Earth's Mightiest Heroes
The legendary first Avengers issue, from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, featuring the quasi-accidental formation of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Released all the way back in 1963, how does it read today?
Well, it's fun stuff. Some of it is goofy fun, but it's still fun. Any Marvel fan knows the plot already: the evil Loki manipulates the Hulk to get revenge on his brother Thor, causing a chain of events that forces Ironman, Ant-man, The Wasp and the aforementioned Thor to join forces against the God of Evil. After the battle, they join up with Hulk and eventually agree to form a permanent team called The Avengers.
All the characters are defined as quickly as possible, which is always good. Thor is a noble warrior, the God of Thunder, disguised on Earth as Donald Blake, a middle-mannered doctor. He jumps into the action when he hears of the Hulk rampage. Ironman, aka. millionaire industrialist Tony Stark, gets caught up in the whole Loki scheme for more selfish reasons, as he wants to measure up the power of his armor against the strenght of the Hulkster. Ant-man and the Wasp are already a bickering couple. Stan Lee writes Jan as the most superficial super-powered bimbo you can imagine and Hank seems constantly annoyed by her shallow behavior. Finally, the Hulk is portrayed as a good-hearted dude stuck in the body of a universally-despised green monster, which is classic Hulk.
There's a lot of action here and most of it is vintage Jack Kirby goodness, especially the Hulk/Ironman and Thor/Loki (which features Loki sicking a RIDICULOUSLY CREEPY giant troll on his brother) showdowns. The goofiness I was referring to mostly comes down to:
1- Rick Jones and the Teen Brigade! What the hell.
2- The Hulk trying to escape all of this madness by becoming "Mechano", a circus performer robot (Yes). Nice try, Banner.
3- The all-powerful Loki, son of Odin and master of illusion, is defeated when Pym's telepathic ants get him to fall into trap door. D'OH!
This is still an enjoyable read and the concept of "a bunch of Marvel heroes getting accidently thrown together to fight a common threat" is a real winner. In the end, it's still freaking Avengers #1, from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Everyone should at least read it once.
