BHOC: AVENGERS #187

Brevoort History of Comics

I picked up the newest issue of AVENGERS on my now-weekly Thursday trip to the Stationery Store. The book was on something of a roll right at that moment, in the midst of a three-part adventure sorting out the backstories of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (or trying to–later developments would overturn some of the revelations made in this storyline.) This was also the first time that the Scarlet Witch went bad, though here she’s possessed rather than acting of her own accord. In later years, this too would become a theme that was returned to more than once. In any event, it was a series that I was regularly enjoying, so no real thought went into laying out my four dimes for this latest issue.

AVENGERS was mostly being written by David Michelinie at this point, but for this continuity-heavy story, Mark Gruenwald and Steven Grant stepped in to take care of the plotting. I have to also assume that penciler John Byrne also had a hand in the plot, as he typically did on his assignments from around this time. Byrne was paired here with Dan green as his inker. While Green wasn’t quite so seductively sharp in his line as Terry Austin, he was still a good and polished match for what Byrne was putting down. The book looked good.

Plotwise, as this is the concluding chapter of a trilogy, we hit the ground running. The Avengers are running too as the story opens, racing to far-off Transia in response to an urgent call for help from Quicksilver received last issue. But there’s an unnatural storm brewing over Transia that quickly knocks out the Qunjet’s engines, forcing the team to bail out. All except Wonder Man, who figures he’s indestructible enough to survive the crash and offers to stay behind and guide the ship away from any populated areas. When the Beast wants to remain with his buddy, Wondy straps his own rocket-belt onto the Beast and sends him hurling out of the plummeting Quinjet to safety, though he lands some distance from the rest of the team. Meanwhile, having reached the ground, the Avengers are attacked by Modred the Mystic, who has been sent to capture them for his master, Chthon. So we break out in a fight sequence as the Avengers tackle this mystic menace.

The Avengers do a credible job of laying the smackdown on Modred, though it’s a battle that occupies several pages as one by one the individual Avengers are trounced. Finally, though, it’s the overlooked Wasp who delivers the coup de gras, zapping Modred into unconsciousness. But there’s no time for celebration, as Janey Van Dyne herself is similarly zapped by a figure that turns out to be the Scarlet Witch, now completely possessed by the demonic Chthon. She’s already put the kibosh on Wonder Man after he crawled out of the wreckage of the Quinjet, and now she transports the stricken Avengers up Wundagore Mountain to where she’s ready to enact a spell that will let Chthon dominate the world. We get a reprise of the cover image at this point, as the assorted Avengers are hung upside down like Christmas Tree ornaments.

This being Gruenwald’s show, we then get a three-page recounting of the details of the history of the Darkhold, the mystic book of evil first established in the pages of WEREWOLF BY NIGHT. Gruenwald and Grant thread the needle of a bunch of previous stories to lay out the story of the dark book and its connection to Chthon–as well as Chthon’s connection with the Scarlet Witch, which goes back to the moment of her birth. The text establishes that Chthon was the reason why Wanda’s mutant hex powers would occasionally ebb over the years, in the hopes that she might turn to actual sorcery to augment her abilities, as she did under writer Steve Englehart. This has opened up the doorway for Chthon to inhabit Wanda as a vessel.

But before Chthon can get on with his enchanting, he’s interrupted by a member of the Knights of Wundagore on a flying techno-steed. This is actually the Beast, who found the remains of the Knight and his vehicle where he landed on the mountainside, and commandeered it (though why he suited up in the dead Knight’s armor as well before knowing he might need it will remain a mystery for the ages.) The Beast is able to put his lance through the Darkhold book, breaking the spell holding the Avengers, so a free-for-all breaks out. But even all together, the assembled heroes can’t seem to do much to harm Chthon. At a certain point, Django Maximoff, Wanda and Pietro’s father who had brought them to Wundagore in the first place (and who had mostly been overlooked in this issue up until now) pulls out the doll in which he’d been able to capture Wanda’s soul in the first place. And by concentrating, he’s once again able to summon Wanda’s essence to the figuring. But this proves too much for him, and he collapses.

