One of the weirder collections of comics you’ll ever see arrives on Wednesday. It’s Essential Avengers Volume 5, and it’s quite a snapshot of a book in transition. The Kree-Skrull War is over, and Steve Englehart’s reign of weirdness begins.
Of particular interest is material that establishes Hawkeye as the least desirable man in the Marvel Universe. In the collected issues (Avengers 98-126, Daredevil 99, Defenders 8-11, Captain Marvel 33, and Giant-Size Avengers 1), Hawkeye’s romantic advances are spurned by the Scarlet Witch, the Black Widow, and Valkyrie. If Marvel had a sense of humor, they would come up with a cover image of his personal ad with a big red X through it.
But that’s not all. There’s also a Harlan Ellison story, the introduction of suicide bombers into the Marvel Universe, the Avengers-Defenders War, Black Widow officially joining the team (for about a day), Swordsman joining for a slightly longer period, the arrival of Mantis (who would become the most hated woman in Marvel Comics, entirely by design), and a quantity of guest-stars that boggles the mind.
It’s not Englehart’s best work on the book (that would come later with the Celestial Madonna story and even more in the Serpent Crown arc). But as a curiosity, this collection is pretty darned curious.
Also arriving tomorrow is Yuri Monogatari Volume 3 from ALC Publishing. It promises “manga by some of today’s hottest yuri artists and writers in this 100% yuri original English-language manga anthology.” I’ve only read one of ALC’s books so far (Rica ‘tte Kanji!, which I liked a lot), so an anthology seemed like a good way to sample various takes on the genre.
Poor little Case Closed Volume 9 seems kind of run-of-the-mill compared to the other two, but it’s a reliably entertaining mystery manga with a cute premise. (The book is always better when the Junior Detective League is in action, but I can’t seem to find any solicitation information for this installment, so I don’t know if they’ll be around.) As Johanna Draper Carlson put it, it’s “the equivalent of watching a decent sitcom, a bit of entertainment to distract you temporarily with goofy events.”