I would like to apologise for and attenuate some comments i made upthread regarding the cooleth of the actor/avenger/glasses-wearer of the year 1983, simon whatever. i have since recalled an opening page during his red raincoat fashion period (see above) where he and hank the spank mccoy are seen stumbling home towards avengers mansion at dawn, having been out all night drinking in celebration of simon give-one having landed a role in some soap opera or other. a huge robot attacks, and wonderman and beast are the very first to fall, being blind drunk. contrary to what i said earliereth, that is in fact very fucking cool.
i am glad that haus mentioned simon youknow's brother the grim reaper, as I think there is much potential there for an 'impractically accessorised villains' thread. obviously this would feature g. reaper, with the scythe on his hand there
(great cover)
and we caould talk about his grim usefulness around the family farm come harvest time ('just don't expect me to be happy about it!'), and perennial shang-chi badster razorfist
(not so great)
with his special powers of making salsa and bringing new meaning to the term 'having a slash'. (oh hang on, i'm just being dave's long box now aren't i?)
is it weston? or is he the guy who got his head blown off in the falklands?
moving on, the sports-team analogy works well i think. one of the avengers' more agreeably daft villains is the taskmaster
(I really like that shot- good update)
who's basically the ultimate in evil PE teachers.
the first appearance of the taskmaster is out in trade i believe, along with quite a lot of roy thomas' excellent run on the title, including the kree-skrull war storyline which i think is generally hailed as the avengers' finest moment, with excellent neal adams art, some classic ant-man sequences and a ending which might have been original at some time in history i guess. thomas' work on the book is to my mind the apotheosis of seventies-into-eighties superhero marvel magic, keeping it real at a time prior to claremont/byrne's xmen when the company was only really making its mark in the comedy, horror and kung-fu genres (byrne/claremont's xmen aside).
to thomas' lasting credit, his work tries to put some sense into the biggest bit of stupid surrounding the team, that of their name, and the fact that they don't really do much avenging. in his run, there are lots (really, lots) of instances of avengers believeing certain team-mates to have just been killed by the scarlet viking or whoever, when in fact they have just fallen through a trapdoor, been teleported away at the last second, were just a robot double anyway etc. this gives the remaining, grieving (action-grieving) avengers something to get all motivated and self-righteously avengeful about ('let's do it for goliath!'). it's a very cheap trick of course, and makes for weirdly bumpy storytelling, but allows for their enormous, mediocre membership to get the odd couple of panels in the sunshine, and is somehow rather compelling, in that you true believe iron man hasn't been killed by that stupid boobytrap (although some part of me is always a bit worried for them) because he's iron man, but you do want to know how and why he isn't dead, so you read on. Read On! |
