5 Avengers Who Could Be Great Justice Leaguers

I don’t have to essentially repeat my intro from the other day in reverse, do I? If you haven’t already, go back and read my post on Justice Leaguers who would make great Avengers—or at least the first couple paragraphs—and then come back here.

Done? Ok, let’s rock…

IRON MAN
Yep, right out the gate with a big one, I think Tony Stark and his armored alter ego would be a tremendous asset to the Justice League of America. Iron Man is definitely your classic “feet of clay” Marvel hero rather than your idealized DC type, but if you look at his history, he’s all about rising to both the occasion and the people around him. Tony started out as military contractor, but upon experiencing the horror of war vowed to be better regardless of the personal and financial hits he would take. He may have fought a Civil War against Captain America, but he also has incredible respect for Steve Rogers and has been working overtime to be a hero worthy of standing alongside Cap since he thawed him out of the ice. Being an Avenger has always brought out the best in Iron Man and I believe being part of the Justice League would do the same. Tony Stark is both ultra-competitive and extremely—figuratively—goodhearted. He’d not only want to be on the same level as Superman, he’d want to prove he can be even better; he’d not only need to earn Batman’s respect, he’d have to beat him at being the best billionaire altruist and hero—I bet they’d actually go from a grudging respect to being good friends! He may almost irritatingly competitive, but it comes from a good place, and I believe Iron Man would utilize all his considerable resources to take both himself and the Justice League to untold levels of greatness.

HELLCAT
Nobody ever thought teen model Patsy Walker could make it as a super hero, but she did—she became an Avenger! Ever since, Hellcat has been bucking the odds, whether that means earning her place on a team where Namor was arguably the weakest member, making a marriage with the son of the devil work—temporarily—or coming back from the freaking dead. Bottom line: If you tell Patsy Walker she can’t do something, she will do it. If Patsy lived in the DC Universe, she would march right up to the Hall of Justice or build her own spaceship to fly to the moon and you better believe she would join the Justice League. Hellcat’s just the right amount of sugar and spice to make things interesting for DC’s pantheon of champions. She’s a sweetheart who would probably be a great gal pal to Wonder Woman and Zatanna, make Superman smile and get Batman to loosen up; she’s also as fierce as her namesake and would tell Green Arrow where to stick it, let Plastic Man know to shut it and get Batman to loosen up. Hellcat would be a neat variation on Black Canary—who she’d make a great foil for/confidante to—as an underestimated little lady with the spunk and skills to hang with the big guns.

MONICA RAMBEAU
If there’s one Avenger who doesn’t understand intimidation, it’s Monica Rambeau. She named herself Captain Marvel despite the moniker previously belonging to a legendary universal champion who died surrounded by the great heroes ever and didn’t flinch in trying to live up to it. She joined an Avengers team that included Captain America and Thor and did not just earn her spot but was chosen to be their leader before she’d even really completed her rookie season. Whether as Photon or just herself, she’ll fly into any situation with poise, confidence and skill to ensure the resolution that guarantees the safety of those around her. She has incredible powers that allow her to travel across galaxies in an eye blink or put down the toughest bad guys. There is no quality Monica Rambeau possessed that does not make her an ideal candidate for the Justice League. Picture her and The Flash as two light-fast streaks racing into battle. Imagine what she could do matching energy abilities with Green Lantern. Just think what a master strategist like Batman could do if he knew he had this kind of resource at his disposal. They’d be lucky to have her.

QUASAR
Wendell Vaughn is tagged as a guy with tremendous potential to be a great Avenger, but his sticking point has always been that with his other duties as Protector of the Universe and need to mainly stay in outer space for cosmic adventures, he hasn’t really been able to commit as much time to the team as they’d like. The nice thing about the Justice League is they don’t really mind if you miss a meeting or ten, just so long as you deliver when it counts. Any Green Lantern who has ever been in the League can’t be there all the time because they’ve got a whole sector to patrol, but they make it work. Batman comes and goes as he pleases, but the void gets filled. The Justice League has enough powerhouses that they can afford to be without Quasar one mission and then appreciate his presence the next. Speaking of power, as a member of the recently former Annihilators, Wendell has demonstrated that just as how I described Tony Stark earlier he’s a guy who plays up to the people he’s surrounded by, so being around other super-charged heroes would only raise his game. Quasar’s also just such a nice, even-keeled guy that he’d probably fit in better with the generally harmonious League than the oft-bickering Avengers.

