BHOC: AVENGERS #19

Brevoort History of Comics

One of the things that the Batcave comic book shop was notable for during this late 1970s period was in having affordable copies of relatively old and key comics. These were typically more well-read copies, but for my purposes, i didn’t care. there was some elusive magic in holding an actual vintage book from a bygone age–as an object, it carried some sense of specialness and antiquity even apart from the story that it contained. On this particular trip to the shop, I happened across a copy of AVENGERS #19 in the back issue bins. It was well-read but not in terrible shape, and they were only asking something like $3.00 for it. So I picked it up. This cover, featuring the debut of the Swordsman, was primarily made from Jack Kirby’s initial character design, with inset heads of the assorted Avengers and a technology-filled background added by Don Heck. Kirby was often called upon to design new characters even for stories he wouldn’t be illustrating, and often he wasn’t paid for these efforts. I wonder who got the check for this cover, Kirby or Heck or both or neither?

Speaking of Don Heck, he was an artist whose popularity waned over the years, but in 1965 when this issue came out, he was largely well-regarded. A few things impacted on Heck’s work in the coming years. The reduction of the size of the original art boards around 1967 didn’t do his work any favors (it had an impact on almost everybody to one degree or another.) On top of which, super heroes weren’t really Don’s strongest idiom. He could do them, but he was much better at depicting real-world elements. That Kirby=styled exaggeration wasn’t his specialty. And as that became more the norm, and other, better draftsmen such as John Buscema came into the field, Heck’s work became seen as a bit old fashioned and tired. I wasn’t a huge fan of his current stuff in the 1970s myself. But I liked, and continue to like, his efforts throughout the formative Marvel period.

As for AVENGERS, at the time this issue first came out, the series had been through an almost-unthinkable transformation. It had begun a few years earlier as a counterpart to DC’s JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, a team made up of Marvel heroes who each headlined their own ongoing solo series. But as the series lagged in reader interest, writer/editor Stan Lee found two things to be of issue. The first was that, as the Marvel stories began to lean further into continuing epics, the fact that a given hero was in jeopardy in one title but fine to be running around with the Avengers in another was ruining the suspension of disbelief for a portion of the audience. The second was that Lee keyed in on the fact that it was the personality conflicts and soap opera running romances that were bringing the Marvel audience back month after month. And AVENGRS didn’t have any of that. So Lee completely overhauled the series, taking all of the established heroes off of the active roster (with the exception of Captain America, whose solo strip was set during his WWII adventures at that time) and replacing them with a trio of ambivalent villains who had garnered some popularity among the readership: Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. To say this was risky is a bit of an understatement–it was a complete overhaul of a title the likes of which had never been seen in comics before. But it seemed to work.

A quickie pause here for one of Marvel’s ubiquitous house ads of the period. I loved getting these old books and seeing these ancient covers. In particular, this AMAZING SPIDER-MAN cover was striking, though I’d already seen a modern day riff on this approach on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #188 a few months earlier.

The New Avengers as they were informally called for several months, all had attitude and personality, but very little in the way of backstory. That’s part of what this issue sets out to address. It opens with a mysterious costumed mercenary, the Swordsman, breaking into Avengers Mansion in an attempt to join the team. The Swordsman realizes that having priority Avengers clearance would give him legitimacy and license to do what he pleased. The New Avengers, specifically Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, are unimpressed by this arrogant newcomer, and best him in battle when he attacks them. Captain America shows up at this point and runs a background check on the Swordsman, learning that he’s a wanted fugitive in several countries across the globe. But before the Avengers can take the Swordsman into custody, he’s able to cut the power to the lights and escape in the confusion.