Quicksilver attempts to use the doll to swap Wanda’s soul back into her body, but he doesn’t have the spiritual juice to get the job done, not on his own. But the Avengers assemble, all focusing their efforts on making the swap, and together they prove to be enough to get the job done. Back in her own body, Wanda brings down a portion of the Mountaintop upon the figure, in which now resides the essence of Chthon, burying it forever (or at least that’s the idea. Of course Chthon came back again in later years, multiple times.) And that’s about it. Django Maximoff perished in his efforts to save Wanda, so the Avengers bury him, and they leave the now-mindless Modred in the care of the New Woman Bova who had been Wanda and Pietro’s midwife when they were born. And that wraps up this tale.

The Avengers Assemble letters page this time includes two pieces of correspondence that are of some small note. The first letter by Bruce McCorkindale takes up a challenge delivered on an earlier letters page by future Avengers writer Kurt Busiek, who bemoaned the lack of substantial critique on recent letters pages. Also responding was future Eclipse Comics publisher Cat Yronwode, who was also a huge Marvel fan throughout the 1970s.

Published

58 thoughts on “BHOC: AVENGERS #187”

  2. A great story, but Magneto as Wanda and Pietro’s father never made a lick of sense. If no other good came out of the whole Fox/Disney X-Men/Inhumans debacle is that this was changed for the better.

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    1. A lick of sense?

      We never explained it in the comics, but one of the arguments I presented was that I could explain both Quicksilver & The Scarlet Witch’s powers in terms of magnetism. It had also been pointed out by Neal Adams, also years earlier, that Magneto, helmet off, & Quicksilver were virtually identical, figuring in their age difference.

      Obviously, there was a story of Magneto’s past left there to be told, but there were easily enough years there where he either hadn’t taken on or hadn’t officially appeared publicly as Magneto where he could easily have fathered children by a homo sapien woman, & it always struck me as a bit convenient he & Wanda & Pietro all just happened to have been wandering that same out of the way patch of Eastern Europe at the same time…

      But, hey. You may be right…

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      1. It’s not so much that Neal pointed it out, but that he made it up — he was the first artist to draw Magneto without the helmet, and he chose to draw him to look a lot like Quicksilver.

        I don’t remember whether he did so with the idea of establishing later that Magneto was the twins’ father, but I think it was a terrific idea, and am very glad you and Mark (and John) set it up.

        And I wish Marvel would go back to it, now that the movie-rights issue that messed it up is no longer a concern…

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      2. I might also mention that it was my thesis Quicksilver & The Scarlet Witch were NOT mutants. Magneto was the mutant. Because I could tie their powers to magnetism, while the twins inherited their father’s mutation, they themselves didn’t display any traits not inherent in their predecessor & therefore didn’t qualify as mutants themselves.

        This did not go over well in the Bullpen…

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      3. Makes sense that you would consider the twins not to be mutants. This was before the X-gene was the defining trait for mutants and Marvel was defining mutants as genetically different from the parents. If their powers were inherited then they wouldn’t be mutants.

        This is why, for me, Franklin Richards was a mutant originally, but then it was a matter of whether he had the X-gene or not.

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    2. Can’t reply to every reply here for some reason, so one will have to do. I’ve never liked that comics synchronicity where everybody must know or be related to everybody else. It’s that same feeling I get when I watch a movie or TV show set in NYC and the characters keep running into people they know, as if there aren’t 9 million other people there too. All too neat and tidy for me. This also applies to Magneto running into Wanda & Pietro in X-Men 4. Then there’s the problem of Magneto later becoming a Holocaust survivor, which introduced the same problem as having the Whizzer and Miss America being their parents, (I hope we can all agree that of all the origins discussed here that was the worst and least logical!) that being the Marvel Sliding Time Scale. Meanwhile, the origin introduced by James Robinson in his Scarlet Witch run makes a whole lot more sense and gives Wanda a better lineage, not to mention putting that much more distance between the twins and the X-Men. I much prefer them being independent of the X-Morass in the hopes they won’t get sucked into it and disappear from the rest of the Marvel Universe.

