Even before the 2012 movie and the films leading up to it made them a top-tier household name, the Avengers was one of Marvel Comics's big titles, and both recognized and popular among comics fans. Over the decades, they're often positioned as "Marvel’s Justice League", but what's interesting about the Avengers is that they didn't start out that way at all, either in concept or in execution.
The Avengers #1:
"The Coming of The Avengers!"
- Writers: Stan Lee
- Artists: Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers
- Editor: Stan Lee
- Publication Date: July 2, 1963
- Cover Date: September 1963
Particularly now that the original characters are some of the most recognizable figures in popular culture, it's easy to lose sight of where the team originally came from and why. The team-up was created out of necessity rather than creative inspiration: in 1963, the founding members of the Avengers -- Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and the Wasp -- were not what you'd consider big hitters. They were Marvel's B-list assets, and even that might be generous in some cases.
Iron Man had a few appearances in the Tales of Suspense anthology book, mostly met with modest reception at best. Tony Stark was barely a character -- he was more a representation of an archetype, with precious little internal drama going on, and his stories weren't particularly memorable (see my retrospective on Tales of Suspense #42 for more on this subject). Thor and Ant-Man didn't appear in a feature magazine either, and as far as I can tell, nobody was a die-hard Ant-Man fan in these early days. Out of the lot of them, the only one who ever even had their own magazine was the Hulk, and that was axed after 6 issues.
It wouldn't be fair to say the characters were "failures", but they certainly weren't superstars -- the concept, therefore, of a team formed out of this sorry bunch is clearly not the same as that behind the Justice League of America, which came about specifically as a collection of DC Comics's biggest, most popular heroes.
Those that know their comics history know that the Avengers wasn't pre-meditated in the conventional sense -- it wasn't a creative twist from Stan Lee, nor was it a daring business gambit, at least not as its primary objective. The reason the Avengers was put together in the first place was that Marvel needed to fill a publishing slot quickly after Daredevil #1 was delayed until 1964 due to Bill Everett needing more time to finish its art.
Stan Lee was a creative man (at least if you don't entirely subscribe to the belief that he was a talentless credit-hog), but even he couldn't whip up a new character on short notice while writing the scripts to several magazines and being in charge of the entire Marvel editorial department. More importantly, new characters take time to design and illustrate, and that wasn't ideal for a situation such as this. What made sense, then, was to look into the junk drawer and see what was there ready to go, without a need to design costumes or develop origin stories.
The Avengers would go on to become a big success for Marvel, and even though this first issue didn't explode into instant legendary status, many of the reasons why the team would become a fixture in Marvel mythos can actually be found in the pages of this first story. While not without its flaws -- what story from this era is? -- it's a particularly strong comic book for its time, and most importantly it structurally works as a launchpad for a multi-character setup in a way that even today writers sometimes struggle to grasp.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. © Marvel Comics. |
People reading Marvel's comic stories from the early 60s might have a certain adjusted expectation for the dynamics of the plot, which often consisted in a significant measure of nonsense twists, absurd motivations, and good old-fashioned coincidence. That being the baseline is essentially why comics like The Amazing Spider-Man instantly distinguished themselves as something special, with stories that followed some sort of logical path, and characters who behaved like actual people might. It's partly this context that makes the Avengers come out of nowhere with how surprisingly tight and mechanically sound the plot is.
The core of the plot is relatively simple -- Loki, imprisoned in Asgard, wants to lure his brother Thor to him so he can have his revenge on the god of thunder. While petty, this is a reasonable villain motivation for the time. What's sort of impressive is that most of the story isn't actually revolving around Loki, but rather the Hulk, whose involvement is an indirect consequence of Loki's tactics: he fools the Hulk into wreaking havoc, trusting that Thor would intervene, and essentially declares being behind the incident in order to draw Thor into Asgard.
Rick Jones, knowing how much trouble everyone is going to be in if the Hulk comes around, doesn't intentionally contact this random band of heroes that would be the Avengers: he does the sensible thing, and tries to reach the Fantastic Four. Loki, using his vaguely defined powers, interrupts the signal and scatters it in all directions, preventing the FF from learning about the situation, instead causing a variety of other people to receive the signal. Among them is his brother Thor, while the rest of the team is tangled into the mess by accident, which is one of the more important elements in why the Avengers works in its conception.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. © Marvel Comics. |
The strengths!
The story of the first issue is actually less a team-up and more a collaboration (and yes, I think there's a difference): the heroes spend very little time interacting with one another or even sharing a space, in favor of a story structure where the protagonists each in turn have their own scene to be the sole focus. Thor enters Asgard to pursue Loki, while Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp engage in a sort of relay race while tracking down the Hulk.