Hawkeye is the last to arrive, and he’s ashen-faced as the team tells him about the Swordsman’s break-in. Turns out that he’s got history with the Swordsman, who was the one that trained Hawkeye in archery at the circus in the first place. So we get to learn a bit more about Hawkeye’s background (though not his real name–that wouldn’t be revealed for another 46 issue, believe it or not.) Meanwhile, we get a strange sort of tie-in to events elsewhere across the Marvel line. A few issues ago, having heard that his old colleague Nick Fury had gotten into counter-espionage work following the War, Captain America wrote to him in the hopes of earning a position within Fury’s team. But now Fury has been recruited to ramrod S.H.I.E.L.D., and that organization’s enemy group Hydra is keeping tabs on him. they waylay the letter that Cap wrote, then discard it as unimportant to their plans for Fury. But the discarded letter winds up in the hands of an underworld stoolie, who is able to sell the information it contains to the Swordsman.

The Swordsman figures that he can capture Cap and use him as a bargaining chip to get the Avengers membership he desires–a pretty bonkers plan when you come right down to it. But he writes back to Cap as Nick Fury, arranging a meet-up at a run-down warehouse. Cap is elated at potentially having a mission and being out from under foot, so he’s not all that cautious about attending the meeting. Meanwhile, Hawkeye stops a typical burglary, one of the perpetrators of which is the stoolie that sold the info to the Swordsman. He gives up this info to the bowman, who scrambles to alert the rest of the Avengers since Cap is already gone. But they’re too late–Captain America walks into an ambush. Of course, Cap is no slouch, so what we get next is an extended multi-page bout between the Swordsman and Cap.

But this would be a pretty dull story if Cap simply clobbered the Swordsman, and so, while he gives an excellent accounting of himself, Cap is undone when a stack of crates falls atop him. The other Avengers race to the scene, but by the time they arrive, the Swordsman has Cap out on a makeshift plank, and he threatens to hurl the hero to his death of he’s not immediately instated as the new leader of the Avengers. The three younger heroes aren’t sure of just what to do next, but Cap takes the decision out of their hands–he deliberately hurls himself forward into open space to his doom so that his team won’t surrender to the Swordsman. And that’s where this story is To Be Continued. I wasn’t especially worried about Cap’s fate here–even if I didn’t know that he was still alive and active in the present, I could think of a dozen ways that the other three Avengers could save him from a fatal fall.

After the story came another house ad, this one from two just-released Annuals for that year. Again, I found seeing these early books very cool.

This early version of the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page was mostly turned over to hawking Marvel merchandise, such as the cool stationery set that was being offered. I never had one myself, though I wanted one. But the page continued to print the names of 25 members of the Merry Marvel Marching Society, including in this batch future Marvel writer Tony Isabella, known today as Jenny Blake.

The two page All About the Avengers letters page included the first bunch of reactions to the sudden change in the team’s line-up. Suffice it to say that most correspondents weren’t enthusiastic about this change, though Lee front-loads the page with more positive reactions. One of these comes from Cary Burkett, who would one day write for DC. The letters pages at this time were a kind of hybrid operation, including material that would eventually migrate over to the Bullpen Bulletins page, including the Marvel Checklist. There was also a blurb concerning the short-lived name change from Marvel Comics to Marvel Pop Art Productions–a designation on the cover of this issue that confused me at first. It’s a good example of the fun, funny, self-aggrandizing, self-effacing conversational tone that Lee permeated the Marvel titles with, which made the company feel less like a publishing endeavor and more like a crazy gang of like-minded weirdos having a fun time. Much of this impression was manufactured, of course, but it was a key element in Marvel’s ongoing popularity. A reader, even one perusing these pages so many years after the fact as I was, couldn’t help but feel like Stan was talking directly to them, and treating them like a respected adult.

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32 thoughts on “BHOC: AVENGERS #19”

  1. The cover looking like a Kirby presentation piece aside… I think the Swordsman looks more like a Don Heck design. He’s basically Hawkeye but with a sword. Not that creators can’t misremember who did what, but there’s an interview where Don claims to have designed Wonderman and Goliath’s first outfits. I don’t recall if Swordsman was on that list.

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  2. I’m not a Heck fan but in scenes like Pepper and Happy squabbling in Iron Man I can sort of glimpse why some people are.

    My first Avengers issue (possibly my first Marvel issue) was the previous story, “When the Commissar Commands.” As far as I knew, the Kookie Quartet were as iconic and legendary as Iron Man and Thor. Rereading a few years ago, it struck me that that Stan does what Gerry Conway never did with the Detroit League, proving that yes, these guys do kick enough butt to deserve the name Avengers.