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      1. Meh. Magneto was made younger at least once in continuity and it never says how long the twins were kept on ice in Wundagore.

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      2. Well… Magneto (among others) was reduced to babyhood via the cosmic power of The Stranger, but that was well after the foundation of the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants.

        If you want to go all Marvel Comics on the subject, though, who’s to say time on Wundagore Mountain even passes at the same rate as the rest of the world, huh? When you’re making it all up as you go along anyway, you can concoct any crazy bullshit you want to. I should know.

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      3. I suppose if they wanted to link them back up, Magneto would have to be the twins’ grandfather, just like Peggy Carter eventually became Sharon’s aunt. Or maybe they had concentration camps in “Sin Cong”, too…?

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      4. Magneto running into Wanda & Pietro in X-Men#4 might not be that unbelievable if he heard rumours of a female and male with powers. It is far more unlikely for Corsair to run into his first born in X-Men#107-108 ( October-December 1977 ), than Magneto to run into his kids. I’m team Magneto as their father. I wonder, had John Byrne stayed on Alpha Flight would Canada’s twins have a heroic or villainous father? Vanguard and Darkstar got the Presence [ The Incredible Hulk#258-259 ( April-May 1981 ) ].

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      5. I’ve never seen James’s version. How did it go?

        I’ve never been a fan of all characters being related to all other characters either, esp. if the only connection between them is a shared last name.

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      6. Briefly and from memory: Django Maximoff ended up being the twins’ uncle and had ben entrusted with them by their real mother who was heir to the lineage of the Scarlet Witch, much of which was revealed on her journey along the Witches’ Road. I like the idea of her being more of a witch than superpowered as well as finally having past.

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    3. Marvel makes a bad guy the father of twins and then Hollywood does the same: Darth Vader father to Luke Skywalker [ The Empire Strikes Back ( 1980 ) ] and Princess Leia [ Return of the Jedi ( 1983 ) ].

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      1. Thanks for this! I now hate Star Wars that little bit more than I already did, a thing I didn’t think was possible!

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      2. Don’t take release time as an indicator. There’s no reason to think Avengers 187 had any influence on George Lucas at all, & I’d be willing to bet the Empire script was already written by the time 187 saw print. Films don’t appear overnight, y’know.

        Parallel development & all that. It happens.

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      3. I wasn’t thinking Star Wars was imitating Marvel, in fact until I saw the dates I thought that Marvel was imitating Star Wars. Comics borrow from TV, Movies and Literature. Earlier I wondered if the possessed Scarlet Witch’s look was inspired by The Exorcist ( 1973 ) minus the cuts on the face.

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      4. I thought Vader being Luke’s father was possibly a call back to Darkseid being Orion’s father.

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  3. I loved this run of Avengers, though I missed a couple issues here or there. But that was my prime “collecting” phase as a kid, so I’m pretty sure I hunted down the gaps. I was a sucker for the artwork, though I enjoyed the stories too. I think a reason for that is one that I still find valid today – things could actually happen to the characters. Sure, nothing was going to fell Cap, but the others (Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Carol, Beast, Wonder Man, later Hawkeye) all had spurts of character development. I loved those non-action scenes as much as the big battles. These days, (IMO), it feels like nothing much ever happens (to too may characters) unless it’s an event/promo/gimmick which usually gets undone or ignored within a few months. But this stretch of Avengers was one of my favorites.

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    1. Actually, I really liked having Magneto as Wanda and Pietro’s father. I appreciated the initial intent on Byrne and others part that such an insinuation would never be openly expressed, but once the Chris Claremont let the cat of the bag, I thought it was handled well.

      Of course the complexities of the various cinematic rights made that relationship impossible in later years. Then again, with everything now seeming under the MCU banner, who’s to say that Magneto won’t again find himself the father of the twins?