JACK OF HEARTS
Jonathan Hart never really got much of a chance to find his true potential as an Avenger or a hero because his powers were so unstable he had to spend most of his time locked in an isolated room and then when he got out he exploded a lot—right up until his death. The combined brainpower of Hank Pym and Tony Stark couldn’t find a solution to Jack of Hearts’ condition, but for some reason I feel like the DC Universe could. The Justice League is a melting pot of such varied cultures as Kryptonian, Thanagarian and Martian, not to mention the New Gods of New Genesis, all of which have technology even further beyond our imagination than Iron Man’s armor. A city like Metropolis where the future is now doesn’t really exist in the Marvel Universe; the Guardians of the Galaxy don’t visit the present nearly as often as the Legion of Super-Heroes. Bottom line, while the Avengers certainly live in a world where anything is possible, I think the one that surrounds the Justice League is even a bit more far out, and my gut tells me they’d find a way to “cure” Jack of Hearts, who would be so grateful he’d be one of the most committed members their team had ever known.

5 Justice Leaguers Who Could Be Great Avengers

I believe I’ve said it before—been doing this a few years now, folks, hard not to repeat myself—but I do believe and also appreciate that the respective DC and Marvel Universes have distinctive DNAs. This is a good thing. It doesn’t make one better than the other, it just makes them different, and for fans and creators alike, this is a good thing. It also doesn’t mean anything is mutually exclusive, be it a style of storytelling or a type of character or whatever, but certainly I do believe if you’ve been around, you can tell when a comic hits perfectly on what makes either world singularly special.

Anyway, I’m getting into a whole other story—and really not one I have the patience or coherence to write, so just corner me at a con some time and buy Rickey a drink—but I do have a point.

One series that not only illustrated what gives Marvel and DC their respective shines via their apex representatives was a personal favorite of mine: JLA/Avengers by the brilliant Kurt Busiek and George Perez. The story was all about how while each Universe is awesome in its own way, the characters most ingrained in one can’t really cope with how the other does business (the examples Busiek chose to focus on were Superman feeling the Marvel heroes didn’t do enough to make their world a paradise while Captain America was uncomfortable with the level of idolization the DC champions achieved).

But it’s not a hard and fast thing. Indeed, I think some characters who have had distinguished and entertaining careers in the Justice League would perhaps thrive even further or at least show another side as Avengers.

And yes, the flipside also applies, but please, let me milk two posts out of this.

So I thought to myself about who would be the best candidates to make the World’s Greatest--Earth’s Mightiest jump, but before we get to my final five, here are a few who didn’t quite make the cut and why…

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan): He’s certainly got the swagger, but I don’t think the Avengers would be able to put up with his long absences quite as well as the League has in the past (they’ve parted ways with folks all the way up the ladder to Thor because they couldn’t put in the time).

Red Tornado: The Avengers already have The Vision.

Blue Beetle: Honestly, no good reason, he was just number six and I wanted to stick to an even five.

Guy Gardner: I think if anybody could straighten him out it would be Captain America, who possesses far more patience than Batman, but more likely he’d just quit after two issues like The Hulk.

The Flash (Wally West): Too obvious an answer from me, but also, he’s the ultimate team player and would likely work well with any group, so it’s not an interesting selection.

THE MARTIAN MANHUNTER
J’onn J’onzz is a cornerstone of just about every incarnation of the Justice League; it’s inarguable and he’s proven himself time and again. But despite how many aliens, robots, etc. may have joined the League’s ranks over the year, it’s very much a team designed to showcase the epitome of humanity—or at least folks who look human—and while beloved, The Martian Manhunter has always been something of an adopted outsider who must work to fit in. The Avengers, on the other hand, are considerably rougher around the edges, not unlike the Justice League International team on which many would say J’onn most thrived. Rather than struggling to prove himself the equal of Batman or Wonder Woman, MM would probably dig being the calming influence to wild cards from Quicksilver to Wolverine just as he was to Guy, Booster, Beetle and friends. Indeed I could see J’onn as being the glue that holds the Avengers’ menagerie of mutants, mystics and monsters together and becoming recognize as one of the Marvel Universe’s most potent and powerful heroes as he does it, no longer needing to tone down his considerable skill set just so Superman doesn’t feel insecure (c’mon, you totally know he does). On a team where former criminals and guys with bad complexions tend to be the norm rather than the exception, The Manhunter From Mars would find the home he’s long sought.

VIXEN
Despite the fact that Vixen has a strong power set, a fierce personality and some natural leadership skills, she’s never quite broken through to the Justice League’s A-list and a lot of that has to come down to timing. For better or for worse, she’ll always be seen as having cut her teeth in the Detroit Era League, and while there’s really no shame in that—hey, J’onn and Aquaman did time on that team—it seems to leave this lingering “not ready for prime time” feel. On the Avengers, that generally doesn’t seem to be a problem. Cap’s Kooky Quartet of him, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch was basically the Detroit League two decades early, and they all went on to be legendary Avengers. Heck, looking at today’s roster, did anybody but a young Brian Michael Bendis really ever believe Spider-Woman and Luke Cage would achieve the legitimacy they have? While the best of the best tend to shine on the Justice League, the Avengers are more about second chances and extending a hand to could-be contenders, and that sounds like Vixen all over. She’s got the ferocity of Wolverine, the fashion sense of The Wasp and the track record to date of Tigra—the girl was born to be one of Earth’s Mightiest!

