After an unexpectedly stellar start, the Avengers settled into a more modest quality of storytelling while simultaneously trying to figure out how to take advantage of the elements that made it unique to begin with. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the team from existing parts with an accelerated timetable, so you can't really blame them too much if they weren't exactly prepared to ramp it up in the issues following the debut -- I'm somewhat convinced they weren't even completely aware of what they did with the first issue that worked so well.
Avengers #2:
"The Avengers Battle... the Space Phantom"
- Writers: Stan Lee
- Artists: Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman
- Editor: Stan Lee
- Publication Date: September 3, 1963
- Cover Date: November, 1963
The plot in Avengers #2 isn’t anywhere near as tight as the first issue – it hinges on multiple counts of convenient coincidence, and exhibits some pretty significant plot holes or other unsatisfying beats. But I feel like that’s mostly because the issue seems to have been designed as a sort of showcase of the heroes: the majority of the book is them fighting each other in various configurations due to the Space Phantom impersonating them each in turn.
The plot is there almost as an excuse to get them to fight. And that’s fine – it’s a mostly lightweight issue with not much of consequence going on in terms of characterization or actual storytelling, but it does familiarize the reader further with the characters without having a villain distract too much from them (the Space Phantom being an alien is an indication in itself on Stan and Jack not really wanting to bother with a whole backstory).
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| Art by Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
Even if the narrative is awkward and clumsy, there is the one thematic focus here of the heroes not quite knowing how to co-operate yet – a nudge is all it takes for them to start fighting. What’s more, we learn that Iron Man never actually trusted the Hulk in the first place, and knowing that is what triggers the Hulk to turn his back on the group. Just for that permanent consequence alone this issue feels meaningful and not just fodder, even if the preceding story didn’t quite earn it with how wobbly it is. It’s a sort of regrettable case where the theme could have been very strong, if the plot and the villain’s part in it felt a little less like an afterthought. As it stands, Avengers #2 works better as a backstory anecdote than an actual adventure.
One other important thing that this story sets up is the Avengers as a mutable, variable entity – before we even get a chance to canonize the lineup, it already changes. I don’t know if Stan or Jack had any plans of keeping the ensemble ever-changing in the long term, but one of the consequences Hulk’s departure had was to immediately nullify the sort of orthodoxy that might have accompanied the original cast. Such consecration would have made it hard to cycle in new characters without readers feeling it’s not the "real" avengers or waiting for the group to revert to the original form eventually, as often happens with shake-ups to conventional premises in long-running comics. This immediate disruption made Avengers a flexible concept, rather than a static one, and it’s one of the surprisingly numerous early setups that would influence Marvel stories for decades.
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| Art by Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
Avengers #3:
"The Avengers Meet 'Sub-Mariner!'"
- Writers: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
- Artists: Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman
- Editor: Stan Lee
- Publication Date: November 5, 1963
- Cover Date: January, 1964
As if we didn’t have enough of it last issue, Avengers #3 is a showcase of each of the main characters in action. We’re hunting the Hulk, who left the group in the aftermath of the battle with the alien shapeshifter, for the reason that he’s too dangerous to leave unchecked.
Before we get into the action, we get multiple pages of Iron Man casting a sort of projection of himself to visit various other Marvel heroes to ask for information about the big green monster. Why he couldn’t just fly there in person is unclear, and it doesn’t really matter anyway because he gets no information at all – this is just a marketing circuit to remind the reader that the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and now the X-Men all also exist.
The Avengers locate the Hulk with the help of Rick Jones, and Jack Kirby gets to do his thing. We get an extended fight sequence that cleverly utilizes environments and the characters’ powers: rock formations, cacti, train cars, and packs of flour are used in clever ways to make the fight fun, unique, and creative. If Steve Ditko was good at making characters feel physical and kinetic, surely Jack Kirby was undefeated in fight scenes that feel spatial and resourceful in a cartoony kind of way. Like with the first issue, each character (excluding the Wasp) also gets their own moment in this fight, making their presence feel meaningful.
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| Art by Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
The Hulk escapes, and ends up in contact with Namor, who (after a brief test of strength between the two) proposes an alliance to defeat the Avengers. What Namor has against the Avengers specifically is beyond me, but we can chalk that up as his way of making sure Hulk sees their goals are aligned.
The second fight is a little less engaging because it’s more of a tennis match between the two parties, with each hurling various weapons and devices at each other. The brawls that we do get are good enough, just not as fun as the previous sequence with the Hulk alone against the heroes. It’s just as well, then, that this battle ends with quite a whimper – the Hulk randomly turns back into Bruce Banner, and Namor runs out of energy having been too long out of the water.
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| Art by Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
What started as a pretty promising action yarn ended up turning into a rather messy conclusion, and a lot of it has to do with setups that weren’t taken advantage of. Namor orchestrates the final fight to take place at Gibraltar because of the presence of both land and water (no place like that was to be found anywhere closer), but ultimately the water wasn’t within his reach when he needed it at the end – setting up the scene of the battle felt odd because he was undone by something he was specifically established to have taken into account.
There’s also a constant seeding of distrust and antagonism between the Hulk and Namor, which would have played nicely as the conclusion – too strong even for the Avengers to defeat while they’re together, they could have used their brains instead of just their brute strength to pull them apart, and have Hulk drive Namor off. When we instead get just a lucky break of both antagonists running out of juice, it feels like an unforced error that could have been a fun and satisfying end that respects the power levels of the characters.
As it stands, I don’t think Namor needed to be part of this story at all – since we didn’t go with the broken alliance plot, he didn’t really serve a purpose. The story ignored all of the moral complexity behind the character that was set up by Fantastic Four Annual #1, instead treating him as a one-dimensional bad guy who just hates humans. With the second battle also not being comparable to the first one, I would have rather had just a second fight with the Hulk without any pretentions of the story being anything more than a Jack Kirby fireworks show.
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| Art by Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
Neither issue #2 nor #3 is a bad book on the level of some of the doozies from before Stan Lee and the team started to figure out their craft, but they're not particularly good -- issue #2 especially feels like a horrific stew of half-baked ideas, unnatural plot progression, and unnecessary story beats. We can excuse a lot of this just based on the presumption that nobody was really prepared to have the Avengers as a part of the roster until relatively shortly before the release of the first issue, and they probably certainly didn't anticipate any significant expectations for the series to follow. They hit the ground running with the debut story, but it took them a while to actually find their balance and stride without tripping on their own feet.
While not as big a disappointment as the Amazing Spider-Man #6 in the department of promises unfulfilled, Avengers #3 is kind of a mediocre story that doesn’t take advantage either of its existing cast or the characters it chose to use from the greater roster. It’s a stronger story that issue #2 had, but it feels more like a stumble than a hit. We know it all worked out eventually, but at the time the future of the Avengers might have looked more precarious than the first issue may have suggested.
At the same time, issue #3 being almost a pretty good story is a strong sign that things will start running smoother from here. Maybe not the next issue, or even the one after that, but there's hints here that Stan and Jack knew they had accidentally created something special. They just needed a little more time and a few more trials and errors to zoom in on what it actually was that worked; the fumbles in these two issues displayed clearly that it took something more than just this lineup of characters punching hard.
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