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      1. I liked Magnus being Wanda’s & Pietro’s father, too. It added more drama and even difficulty to all of their characters. When I started reading comics, that was the status quo. And though I like character development, I didn’t think the change made things more interesting for them, or for me.

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      2. Claremont let the cat out of the bag? I don’t remember it that way. We had just learned in the issue before this that the twins’ mother was named Magda and over in X-Men the month this issue came out that Magneto’s wife was Magda and I put 2 and 2 together. It wasn’t until the first Vision and Scarlet Witch limited series a couple of years later that it was expressly clear that they were related.

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      3. Actually, it was my intention that Magneto, Wanda & Pietro never know of their familial relationship, & it was John, not Chris, who let the cat out of the bag by rubbing Chris’s nose in it. There’s a page in the issue of X-Men that came out the same month as this issue that abruptly cuts away from the story at hand to drop in on Magneto, up on Asteroid X, wistfully looking at images of his former wife, who happens to be identical to the woman identified in our Avengers run as Wanda & Pietro’s mother. That page wasn’t in the plot for that issue of X-Men. John threw it in out of the blue, without telling any of us, but specifically without telling Chris.

        You poke the bear, you shouldn’t be surprised if the bear snaps.

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      4. That’s wild! I recall reading a Byrne interview where the shade for this nefarious deed was cast upon Chris Claremont. Now am I to believe that not everything John Byrne expresses in an interview is the Gospel truth? Not sure how I can go on with that? 😉

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      6. That was just Byrne on his own without Claremont? But if that hadn’t happened, there would be no way to connect Magda to Magneto. As it was, a reader had to have seen both stories to make the connection and none of the characters in-story were aware of it. It wasn’t until 1982’s Vision and Scarlet Witch by Mantlo that it was made explicit to the readers and the characters.

        Wasn’t Roger Stern involved as editor?

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      7. Roger was editor of both Avengers & X-Men at the time, yes. But he didn’t interfere with John much.

        Chris wrote that page but he didn’t plot it. He had no idea it would be there.

        The idea was to scatter clues over time for fans to piece together, but it would never be stated outright & the characters themselves would never know. John just sped up the process considerably. I believe Roger had left editing by the time Bill wrote the mini-series that openly spilled the beans.

        BTW, several years later I wrote the mini-comic episode that strongly implied (correctly) that Skeletor had in fact begun his existence as He-Man’s by then long-lost, presumed-dead uncle… which to the best of my knowledge has also never been officially stated out loud, though I’ve admitted on several occasions when pestered by Masters Of The Universe fans, of whom there seem to be quite a few, to parse the story. Appears there was quite a debate seething over it for some time…

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  4. “Kurt Busiek, who bemoaned the lack of substantial critique on recent letters pages.”

    I believe this was a deliberate choice on Jim Shooter’s part. I remember him writing on his blog years back that he considered the letters pages promotional material, and he didn’t want any negativity on them. I think he’d also been getting complaints from Jack Kirby about the presence of negative letters on the pages in Kirby’s books. Ralph Macchio and the other staffers who’d been assigned to put those pages together apparently weren’t sympathetic to what Kirby was doing, and filled the pages with reader complaints.

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    1. According to one article I’d read, Kirby getting to be writer/artist/editor annoyed some of the newer staffers who didn’t see why he should get a deal like that.

      Phooey on Shooter. I enjoy Julius Schwartz Silver Age letter pages precisely because there’s some good critiques in them.

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    2. It was, in fact, Jim’s edict to eschew negative comments on the letters pages, from the perspective that there were plenty of fanzines (like the Comics Journal, which made something of a bloodsport out of excoriating Marvel comics for this & that) that ragged on Marvel, & that the letters pages should be, essentially, brand ambassadors to the readership.

