Best Avengers run

[ZNOP]

Operation: Galactic Storm

[t hedge coke]

Roger Stern takes the top spot for me. Ties with Kelly Sue DeConnick's Avengers Assemble, for me.

Busiek's never quite climbs higher than its beginnings for me. Larry Hama's was way too short or it could've been gold. Bendis' is too all over the place in terms of personal enjoyment. And, The Crossing really throws off a gorgeously romantic run I otherwise love. Otherwise, they're all vying for second and third place, if I tried to sort that out.

[mtop2036]

Roger Stern takes the top spot for me. Ties with Kelly Sue DeConnick's Avengers Assemble, for me.

Busiek's never quite climbs higher than its beginnings for me. Larry Hama's was way too short or it could've been gold. Bendis' is too all over the place in terms of personal enjoyment. And, The Crossing really throws off a gorgeously romantic run I otherwise love. Otherwise, they're all vying for second and third place, if I tried to sort that out.

Well so far i've only read Bendis(only the issues in the omni) and hickman. Its a hard pick between the two for me, both have their pros and cons. Although I havnt read secret wars yet, waiting on the HC

[ed2962]

Steve Englehart
Roger Stern
Kurt Busiek
Micheline/Shooter/Ewing

[Witchfan]

1. Kurt Busiek's run Volume 3, #1-56
2. 1970s issues with George Perez and John Byrne art, #141-202
3. Roy Thomas/John Buscema issues from #41-104.
4. Roger Stern/ John Buscema issues from #255-285.
5. Everything from AVX to Secret Wars

[t hedge coke]

Special mention to Walt Simonson's second run. Not the best run ever, but undoubtedly the best save an Avengers title has ever had. Like turning a broken, dirty vacuum cleaner into a spiffy warp-speeding rocketship. And, funny, too.

[totalsellout]

stern, buscema run for me. the kang story, masters, olympus, those stories jut define avengers for me (also, the first ones i read so..).

bendis has great characterization and team moments, but his plotting could be weak and i think the story spun a bit out of his control in secret invasion.

ive recently reread englehart's run, and it is so odd. he can be way too wordy, some of his pages just look like blocks of texts with tiny drawings poking their way through. he kept revisiting kang to the point it just got old. and it's funny, but if you read the letter pages you can tell he was chronically late and there are a lot of fill in issues peppered throughout. we'd crucify him for that stuff nowadays.

busiek did a solid, good run. it was a return to form the book really needed, but it never seemed to get past that feeling of being a nostalgic rehash, at least to me. some of his tangents (triune, 3d man, ) i just didn't like.

hickman's been great, but it is a little distant at times. i need to reread ff to avengers/new avengers to secret war in correct order one more time to really decide on it.

[MollyBarton]

Stern. Under Siege, Assault on Olympus, etc.

[The Whovian]

Same. Avengers Forever was probably my favorite self-contained story.

Same here. It has everything you want in an Avengers book--great writing, fantastic artwork, awesome characters, villains....just everything.

[Tiamatty]

In terms of the main book, Busiek would probably be my favourite. Stern was great, too. Most other runs tended to leave me a bit cool.

A lot of spin-offs have been fantastic. Slott's Mighty Avengers, Ewing's Mighty Avengers, Avengers Academy, Gillen's Young Avengers, KSD's Avengers Assemble, plenty of other books.

[manymade1]

One writer how never gets enough love on Avengers is Jim Shooter. He was kinda here and there as far as a steady run goes, but between issues 151 to 224 he wrote some of the best Avengers stuff ever. He created Graviton, Jocasta, set up the fall of Yellowjacket story, and gave us the Korvac Saga.

Best period in the book's history. You just didn't hear as much about it because it was a consistently good seller, but the New X-Men were starting to get all the attention. I think the Korvac Saga is every bit as good
as the famous X-Men arcs from their heyday.

Agreed. Shooters run is criminally underrated.

That being said, Busiek's has always been my favorite.

[Captain Zolalnadia]

Slott's Mighty Avengers is my favorite run. had a nice mixture of popular and obscure characters and my favorite Hank Pym moments, in this run he tricks Norman Osborn into to not touching the Cosmic Cube, almost flawlessly breaks into the Baxter Building, builds an Avengers Mansion that is infinite with portals that go anywhere, and manages to outsmart Ultron with a bunch of Ants.

[pugbuddy]

I'm split between Shooter and Stern with honorable mention to the Lee and Kirby stuff that started it all.

[Nomads1]

Roger Stern by a mile. Assault on Olympus is without a doubt my all time favorite Avengers story. Under Seige of course, is widely considered the best Avengers story ever. He managed to feature dozens of Avengers and futher their charactarizations despite the team's six members limit (THAT's being creative). He featured classic villains and managed to bring new ones to new prominence (Morgan Le Fey, for exemple of the later). He also introduced a couple of newbies that went on to become favorites (Nebula, for exemple). Plus, I'd much rather had seen HIM introdduce Power Man to the team than the boring character Bendis gave us.
Busiek comes in second. With the help of a slew of firts rate artists, among them classic Avengers artist George Perez, he revitalized the team, and especially revitalized classic Avengers foes (most proeminintly Kang and Immortus). I may not have liked most of his introductions to the team (I think Jack of Hearts was the only one I really liked ), some of my favorites storylines came from that era (Kang Dynasty, Ultron Unlimited, and Avengers Forever, in collaboration with my all-time favorite writer).
Bob Harras comes in right after Busiek, but only right up to the end of the Gatherers Saga. After Epting left, the book really went into a downward spin. Despite having a special place in my heart for the Crossing (and actually think that a really great story could have come out of it, if they'd simply had changed a couple of basic things in it) it is not up to the firts half of Harras stint on the book, which really gave it direction after a really aimless period.
I guess I cannot leave out Roy Thomas. His run in the firts hundred or so issues of the book introduced many of the concepts that became such na importante part of the Avengers mythos. While it's dialogue may be dated, it is still light-years ahead of so much mediocrity (in creative terms, not in sofistication) that we have nowadays. Thomas also is responsible for my favorite run in the Avengers companion book (West Coast Avengers), a book that many times was actually my favorite of the two.
For more modern writers, I greatly enjoyed Slott's Mighty Avengers (A breath of freshe air in na otherwise very bleak period. However, it was far too short), and Ewing's Might Avengers also. However, I still prefer the classics.

Peace

PS. Haven't there already been two or three threads with the some title?