The latest issue of AVENGERS came out around this time, the second part of a three-part story that would redefine the background and history of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. it was a series that I liked during this time, although it never quite rose to the status of my favorite book at any point; which carries some irony, given that I wound up editing the title for 26 years. This stretch of issues was a bit of a high water mark as, for the most part, the quality of the artwork was quite good, typically produced by either George Perez or John Byrne with only a couple of small gaps.
Where AVENGERS had faltered a bit was in the writing. Once Jim Shooter had been promoted to Editor in Chief of the entire Marvel line, he didn’t really have the time to write AVENGERS regularly any longer. But it seems like it took the editorial staff a bit of time to come to that conclusion, as other writers were constantly jumping in to help Jim out in deadline situations. Eventually, David Michelinie emerged as the inheritor of the series–but here on this three-parter, the plot was put together by Mark Gruenwald and Steven Grant. Given Mark’s obsession with cleaning up Marvel history, it makes sense to turn to him for a story that was going to reinterpret a bunch of past information to bring it all to a different conclusion.
The art for this issue was produced by John Byrne and expertly inked by Dan Green. Green is one of those figures whose value has largely been forgotten over the decades, but he was a strong and reliable inker and finisher all during this era, and he gives Byrne’s work a nice polished sheen in this story. It was work like this that helped increase Byrne’s popularity–he both created attractive artwork that harkened back to the glory days of each character he worked on while simultaneously making them feel modern, and he was prolific, which meant that you saw a lot of him during this time as he was put into play on book after book; often when there was a crisis situation, Byrne would step in to lay out an issue in jig time in the manner of Jack Kirby.
This issue opens with Quicksilver recovering under the ministrations of Bova, one of the High Evolutionary’s artificially-advanced New Men. Pietro and his sister the Scarlet Witch had come back to Wundagore Mountain to investigate the truth of their lineage. But before too much progress could be made, Wanda was jumped by Modred the Mystic, who up to this point had been a heroic character. In trying to assist her, Pietro was knocked down the mountainside, where he was found and rescued by Bova. The midwife, it turns out, coincidentally has important information about the twins’ past, and so the opening of this issue is an extended sequence of flashbacks putting all of the known information about Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch’s origins in context with other new material to lay out the circumstances of their birth. (Wanda and Pietro, it must be said, must hold the record for the greatest number of conflicting origin stories across their history. Their past has been retconned and retconned and retconned again to the point of absurdity.)
Suffice it to say that the point of all of this was to create a sort of stealth crossover with an issue of X-MEN, through which it would be revealed that the father of Wanda and Pietro was actually Magneto. The creators intended for this to remain a between-the-pages secret known only to the most astute audience members. But of course, as soon as it was put down on paper, it was only a matter of time before somebody turned it into a story, which swiftly happened. Anyway, after getting a download from Bova, Quicksilver heads out in search of his sister once more–but he discovers that she’s been turned into a vessel for Modred’s benefactor, the demonic Chthon. As Quicksilver and his adoptive father Django Maximoff are attacked by the trees and rocks of the forest in which they’re forced to flee for their lives, Pietro realizes that he’s going to need help if he’s going to have a prayer of rescuing his sister. Fortunately, he knows just who to call.
One transatlantic phone call later, the Avengers are ready to fly to Quicksilver’s assistance. But there’s one immediate hang-up: Henry Peter Gyrich, who has been installed as the team’s new government liaison. Gyrich insists that the Avengers can’t simply go halfway around the world and invade the airspace of another country, not without causing an international incident. Gyrich has been a bit of a thorn in the Avengers’ side for a while now, and Captain America decides in this instance that he’s had enough. So the Star-Spangled Avengers places a quick call of his own. And thereafter, Gyrich receives a call from the President requesting that the Avengers immediately embark on a “goodwill tour” of the nation in question. It’s a fun bit of business, back in the days before Gyrich was recharacterized as an evil-hearted bigot.
As perhaps a form of retribution, however, Gyrich insists that the Vision remain behind on monitor duty, insisting that the android is too compromised by his emotional involvement with the Scarlet Witch. He’s probably right, as the Vision almost feeds Gyrich his own teeth before Cap convinces him to stand down. Meanwhile, in Transia, Quicksilver and Django aren’t entirely certain that their call was understood or answered. But they are suddenly struck down by a sinister figure that turns out to be Wanda, now completely in the thrall of the demon Chthon. To Be Continued!
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
As I’ve mentioned before, I really love this arc. The odds were against pulling all the strands together and making it work, but work it did.
“It’s a fun bit of business, back in the days before Gyrich was recharacterized as an evil-hearted bigot.” That was a bad idea. He was much more interesting as the embodiment of bureaucracy and red tape.