      The biggest problem – & I know this because I was putting together a lot of letters pages for Marvel at time – was that Marvel was hardly getting any letters at the time, positive or negative, except for letters that were utterly unpublishable. (“I loved the latest Spider-Man. Please guest star [handwritten laundry list of every character in the Marvel pantheon] in future issues.”) I’m not making this up. Somehow Marvel got DOZENS of these a month – & they were from a lot of different readers, in different cities. There was absolutely nothing to work with there.

      Two other lettercol rules Jim imposed at the time: no making up letters – & I made up a LOT of them to fill space with (two names to look for are Greg Samsa & Dom Dewlay, & there were others) – & no publishing letters from readers using obvious pseudonyms. Jim thought the latter were using Marvel to make names in fandom for themselves. The big problem there was those were usually the most coherent & most positive letters they got. One in particular was a guy whose real name I learned many years later when he introduced himself was Jim Burke, a Canadian who wrote in as The Mad Maple. Forbidden from putting the Mad Maple name in print, I did a workaround for a bit by publishing him as T.M. Maple.

      I caught a little hell for that when Shooter finally figured it out. But I think I was done doing letter pages by then anyway…

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      1. TM Maple was prolific. Many letters ro both Marvel & DC. I’d actually look for them in letter columns. He knew his stuff

        It was almost like one of the recurring characters on a late night TV talk show, or even the “Gong Show”. 😉

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  5. TOM wrote ( Though why he suited up in the dead knight’s armor as well before he might need it will remain a mystery for the ages ): Perhaps the dead knight’s helmet had a message inside ( I’m inspired by the message that MCU’s Tony Stark was leaving ( recording in his helmet ) in Avengers: Endgame 2019 film on the Guardians of the Galaxy’s ship before Captain Marvel encountered him and Nebula ) about who he was fighting before he was killed. If that had happened the Beast would have hoped it might be great psychological warfare against Chthon ( Temporary catch Chthon of guard — like Sprite/Kitty Pryde ( with help from Nightcrawler ) impersonating Dark Phoenix did against the Shi’ar — Uncanny X-Men#157 ( May 1982 ) ).

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  6. Dan Green’s an accomplished artist in his own right, beyond his vast credits as one of the best inkers of his generation. Depending on which series it is, and who’s drawing it, I’d choose his inks over some of his contemporaries.

    These “Avengers” issues showed me he’s a great inker for Byrne. His thick, lush inks and lighting sense were perfect for Byrne’s Beast (Byrne drew one of the best). They also added ro the mood and tone of all the characters. They didn’t come off as physically flat, despite the 2 dimensional medium. No easy trick.

    I also like the work of George Roussos and Jim Novak. George was limited by the available technology at the time, but his choices were creative. His colors could change and overlap without the boundaries of inked lines, which added to the naturalistic quality and just more appeal to the colors. Like Dan Green, George was also well accomplished in comics, in addition to coloring.

    Jim Novak woul letter many great comics, getting more bold and distinctive. His eun in the first “Punisher” ongoing featured some eye popping work, that I hadn’t seen much of, if at all, in comics at the time. Added another level of graphic visual appeal and sophisticatuon.

    Roger Stern’s later, lengthy run on this book as its writer is one of his many highlights, for me it was especially the “second half” drawn by J.Buscema and Tom Palmer. But I have to say, there are a few series he edited that were at the top of their game under his watch. The guy knows the nut and bolts of comics as well as drama and excellent characterization.

    Steven Grant knows I’m a fan, so I wont butter him up more here. But the whole credit box would be in a Gen X readers’ hall of fame.

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    1. Add me to the list of being a huge fan of Stern’s latter half of the Avengers with Buscema and Palmer’s art. Even less than completely inspired, John Buscema gave that book such “grand old heroes” touch that couldn’t help adding that much more to Stern’s amazing stories.

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      1. Right? His “Conan” continued simultaneously, and often seemed more inspired than his 2nd or 3rd return to “The Avengers” (especially the “Conan” issues inked by Bob Camp!). And John’s on record saying about as much, preferring drawing “Conan” to “mainstream” superheroes.

        I also had a “Thor” annual from around then,that he inked his own work on, and it absolutely blew me away. No one drew a more wicked and formidable Mephisto.