    That said, while I loved this story as a kid, the Swordsman really feels out of his weight class when I reread it (let’s face it, ripping off a carnival for the gate receipts isn’t A-list). Not to mention the splash page — it looks good but what’s the point of landing on a roof and sticking his blade in? Quite aside from the probability he’ll break the blade.

    For the record, I’ve never had a problem with the Swordsman training Clint as an archer and still don’t. He presumably had enough training to teach archery to a gifted youngster even if he was better himself with a sword. It still makes more sense to me than having yet another super-villain in the same carnie operation.

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    1. Yes, I also found Trickshot (from Gruenwald?) to be the product of over-consistency. In the minds of guys like Stan, mastery of archaic weapons was just an Errol Flynn kind of thing; if Swordsman knew swords, he could know arrows too, and could teach the rudiments to a kid who turned out to have a natural talent.

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  3. I first saw this issue in The Marvel Super Heroes cartoon. On the splash page Stan should have had the Swordsman say,” and, those costumed do-gooders would be fools to reject anyone as SKILLFUL ( not powerful ) as… The Swordsman!” — cause he is powerful how? The Swordsman must have wanted the same deal as former criminals Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver and being jaded must have thought the Avengers was a scam to cover hidden crimes they were doing. Page 4 panel 2, you would think a speedster like Quicksilver would have seen that blow coming a mile away and easily disarmed the Swordsman. Plus Cap as a hostage, the Avengers should have just agreed to the Swordsman demands and then arrested his ass once Cap was safe.

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  4. I have read a lot of 60s and 70s Epic collections this year and you can sort of tell which books and pencillers are favoured as they get the better inkers. I think Don Heck was not fortunate in this regard – with the right inker his superhero comics were good enough. With some of the people being used his work looked horrible. For instance compare Sal Buscema;s work on Hulk inked by Mike Esposito to almost any other inker. Esposito can make almost anyone look worse.

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    1. You won’t get any argument from me about Mike Esposito’s inks. Look no further than Iron Man to see the impact of his work on the overall art when compared to other inkers covering George Tuska.

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      1. SUB-MARINER #43 is burned into my memory. Having seen over on DAREDEVIL how good Gene Colan looked when inked by Tom Palmer how bad his work looked here came as a real shock.

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  5. “Don’t do it, Rick! Don’t risk inciting the wrath of others on this site by criticizing Don Heck!”

    Ignoring that worried voice in my head, I’m trudging forward with my thoughts on this issue. I read it as a reprint in Marvel Triple Action, coming out after I was about six months into collecting the Avengers in the mid-70’s. Not knowing any of the rationale Tom provides, as a kid, I found this version of the Avengers falling far short of the then-current version of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. That the Swordsman – who was on the A-Team at that time – actually kept Cap’s Kooky Quartet busy was “bucket over your head” shameful. Even though I liked him under Englehart’s hand, the dude’s sexy girlfriend Mantis brought more to the table than he did in terms of power.

    Added to that, Don Heck’s artwork was okay at best to me. I liked it better than what I saw of him at that time on Daredevil and Ka-Zar, but I still greatly preferred the art on the current series – particularly when Dave Cockrum showed up for the inking duties. While Sal Buscema and Joe Staton weren’t quite that level, their work seemed a bit more contemporary. (And of course your mileage on that assessment may certainly vary.)

    As a result, at that time, I read those reprints on a monthly basis to learn more about the Avengers but didn’t consider any issues particularly memorable. Although Lee’s logic made some sense, why throw the baby out with the bathwater? As Roy Thomas later showed, you could have the big three hang around to provide some power and sales, but let everyone else savor in the soap opera aspects.

    On a personal note, my father who never read comics, picked up one of my Triple Actions with that Kang story. He read through that entire story, thoroughly engrossed. Shame I could never get him to check out anything else.