BOOSTER GOLD
We’ve seen in 52 and his solo series how great a hero Booster Gold can truly be, but the Justice League has only ever really tolerated him and his antics, not embraced him and tried to make him feel welcome. The Avengers have dealt with far worse members than an opportunistic scam-seeker and kept them around long enough for them to do some good (Quicksilver again, Moondragon, Swordsman, Doctor Druid, USAgent, Sersi, Hank freaking Pym—and I could go on). With some mentors like Captain America, Hawkeye and The Wasp who actually give him a chance and show some patience with him, Booster could really live up to his potential and feel supported while doing so rather than having to be the greatest hero you’ve never heard of (though that does remain a pretty cool angle). He’d also be a pretty natural protégé for Iron Man, who could show him both the right way to manage money as well as the potential pratfalls of wealth—there are honestly few more conscientious millionaires in comics than Tony “Won’t take defense contracts” Stark”—and probably hit it off with Spider-Man as well.

POWER GIRL
She’s led the Justice Society and has enough power—pun unintended, but there aren’t many other ways to put it—to mop the floor with just about anybody, but strangely Power Girl has never really had a seat at the big table as far as the Justice League is concerned. It could be that Superman and Wonder Woman more or less already fill the slots she’d comfortably fit into. It could also be that PG is a bit brash and headstrong for the League’s oft rigid chain of command. Over on the Avengers, they’re not only always eager to load up on heavy hitters—it wasn’t too long ago they had The Sentry, Ms. Marvel, Wonder Man and Ares all on one roster with Iron Man to boot—but spunk helps more than hurts. Hawkeye spent years mouthing off to his elders then ended up getting handed his own West Coast branch and becoming one of the team’s most celebrated chairmen. If Power Girl doesn’t fit in straight away, I’m pretty sure her combo of battle savvy, proven intelligence and willingness to stand up for what she believes in would earn the respect of her teammates real quickly. Honestly, I don’t just think PG would be a great addition to the Avengers, I could see her leading the darn team.

MAJOR DISASTER
I can’t think of many former villains who have managed to turn their careers around as members of the Justice League; frankly, the standards the DC Universe, heroes and citizens alike, demand from their standard bearers makes it a tough road to hoe. Across the street, some of the most trusted and respected Avengers started off as bad guys: Hawkeye, Quicksilver, The Scarlet Witch, Swordsman, The Vision, The Black Widow, Wonder Man, Namor and Ares are just some of the folks who started on the wrong side of the tracks and ended up proving themselves worthy of being counted among Earth’s Mightiest. Major Disaster made a solid go at reformation, but whether it was the pressure or Batman shooting him dirty looks, he high tailed it to the black ops squad at the first opportunity and never got another shot at redemption before biting it in Infinite Crisis. With a burning need to turn his life around—his soul belonged to Neron, remember—and cool abilities like being able to create localized earthquakes, Disaster could have been a solid Avenger—or at least a decent Thunderbolt.

Hank Pym: The Worst Avenger Ever (duh)

Honestly, I almost didn’t even want to do this one because it’s really kind of obvious and therefore not as much fun as Forge or Batman, but I’m a “need to complete the series” kind of guy.

I thought about if maybe this could be Doctor Druid because he broke up the team and led to Steve Rogers needing half the Fantastic Four to field a squad. I thought about Quicksilver since he’s betrayed the team plenty of times and really caused House of M and the de-powering of all this mutants. Even Iron Man killed a few second stringers during The Crossing.

But no, at the end of the day, whether it’s Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket or The Wasp, Hank Pym will always be the worst Avenger ever.

As with my previous two forays into this line of thinking, I must remind when I say “worst ever” I’m not referring to a bad character, I’m saying that in the world of fiction in which these stories take place, this person has had the least success and most failure as a member of their given team. Hank Pym is not a bad character; I rather enjoy him. Honestly though, being pretty bad at being a super hero is a big part of why Hank Pym occupies a unique place in the Marvel Universe and guys from Steve Englehart to Kurt Busiek to Mark Millar to Dan Slott to Christos Gage have been able to get mileage out of him with some good stories.

As a square-jawed Silver Age hero who didn’t even really have his own Marvel style “feet of clay” foible aside from yelling at his girlfriend a lot, Ant-Man was ok, but never really took off (hence why he switched identities so often, I figure). He started to flourish—to a degree—when writers like Roy Thomas started to explore the idea of Hank Pym being a scientist who didn’t really like being a super hero but did it to appease The Wasp. Subsequent folks like Roger Stern and Jim Shooter continued to up the ante as far as Pym not only chafing at his role as an Avenger, but being pretty bad at it; some have argued the character became damaged goods, but I think he just became more and more interesting, and gave the creators of today like Slott and Gage that much more to work with crafting his quests for redemption and frequent failures along the way.

