Marvel Masterworks: Avengers Volume 10

Reprints Avengers 89-100
Written by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams.
Penciled by Neal Adams, Sal Buscema, John Buscema and Barry Windsor-Smith.
Inked by Sam Grainger, Sal Buscema, George Roussos, Tom Palmer, Neal Adams, Alan Weiss, Tom Sutton, Joe Sinnott, Syd Shores and Barry Windsor-Smith.

Summary:
The Avengers battle aliens, gods and Inhumans in a star-spanning epic of the Bronze Age!

On the planet Hala, the villainous Ronan The Accuser takes power over his people, the Kree, and forcibly overthrows its proper ruler, the Intelligence Supreme. Ronan's first act is to activate Sentry 459, a giant robot.

Ronan dispatches the Sentry to Earth to kill the Kree Captain Mar-Vell, AKA the superhero Captain Marvel. Thankfully, the Avengers are protecting Mar-Vell. Vision, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch battle the Sentry, but the robot captures Mar-Vell and teleports him away from the Avengers.

Avengers Wasp and Yellowjacket are conducting research in the Arctic Circle, near Alaska. They notice a strange tropical island among all the ice. When Yellowjacket investigates this, he's shot with some sort of ray. It's the work of Ronan, who has set up a base on the island.  Fearing that her husband has been killed, Wasp contacts her fellow Avenger Goliath, who in turn calls the rest of the team to the Arctic. 

The Avengers learn that Ronan blasted Yellowjacket with an Evo-Ray, which causes Pym to de-evolve into a brutal, savage caveman. Ronan intends to de-evolve all life on Earth, which will make it easier for the Kree to conquer or destroy the planet.

During the battle, Ronan receives an emergency transmission from outer space. The Skrull Empire, eternal foes of the Kree, have launched an all out war against Ronan's people. Ronan flees Earth to join the battle. The Kree-Skrull War has begun! The Avengers find themselves caught in the middle of two alien races who are determined to slaughter each other.

The Avengers decide to keep Ronan's actions on Earth secret from public knowledge, believing that it would cause panic and paranoia. When the Kree activities are uncovered, the Avengers are in hot water for keeping secrets. A sense of dread about alien invasions takes over the public consensus. Captain Mar-Vell is suspected of being part of the Kree invasion. This leads to the formation of the Commission on Alien Activities, headed by H. Warren Craddock.

Mar-Vell wants to turn himself in to the commission, believing it will calm the anti-alien sentiments and take heat off the Avengers. His friend Carol Danvers disagrees and takes Captain Marvel to a farm owned by her friends in Upstate New York. Mar-Vell's friend Rick Jones has a vision that Captain Marvel will be attacked when he arrives at the farm. Rick and Mar-Vell have a unique connection (Rick used to "swap atoms" with Mar-Vell, so the Kree captain could appear on Earth), and he fears his friend is in grave danger.

Craddock calls the Avengers into a hearing, where they are made to look like traitors. Original members of the Avengers Thor, Iron Man and Captain America are embarrassed by this development. They tell Wanda, Pietro, Vision and Goliath that they have disgraced the Avengers and the team is dissolved!

Shortly after this, Vision arrives at the mansion. The android is near death. After Ant-Man saves Vision, he tells the Avengers that he, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver were attacked by three cows who turned into members of the Fantastic Four in Upstate New York.

But this version of the FF have different powers than Vision expected. The heroes decide to investigate these strange cows.

The Avengers battle the Thing, Human Torch and Mr. Fantastic. After a brief fight, the heroes learn that their opponents are actually Skrulls. They also discover that the Cap, Iron Man and Thor who dissolved the Avengers were also Skrulls.

Captain Marvel, Quicksilver, and Wanda have been captured by Super-Skrull, who possesses all the powers of the Fantastic Four. Super-Skrull takes the heroes to the Skrull homeworld in the Andromeda Galaxy, hoping to regain the favor of Skrull Emperor Dorrek.

When he arrives at the emperor's throne room, Super-Skrull is promptly stunned and imprisoned.

Emperor Dorrek forces Captain Marvel to construct an Omni-Wave Projector. Such a device could wipe out the Kree. Mar-Vell is forced to construct the projector when Dorrek threatens to kill Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.

Back on Earth, H. Warren Craddock has decided to arrest the Avengers. He sends a brigade of Mandroids to the Avengers' mansion. Mandroids all wear weaponized armor created by Iron Man's alter ego Tony Stark. Iron Man's unexpected knowledge of the Mandroid armor helps the Avengers win the day.