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  6. The first issue I ever got of the Avengers was #104, the end of Thomas’ run. I missed the next couple of issues but then started getting it regularly with issue #112, drawn by Heck and with the introduction of Mantis and a mysterious figure kept in shadows. A couple of issues later it was revealed that that figure was the Swordsman, whom I had never heard of before. It was maybe a few months later I got the issue of Marvel Triple Action that reprinted Avengers #19. I’d also read MTA’s reprints of issues 12-18, the latter era of the classic early line-up with the “Big Three” & Giant-Man & Wasp & Rick Jones as regular hanger-on and then the big change-over, leaving Cap with three former baddies now on the good side, if Cap could keep them together. I didn’t think about it at the time, but in retrospect, before the line-up change, seems despite a few petty squabbles, everyone got along fine and mostly looked upon Cap with awe despite his powers being relatively meager compared to Thor, Iron Man and Giant-Man (well, he did have what amounted to magic powers over his shield – doing things with it that no one in the real world with any amount of training would be capable of doing, including carrying it on his back while wearing civilian clothes without anyone noticing anything unusual underneath his dress jacket. With the new line-up, however, Quicksilver & Hawkeye looked upon Cap as an old glorified athlete past his prime who should get out of the way and let one of them take over the team – despite the fact that neither of them had any leadership experience. And Cap himself actually began to seem much more human than before, capable of mistakes and self-doubts, up to wondering if he was really up to the job of mentoring this new trio into a functioning team capable of taking on whatever threats may come up. Sure, in retrospect (and maybe to plenty of readers at the time), the Swordsman hardly seemed a viable threat to “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” – a sobriquet that wouldn’t appear above the title name on the cover for several more years. But I think at least the Swordsman made for the sort of low-level threat, on his own or as a flunky for the Mandarin, that sort of fit the Kooky Quartet era of the Avengers as Lee & Heck were shaping them up and gradually bringing on greater threats, such as Powerman and the Enchantress, and then Kang, just after Cap himself had given up on the team and gone off to become a boxer before running back upon hearing of their abduction by one of the Avengers’ most formidable early foes.

    To some degree, IMO, Cap comes off as much more relatable in these Kooky Quartet stories than in most other Silver Age stories in either the Avengers or his solo series. In the Bronze Age, Englehart at least made some strides in making Cap/Steve Rogers more 3-dimensional as a character and not simply a statuesque figure who always knows exactly what to do, has all the answers and never falters.

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    1. “Quicksilver & Hawkeye looked upon Cap as an old glorified athlete past his prime” One of Lee’s quirks was writing Cap as if he was a WW II veteran who’d lived the intervening years. In reality he was probably 24-25 (https://atomicjunkshop.com/captain-america-young-punk/).

      In listing Cap’s magic powers you forgot him teaching the Avengers the magic judo chant — “You’re more powerful but Captain America taught me how to use an enemy’s strength against them!” Never fails.

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      1. I’d argue that actually, Cap would in fact be socially perceived as his chronological age rather his biological age. Sure, he may look 24-25, but he’d talk in many ways like someone much older. His speech-patterns and cultural references and touchpoints would be from decades ago. This is magnified because he’s famous as the “living legend of WWII”. Plus he does have an “old soul”. He was in the middle of a brutal war for years, going on intense mission after mission, seeing people getting killed all around him – ending in the death of his best friend and partner. That ages a person mentally at least. Thus, Quicksilver and Hawkeye would see this guy they know from history books, who talks like someone from that earlier time, and does have some obvious issues (what we’d call PTSD nowadays) – that all adds up to him coming across as not young at all.

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      2. I touch on some of that in the post but no, the stories do not treat him as a young man with tons of experience. There’s constant talk about how even after all these years he’s haunted by the loss of Bucky and of his great love — Stan never acknowledges that from Steve’s perspective it’s been a matter of months.

        Clint would certainly react to Steve belonging to another era but I doubt the Maximoffs would. Eastern Europeans who’ve spent the past few years under Magneto’s thumb — what would they know of American youth (much the same way as a kid growing up in England I figured American teens might very well talk like the ones in Bob Haney’s Teen Titans.

