I'm not much of a Marvel fan, but I wanted to come over to the Marvel boards to show some love to one of my favorite Avengers runs of all time.
This run is in my opinion the definitive run of the title. It stands out because every single issue was drawn by Buscema and Palmer. 33 issues, only one fill-in. To be fair they continued on the book for a lot longer but I marked Roger Stern's departure as the end of this specific run. Imagine an artist team today being able to put out that many issues, and in an era when comics were two pages longer than today’s.
They weren't exactly noteworthy for their artwork but man oh man could they tell a story. Their portrayals of Wasp, Captain Marvel, Black Knight, and a variety of others are classic.
Noteworthy moments from this run:
-Captain Marvel becomes trapped on Thanos’s vessel, the Sanctuary II, by Nebula and her crew (this was Nebula’s first appearance).
-The team fights Terminus in the Savage Land, and the whole thing gets destroyed and covered by ice.
-Firelord joins the team in travelling to rescue Captain Marvel, and gets all angry when he has to help Skrulls.
-The Beyonder shows up a few times, as Stern had to make the ridiculousness of Secret Wars II work in his storyline.
-The Avengers lease Hydrobase from Stingray after losing their security clearance, and receiving notification that they can’t fly their Quinjets out of their mansion anymore. Eventually, they move the whole mansion to Hydro Base (I don’t remember when it was moved back to Manhattan).
-Namor joins the team, which makes a lot of the general public very angry, because of his status at that time as a villain.
-The Avengers discover the weird pod-thing in Jamaica Bay which eventually turns out to be holding Jean Grey, in a tie-in to the new title X-Factor.
-Baron Zemo gathers his Masters of Evil in the slow set up to an epic story.
-After vanquishing the Beyonder, the Avengers and Fantastic Four need Molecule Man to fix the entire Earth so it’s not destroyed.
-Kang embroils the Avengers in a complicated plot to eradicate his other selves.
-Alpha Flight and the Avengers help Namor fight off Attuma, who has kidnapped his wife and taken over Atlantis.
-The Masters of Evil infiltrate Avengers Mansion, beating the hell out of Jarvis and Hercules in the process. Eventually they are taken care of, but it’s a pretty dark tale for that time.
-Dr. Druid joins the team, Thor wears some truly hideous armour, and Captain Marvel becomes the leader after the dust of the Masters of Evil story settles.
-We get to see some of Jarvis’s history with the team as he contemplates leaving, after recovering from his injuries. This is the fill-in issue, and it’s really weird to see Kyle Baker inking an artist as straight as Bob McLeod. You can see hints of where he has ended up as an artist.
-Zeus gets angry with the Avengers for allowing Hercules to be hurt (he’s in a coma), and brings them to Olympus (by way of Hades) for revenge.
-The Super-Adaptoid, in the guise of the Fixer, starts gathering robots and artificial beings to help him with a plot.
The team’s line-up is interesting during this time, consisting of:
-Captain Marvel
-Black Knight
-Captain America
-Hercules
-The Wasp
-Starfox
-Namor the Sub-Mariner
-Thor
-She-Hulk
-Dr. Druid
What are everyone's thoughts on this run?