Where it all started, and how did it end up here?
This is the first of a few comic rants that I've been working on, and as I read them over, they really are rants. There's whining ahead... be forewarned....
It was 1974, according to the experts, when I started this in earnest. Prior to that, I didn’t have any money to call my own, so “collecting” anything was something that I wasn’t really allowed to think about. I was in the 8th grade. I walked by this drugstore every day on my way to school for the past 8 years. I’d looked at these things before, and on occasion, I’d owned one or two, although I can’t actually tell you where I got them. This day was different. I was buying comic books.
In order to get the most for my money I bought two books that had teams in them. Avengers #124, and Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #203. Between the two, there had to be twenty or thirty superheroes!! I read them, I re-read them, I traced panels from each, and of course, I started figuring out my own superheroes.
Weeks later, I found a comic titled Marvel Triple Action, which chronicled the early adventures of the Avengers. The first issue I bought was a reprint of Avengers #26, which featured “the return” of The Wasp and Giant Man, and which also had Quicksilver and Hawkeye. That was the beginning of my obsession with this team. It’s lasted more than 30 years, and during that time, I’ve also gone back and collected or at least read, every Avengers tale that came out prior to that date.
Did I have a favorite Avenger, of course I did. The Scarlet Witch captured my top prize for cool and unusual powers and depth of character right from the beginning. It probably helped that I came on board just as she was learning a little bit about the magic she had control over, in addition to her mutant ability. It also didn’t hurt that she went and married an android a few months after I started reading. The whole thing was just way too cool.
I read along as different storylines made her more or less powerful, I read along as Steve Englehart and then John Byrne messed around with her psyche. Gave her children, and then took them away. Through it all, she was one of the backbones of the team. Whether she was married to the Vision, or dating Wonder Man, or hanging out with the Wasp, She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel on “girls night out”, she was Wanda Maximoff - daughter of Magneto, the Scarlet Witch. She kicked butt as a mutant, she kicked butt as a witch, she kicked butt as an Avenger, through and through.
So this new guy comes along and decides that deep down in the pit of her psyche, my Wanda is psych-O, and she’s going to destroy the Avengers. Who is this guy? This Brian Michael Bendis?? And now that he’s gutted my favorite Avenger, and destroyed the team, not to mention the brutal and can I say it, anti-climactic murders of Hawkeye and the Vision, he disbands the most venerated superhero team in history. (Don’t talk to me about the X-Men or the JLA). He symbolically rips down the mansion that has withstood what hundreds of super-villians have done to it over the past forty years of Avengers history, and slaughters not one, not two, but no less than 5 Avengers in the process? How is the world going on in the wake of this tragedy? How is it that “life just goes on”? Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Jan and Hank, Hank McCoy, T’Challa, they simply go on with their lives? This doesn’t really play well for me. How is it that Magneto just swoops in and walks off with Wanda? Now what am I supposed to use my Avengers Priority Card for?
It was 1974, according to the experts, when I started this in earnest. Prior to that, I didn’t have any money to call my own, so “collecting” anything was something that I wasn’t really allowed to think about. I was in the 8th grade. I walked by this drugstore every day on my way to school for the past 8 years. I’d looked at these things before, and on occasion, I’d owned one or two, although I can’t actually tell you where I got them. This day was different. I was buying comic books.
In order to get the most for my money I bought two books that had teams in them. Avengers #124, and Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #203. Between the two, there had to be twenty or thirty superheroes!! I read them, I re-read them, I traced panels from each, and of course, I started figuring out my own superheroes.
Weeks later, I found a comic titled Marvel Triple Action, which chronicled the early adventures of the Avengers. The first issue I bought was a reprint of Avengers #26, which featured “the return” of The Wasp and Giant Man, and which also had Quicksilver and Hawkeye. That was the beginning of my obsession with this team. It’s lasted more than 30 years, and during that time, I’ve also gone back and collected or at least read, every Avengers tale that came out prior to that date.
Did I have a favorite Avenger, of course I did. The Scarlet Witch captured my top prize for cool and unusual powers and depth of character right from the beginning. It probably helped that I came on board just as she was learning a little bit about the magic she had control over, in addition to her mutant ability. It also didn’t hurt that she went and married an android a few months after I started reading. The whole thing was just way too cool.
I read along as different storylines made her more or less powerful, I read along as Steve Englehart and then John Byrne messed around with her psyche. Gave her children, and then took them away. Through it all, she was one of the backbones of the team. Whether she was married to the Vision, or dating Wonder Man, or hanging out with the Wasp, She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel on “girls night out”, she was Wanda Maximoff - daughter of Magneto, the Scarlet Witch. She kicked butt as a mutant, she kicked butt as a witch, she kicked butt as an Avenger, through and through.
So this new guy comes along and decides that deep down in the pit of her psyche, my Wanda is psych-O, and she’s going to destroy the Avengers. Who is this guy? This Brian Michael Bendis?? And now that he’s gutted my favorite Avenger, and destroyed the team, not to mention the brutal and can I say it, anti-climactic murders of Hawkeye and the Vision, he disbands the most venerated superhero team in history. (Don’t talk to me about the X-Men or the JLA). He symbolically rips down the mansion that has withstood what hundreds of super-villians have done to it over the past forty years of Avengers history, and slaughters not one, not two, but no less than 5 Avengers in the process? How is the world going on in the wake of this tragedy? How is it that “life just goes on”? Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Jan and Hank, Hank McCoy, T’Challa, they simply go on with their lives? This doesn’t really play well for me. How is it that Magneto just swoops in and walks off with Wanda? Now what am I supposed to use my Avengers Priority Card for?