In the meantime, rather than leaving you with nothing, Matt C has taken a look at five issues of Avengers for his continuing Buscema Avengers Project.
AVENGERS #261Writer: Roger Stern
Art: John Buscema & Tom Palmer
Marvel $0.65
Matt C: An incident packed issue, that’s for sure. Reading this you realise how comfortable we've become with the decompressed style of storytelling that’s de rigueur these days, and how surprising it is to look back at a comic where there’s so much going on! The Avengers wind up their cosmic shenanigans with the Skrulls and it’s sadly the last (ever?) appearance of General Zedrao, a proud leader displaying a level of characterization that was sorely absent for the entirety of Secret Invasion (there’s your Bendis potshot this week, folks!). One of the team quits to pursue his personal agenda, while the remaining Avengers return to Earth to discover the government wants the Quinjets (and the highly flammable fuel they run on) out of Manhattan. Before they've had an opportunity to digest this, the Beyonder makes another sudden appearance to throw a cat among the pigeons. A brilliant, hilarious scene with Hercules completes a sequence of events that remind Earth’s Mightiest Heroes of the potential threat the Beyonder presents. It feels like the characters are almost writing themselves here, meaning Stern had pretty much mastered how to tell a gripping, compelling Avengers comic. 8/10
AVENGERS #262Writer: Roger Stern
Art: John Buscema & Tom Palmer
Marvel $0.65
Matt C: The cover doesn’t hold any secrets – what you see is what you’re going to get, namely a smackdown between Herc and Namor. Namor is moping around having been cast out of Atlantis, so Hercules decides to present him with “the gift”. If you know a fair bit about Hercules, you’ll now what “the gift” is, and you’ll now what usually happens when he offers it to someone. These were the days when it was still acceptable for a superhero to wander about in nothing but his swimming trunks. A few weeks ago Namor recalled this scrap in Hercules: Fall Of An Avenger #1 – his memory was obviously a bit faulty because his recollection had him full clothed. Fortunately for us there’s plenty of evidence in the back-issue bins to prove he did indeed feel that the worthy attire for a Prince of Atlantis was a pair of scaly underpants. There’s something almost joyful in the way Buscema and Palmer render the punch-up between the two bemuscled colleagues, like watching a super-powered version of WWE Raw. When Cap offers his old Invaders colleague a place on the Avengers, you kind of know that it won’t be the last time we see Herc and Namor at loggerheads. 8/10
AVENGERS #263Writer: Roger Stern
Art: John Buscema & Tom Palmer
Marvel $0.65
Matt C: Herc and Namor are at it already when the Sub-Mariner decides he likes the look of the Prince of Power’s bedroom in the Avengers mansion. The real meat of this issue though is the discovery of a man-sized cocoon in Jamaica Bay, just adjacent to JFK airport. With the slogan “It begins here! X-Factor.” on the cover it’ll come as no surprise to those familiar with Marvel lore that this marked the return of Jean Grey to the Marvel Universe, in a story that carried on into Fantastic Four #286. Although somewhat functional, we do get some great displays of Stern’s firm grasp of characterization here, along with the usual high standard of artwork. 8/10
AVENGERS #264Writer: Roger Stern
Art: John Buscema & Tom Palmer
Marvel $0.65
Matt C: Hardly the most exciting instalment of Avengers. Captain Marvel visits her folks in New Orleans while the Black Knight helps Wasp learn to keep her wings when she's full-sized. Whoop. Okay, it’s a fair bit more involving than my description indicates thanks to the usual high quality of writing and art. Stern makes these characters come alive, and the soap opera of their everyday superheroic existence remains compulsive reading even when not much is happening. Special mention should also go to Buscema’s knack of producing really punchy imagery for the first-page splashes. Even if the scene is relatively static, the layout, angle and level of detail are always enough to have you eager to turn the page and get involved in the story. 7/10
AVENGERS #265Writer: Roger Stern
Art: John Buscema & Tom Palmer
Marvel $0.65
Matt C: The Beyonder’s flipped his lid and the Avengers are in the firing line. There’s some pretty great stuff going on in here as the ‘One From Beyond’ hands the team their asses without breaking a sweat, but there’s a nagging feeling that this all merely padding before the real action gets underway in the final instalment of the Secret Wars II miniseries. Still, this creative team seem incapable of putting out a duff issue and this doesn’t skimp on the action. Even though it is basically a somewhat inessential 'offshoot' of an event title, it still provides enough thrills to ensure it’s a worthwhile read. 7/10
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