The Avengers then blast off into space, determined to save their friends and battle Skrull and Kree alike.

In the middle of all this, Rick Jones is captured by the Kree, taken to Hala and brought before Ronan. He taunts Rick and mocks Earthlings as primitive creatures who are beneath his contempt. However, Ronan tells Jones that Earth is important strategically, since it is the exact midpoint between the Kree and Skrull homeworlds. Due to its location, the Kree will either conquer Earth...or destroy it!

At the same time, the Avengers capture a Skrull spaceship and defeat the crew. The Vision interrogates one of the Skrulls, demanding to know the whereabouts of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Vision gets carried away, beating the Skrull within an inch of his life. The Avengers intervene and save the Skrull's life. He tells the heroes that Earth is doomed, since a Skrull ship is headed towards Earth. The ship is carrying a nuclear warhead powerful enough to wipe out all of humankind.

Rick is imprisoned with Intelligence Supreme. The fallen Kree leader tells Rick that he has an important role to play in the war and zaps Rick with a bolt of energy. This gives Rick the power of the entire human race. Intelligence Supreme suggests that Jones' memories of reading comic books from the 1940s could help him bring peace between the Skrulls, Kree and Earth.

What will Rick Jones do with his newfound powers? Can Rick and the Avengers possibly save Earth from two alien races bent on its destruction?

After the war, the Avengers have little time to relax. A man who calls himself Mr. Talon is stirring up crowds of people, encouraging them to commit acts of mass violence.

When the Avengers arrive to quell the violent mobs, Thor recognizes Talon as Ares, Greek God Of War! Thankfully, Hercules has returned to the Avengers' ranks. But Hercules is suffering from amnesia.

While the Avengers are probing Hercules' mind at their mansion headquarters, the heroes are attacked by two Olympian Warriors named Bia and Kratos. They capture Hercules and take him to Mount Olympus.

Ares has also gone to Mount Olympus where he's joined by the Enchantress, one of the Avengers' oldest foes. The Avengers call every hero who has ever served as an Avenger to Olympus. They will need everyone they can get if they hope to rescue Hercules and defeat Ares. 

Review:
At this point, it's hard to say anything new about the Kree-Skrull War. I'd put off reviewing it, focusing on less-famous storylines. But the recent release of Captain America: Civil War got me thinking it was time to review this volume of Marvel Masterworks. 

Story:
Roy Thomas is credited as writer, but in his introduction, he gives Neal Adams co-plotting credit.  In any case, this is a great story that deserves its "classic" status.

There's lots of drama, action and character development.

Ronan's threat to de-evolve Earth feels like a legit "end of the world" scenario. The Avengers are under siege from the Skrulls, Kree, Ares, the Enchantress and their own government for the entire book!

Of course great superhero stories require great villains, and Ronan The Accuser certainly fits the bill. The Skrull's Emperor Dorrek is also as evil as they come. The Super-Skrull is a minor player in this book, but he's always been one of my favorite villains. As far as I'm concerned, any story can be improved by the presence of Super-Skrull!

But it's a tribute to Thomas and Adams' storytelling that not every alien here is evil. The Intelligence Supreme helps Rick Jones and Skrull Princess Annelle begs her father not to go to war.

While readers of this story know Earth won't be destroyed, Thomas' script keeps adding layers of tension to the story. These tales also give us early indications that the Vision and Scarlet Witch would eventually become romantically involved.

Thomas' script is full of pop culture references. The characters mention Joe Cocker, Crosby, Stills & Nash (the names of three ants who help Ant-Man!), and the silent movie Metropolis. This helps lighten the mood, so that the story isn't all doom, gloom and paranoia.

The Commission on Alien Activities is an obvious allegory for Red Scare-era investigatory entities such as the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate Internal Securities Subcommittee.  H. Warren Craddock's behavior resembles the actions of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. This will seem obvious to any student of history, but such allegories didn't appear very often in comic books of the early 1970s.  Roy Thomas deserves kudos to adding Craddock's committee to the story, it adds a bit of realism to the story.

Making Rick Jones the hero of the story is also a nice touch. Rick served as sidekick to Hulk, Captain America, Mar-Vell and the Avengers during the 1960s and early 70s. Jones always wanted to be a superhero and in this story he gets to save three planets from destruction.