Too many super heroes are perfect or at least win in the end despite hard luck along the way; Hank Pym frequently loses, and he’s a character with more depth for it.

However, he’s still the worst Avenger ever by far, and rather than drone on at length, I’m just gonna bullet point this one…

-First and foremost, of course, Hank created Ultron—check out recent episodes of the awesome Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes! cartoon to see this story re-imagined—possibly the Avengers’ greatest foe and at the very least a genocidal killer robot who has slaughtered thousands. Intending to create a harmless robot to help him around the lab—and apparently never having read or seen any sci-fi books or movies involving artificial intelligence ever despite being a total nerd—Pym uploaded his own brain patterns into an indestructible shell, ignoring the fact that he was deeply screwed up to the point where his best friends were ants. Ultron turned on his creator—of course—and would spend the next several decades trying to kill his dad and his friends, attempting to romance his “mother” The Wasp, creating other robots to try and kill his “parents” and their friends, razing countries, trying to conquer the galaxy, and so on and so forth.

-Not quite as drastic, during another experiment—Hank Pym should never be allowed near a lab—our hero inhaled chemicals that made him go schizophrenic and become the obnoxious Yellowjacket, claiming he had killed Goliath and demanding The Wasp marry him. Jan knew the score and went along with the wedding, since she wanted one—which is pretty terrible—and then Hank reverted to normal, living in matrimonial bliss with a woman he apparently did really want to marry and who knew he’d only be her husband if he was suffering from a brain disorder.

-Another time, Ultron brainwashed Hank and he attacked the Avengers as Ant-Man. Actually, Ultron brainwashed him a lot.

-Trying to show off on a mission, Hank attacks a defeated foe from behind, making the Avengers look like total jerks in front of the world. Court-martialed by Captain America, Hank attempts to redeem himself by building a killer robot to attack the Avengers—essentially his go-to Plan B—with the idea that he’d save the day. He strikes his wife when she discovered what he’s up to, but then can’t defeat the robot he made, endangering all his teammates once more in the process, and requiring Wasp to rescue him; they booted him off the team and into jail, she divorced him.

-Hank and Jan would eventually reconcile years later, but when their relationship hit the skids again, he had a fling with a pretty young co-ed who turned out to be a Skrull and made him one of the first heroes to be kidnapped and replaced during the road to Secret Invasion—classic Pym!

-Proving that he had indeed done a pretty great job studying the guy he’d be posing as, the Skrull who acted as Yellowjacket helped create—what else—a killer robot version of Thor who killed the real Hank’s old buddy Bill Foster. He also knocks up Tigra and then implants Wasp with a Skrull weapon that takes her life during the final battle of the war with the aliens. The true Hank returns to Earth to learn that a guy who was supposed to be him—basically an alien Ultron—got his best friend and ex-wife killed all because he was thinking with his little Goliath.

-One last one: Ultron created The Vision, eventual hero and Avenger, meaning Hank at least indirectly did something good, right? Wrong. The Vision romanced and married The Scarlet Witch, they had fake magic babies, he got deprogrammed and lost his emotions, she slowly went nuts and caused the events of Avengers Disassembled, leading to the deaths of Scott Lang and Hawkeye as well as the disbanding of the team—all kinda sorta on Hank Pym’s head, y’know?

Lately, Hank has been doing a lot better as the founder of Avengers Academy—one of the best books on the market—but really it’s just a matter of time before something goes horribly wrong. Why?

Because Hank Pym is the worst Avenger ever—and I hope he never changes.

Anti-Avengers? Why not!

When people ask me that old “What’s better, Marvel or DC?” chestnut—and not just who’s better in the here and now, since obviously I’ve got a horse in that race and can’t answer without bias, but rather of all-time—I prefer to avoid answering by instead talking about the differences between the two. In short, rather than pick one of the classic super hero universes over the other, I’d rather ruminate on the root contrasts between them and why those separating factors ensure that each has an important role to play in this larger industry we love.

DC does the big cosmic stakes stuff. Marvel does the down to earth relatable stuff. DC celebrates legacy. Marvel has characters with feet of clay. You’ve heard it all before, and frankly, in 2010 there’s nothing either company does that the other can’t—Marvel can certainly do a Crisis-level event darn well and DC has created plenty of characters with grounded and relatable personas—but there will definitely always be something in the base DNA of both universes that separate them.

And now to move away from a dangerously intelligent dissection of what makes super hero comics tick, let me swerve over to a far more in-my-ballpark proletarian (looked it up) statement around which I shall frame the rest of this post: DC has more evil twins than Marvel does.

