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the AVENGERS

Hands down. Case closed. There isn't even any serious competition for this one.

FANTASTIC FOUR is the granddaddy super-hero title of the Marvel Universe, no question.SPIDER-MAN was the most pivotal. And THE X-MEN are the company's single greatest total sales success, sure; no one's ever gonna deny that one.

But by that same token... if you stop right here -- right now -- and think to yourself "... the ten all-time greatest Marvel stories ever are...," and at least half of your final tally isn't comprised of tales of The Mighty AVENGERS...

... well, then either you've never read more than a handful of Marvel comics in your life... or you're under twenty-five years of age.

Both of these conditions, by the way, are correctable.

Settle back. Get comfy.

This is gonna be good.

You have to start with Captain America. You just have to, is all.
He wasn't the first Avenger -- Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, Giant Man and the Wasp all beat him out of the gate in that regard, true enough...

... but it became readily apparent from his very first appearance in this title's pages (issue #4, to be precise) that this man was the very heart and soul of the team.

Captain America is to the Avengers what the Batman is to DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE the sole essential component of the total team dynamic. He's been their leader in practically every incarnation of the title since fossil fuels still roamed the earth on their hind legs. They've triumphed in each and every one of their greatest battles -- the Kree/Skrull War; the Avengers/Defenders knockdown drag-out; the Infinity Gauntlet -- with the Star-Spangled Sentinel confidently manning the helm of the team's "ship of state."

If you're a comics writer, and you've just been handed the plum assignment of taking over AVENGERS, and you even pause to think about doing the title sans Captain America... then you're the wrong man for the job.

Unlike DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE, however -- where the precept "The World's Greatest Super-Heroes" is the bedrock underlying the entire concept -- the Avengers have always been more of a gathering of "like" personalities than of undisputed comics icons.

This, of course, is not necessarily a Bad Thing (although such an approach has never proven wholly successful, creatively, with the JLA). In the case of the Avengers, some of their most vital and compelling members have been characters who started out "at odds" with the law... or -- worse yet -- couldn't even hold down a monthly title -- !

Case in point the brother/sister duo, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch [see cover, below].

(By the way... just in case you were wondering. Avengers who started out as costumed super-villains Hawkeye; Quicksilver; the Scarlet Witch; Wonder Man; the Vision; the Black Knight; Jocasta; Moondragon; the Sandman. Throw in those members who've had major contremps with the law in the past -- the Hulk; Sub-Mariner; Stingray; the Falcon; and Spider-Man -- and you really do have to wonder if maybe Peter Parker wasn't on to something after all with that "... with great power comes great responsibility" jive.

... and... speaking of the Black Knight...

It was an intriguing concept, right from the git-go take one of the Avengers' most constant and troublesome foemen (the original "Silver Age" Black Knight; an arch-enemy of Iron Man's, and one of the less pleasant members of Baron Zemo's "Masters of Evil" cabal)... bump him off, quickly and with a minimum of fuss... and have his young nephew pick up the mantle and attempt to "redeem" the family name and/or honor.

Of course -- the AVENGERS being a Marvel comic (and a 60's Marvel comic, in this particular instance) -- you just know there's going to be the obligatory case of mistaken identity, leading into a royal whompus of an all-out battle over the rooftops of New York... right...?

Probably the most popular of the "bad-guy-turned-good" characters ever to turn over a new leaf in the pages of AVENGERS, however, was the character who -- right after Captain America his own bad self -- practically came to symbolize the Avengers the tormented android known as the Vision.

Created by long-time Avengers nemesis Ultron-5 (as he was wont to refer to himself, back in those giddy, carefree days) for the sole purpose of slaying Marvel's primo super-team entire... the Vision quickly reformed (hey... beats the heck outta fighting Thor, man...!) and became an integral part of the team's ongoing chemistry.

Actually -- as the cover here clearly demonstrates -- the Avengers were a pretty cantankerous bunch, even at the best of times. If they couldn't find a couple of decent super-villains to pound through the floorboards, like so many tenpenny nails... they'd simply take out their frustrations on one another.

(Okay... okay; long-time AVENGERS readers know darned good and well that what I just described isn't the real story behind this issue's cover. I just felt like being a li'l pain in the hinder, here, is all...)

The Silver Age AVENGERS
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