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      3. I agree that you’ve pointed out many continuity errors in your post. But even if they were changed, I think it’s different from how Cap would come across to other people. Even Eastern Europeans would certainly know about WWII. Again, in-universe, Cap is someone deeply associated with past history. Every time he mentioned some WWII skirmish he’d been in, the listener would think of him as not a young man, rather than as a time-displaced young man. The “old soul” point is that he just wouldn’t act like people they know of comparable age, he’s literally been through a war.

        Note, most obviously, they all know roughly how old he is chronologically. While he looks much younger than that age, I’d suspect that’s not too significant as their world is filled with slow-aging and no-obvious-aging people. The time-displacement is an abstraction, so won’t override everything else.

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  7. There’s another one of those Stan Lee mismatches in the scripting on page 3 of this issue.

    From the art, it’s clear that Wanda casts a hex at the Swordsman, but he deflects it with the blade of his sword, so it hits Pietro. But in the script, the hex makes him drop the swords (which makes little sense, because he’s wielding it again moments later) and somehow passes beyond the Swordsman to also strike Pietro.

    So what Don drew was the Swordsman being skillful, and what Stan wrote was Wanda being inept. Ah well.

    I liked seeing those house ads too. Since I was experiencing this era in back-issue form, I was perceiving in linearly via series — I knew what happened issue after issue. But the ads (and the Mighty Marvel Checklist) gave me a lateral view of the line: Here’s what else is coming out at this moment. I liked having that reminder of the broader Marvel Universe.

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  8. Characters wielding swords never worked for me outside of fantasy settings. Swordsman getting the teched up sword was better but I still wince remembering hero dialog mentioning they were using the flat of their blade. Why noy ust se a truncheon, you boobs!

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    1. Swordsman was shown using the point of his blade one time – to kill the guy who shot him in the back in Avengers #117, and Valkyrie used her sword to chop off the lamprey arms of the absurdly transmogrified Chondu in Defenders #35 but those were very rare instances of modern era heroes shown using their swords to inflict serious injuries upon opponents. Then there are the archers, Hawkeye and Green Arrow who at least through the late Bronze Age couldn’t really be shown using regular arrows to inflict injury on their opponents but had to resort to trick shots or a variety of gimmicky arrows over the course of the conflict. Real arrows, after all, were intended to kill or seriously injure opponents (or prey) as much as swords and loaded guns and rifles. and even so-called “dummy bullets” could be just as lethal as regular bullets. IMO, however, the most ridiculous aspect was Shooter’s edict that Wolverine never killed anyone with his adamantine claws. I could sort of understand that in the context of the CCA requirements as well as Shooter’s definition of how a modern-day fantasy hero should behave (as opposed to a real-life hero who in the course of duty or other circumstance happens to kill armed criminals or enemy soldiers during a conflict). On the other hand, the only realistic purpose of those claws was to use them as lethal weapons against opponents in the field of action. Otherwise, they just came off as rather silly.

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      1. I think nonlethal comic-book archers have worked reasonably well where the arrows are downplayed as lethal projectiles themselves, but are emphasized as a delivery system for gadgets like nets and glue. Calling it “trick arrow” draws attention to the wrong part, as I see it. It’s more along the lines that the arrow isn’t the point itself, but is used to carry something – “payload arrows?”. I also have a soft spot for the boxing-glove arrow. Of course it’s incredibly unaerodynamic, but it’s a fun concept.

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      3. The author of the indie Southern Knights had similar views, so he gave the team swordswoman a psychic sword. Slice through someone’s arm it goes numb like it had been cut off but no permanent damage.

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      5. Actually Green Arrow killed a bad guy ( in silhouette/shadow with arrow in his chest ) using a normal arrow in The Brave and the Bold#100 ( February-March 1972 ) – “One dead…one got away… ( is what his thought bubble said ).

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  10. Seeing Mark Kernes name in the letter column was a bit of a surprise. He’s a friend of my wife and went on to edit Adult Video News.