Don’t get me wrong, Venom is awesome, and to a lesser extent so are Sabretooth, Abomination and all those armored bad guys that Iron Man fights, but most of those folks aren’t really classic evil twins, and even if, you can’t really hold them up to the collective grouping of Bizarro, Sinestro, Reverse-Flash, Ocean Master, the Crime Syndicate, the Legion of Super-Villains, and so on and so on.

The fact of the matter is that while Marvel was really born out of the socially-conscious super soap opera stylings of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, et al., DC grew out of the fantastical sci-fi landscape imagined by Gardner Fox, Julius Schwartz and their crew, and it was a multiverse that utilized every tried and true trope of the genre, one of which happened to be evil twins. And hey, they’re tried and true for a reason; opposite number villains is the type of concept that makes our inner-10-year-old squeal with delight (ask Sean T. Collins).

One of my favorite evil twin comic concepts is when they all team up together to take out a grouping of their heroic counterparts. The aforementioned Crime Syndicate is the prime example of that, but another story I really love is Grant Morrison and Howard Porter’s “Rock of Ages” from JLA where Lex Luthor gets a whole Injustice League together specifically composed of villains to counter the then-roster of the Justice League; a lot of Luthor’s picks were more archenemy types than doppelgangers—The Joker and Mirror Master aren’t terribly similar to Batman and The Flash on a superficial level—but I still liked the strategic human chess “I’ll counter Martian Manhunter with Jemm” aspect of it all.

Marvel has had teams like this in the past. The original Masters of Evil were pretty much the inverted Avengers, with Baron Zemo (a Captain America villain), Radioactive Man (a Thor villain), The Melter (an Iron Man villain) and The Black Knight (another Iron Man villain, because Giant-Man and The Wasp never fought anybody cool). I also remember quite fondly a story I’m not sure anybody else feels similarly about towards the tail end of Chuck Austen’s X-Men tenure where he and Salvador Larroca created a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that had Sabretooth and Nocturne in there just for the sake of having “dark” Wolverine and Nightcrawler analogs because that seemed cool to me. The Dark Avengers would also be a pretty obvious example of what I’m talking about here, and I really liked that idea, but in a lot of cases the characters were plucked out of their elements and molded to what Osborn needed as opposed to say Bullseye being a bad Hawkeye or Moonstone as malevolent Ms. Marvel defining who they are.

I would really dig seeing a big ol’ anti-Avengers team though. As I’ve said more than once, I consider Roger Stern and John Buscema’s “Under Siege” to be not only one of the best Avengers tales ever, but one of the flat-out best comic book stories of all-time. The deal there was that Baron Zemo attempted to overwhelm Earth’s Mightiest Heroes with numbers, counting on having three of his Masters of Evil for every one Avenger being enough, and it nearly was if not for the usual backstabbing, ego and underestimation that we know we love seeing bad guys fall prey to in the end. More recently, The Hood pulled a similar routine with his gang, piling up the odds with tons of villains, and he also had some success, but fell in with the wrong crowd. Speaking of that wrong crowd, Norman Osborn did organize his own anti-Avengers team, but preferred to wage a PR battle more than a physical one at most points during his Dark Reign, so I don’t feel like we really got a full-on Avengers vs Dark Avengers throwdown before his house of cards crumbled, despite tantalizing teases.

I’d love to see a new Masters of Evil where it’s a line-up specifically tailored to take on the heroes currently comprising the Avengers. With the A-team currently being more iconic and filled with a diverse roster of heroes than perhaps ever before, it’s the perfect time for it. And if Brian Bendis called me tomorrow (which he never does) to ask for my roster, here’s what I’d hand him…

BARON ZEMO
Natural pick for team leader both based on history and because he’s a perfect foil for Steve Rogers as well as Bucky Barnes. Ed Brubaker has been doing a great job sprucing Zemo up over in Captain America and he’s always got great motivation to put together a scheme like this because no matter how many times he teases a hero turn, at the heart of his motivation is that he believes he is better and more deserving of glory than everybody else, so if taking out the Avengers validates that, he’ll do it; great character, excellent starting point.

EZEKIEL STANE
The kid who nearly took Tony Stark apart has been lying low since his debut in the first arc of Invincible Iron Man, but I’d say he’s due for a return. If Zeke almost got the job done on his own, why not join up with some like-minded allies to try again? But then that’s the best part about this Stane: he’s really not like-minded with anybody, being an anarchist like he is, so he’s a total wild card whom Zemo would love to have, but need to keep an eye on at all times.

RAGNAROK
Speaking of evil twins and speaking of wild cards, Thor’s clone gives the Masters a primo powerhouse, a reminder to Iron Man of a huge mistake he made, and a potentially uncontrollable force of nature to spice things up. Seeing him one-on-one with Thor again would be great, but how about watching him match up with his creator?

