his floating eyes to Earth. Yes, I said “floating eyes”.
There the spy Thor in his civilian identity of Dr. Donald Blake. Now, if you wanted vengeance on Thor, I’d strike at Dr. Blake. After all, he’s a puny human with a bum leg. Drop a bookcase on him and be done with it.
But noooooo. Loki has to be all honorable and stuff. He must defeat Thor when he’s Thor. So he paints himself into a corner. Not only does he have to get Blake to turn into Thor, but also come to Asgard. Why must he make things so difficult for himself?
Then, what to Loki’s wandering eyes should appear by the Hulk. Ah, this beast should be powerful to make Thor take notice!
So, Loki decides to have Hulk destroy a train trestle, hoping that Blake will change into Thor and take notice. Loki creates some fake dynamite and leaves it on the trestle for Hulk to see.
Now, this was a slight more intelligent that average Hulk. He is actually able to speak in complete sentences with a modicum of subject/verb agreement. So, when the Hulk sees the dynamite, he adjusts his leap to try and get rid of it before the train comes. Unfortunately, Hulk doesn’t realize that his 1,000 pound frame doesn’t really land all dainty like, and destroys the trestle anyway. Luckily, he is able to jury rig a platform an holds up the destroyed tracks so the train doesn’t crash. But that’s okay, damage is done.
There is a lot of talk about deconstructed storytelling these days. One conversation can take up an issue in a half. In this issue, Lee and Kirby go from the Hulk saving the train, newspapers reporting the fact as the Hulk almost destroying the train, to Rick Jones reading about it in the span of four panels. FOUR PANELS! That took at least the better part of a day, if not a day and a half, all covered succinctly in four panels. Eat that, Bendis!
Of course, Rick is a friend of the Hulk so he does the only thing a true friend would do in this situation—he tries to contact the Fantastic Four to beat the snot out of the Hulk so he can’t destroy anymore stuff.
This simply wouldn’t do for Loki however. He has no beef with the FF. Luckily for him, there was a hiring freeze in Asgard. Instead of hiring new gods for everything, the just double up with the gods they have. Loki, fortunately, gained the title of God of Misdirecting Ham Radio Communication. He uses the powers given him as God of Misdirecting Ham Radio Communication to redirect Rick’s pleas of help to Don Blake’s transistor radio.
Unfortunately for Loki, he’s not a good God of Misdirecting Ham Radio Communication, because he also redirects the message to Iron Man, and Ant-Man and the Wasp too.
A panel or two later, all the heroes converge on the clubhouse of Rick and his Teen Brigade, offering help. How did they know where the Teen Brigade was located? Damned if I know.
Then, we get one of the goofiest set of panels in comic history. Here, let me show you them:
Okay, so instead of just, oh, I don’t know, growing to human size, they decide to climb inside a conveniently placed projector, next to the blazing hot bulb, and have their pictures projected on the wall. And instead of what usually happens when light hits a solid object, it doesn’t cast a shadow but actually projects their image on the wall!!! Hank Pym is a freakin’ genius!
Of course, the fact that there are now three other heroes joining Thor doesn’t do Loki any good. He wants Thor alone. So he creates a “mental image” outside of Teen Brigade headquarters at a time when only Thor is looking. Thor, the gloryhound that he is, goes after the Hulk alone. He soon realizes the Hulk is a “mental image”, automatically knows that Loki is behind it, and hi-tails it to Asgard to “straighten Loki right out” and apparently tell him what a “rude, thoughtless, little pig” he is.
What is the Hulk doing all this time? Oh, he’s joined a circus.
I just love this panel. The Hulk, in clown make up, juggling a random set of animals: a horse, an elephant, and a seal. Where the seal come from? Were seals a popular circus animal in the 60s? And couldn’t they find another animal? I mean, I could probably juggle a seal, if I had to.
And I love the look on the faces of the animals. The seal seems almost to be enjoying it. He’s all “Wheeeee!” and stuff like that. And, to be honest, it might be fun to be juggled. Getting tossed up the air, the slight feeling of being weightless. Fun.
The horse is kind of, “Eh, whatever. Just don’t drop me, putz”. The elephant, however, has a look of abject horror on his face. Well, not so much in the original, but as he’s recolored in the Marvel Masterworks version?
Notice the added white of the eyes. This is just brilliant. It just adds so much to the elephants character. That one coloring change puts us in the mind of the elephant, and the elephant is thinking “Holy S#%t! I’m in the freakin’ air! I’m a freakin’ elephant! I shouldn’t be in the air! Help! Help me!”
Well, at least to me it does.
