Man, there’s a lot of fun to be found in ESSENTIAL AVENGERS 4, especially if you’re feeling a touch of malaise over the whole AVENGERS: DISASSEMBLED stunt currently in progress. The book collects AVENGERS 69-97 and HULK 140, part two of an early Marvel crossover.
One thing that surprised me was writer Roy Thomas’s portrayal of the Scarlet Witch. I had always attributed her romance with Vision and her growth as a heroine to Steve Englehart, who followed Thomas on the title. While Englehart significantly expanded on both, a lot of the credit for those developments has to go to Thomas.
His Wanda has definitely evolved past “the girl.” While her powers are still unpredictable and her mastery of them shaky, she’s as much of an Avenger as any of her male counterparts. She takes pride in what she does and counts herself as an equal among her teammates. (Heaven help anyone – ally or adversary – who suggests otherwise, or they get a dose of sharp-edged feminism, sometimes followed up with a devastating hex.)
And while I always regarded the Kree-Skrull War as an early and definitive space opera, I hadn’t really noticed how much of it was driven by character. The revelation of Wanda and Vision’s complicated feelings, Clint’s gradual progression from Goliath back to Hawkeye, and Quicksilver’s increasing hostility (dovetailing with the anti-alien paranoia in the plot) are all folded nicely into the twisty, interstellar action.
And wow, but these issues are crowded! The roster is fluid, variously featuring the Big Three (Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor), Hank Pym (as both Yellowjacket and Ant-Man), the Wasp, Goliath, the Black Panther, the Vision (who was clearly a Thomas favorite), and the return of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Black Knight officially joins in this run, and Captain Marvel and Rick Jones make frequent and pivotal guest appearances. (Come to think of it, Kurt Busiek took much the same approach in his run in Vol. 3 – a somewhat stable core with just enough change and visiting members to keep things humming.)
But the guest appearances don’t stop there. Future members Black Widow, Swordsman, and pre-Ms. Marvel Carol Danvers stop by, as do Daredevil, the Falcon, Nick Fury, the Hulk, most of the Fantastic Four, Professor X, several Inhumans, Nick Fury, and the Red Wolf. The Squadron Supreme make their first appearance (hot on the heels of their villainous equivalents, the Squadron Sinister), triggering the “first” Avengers-JLA crossover.
These are great, classic Avengers stories, even if some of them show their age. And it’s really the only significant patch of issues I’ve never read before, either in reprints or original issues. The Kree-Skrull issues have been reprinted frequently, but everything after Wanda and Pietro’s return (issues 75 and 76, if I remember correctly) hasn’t been readily available. (Marvel’s Triple Action and Super Action covered most of the early issues in glorious color, if you’re ever hunting through back issue bins.)