What this does is allow each character space to breathe, in terms of both narration and illustration. We get a chance to actually pay attention to what each of the heroes is doing, and they behave like they would in their own stories, using their abilities in ways that make organic sense. This is one of the big problems I find with many other multi-character stories, even iconic ones like the original Secret Wars or Maximum Carnage: the characters feel like action figures thrown in the air, with no time or space to exist as the actual characters, and no weight in the decisions they make. What they do in those stories doesn't matter, they're just there to fill space.
Thor's departure from the rest of the group for much of the book's page count could seem jarring and break the consistency of the story, but here it doesn't -- it only establishes two planes of action taking place at once, which honestly rarely works in comics, particularly older ones. Here it gives the story scope, and because Thor's arc both starts and ends with the other heroes, there's no feeling of disjointed narrative.
What's most impressive is that for a story with so many moving parts, the actions taken and decisions made are all motivated by character: there's no sudden left turns just to keep the plot on track or to introduce a twist to keep the reader from falling asleep. The characters all act like they should, and choose their course motivated by actual circumstances and personalities. This was far from guaranteed in comics at the time, and it elevates Avengers #1 -- not quite to the level of the greats like The Amazing Spider-Man #3, but up into the category of good comic book storytelling nonetheless.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. © Marvel Comics. |
The stumbles!
The book is not without its problems, of course, even if here they're just unfortunate exceptions -- the yawning seams rather than a faulty fabric the entire thing is crafted out of. Even as such, some of these are less a criticism of the story of Avengers #1 and more an observation about its components. The characters can't be said to have much depth at all, and in particular I'd direct that criticism at Tony Stark, who at this stage was as textured as cardboard and half as deep.
The other characters don't get much in the way of characterization in this issue either, but this wasn't really the time or place to start fleshing them out -- for a 20-pager with this many main characters, you don't have the space for a lot of character work, but the dialogue did do a good job making the characters (maybe aside from Stark) feel distinct, even if you didn't get much of a grasp on their personalities or identities.
There's another problem regarding dialogue here, especially looking at it with modern eyes -- which is a little unfair, I know, but I wouldn't say this was a great call even in the 60s. I’ve not read any Ant-Man stories from this time, and quite honestly the portrayal of Hank Pym in this story gives me very few reasons to want to do so. You can really tell where the later rather dark iterations of the character came from, when you look at the unflinching misogyny on display with almost every interaction between him and the Wasp. This was Stan channeling a mid-century husband-and-wife sitcom dynamic, where more often than not the punchline was the man telling the woman to shut her ever-yapping mouth, but it plays weird, and makes Hank unlikable.
Finally, there’s a single narrative stumble that bothers me to no end. It’s an unforced error that dilutes an otherwise rather magical detail about the now-iconic origin of the Avengers. We’ll look again at the fateful moment when Rick Jones attempts to contact the Fantastic Four, but due to tricks played by the god of mischief, that message gets thrown off course, alerting the protagonists of this story instead.
This, as I see it, is a delightfully mythical moment: if the Fantastic Four had gotten the message, the Avengers would never have come to be. It’s the kind of twist of fate that turns a motley crew into a many-headed legend. It’s probably my favorite understated detail about the entire story.
…or it would be, if it wasn’t immediately undermined by a beat where Reed Richards picks up the phone anyway, having somehow intercepted the signal, and informs Rick Jones that the FF is busy and can’t help. So even if the message did go through, the Fantastic Four still wouldn’t have come (even adjusting for the throw-away line from Richards pointing out that other heroes showed up already, so they won’t be needed after all).
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. © Marvel Comics. |
What I genuinely don’t understand is why Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wouldn’t just let that story beat of Rick never reaching the Fantastic Four suffice. There’s nothing about the rest of the story that requires them to be made aware of what’s transpiring: they don’t swoop in for the rescue at the last minute, they don’t provide any additional intel, and there’s nothing about them being involved in the story at all that really makes any difference. This was a case where there was an acceptable reason why the big shots didn’t show up to save the day, and even a meaningful narrative benefit to keeping them out of it. This is a tiny detail, but one that I find entirely deflates the dramatic payoff of the suggestion that the Avengers were born only because the Fantastic Four never heard Rick’s call for aid.
None of these gripes are enough to really sour the taste left by the first Avengers adventure, however. For all its rough edges, Avengers #1 is a stunningly entertaining, structurally sound superhero story, with internal logic and a motivated story that put the average Marvel story of the early 60s to shame. It’s also an absolute gem of team-up storytelling, that (maybe partly accidentally) nails the principles that make a multi-hero setup work – giving the characters room to breathe, opportunities to shine using their strengths, and justifying their presence by giving them meaningful things to do. Comparable success with later attempts is woefully rare, and if it wasn’t for the New Avengers from 2013, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a single good example.
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| Art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. © Marvel Comics. |
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