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I actually liked it when it was originally stated that Pietro and Wanda were the children of the Whizzer and Miss America. But I had to admit it worked better making them Magneto’s children and it should have been left there, no further retconning needed. There’s something to be said for leaving well enough alone.
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I disagree because them being Magneto’s kids became the main plot point used on the twins to excess. Writers kept making Pietro into a villain like Daddy and Wanda was weakened by being Daddy’s little girl too often. Then there was the problem of two at most thirty somethings being conceived in the years following World War 2.
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To be fair, the next retcon was 30 some odd years later, & it’s already been unofficially retconned back, with at least Wanda & Magneto treating each other as at least honorary relations.
My original concept was that we’d make the relationship obvious to the readers, but the characters themselves would never know. That lasted as long as it took John to draw a page that Chris didn’t plot into the X-Men issue parallel to Avengers 187 to tweak him, with Magneto waxing nostalgic on Asteroid M looking through old pictures of his former love – who happened to be identical to the woman identified as the twins’ mother in our run. John did this without mentioning it to anyone except possibly Roger, as they were basically joined at the hip by telephone at this point, & Roger edited both books. I was kind of aghast.
But that was before it finally got hammered into my head that anything left implicit in a superhero comic someone else will gleefully make totally explicit at the earliest opportunity.
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Regarding the character of Gyrich, Jim Shooter once told me at a comic con that his original intention for Gyrich was that the character would start out being a real pain in the rear end, but over time he’d actually help the Avengers get organized. Instead, after Shooter left other writers made Gyrich more and more villainous.
I did like how Geoff Johns later wrote Gyrich, as a close confidant of the team who helped them against the Red Skull. But, yeah, after Johns left the series, Gyrich went back to being a villain again.
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Modred is on my list of villains who never chose to become evil that no one ever addresses. It rankles me as much as Spiral being the result of Ricochet Rita being monstrously tortured.
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True, it was usually the default of most “controlled heroes” that they at least have a moment where they come back to their noble selves, even if it’s only after being controlled. But as memory serves, in Modred’s next appearance, he’s regressed to childhood for some reason– I guess to make the story (something in MTIO maybe) work out. Admittedly he wasn’t a great conception. But originally he was trying to tap the Darkhold’s power because he thought Merlin in Camelot was corrupted– a detail from Modred’s brief series that I’m not sure ever got explored.
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Power corrupts, & the Darkhold’s power corrupts absolutely…
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Speaking of controlled heroes, I just caught up with some of the FF stories of Dan Slott from a few years back. One story involves the Hulk, controlled by the Puppet Master, attacking the Thing on his honeymoon. In contrast to every Puppet Master story I’ve ever read, here the Hulk is at least partly aware of being controlled, but he keeps attacking Thing because he really likes beating up the hero. I recall a few stories where the controlee tries to fight the influence a little, but I don’t recall anyone succeeding against that darn ol’ radioactive clay– nor ever seeing the implication that the Puppet Master’s job got easier if the subject liked doing what he/she was ordered to do. Quibbles aside, the Slott story is imo the second-best Thing/Hulk fracas since– well, take a wild guess as to Number One.
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One small correction: Mark (& I, for that matter) didn’t “turn to a story that was going to reinterpret a bunch of past information” etc. It was what we were specifically brought on board to do. Jim had started that ball rolling when he started his Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch subplot, for which (to the best of my knowledge) he didn’t have a conclusion in mind. David inherited it, &, as was fairly common for the time, the longer it dangled the more readers wrote it complaining it was time to wrap it up. David, however, had little interest in pursuing it, &, since he needed some time off… it was decided that the moment to wrap it up… ergo…
But while we had a fairly free hand in what directions to take, the subject matter (&, as I recall, the three issues to work it out in) was handed to us.
Always did think John & Dan did an absolutely sensational job on the art. Chris stopped me in a Marvel hallway during this run to ask how I got work that good out of him. I told him it was easy: give John something impossible to draw & he’ll draw it. I was b.s.ing, & it really didn’t come down to me anyway, but I have always thought that true of John regardless.
Mark brought Modred into it. Chthon was mine. (A vestige of a never-done series John & I were concocting when fans right before he got the big call-up, matter of fact. Fun fact that always amused me: he’s Thor’s uncle.)
Better known fun fact: Gyrich was Jim’s grown up version of ’50s Atlas Comics Dennis The Menace knockoff Petey The Little Pest. And, I believe, named for Jim’s cousin.
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If it’s not breaking a confidence, what was the series-idea about, and what role would Chthon have played?
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