AVENGERS was beginning to get itself back on track after a long stretch of fill-ins and stopgapping, but the book was still running perilously behind schedule. This led to even more stopgapping in the future. But just as a reader, none of this bothered me especially, I simply accepted each issue for being what it was meant to be. I remember enjoying this two-parter in particular, at least partially because the threat of the story was relatively down-to-Earth in a way that I could relate to.
The series continued to be penciled by John Byrne, who was building up his reputation as one of the most popular artists of the period. Inks were handled by Klaus Janson, whose scratchier and lusher brush style would seem on the surface to not be all that compatible with Byrne’s more slick, clean style. But the combination works surprisingly well here, though it winds up giving this issue a bit more of a hint of darkness to it visually than may have been intended. It isn’t the sheen of a Terry Austin, but Janson’s finish here is quite nice taken on its own terms.
The first half of this issue is primarily focused on downtime and characterization for the Avengers. Ms Marvel is officially inducted as a member of the group despite some onerous security vetting from prickly Government liaison Henry Gyrich–Gyrich was a bit of a jerk back in these days, but he wasn’t the out-and-out villain later writers would paint him as. There’s also a bit of space devoted to comedy, as both Iron Man and the Beast help the sanitation workers assigned to Avengers Mansion to cart off a literal ton of debris from the team’s latest battle. This leads straight into the next bit, in which the Absorbing Man reforms himself at the junkyard, enough bits of his scattered body having been delivered to the same place to allow him to pull himself back together after being wrecked by the Hulk in a previous story.
Needing clothes, and not wanting to risk the wrath of the Comics Code, the Absorbing Man proceeds to break into a boutique in Hoboken. Crusher Creel isn’t looking for a fight, he just wants to get away from the area. So he smashes his way into the safe and grabs up the cash that’s there, intending to book passage for himself on a Freighter. And he also decides to take the proprietor of the shop, whom he calls “Chippie”, along with him for company.
Having an hour to kill before the ship embarks, the Absorbing Man decides to grab some lunch at a local greasy spoon. But a shameless coincidence, this happens to be the same restaurant where Clint Barton is eating his own lunch after having seen the Scarlet Witch off on her voyage back to Wundagore. The surly Creel, of course, gets into a fight almost immediately, but the patrons of the establishment are no match for his ability to take on the properties of any substance that he comes in contact with. So Barton rings up the Avengers for assistance before switching to his costume and getting into it with the Absorbing Man.
Hawkeye does his best for a couple pages to hold the Absorbing Man at bay, but eventually the rest of the Avengers come racing to the rescue. Creel is completely outnumbered here and he knows it, but he’s not ready to abandon his plans. So carrying Chippie (real name: Sandy) with him, he leaps aboard the freighter. He races out of sight before the Avengers can follow him, and so they spread out to begin a target search as they arrive on the boat.
But that proves to be unnecessary, as the Absorbing Man comes crashing up through the deck, having absorbed the properties of the ship’s turbines. He’s now red-hot and glowing with energy, and he’s unhappy that the Avengers are getting in his face. So he’s about to pulverize them. And that’s where this issue if To Be Continued.
This issue’s Avengers Assemble letters page includes a letter from future AVENGERS writer Kurt Busiek. He’s come to take editor Roger stern to task over the quality of the recent letters pages, and Roger gives him a forthright answer here. Years later, these two men would collaborate on a number of projects including IRON MAN and AVENGERS FOREVER.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
I just reread Avengers V1 via Marvel Masterworks. The first 150 was wonderful, like visiting an old friend, while the next 150 was a painful slog with very few high points.
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This was a neat two-parter with great art, good pacing and top of the line action. Love the combo of Byrne and Janson. I do remember being soured by the ending though. Creel’s hostage muses that it might have been alright if the Avengers left Creel alone. To do what exactly? He intends to take over a foreign country and as for his ultimate plans for Sandy… I doubt he was taking her just for conversation. Though I guess any hostage negotiator will tell you to never trust a hostage.
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Yes, i was going to make the same point. A tragic figure Creel ain’t. Though I enjoyed him when all he wanted was to cocoon with Titania.
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Klaus Janson’s sheen is thick & rich in depth. His sense of lighting adds both a dynamic naturalism and a heavier mood that I think is missing from the majority of Byrne’s work.
Klaus gets Iron Man’s armor to gleam. And, my favorite, his inks’ shadows show the Beast’s fur as dense. Byrne draws one of my very fave versions of Beast. And Janson’s my fave inker for it. Look at Hank on that opening splash. Never better. Same for Klaus inking Gene Colan’s Beast.
Byrne’s a great. But a lot of his stuff was either too open, or he overcompensated with too much inking that was scratchier than Klaus ‘s, but lacked all the dark flavor that Klaus brought.
Their Avenger issues together during this period are superior, to me, than the “Wolverine” arc they collaborated on 10 or so years later. That stuff looked sloppier than these issues from 1979.
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I like, due to the figure layout, it looks like Crusher’s chest hair is shaped like an atomic bomb mushroom cloud, which, coincidentally, young Hulk Hogan was doing around this time when whe was a bag guy before his first WWWF stint a few years later.
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So was there a blonde woman in John Byrne’s life with glasses: Sandy Herkowitz in this issue and Sharon Selleck [ Fantastic Four#245 ( May 1982 ) ]. The Absorbing Man is one of my favourite villains these 2 Avengers stories demonstrated why, I just don’t get why in the next issue he abandoned such a powerful form during his fight with the Avengers. He broke in pieces after stupidly abandoning the Hulk’s power before he started falling to his death, hence his grasping for something to touch as he was falling and grabbing glass instead [ The Incredible Hulk#209 ( March 1977 ) — have this too ].
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“Chippie” is (or was) a slang term for a low-class, sexually-promiscuous woman. His using it to refer to Sandy is an expression of disrespect, and an indication of Creel’s lower-class origins as well.
I think Janson’s work looks excellent over Byrne in this era, and I think Dan Green may have learned a lot from Janson, though he took it in a different direction as their careers went on.
And Roger was one of the most fan-friendly of Marvel’s writers — he and Bill Manto would at times send letters or postcards responding to letters of comment, in addition to including them in letter columns. So Roger was among the first few creators I felt like I knew a little, as a person, and when we actually met he was ever bit as friendly and engaging as he seemed.
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I’m almost surprised the Comics Code Authority let him use the word in this period. It was often used loosely as a euphemism for “prostitute.”.
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There were many terms the Code either did not know or didn’t think readers would know. Chris Claremont used “joyboy” as an insult a few times and even once as a character name, despite in being in fairly recent use as a term for a submissive homosexual.
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Agreed on Dan Green’s inks over Byrne’s “Avengers”. Especially on the Beast. I’d still give Klaus the edge. But if Klaus wasn’t available to ink Byrne’s drawing, Dan would’ve been my next phone call.
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This story stuck with me for decades. Finally picked it up in a tpb a few years ago
Byrne and Perez kept me buying Avengers for a few issues longer than I probably would’ve.
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