If there's anything to criticize about the Kree-Skrull War, it's that the Inhumans portion of this story doesn't add a whole lot. Most Bronze Age Inhumans stories involve Maximus seizing control (or at least attempting to seize control) of Attilan. This one is no exception.  

The Ares story that follows is a comparably weak follow-up. It's not bad, but any story that followed the Kree-Skrull War was guaranteed to be a bit of a let down.

Art:
The first four issues reprinted in Marvel Masterworks: Avengers Volume 10 feature pencils by Sal Buscema embellished by three inkers (including himself). Sal does a fine job drawing aliens, fight scenes and cavemen. I love Sal's depiction of the helicopter crash in these images:

Neal Adams (pencils) and Tom Palmer (inks) take over the art duties after Sal and this is some of their finest work. Ant-Man's journey into the Vision is one of the most memorable stories of the Bronze Age and that's because Adams and Palmer make the Vision's insides look like something out of a sci-fi movie (it's an homage to films like Journey To The Center Of The Earth and Fantastic Voyage). Here are two gorgeous pages from "Journey To The Center Of An Android":

I also love this Triton splash page from Adams and Palmer:

Great stuff.

Sal's brother John Buscema succeeds Adams and finishes the Kree-Skrull War, with Palmer staying on as inker. It's too bad Adams couldn't finish this saga, but "Big John" and Palmer were always great together. Here's a nice example of their work in this book:

Barry Windsor-Smith provided pencils on the Ares story. He's a great artist, but I've never been crazy about his art in superhero stories. But Windsor-Smith provides some good art here, even if his work (like the story he penciled) is a bit of a step down from the previous tale. I've always liked this splash page he drew that features the Black Knight. 

Extras:
Roy Thomas wrote a new introduction where he discusses the creative process behind these issues. Walt Simonson and Tom Palmer created some new Kree-Skrull War pages that were published in a 1983 reprint of the storyline and their work is reprinted here. The book also contains several pages of Adams' original artwork.

How Does It Look?:
I have never owned any of the original issues that are reprinted in Marvel Masterworks: Avengers Volume 10. However, I found a scan of the splash page for Avengers #92 posted on one of my favorite blogs, Diversions Of The Groovy Kind. Below you'll see that page paired up with the splash page as it looks in this book:

Left: Original page from Avengers #89;
Right: How it appears in Marvel Masterworks: Avengers Volume 10.

It looks pretty good to me. I don't notice any strange re-coloring.

Rating:
Marvel Masterworks: Avengers Volume 10 contains a story that lives up to its hype 45 years after it was first published. When it comes to creators, it doesn't get much better than scripts by Roy Thomas combined with art of Adams, Windsor-Smith, Palmer and the Buscema Brothers.

J.A. Morris' rating:

4 Sals!

Marvel Masterworks: The Defenders Volume 2

Reprints Defenders #7-16, Giant-Size Defenders #1 and Avengers #115-118
Written by Steve Englehart, Len Wein and Tony Isabella.
Penciled by Sal Buscema, Bob Brown and Jim Starlin.
Inked by Frank Bolle, Frank McLaughlin, Jack Abel, Klaus Janson, Dan Green, Mike Esposito, Al Milgrom and Frank Giacoia.

Variant cover.

Valkyrie, Hulk and Namor, the Sub-Mariner, all members of the Defenders, encounter the archer superhero Hawkeye. He's recently left the Avengers and wants to find a new direction in life. After a less-than-friendly encounter with Hulk and Valkyrie, order is restored and Hawkeye is invited to join the Non-Team.

Suddenly, an Atlantean arrives at their headquarters and tells Namor that his old foe Attuma is preparing to attack Atlantic City. The Defenders head to the Jersey Shore to battle Attuma and his minions. In a short battle, Namor, Hawkeye and Valkyrie are captured and imprisoned on Attuma's ship.

The heroes learn that Attuma's new partner is the Red Ghost. The Ghost uses cosmic rays to mentally control the captured Defenders and orders them to attack Atlantis. Thankfully, the Defenders' leader, Doctor Strange, returns and brings Silver Surfer with him to take on Attuma and Red Ghost.

Shortly after that, Loki, Asgardian god of mischief falls off a cliff after being blinded in a battle with his brother Thor. Loki is rescued by the dread Dormammu, ruler of the Dark Dimension. Dormammu tells Loki he will restore his eyesight if Loki will assist him in his "grandest scheme."

