I started reading the original Avengers series around the holidays and have really liked it, es

I started reading the original Avengers series around the holidays and have really liked it, especially after the team changes in issue 16. In this current age of a dozen Avengers series with frequent lineup changes, you could miss what an audacious move this was in 1965. Only fifteen months after Earth’s Mightiest Heroes assembled, they had all quit and were replaced by nobodies. The new team was led by Captain America, who had joined the team in #4, but whose roots were in the 1940s and were probably unknown by most Marvel readers twenty years later. Instead of the heroic Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man, or Wasp, Cap led three former villains; Hawkeye being a recurring Iron Man enemy, and Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch having run with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Relative to the world’s most brilliant engineer, a Norse god, and a giant-sized scientist and his tiny sidekick, the new team was low-powered. Cap and Hawkeye were just guys who could fight really well, Quicksilver just ran very fast, and Scarlet Witch had an ill-defined “hex power” which mostly made stuff fall over. And Rick Jones, who had gone from Hulk’s friend to Cap’s kind-of sidekick, is just a teen with a radio. Unlike the original Avengers, who got along (except for the Hulk, who quit the team in #2 and then fought them a few times), the new team is immediately at each other’s throats. Hawkeye in particular hassles Cap every chance he gets, and Quicksilver isn’t much nicer. Cap wavers in his own commitment to the new Avengers, as he feels uncomfortable in the modern age and his lack of a life outside of the team. It’s a gutsy move for the series, and it pays off. The complicated team dynamic moves the series into richer dramatic territory than before, and makes a cool mix of goofy 60s adventures and more complex material. I expect I will post a lot more about it as I keep reading.(Avengers #17, June 1965. w: Stan Lee; a: Jack Kirby / Dick Ayers) -- source link

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