        And he found time to draw a fill-in of Mark Gruenwald’s “Squadron Supreme” “maxiseries” (#7?), inked by Bob Layton, who I wouldn’t immediately think of to ink John Buscema’s drawings. But it looked great. And his Hyperion made me wish (again) for John to draw Superman. The 2nd crossover with Spider-Man wasn’t enough, or his best stuff.

        And Palmer took over more & more over John’s “breakdowns”/”layouts” on “Avengers” But overall, the mythic sensibilities and sheer raw drawing skill, depiction of physical power, despite the static panel framing, was like John’s “hold my beer” statement to the generation of artists coming up then.

        As if, oh, you wanna see how a world class superhero team is drawn? Here, lemme show ya. Definitve versions (there can be more than one, by different artists!) of each character. Especially Cap, Wasp, Herc, & the Black Knight. You were reading authentic representations of each

        The facial expressions and body language really sold Roger’s dialog. Including when they were mad at each other, which Wasp and Herc, Herc and Namor, and Monica at Herc and Namor, often were. 😉

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      2. Couldn’t agree more that those facial expressions and body language absolutely sold every aspect of Stern’s excellent stories. From Captain America’s stone face when Zemo tormented him to his tears later and so, so many other outstanding examples. It’s amazing how someone so gifted at superheroes so disliked drawing them.

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      3. I guess John Buscema was just gifted at drawing, pairing, and visual art in general, and superheroes were just a way to make a living using his artistic skills and talents.

        He could draw anything. American Westerns. Romance. Crime. War. But by the 1980”s, superheroes had long eclipsed all other comicbook genres.

        He dud some notable Punisher stories in the 1990’s, I think.He never lost his potency. And he was definitely doing very good stuff in the 1980’s.

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      4. That scene after “Siege”, with Cap finding his old army footlocker, the only photo of his mother he still had. That hit hard.

        This was, what, 15, 20 years before digital scanning? You lost photos then, they were gone forever. Folks who’d lose things like that when their homes burned down.

        Stern, J.Buscema, & Rom Palmer handled that scene mire than convincingly.

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      5. At the risk of revealing my age, that was part of what made that scene so poignant. That photo was truly destroyed. Nothing Steve Rodgers could do to restore it. Yet he held his composure until the mission was complete. Then the emotions hit. Truly remarkable storytelling.

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      6. it was also a good moment between Steve and Monica. It brought them a little closer. She knew him as maybe America’s most respected hero. Her father admired him. Brave and level headed in a fight. Reasonable and friendly. I think it was shortly after that, she told Steve her real name.

        Which is nuts now, to think Avengers could keep their true identities from teammates, let alone the US and UN, which gave them security clearances and limited authority.

        But then was a big deal back then, to know each other’s real names, though Wasp and a few others had gone public.

        Readers today might be surprised by that.

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    2. I agree with you that Dan Green was a really good inker. I think he was underrated. It seems to me that, unlike gents like Terry Austin, Joe Sinnott or Tom Palmer, his inking sort of fell under the radar. But I feel that Green always did solid work when paired with Rick Leonardi, and he contributed what were probably some vital inks on Uncanny X-Men when Marc Silvestri was a relative newcomer.

      Of course, as you say, Green was also a great penciler himself, as his very short run on doctor Strange in the early 1980s showed. And, of course, Green did beautiful painted work on the Doctor Strange: Into Shamballa graphic novel.

      I remember that when Green died in 2023 it felt like his passing was sadly unnoticed by a lot of comic books.

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      1. I was thinking about “Shamballa”, too.

        And I was glad he stayed on “Uncanny X-Men” after JRJr’s excellent run. Dan’s inks were well-suited for Silvestri’s own dynamics & kinetic figures.

        They stayed together on the “Wolverine” solo book, which was a smart choice by all involved.

        Comicbooks were in such a different place in 2023 than they were in Dan’s hey day. I’m unsure when his career trailed off. 20 years ago?