AMERICAN SON
I know Gabriel Stacy is a polarizing character among fans to say the least, but with Harry Osborn working well closer to the side of angels these days, a gleefully psychotic wannabe successor to big daddy Norman has a lot of potential, and he does have those personal ties to Spider-Man as well, considering his mother. And again, he presents a potential opponent for multiple Avengers with his Iron Man-like armor and Captain America-esque patriotic trappings.

LADY DEATHSTRIKE
So Sabretooth is out of the running at the moment as the potential anti-Wolverine here, and Daken just did this gig, so I went with the underrated and underutilized Lady Deathstrike, who makes for a cunning and ruthless element added to the mix. The Lady actually has a thing or two in common with Baron Zemo, with both having a peculiar code of honor, so that could be interesting.

CAPTAIN ATLAS & DOCTOR MINERVA
Two of my favorite somewhat obscure Marvel cosmic characters, as they’re kind of Kree second draft attempts at Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel, which makes them perfect to match up against Carol Danvers and Noh-Varr.

JAZINDA
When last we saw Jazinda, she was She-Hulk’s Skrull buddy, but getting a little frustrated with the xenophobic attitude of humans towards her in the wake of Secret Invasion. Given then Jen Walters seemingly abandoned her at some point, maybe the daughter of the original Super-Skrull joins up with Zemo and uses Spider-Woman as a punching bag to sort out some of her racial issues.

CROSSFIRE
I don’t think Bullseye makes a good fit here, nor would I really want to drag him away from the events of Shadowland—if he can even be dragged at this point—plus Jim McCann is doing nice work making Crossfire a potent nemesis for Hawkeye over in the book he shares with Mockingbird, so let’s go this way.

THE STEEL SERPENT
I’m not suggesting reverting the current Steel Phoenix to villainy, since Davos has had a nice arc over the past several years and deserves a little longer going for redemption at my eyes, but since the Immortal Weapons are all about lineage, if he’s not getting the job done, let’s see his powers-that-be empower a new Steel Serpent to be Iron Fist’s dark mirror.

LUCIA VON BARDAS
Remember the cyborg mastermind behind Secret War? She hasn’t been seen since her initial defeat and, as I recall, came real close to killing Luke Cage, causing Jessica Jones no small stress in the offing. Another real power player too.

ALKHEMA
She’s the female Ultron with the brain patterns of Mockingbird; she adds one of the Avengers’ deadliest and most terrifying foes to the Masters of Evil line-up and screws with Bobbi Morse to boot. She’s also nuts.

SHE-THING
Ben Grimm’s old girlfriend, Sharon Ventura—aka the second Ms. Marvel—was last seen as an Initiative hero, but she has prone susceptible to rage and manipulation before, so it could happen again. With The Thing now a full-fledged Avenger, you’ve got to have a Master of Evil who can make it personal for him. Zemo could also give her back her good looks if he really wanted to stick it to Grimm.

So there you have it: My Masters of Evil. Not a bad line-up if I do say so myself, and I didn’t even have to use the Wrecking Crew.

'Force Works' Was Ahead Of Its Time

Admission: I can't stop reading Force Works comics.


Super serial.

For anyone who doesn't know, Force Works was a Marvel team book published between 1994 and 1996 that was ostensibly a continuation of the publisher's slowly dying Avengers West Coast title with a '90s coat of paint. I'm sure even the most ardent fans don't consider the series much beyond a a footnote in Iron Man history, but the book is kind of notable for being one of the first major American efforts by reigning superhero sci-fi scribes Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (AKA "DnA").

I don't have a tremendous amount of fanboy nostalgia for the book, though I did initially come to the series as a seventh grader. That Halloween, I went trick or treating at a buddy's neighborhood, and one of the houses there was owned by someone who must've had a comic shop because instead of Snickers or candy corn, they were passing out comics. Once the night ended, a bunch of the kids there passed their comics to me because...well, because I was that kid. So I ended up walking home with a few random things like Malibu's Deep Space Nine series and the first issues of Marvels "Marvel Action Hour" tie-ins, which were 22-page adaptations of the Iron Man and Fantastic Four cartoons in syndication – the former of which inexplicably featured Force Works prominently.

Over the rest of middle school, I watched that TV series (even though it ran at 8:00 AM on Saturday in front of a Canadian "Saved By The Bell" ripoff called "Boogie's Diner") start to finish because...well, because I was that kid too. In the meantime, I picked up a few more issues of the Iron Man Marvel Action Hour comic series – attractive to me as someone who'd never found a jumping on point to Iron Man, plus I liked the art by Anthony Williams – as well as a few scattered issues of Force Works (most memorably the series finale which I got mostly because Andrew Wildman drew it). After that, the team remained largely forgotten.