I know what you’re asking, why would the circus hire the Hulk? After all, he is the Hulk. Well, see, they think he’s a robot. A found robot, no less. They say so themselves. “Finding that robot was the best thing that ever happened to the show.” I guess in the 1960s, at least in the Marvel Universe, it was fairly common for people to just discard superhumanly powerful robots that look like the Hulk on the side of the road for any carny or circus freak to pick up. Forget about the fact that the robot in question looks like the freakin’ Hulk and has a heartbeat and hair and everything, think about what he’ll do for the show!
Well, the whole robot thing doesn’t fool our team. Ant-Man and Wasp get there first, setting up what we’ve all been waiting for—Hulk versus Ant-Man and Wasp. If we want to be logical about it, this fight should be over in a time so short that we cannot adequately calculate it with the time recording technology we have today. The genius of Lee and Kirby makes it last three pages.
First, Ant-Man sacrifices millions of his ant brethren to digging out the ground underneath Hulk, millions of ants who are no doubt crushed when the ground, and Hulk, collapses on top of them. Rest well in Heaven, ants, your vain sacrifice will not be forgotten.
Of course, this doesn’t work. So then Ant-Man has his ants loosen a steel, tube-like cylinder that is fastened to the main beam of the big top, trapping Hulk inside it. Why is there a steel, tube-like cylinder fastened to the main beam of the big top? I don’t know. I am unfamiliar with the ways of the circus people.
Of course, this doesn’t work either. So Ant-Man takes the next logical step. What do you do when Hulk escapes your first two traps? Lure him under the trapeze net. Because if tons of dirt and rock couldn’t stop him and a steel tube is ineffective, a flimsy net surely will do the trick.
Later in the series, when Hank Pym strikes Janet (IE, the Wasp, for you non-comics savvy folks.), many argued that it was out of character. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. You can say that the stage was set here because Hank callously sends Janet alone against the Hulk to try to get him under the net. Nice. Sending a wasp-sized woman to fight your battles for you. Pussy.
She lasts a few seconds before being taken out by a fireplace bellows (What was a fireplace bellows doing there? Because it needed to be there! Stop asking questions!). Luckily, Iron Man finally arrives and chases him up into the net.
Of course the net doesn’t work. The Hulk takes it and the big top itself into the desert with him, being chased by Iron man all the way.
But hey! Wasn’t Thor in this book at one time? Why yes he was. We check in on him asking his father Odin if he can kick Loki’s ass. Odin says yes, but don’t expect him to pick sides.
For a man who was all about facing Thor man to man, you’d think Loki’d actually face him, well, man to man. Well, you’d be wrong. Here’s is what Loki throws at Thor to delay him: tangle roots, a volcano, volcanic gas globules (naturally), an ice shield, a giant troll, and various mental images of himself. Of course, none of them work, and Loki ends up hanging off the edge of a cliff. Thor magnetizes his hammer and brings Loki in. He then travels to Earth.
Back on Earth, Iron Man has chased the Hulk to an auto factory. I bet the have plenty of robots the carny folk can “find” for their circus there.
Iron Man ties to take the Hulk out while pelting his invulnerable, bulletproof hide with soft rubber tires. This works as well as you think it might. Hulk responds by slingshotting a drive shaft at I.M. I.M. catches the thick, solid steel drive shaft and molds it to a fork-like thing to pin Hulk to the wall. Hulk replies by simply destroying the wall by backing through it. Luckily, Thor arrives with Loki and brings the slobberknocker to a close.
Hulk, not being picky who he fights, joins Thor and Iron Man against Loki. Loki fight back the only way he can—by turning himself radioactive. Of course, this being a Marvel book of the 60s, that would only mean Thor, Hulk and Iron Man would get a brand spanking new set of powers.
Things look grim for our heroes until, in the background, a bunch of ants are seen hitting a button. Unbeknownst to Loki, he was standing on a hidden trap door. Because, you know, many auto factories have trap doors hidden right outside their buildings. Loki falls down the conveniently placed trapdoor and into a even more conveniently placed lead tank. Thor, being an expert on atomic testing, comes out with: “This is where the trucks that carry radioactive wastes from atomic tests dump their loads for eventual disposal in the ocean!” Ah, the sixties, when wordy exposition was commonplace and dumping toxic waste in the ocean was deemed acceptable.
Threat taken care of, the heroes start to leave. That is, before Ant-Man and Wasp suggests that they form a team. Sure, why wouldn’t Marvel’s weakest heroes want to hang out with much more powerful heroes? They all agree to become the Avengers, and I, for one, am happier for it.
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