Sunday, July 07, 2024

Sunday Splash Page #330

 
"Bank Fraud" in Marvel Adventures Super Heroes (vol. 1) #14, by Paul Tobin (writer), David Baldeon (artist), Sotocolor (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

So Marvel eventually canceled Marvel Adventures Avengers and replaced it with this book. Instead of a more or less stable cast, this book took a couple of different approaches.

Sometimes it was more of a Marvel Team-Up. Dr. Strange enlists Spider-Man to help deal with some mystical monster babies that eat the threads that hold reality together, or Hawkeye and the Blonde Phantom investigate bank robbers who claim to have Bruce Banner as a hostage and might dose him with laughing gas to unleash a crazed Hulk. Other times the book would have two different solo adventures, similar to the old Tales to Astonish where Ant-Man and the Hulk each got a story. Either way, all done-in-one adventures, usually with some clever solution by the heroes.

Then near the end of its 21-issue run, Tobin started a series of stories about people, first one, then, entire towns, going crazy. The heroes would team-up, then continue working together in subsequent issues and eventually decide they should maybe just go ahead and form a team.

By the time the book started over with a new first issue, we were back at the Avengers after all. Yeah, I don't know. Kind of an odd roster; lot of traditional Avengers - Thor, Vision, Iron Man - but also Nova as designated rookie, and the Invisible Woman (in a non-FF, incredibly generic, outfit.) Black Widow joins up, apparently at the behest of Reed Richards. Who, on the one hand is vaguely concerned about Sue's well-being, but also doesn't really listen to Natasha's reports (especially when she mentions there's sparks between Sue and Captain America.)

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