Dormammu wants to recover the Evil Eye, a device that will give him the power to destroy the Earth.  He manipulates the Defenders into finding the pieces of the Evil Eye, which are scattered all over the world. The Black Knight, a friend of the Defenders has been turned to stone. Dormammu tricks the Non-Team into believing that only the Evil Eye will restore the Knight's humanity.   

But Loki has second thoughts. He believes Dormammu will destroy Asgard after he eliminates Earth.  Loki secretly contacts the Avengers and tells them that the Defenders are evil and willingly aiding Dormammu. After hearing Loki's tale, the Avengers go in search of the Evil Eye. This leads to a clash of epic proportions between the Defenders and the Avengers!

On an island in the South Pacific, Silver Surfer battles the Vision on top of an active volcano!

Iron Man takes on his old Avengers teammate Hawkeye in Mexico!

Valkyrie and Swordsman engage in a sword-fight in a Bolivian castle!

Doctor Strange faces off against Mantis and Black Panther in an Indiana cornfield!

Captain America seeks the Evil Eye in Osaka, Japan and is confronted by Namor!

Last but definitely not least, two of the mightiest beings on Earth, Hulk and Thor, duel in Los Angeles.

Eventually, the Defenders and Avengers realize they've been duped and team up to battle Dormammu.  But to defeat him, they'll have to enter the Dark Dimension, where Dormammu reigns supreme.

The Avengers & Defenders unite to battle Dormammu!

After the clash with the Avengers, the Defenders still have to free the Black Knight from his stone prison. This requires them to time-travel back to the Crusades! The Defenders are surprised when they find the Black Knight battling giant gnomes! These gnomes are a difficult obstacle for the heroes to overcome.

Sometime later, Hulk is attacked by the Defenders' old foe Xemnu, the Living Titan. Doctor Strange and Valkyrie come to his rescue and help Ol' Greenskin battle Xemnu.

Next up, the supervillain Nighthawk pays a visit to Doctor Strange's Greenwich Village home, which serves as the Defenders' unofficial base of operations. Nighthawk has recently quit the criminal team known as the Squadron Sinister over their latest scheme.

The Squadron, which consists of Hyperion, Doctor Spectrum and the Whizzer, has "sold" Earth to an alien "geologist" called Nebulon, the Celestial Man. Nighthawk left the Squadron when he learned of Nebulon's plan. The alien has created a laser gun that will melt the polar icecaps and cover the entirety of Earth in water!  
 
Nighthawk tells the Defenders about this and convinces the Non-Team to join him in tackling the Squadron. They arrive at the Squadron's base and quickly gain the upper hand on the villains. But Nebulon arrives and easily beats the Defenders. He imprisons the Defenders in an energy globe and blasts them into space. 

The Defenders ultimately come out on top, thanks to the intervention of Nighthawk. The former villain says he wants to fight crime now and is granted membership in the Defenders!

Lastly, Doctor Strange receives a mental contact from Charles Xavier, known to the world as Professor X, leader of the X-Men. Xavier has discovered something amazing in the Carlsbad Canyons in New Mexico.

But shortly after the Defenders arrive in Carlsbad, they're attacked by Magneto and his new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The Defenders defeat the Brotherhood, but Magneto has a secret weapon.

The Defenders face off against the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

The master of magnetism has discovered alien technology that gives him the power to create new forms of life. He uses this tech to create Alpha, the ultimate mutant. Alpha easily beats the Defenders and he departs with the Brotherhood to New York. Magneto walks into the United Nations and declares himself ruler of the world. Alpha's power makes Magneto seemingly unbeatable. But as long as the Defenders are alive, there's hope for Earth's survival!

The Defenders are no match for Alpha, the Ultimate Mutant!

Review:
I'm a huge fan of the Defenders and this is one of my favorite lineups of the Non-Team.

Story:
Marvel Masterworks: The Defenders Volume 2 features stories from one of the classic eras of the Defenders. Even in the context of Bronze Age comic books, the Defenders shouldn't work. But somehow they do. It's always fun to watch Doctor Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie and Sub-Mariner interact with one another. The Non-Team nature means the cast is always rotating, so you never get bored with characters. Hawkeye and Silver Surfer don't stick around very long. But Nighthawk arrives shortly after their departure and Kyle Richmond goes on to become a Defenders mainstay for many years to come.  

The Defenders meet the Avengers and explain that they are on the same side.