        He inked Ron Garney’s drawings on Kurt Busiek’s run of “JLA”. I think I read Ron saying he wishes he hadn’t gone as loose and experimental as he did on that run. Ron’s one of my very favorite be artists, but that’s not my favorite work from him.

        Just from that credit box, Kurt, Ron, & Dan, “JLA” should’ve been a critical and sales success. I think if Ron and Dan had been on “Avengers” with Kurt, that book wouldn’t have flinched from the excellence Kurt had achieved with other art teams. Just a guess.

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  7. Had my buddies at the time not been telling me it was time to go, this comic would have returned me to collecting several months prior to X-Men #129. Seeing that cover on the comic rack in that convenience store as we walked past snagged my helpless eyeballs and did not want to let them go!

    Jump forward a few decades and this issue still rocks! Although much of that goes to the stellar John Byrne-Dan Green art, I’ve also find the story quite intriguing. Sure it was a tad heavy on continuity, but since it’s not every day that the Avengers tackle elder gods, I didn’t mind expanding my knowledge.

    And if it moved Wanda and Pietro away from the Whizzer as their father, that prompted a “thumbs up” from me. Nothing against Golden Age characters, but Bob Frank wasn’t the most exciting cape in the drawer. As for the Scarlet Witch, I confess that she’s almost more fun when she breaks bad than as a hero. Almost.

    Props as well to the responses spawned by Kurt Busiek’s letter in the Avengers. I have to wonder how much fun it would have been if the internet had existed back then?

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    1. When the Scarlet Witch breaks bad it makes more sense that she should either be possessed or under the effects of a Hate Ray or ID Machine or Purple Man/Controller or Corruptor and her choosing to do so of her free will, cause I just don’t see the U.S. Government letting the Avengers keep their security clearances [ The Avengers#168 ( February 1978 ) & 181 ( March 1979 ) ] with her on the team if she went bad on her own. Same with Sentry or any other hero that goes bad on their own. Are the Avengers leaving things out of any logs they write?

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  8. This is a great issue and the Byrne/Green art is fantastic. Back in the day I probably preferred Austin’s inks on Byrne, but Green’s brushwork really adds to the atmosphere in this issue.Love the flourish of Wanda’s face becoming more demonic.

    This was one in a run of great issues. It didn’t matter who showed up in the line-up.

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  9. As I said when this blog reviewed one of the earlier the chapters this hits all the things I want in a retcon: it makes sense of disparate stories, it’s an interesting retcon and it’s a good story.

    Sign me up as a fan of Magneto as Dad. Englehart did some fun work with that in Vision/Scarlet Witch.

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  10. I think I liked the unfolding reveal of Magneto being Pietro and Wanda’s dead… even though it obviously undid the Whizzer and Miss America reveal… a couple who became even more tragic figures as a result.

    The reader knowing an important fact about a relationship that the characters didn’t know was novel for the time. Comics are episodic…. but how long something can gestate is different from a TV show or prose fiction. I think Marvel showed remarkable restraint on this story point considering this didn’t get revealed to Wanda and Pietro until 1983.

    In hindsight… a lot of time was spent wrangling out who Pietro and Wanda’s parents were. Which is odd considering how many characters Marvel has where their parentage is rarely if ever mentioned.

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    1. I’m finally wised up enough now to understand it was only a matter of time before someone made the implicit explicit. That’s just the way of serialized comics…

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    2. In fact, John did not have a hand in that arc or issue plot. To the best of my recollection, he was more than happy with what we handed him.

      One thing I’m especially happy with on this issue was I came up with the cover concept, which John executed flawlessly. The idea, with the rigid, upside down figures, was to immediately signal the sheer helplessness of the Avengers against the transformed Scarlet Witch. Following longtime comics tradition, the cover was designed first, & that element inserted into the plot. Fortunately, it fit easily. (Stan, by the way, who was still publisher at the time & still paying attention, was NOT happy with the cover, as the figures partly obscured the logo. This was in the days when most comics purchases were still being made off spinner racks, which lent themselves to flipping through only the top quarter of comics, so clear visibility of the logo was often more important to sales than a striking cover image. I didn’t think we obscured the logo enough that people who saw it wouldn’t know what it was, but I did take Stan’s point.)