Earlier this summer, that DisneyXD cable channel started re-airing episodes of the '90s Iron Man 'toon in a little bit of inter-company cross-promotion for "Iron Man 2's" imminent arrival in theaters. When I'm up late transcribing (or writing CKT posts, even!) I end up flipping to DisneyXD's late night superhero marathons whenever MSNBC becomes too depressing, and this was no exception. Combine that confluence of events with a string of conventions this summer where the majority of my brief shopping time was spent diving in dollar bins, and I ended up nabbing a handful of the 22-issue Force Works run on a lark.

I caught up reading those books over the past week, and I'll be damned if DnA didn't turn out a story that while not an awe-inspiring game changer for the superhero genre was strangely prescient considering the trends I see in today's superhero team books. Let me show you what I mean.


1. Force Works Was A High-Concept IP Reinvention

Like I said above, when you get down to brass tacks, the Force Works monthly was a simple rebranding of the failing Avengers West Coast series. The big A franchise was hardly in the shape it is now back in '94 (I'm pretty sure the main title was in the throws of Ben's favorite "bomber jacket" era then), and so it's no surprise that the West Coast title was on its way out after a nice run of 102 issues. What is a bit different for the time was that said team would get a high-concept facelift so soon after its demise, and Force Works was the West Coast Avengers team in everything but its name. It featured most of the same characters (Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, U.S. Agent and, to start, Wonder Man) except that they got a new name, a few costume redesigns and a kitschy new tech-powered HQ.

More importantly, the big hook for the Force Works monthly was that this team wasn't just going to sit there on their laurels and wait for supervillains to attack. They were going to be proactive heroes! Or, as the tagline stated, Force Works was "The Best Defense In An Offensive World." If that hook sounds at all familiar to you, it's because the same essential idea is at the heart of a ton of current or recent hero books including Cry For Justice, JSA All-Stars, Uncanny X-Force, Outsiders and probably a half dozen other books I'm forgetting.

These days, almost every new title launched at either Marvel or DC is a tweak or twist on series or concepts from years past, generally pulled out of the back issue bin either to play on nostalgia for a former success or to polish up a good core idea with a modern allegorical twist. Force Works was both as it spent its first year showcasing how much more bad ass the West Coast cast could be in action by telling stories that allowed its heroes to get fake comic book political by taking on everything from rogue super general in former Soviet block countries to corporate raider revisions of old villains. In that respect, the book feels a lot less '90s than it probably should.


2. The Series Launched With The Death Of A Fan-Favorite Character

If you bought the first issue of that best-selling Busiek/Perez Avengers reboot and thought, "Oh hey, Wonder Man is back as an Ionic energy hero...wait! Wonder Man was dead?!?!?" (and I know some of you thought that), know that Force Works was the final resting place of former Hollywood hero hunk Simon Williams. In fact, our boy bought it straight out in the very first issue after the proactive superteam was (ironically?) caught off-guard by a rogue Kree battle ship that appeared in the skies above earth. To keep said ship from crashing into our planet and taking possibly dozens of people with it, Wonder Man flew it into the stratosphere and E-X-P-L-O-D-E-D.

Do I even need to point out how common this is these days? From ongoing series reboots like the recent killing of Ryan Choi in Titans to the death of Banshee in X-Men: Deadly Genesis and from the big events that kick off with shocking murders including Blue Beetle in Countdown To Infinite Crisis and Bullseye in Shadowland, killing an expendable but known character at the start of a story is now the go-to way to ramp up fan reactions to the book. And just as it went with Wonder Man in Force Works, the message being sent by C-list slaughter is clear: "This shit is fucking SERIOUS, you guys. You HAVE to buy our new book because EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW HAS CHANGED."

And in honesty, I'm going to give an edge to DnA and Force Works on this one too. While I know death has never been permanent in superhero comics, it still feels (to me at least) that death had a bit more gravitas attached to it back in the '90s than it did for most of the '00s. Back in the halcyon days of shoulder pads and ammo pouches, when a character like Wonder Man got killed, you had to accept that the creators who pulled the trigger weren't going to go back on that – unlike today when death and resurrection for a hero are planned from page one. In other words, back then you had to wait and see IF Marvel would bring back your fav character fro the grave. Today, you just wait to see WHEN it'll happen.


3. The Support Heroes Mattered Way More Than The Marquee Guys

All right, I know that it's been common knowledge that team books have been able to get more done with B-listers pretty much since Stan Lee introduced "Cap's Kooky Quartet" into Avengers. But even though the best team books hold the honor of kind of making the Hawkeyes and Martian Manhunters of the world feel like they might one day carry a long-running solo series, both Force Works and a number of modern team comics place extra importance on the lives of their marginal cast. And the real reason for this is that writers can fuck up the lives of said cast members.

