Free Comic Book Day 2012

It's Free Comic Book Day today. This year's event has been overshadowed by the debut of The Avengers movie, and that's odd since movie releases close to or on the day traditionally have added to the zest not overwhelmed it. Maybe it's the fact that FCBD has become a regular event, somewhat commonplace in fact.


Whatever, there are several comics I'd love to get my mitts on. Donald Duck and Family from Fantagraphics heads the list, but Dan Spiegle's My Favorite Martian is one I'm eager to read too. Also Barnaby seems like oddball fun.

One thing I noticed new this year, was the FCBD website features free preview downloads for the "Free" comic books. This seems a bit wacky to me since the Free comics are themselves largely previews. Strange.


Nonetheless, have a good time and support your local comic book shops.

UPDATE: I went and had a fine time. I kidded my wife no end, because for the first time she ended up going along with me, and though her mission was most certainly not to enter a comic book shop, she did ride along and we had a great lunch. I got all the free comics I went for along with a couple more from Bongo and Gemstone. The business seemed way up to me, much to my surprise, and one shop was so filled to the brim with customers that I didn't even attempt to stand in the long long line despite a pretty good discount and a volume of American Flagg I'd been craving of late. Good day, the FCBD tradition seems to be just that, a tradition.

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The Avengers - A Novel Idea!

Here is one of my all-time favorite Avengers images, and I cannot find out who the artist is. One source says it might be Robert McGinnis, but others suggest the artist is unknown. Does anyone know for sure?


The companion novel featuring Captain America is another outstanding cover, this one is reputedly by Mitchell Hooks according to some sources and Lou Feck according to others. Anyone know for sure?

Both of these novels, the Avengers by Otto Binder and the Cap by Ted White have virtues, though as I recollect neither reflects the Avengers exactly as we know and love them precisely as they are in the comics. It's been many years since I read these.

They are lovely objects nonetheless though.

UPDATE: Thanks to info from some kind fellows the artists have been identified. Robert McGinnis is confirmed as the artist on the Avengers cover and Peter Caras is the artist on the Cap cover. Thanks guys!

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The Avengers - And Lo There Shall Come A Day!

And today's the day. It's finally showtime for the Avengers. The buzz is great and I can't wait to see this flick. The hard part will be staying away from spoilers. This should be fun.







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The Avengers - Marvel's Greatest Comic!

Several years ago when at last the Essential Ant-Man volume was published I gathered up all my Essentials and sat them on the nightstand to read the Marvel Universe in chronological order. Month by month I moved from volume to volume reading the books as they would've been released onto the market, trying somehow recreate the experience, at least a little, of what it must have been like to experience the Marvel Universe as it was just getting started and began to bloom. It was a revealing experience in many ways, and despite having read nearly all the stories before in other contexts, reading them this way showed me patterns in what Stan and Jack and Steve and Larry were trying to do.


One pattern revealed was how critical the Hulk was to early Marvel history. After losing his own book after six issues, his peripatetic adventures became something of a spine for many of the Marvel titles as the Hulk saga moved across the spectrum. Eventually it resulted in Greenskin joining the Avengers for a brief two issue run before famously blowing his stack and thundering off. It was in fact the search for the Hulk which caused the Avengers to stumble across a frozen body which just happened to turn out to be Captain America, the Living Legend, and that utterly transformed the whole of Avengers history.



But before that momentous discovery we have Avengers #3, the issue in which the Sub-Mariner, the Golden Age anti-hero and at the time a confirmed Fantastic Four villain, teams up with a reluctant Hulk and the two of them face off against Thor, Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp. I personally feel this adventure may well be the single finest comic book Marvel has ever produced. Avengers #4 was more momentous, but it was not a better story. That honor goes to #3.


Here is the fantastic splash page for Avengers #3. Below is some more original artwork from the issue. Jack's storytelling is impeccable. Paul Reinman's inks do the job nobly.





What I find most impressive about the issue is the sheer density of the story told. There is enough plot in three panels of Stan's and Jack's story to fill a full issue of a modern comic book. In fact I'd argue the story told in Avengers #3 alone would easily be a year's worth of comics today as the the story was told in languid fashion with a mountain of boring reaction shots in overlarge panels. There might two years of story there.


I first chanced across this epic in the reprint comic Marvel Super-Heroes #21. It's a wonderful comic in its own right. And features not only this Avengers masterpiece, but the great second issue of the X-Men seen below. That's a good comic but not as fine as the Avengers story.



Avengers #3 is in my estimation the single finest story Marvel has ever published, or at the very least the most entertaining. And for me, that's the same thing.

To read this outstanding story see this link.

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The Avengers - Crisis On Two Earths!

I've been an Avengers fan since I've been a comic book reader. The Assemblers were soon my favorite Marvel comic book, they had no rival save perhaps for another super-team I cottoned to at another comic book company, a little group called The Justice League of America.