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  11. Speaking of things “non-aerodynamic,” what’s with that splash page? In what world does any person with a sword jump from one building to another holding his sword directly in front of him– much less using it to “stab” the roof of the building? I realize the idea of Heck, or maybe some collaborator, was to place emphasis on the sword, but whoever conceived it (please don’t tell me Kirby dunnit) was undermining his own internal logic IMO.

    The Swordsman-Cap fight is decent though.

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    1. And Swordsy’s assertion that those “do-gooders would be fools to reject someone as mighty as the Swordsman” is seriously obnoxious over self-esteem. Even when he finally did become an Avenger by legitimate means and acceptance, he was by far the least mighty of all of them. But at least he tried to do good, even as he continued to be dogged and physically & psychologically damaged by his own impulsiveness and attempts at derring-do. Yet, in the end he died a hero, sacrificing himself to save another. His trajectory was rather fascinating. In this two-parter, while he generally comes off as far more evil than Hawkeye, Pietro or Wanda were ever depicted during their periods of being on the wrong side of the law, Lee allowed him touches of not being entirely beyond redemption. But for the next several years he was predominantly a flunky, a cackling baddy with no glimpse of remorse for his evil deeds, including attempted murder. Then, out of the blue, Thomas has him showing up in Avengers #100, because, well, he once was an Avengers, even if under entirely false pretenses and fraud, and, Thomas being Thomas, he felt he had to include him. And Thomas has him genuinely joining the effort to do good, which might have been baffling to anyone who had read his previous few appearances in the Avengers and solo Captain America. Little wonder that Cap was more dubious about his intent to reform than anyone else when he shows up again in Avengers 114.

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      1. Although I know that Englehart brought him to the Avengers to be a sad sack, it would be interesting to see the Swordsman presented in a manner focusing on him as a modern swashbuckler. Having his charm, smarts, athleticism as much a weapon as the sword. That could be a fun and interesting character. (And I’m not referring to the guy with all the headaches who returned to the Avengers with “Big Barda” during Bob Harrass’s tenure.)

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      3. I could mount an argument that, 30 years before the Thunderbolts. Swordy was the OG “villain with hero envy.” He really wants to lead the team, and even if it seems bonkers that he would try to extort his way into the Avengers, one could read that as his intense desire to share in the glory of herodom, but wanting to do so w/o considering anyone else’s opinions. Much later Gail Simone executed a similar plot for BIRDS OF PREY. in which a self-appointed New Female Spy Smasher tried to force Oracle oout of the BOP team, and she suffered the same humiliating expulsion.

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    2. Disney had a Zorro series ( 1957-1959 –if Don Heck saw it or any pre-this issue Avengers, Zorro movies ), I don’t know if Zorro ever swung onto a roof in that series but Don Heck should have had the Swordsman swinging onto the Avengers roof cause you would think his momentum would have cause the hilt of the sword to smash into his face or throat and his fingers to slide down the blade.

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  12. When I started buying Marvel Masterworks I didn’t buy them all, but I did buy the the first two volumes collecting The Avengers. However, I wasn’t interested enough to continue and when I just read this story and its conclusion in the next issue I didn’t recall reading it before. It’s likely that I stopped reading before the line-up change.

    Regardless, I like the Swordsman, both as a character and how he’s drawn by Don Heck. In fact, as I’ve stated in previous comments, sometimes I like Don’s work and other times I don’t. In this story I like his artwork in both issues. In fact I was struck by the look of the Mandarin in the fourth panel on page 12 of issue #11: it reminded me of Patrick Throughton’s Nasca (sans ‘mask’ and facial hair) in the Thames Television series The Feathered Serpent (how’s that for an obscure reference?).

    I also like the story, from the conflicted Swordsman to the bickering Avengers to the unexpected appearance of the Manardin. I was however, a bit disappointed to learn that Quicksilver isn’t very fast as he can barely beat an arrow. I’m much more used to the super-speed of Superman and the Flash. While Superman was originally only faster than a streamlined train, by the time his radio show premiered he was faster than a speeding bullet.

    As for the house ads and letters pages, They’re not in the Masterworks collections and the online versions. I personally don’t miss them, but when Tom mentions them I’m glad he usually includes images of the pages so I can peruse them.

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