      My sole regret is tipping over the first domino of what has become the Wanda story ever since.

      Oh, and since at that point the Beast’s characterization was as a cocky, fun-lovin’ “wild & crazy guy,” hey, what fun-lovin’ wild & crazy guy wouldn’t think it’d be a hoot to dress up as a knight if the opportunity presented itself – esp. if he could do it on a jet-powered “horse”? How much more motivation do you need?

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      2. Thanks, but, trust me, I knew instantly it was a great cover idea.

        (Very much inspired by my boyhood love for Justice League Of America, BTW, & very intentionally in the spirit of those early issue covers.)

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      3. The figures didn’t obscure it anymore than the Black Panther’s arm did the FF logo ( the U & R in Four ) on the cover of his first appearance [ FF#52 ( July 1966 ) ] or Doctor Doom’s cape on the cover of FF#86 ( May 1969 ). Look back for other examples I just realized that the cover of The X-Men#135 ( July 1980 — Dark Phoenix crushing the X & N in the X-Men logo ) was a homage to Neal Adam’s The X-Men#56 ( May 1969 — Living Monolith holding the X-Men logo ). The Avengers#187 was/is a great cover and Stan shouldn’t have worried — had no problems finding this issue back then.

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  11. I loved this issue too and I have to say I like Green (and Hunt) over Byrne’s pencils more than I do Austin. Not to take away from Austin’s talent, I just prefer inkers who don’t impose the sameness of their own style over the artist like Austin does. It’s a shame his pencils were so underwhelming the once or twice I remember seeing them. I still smart too over Modred’s insta-villainy but it’s been decades of him being eeeeevil and just one book where he got to be heroic so it is what it is. BTW, the way to undo the Magneto paternity question is that evilified Wanda who cast the damning spell actually cast a spell to make it appear he wasn’t the daddy just because she was just so evil in that issue. You’d have to ignore the short series where her ‘true’ heritage was explored but they’ve been doing that since it ended anyways.

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  12. I have very fond memories of this story from back in the day.

    The letters page is interesting on a personal note because I later become friends with both Bruce McCorkindale and cat yronwode. I actually met cat not long after this issue was published at a meeting of the Ozark Fandom comics club.
    That meeting changed my life, introducing teenage me to actual grown up comics fans and also to small press comics that soon became a huge part of my life.

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  13. Corsair & Cyclops is the Galactic Winner For Most Outrageous Comic Coincidence Of All Time. Sadly, this was just the beginning for Claremont and this sort of thing. As for Northstar and Aurora having a evil dad, I’m not sure Byrne would have done that as he already had a villain on the team with Sasquatch actually being Tanaraq. Also, his AF run was about inverting comic tropes, starting with the team breaking in the first issue, then killing off the leader, and others I’m too tired to look up right now!

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  14. I do love the letters page reply lamenting that real-world problems of the sixties were so much simpler and easy to write about. That’s a feeling that carried on over the years, and it wouldn’t be long before writers were yearning for the good old simple black-and-white problems of 1979…

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  15. My favourite Avengers sagas of all time. The origin of Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch. Full of portent and the quest for self-knowledge. Who could forget the reveal of Bova. Also that stunning full-page image of Chthon/Wanda by John Byrne. Surely one of the best pieces of art he ever produced. A real classic.

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    1. I always thought John did spectacular work on those issues, especially that one. Matter of fact, Chris stopped me in the hallway at Marvel right around then to ask how we were getting work that great out of John. Not actually having an answer, I told him we simply gave him stuff that was impossible to draw & let him figure out how to draw it.

      I wouldn’t say that was exactly accurate, but it’s not exactly far from the truth either. John always seemed to do his best work, at least by my metrics, when he got visual problems to work out.

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