So the dream of having these two teams square off is something I've lived with my entire comic book reading career. There were fun hints of what it might be like, such as Marvel's homage to the DC heroes, the Squadrons Sinister and Supreme, and DC also had a doppleganger group, the Champions of Angor. When the two companies began to cross over their heroes starting with Spider-Man and Superman, the dream seemed almost to be coming true that the two great super-teams would at long last meet for real.


But office politics seemed to kill the project as Marvel and DC fell out and the two rival companies then spent many years in which the aborted crossover by Gerry Conway and George Perez was the stuff of gossip and rumor. Then in the early part of the new millenium, it suddenly was announced that the two super teams would meet at long last and that George Perez, the artist ideally suited to bring them together would be large and in charge of the project, with the writing going to Kurt Busiek, a man who had with the help of Perez revived the Assemblers some years previously.

Things were thrilling from the very first announcement, and I'm happy to report the story lived up to expectations as much as any single story could have after all those decades of anticipation. The story had the scale and scope worthy of such a crossover event, but still thanks to the special talents of these creators, the story was full of heart, the key element which makes any good comic book story worth reading.

Here's a gallery of the outstanding cover art produced by Perez.









Sadly, this crossover, as monumental as it proved to be, also proved to be a capstone to decades of reading the Avengers. While I stayed with the team some few years after, it seemed more and more that the magic which had informed the Assemblers for decades had withered away. They had changed, or maybe I had and with the great dream of the Avengers and the League finally having crossed swords accomplished, I felt it appropriate to close the book on my favorite book. That was nearly five years ago.

Now we have a new movie to look forward to. I'm eager to see it, the most eager for an Avengers project since the crossover. That's saying something.

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The Avengers - Lo! The Lethal Legion!

John Buscema
The Avengers have faced some mighty threats over the decades, cosmic world-beaters, racist secret societies, vengeful robots, and such. Sometimes their old enemies gather together to square off against the Assemblers, the most famous of these groups being the various versions of the Masters of Evil which morphed over time into The Thunderbolts.

One group, less famous but no less deadly, was the Lethal Legion. The Legion got together first in the summer of 1970 when the Grim Reaper, the Swordsman, Power Man, the Living Laser and the Man-Ape all joined forces to battle the Assemblers.


The cover above by Big John Buscema is a draft of the cover for the second part of the story, and shows the gathered group of villains gloating over the defeated Avengers symbolically trapped in an hourglass with their time running out. It's a dramatic cover.

John Busema & Tom Palmer

The first part of the adventure drawn on the inside by Sal Buscema sported a great cover too, again by John Buscema with M'Naka the Man-Ape featured with his utterly defeated heroes in hand. It oozes drama.


The cover of the seventy-ninth issue was inspired according to Roy Thomas by a vintage All-Star Comics cover from the Golden Age. Roy liked to lift these classic images and give them a redo.



He'd done it earlier in the Avengers Annual #2 when the hourglass idea made the splash page of the second part of the story this time featuring the Scarlet Centurion holding the assembled heroes. The image by Don Heck and Vince Colletta was used as a cover many years later when the story was reprinted in Marvel Super Action.


The Lethal Legion got its start when the Swordsman debuted in summer of 1965. He tricked his way onto the Avengers team and quickly turned on them, becoming an immediate arch-villain.


Later that same year Power Man showed up, given abilities by Baron Zemo, this powerhouse battled the Avengers first alone.


Then in 1966 Power Man and Swordsman along with the Black Widow teamed up the take on the Avengers together. The seeds of the Lethal Legion were at last sown.


1966 also saw the debut of a new baddie, the Living Laser, a high-tech villain who took the Avengers to task on his own.


Then the Swordsman, Power Man, and the revised Living Laser joined forces with the Mandarin to battle the full Avengers team in the very first King-Size Avengers Special in the summer of 1967.


Later the next year the Swordsman and the Living Laser hooked up with a Captain America baddie Batroc to battle the Living Legend in his own magazine.


Earlier in 1968 though the Grim Reaper had debuted, taking on the Avengers at one of their lowest points in terms of raw power. He seemed for a time to have killed the Assemblers, but it was all a ruse and he was defeated with significant help from new Avenger, the Black Panther.


Later in 1969, the Panther's own nemesis the Man-Ape first appeared, and the elements of the Lethal Legion were at last all accounted for.


The Lethal Legion was a murderous gang for sure, all seeking their own vengeance on the Avengers ironically for past defeats and past slights. They gave the team all they could handle for a couple of issues in 1970 then disappeared to heard of no more until in 1977 another version of the Lethal Legion was assembled by Count Nefaria, this team featuring Power Man, Living Laser and adding former Master of Evil Whirlwind to the mix.


Other versions of the team have appeared over the decades, but none have matched the raw villainy of that first group so long ago in the earliest days of the Bronze Age.

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