I especially love how the Hulk is written in these Defenders tales. I still laugh when he calls Doctor Strange "dumb magician" and refers to Nighthawk as "bird-nose"! It's also nice to see the Hulk be happy for a fleeting minute or two. Like in this panel, where he realizes his fellow Defenders are his friends.

Hulk smiles when he realizes "Dumb Magician" is his friend. 
It's nice to see Hulk happy every now and then.

The centerpiece of this book is what's become know as "The Avengers/Defenders War." This is one of Steve Englehart's crowning achievements and one of the most entertaining stories of the Bronze Age...with one caveat. During the Vision's fight with the Silver Surfer, Scarlet Witch is around for the sole purpose of being a victim. This is silly, since Wanda had already been established as a heavy hitter.  Englehart makes up for it later by having Scarlet Witch play a major role in the battle against Dormammu, but it's still silly.

The other Defender vs. Avenger fights are all excellent. I was surprised when I re-read this to see that the Defenders won every battle, or at least walked away with the piece of the Evil Eye they were seeking. Maybe Englehart wanted to help the new team build their reputation against the old one. I was also surprised to see the Swordsman stab someone to death. It doesn't bother me, since Swordsman was a recently reformed villain engaging in self-defense, but I'm still shocked Englehart would write a story where an Avenger kills someone. The Hulk-Thor conflict is the highlight of the book and Englehart does a great job in the narration building up the powers of "Jade Jaws" and the thunder god.

Len Wein takes over after Englehart and the stories remain strong. The conflict with the evil mutants takes place during an interesting era for Marvel's mutant characters. The X-men series had been cancelled and turned into a reprint title.  But Professor X and the X-men made sporadic appearances in other Marvel series between the end of the old team and the first appearance of the new X-men.

It should be noted that Magneto is written here like a cartoonish madman villain dedicated to world domination. That's fine by me, but modern readers may be surprised by this, since the story was written about 8 years before the retcon that established Magneto as a survivor of the Final Solution.

Of course superheroes need quality opponents. Any book of Bronze Age reprints that features Dormammu, Loki, and Magneto as villains has to be good! Plus we get appearances by Nebulon, the Squadron Sinister, Attuma, and the Red Ghost, who aren't exactly slouches either.

Good stories all around from Englehart and Wein.   

Art:
The art is as good as the writing here, if not better.   

Sal Buscema pencils the Defenders stories. This book shows Buscema at the peak of his Bronze Age powers. He gives us lots of great fight scenes. Buscema was the definitive Bronze Age penciler of the Defenders series and his work still looks great today.

If there's any problem with the art in this book, it's the lack of a steady inker. But Sal B.'s work shines through no matter who inks him. Klaus Janson inks two of the issues reprinted here, I thought he was the best inker of the bunch. Here's a great two-pager, where Nighthawk describes what the Squadron and Nebulon will do to Earth if they aren't defeated:

Nice work by Buscema and Janson!

Bob Brown was the Avengers penciler at the time and he provides some good art as well. Brown received a special on-page commendation for his art in Avengers #118, which required him to draw 14 superheroes, a few SHIELD agents, Loki, Dormammu, a few other heroes making cameos. Plus, Brown does a nice job depicting Dormannu's Dark Dimension. Brown was 20+ years into his career at this point, but the art in the Avengers/Defenders War is one of his finest hours as a penciler.

Giant-Size Defenders #1 consisted of reprints, but it also included new "wraparound" pages penciled by Jim Starlin and inked by Al Milgrom. Their art is great and leaves you wanting more.

How does it look?:
I dug out my old copy of Defenders #16, here's a scan from that issue:

The same pages look like this in the Marvel Masterworks version:

Looks pretty good to me, no weird recoloring.

Extras:
A nice 4-page introduction from Steve Englehart where he talks about writing the Avengers-Defenders war. One gets the impression that Englehart is very proud of that storyline 40 years later, and rightly so. 

We also get three non-Bronze Age stories. As I mentioned above, Giant-Size Defenders #1 featured reprints with new filler material. A Sub-Mariner story from the Golden Age is reprinted, along with Silver Age stories that feature Hulk and Doctor Strange. I'm not crazy about this, since it means we get one less Defenders story.

Marvel Masterworks: Defenders Volume 2 is worth buying just to have the Avengers/Defenders battle, but the other stories are fun and action packed as well. Plus, this book features work by some of the finest writers and artists from of the Bronze Age and easily earns my highest grade.

J.A. Morris' rating:

4 Sals!