Over their 22 issues, DnA bolstered the status of perpetual also rans like U.S. Agent and the Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman (who besides juggling an in-headquarters stalker and being a single mom ended up dating a mysterious boyfriend no one remembered appearing late in the series...though that last part was on purpose). But the most important thread in the series revolved around the alien warrior made up of 100 alien warriors' minds Century. The cosmic axe-wielding hero created by the writers specifically to work in the team got a TON of love for a complete unknown including several guest spots in Marvel Comics Presents and his own one-shot, and if I'm reading between the lines right, DnA had plans for Century to not just romance team leader the Scarlet Witch but to have a crazy space battler with her darker half on down the line.

Backstory building like this became more and more relevant as the book went along in a way that reminds me a lot of how Brian Michael Bendis essentially used New Avengers as a backdoor Luke Cage solo series here and there or how Dwayne McDuffie's entire Justice League run where seldom seen minority characters like Vixen, Bronze Tiger and Doctor Light earned more page time and development than anyone even when Superman and Batman were still on the team. In fact, the only time Iron Man – the supposed draw of the book – had a major impact on Force Works was when he was threatening to pull funding like a dad killing your garage band's practice or in one of two crossovers he anchored at the time whose plot threads were resolved in other, more important titles. Which brings me to my final comparison...


4. Ultimately, The Book's Big Plan Got Scuttled Thanks To An Event

Probably the biggest reason why Force Works left so little an impact on the Marvel Universe even for die-hard fans is because the series end dovetailed into an event called "The Crossing." If you've never heard of this story, the basic premise is that Tony Stark is driven insane by Kang (or Immortus? I honestly can't tell the fucking difference) and forced to kill a nanny who lives at Avengers mansion or some shit. In an effort to save the day, the other Avengers pull an alternate reality teen Tony from out of the past to kill the original Iron Man, and that was that. The story was so poorly received it helped convince Marvel to hire two of their biggest competitors to take over the entire Avengers franchise from scratch. So yeah...not good.

"The Crossing" pulled Iron Man out of his own team book for the better part of its second year, meaning that the "proactive heroes" high concept was largely scuttled AND that there was no big name character to help keep fan interest in the title much longer. DnA wrapped the run in the middle of a number of subplots with a story that both tied up threads from "The Crossing" probably no one wanted to have wrapped up and pulled a pretty solid "resurrection of Wonder Man" fakeout (I have no proof, but I'd like to think they did that last one just to stick it to the crybabies).

Once again, it may just be me, but this is a pattern I see repeated a lot in this era of Mobius Strip event comics which leap frog one off the back of the other again and again. From the reality TV reboot of New Warriors made cannon fodder for Civil War to half a dozen (surprisingly successful) attempts to tie Agents of Atlas to Marvel U shakeups via new #1 issues to that other New Warriors book that went from some kind of street-level teen rebellion thing to a mashup of leftover Generation X characters to a part of the Initiative and ultimately to a quiet death, the modern event era is littered with high-concept relaunches of old properties whose shelf life is somewhere between 12 months and whenever the next red sky shows up.

Ultimately, I don't think all these trends hold a lot of baring on whether or not any individual comic series is any good or not. The best creators can find ways to make cool core concepts sing no matter what the circumstances surrounding them. But I do wonder some days how many people are starting to see the reboots, redesigns and retcons of books like Force Works more as clichés rather than as creative realignment. Hell, I'm wondering if I myself can really tell the difference anymore.

My Five Favorite John Buscema Comics

I always knew I was a John Buscema fan, but I don’t think I realized how much until I started writing this blog.

It seems like nary a subject goes by where I’m not singing the praises of “Big John,” whether it’s thanking him for designing Nova or saying what an honor it was to work with his granddaughter Stephanie. There’s no question some of my favorite comic books and those that drew me in as a fan to begin with bore the handiwork of John Buscema; in a lot of ways, I owe the man greatly for drawing me into my chosen profession.

When I was a kid, guys like Jim Lee and Darick Robertson grabbed my attention; as I grew up, George Perez and Mike McKone became more my speed. But if you group all those guys, you notice a common element of solid fundamentals and appreciation of how to infuse larger-than-life super heroes with a sense of reasonably grounded anatomy that was a benchmark of what Buscema did his entire career.

With all that in mind, I wanted to pay some much-deserved tribute to Mr. John Buscema by listing off the five works of his that resonated most profoundly with me personally.

(And I should not before I even begin that I know Buscema is forever linked to his Conan work and while I’ve admired it from afar and it’s impressive as heck, I’ve never actually read it, so I’m disqualifying it in this instance)

5. The Punisher Meets Archie
As with Buscema’s Conan, his Punisher work is a gaping hole in my reading history I hope to someday fill, but I did get a tease in this quirky little memento of my childhood. Buscema handled the strictly Punisher portions of the most bizarre team-up in comic book history and brought a professionalism as well as a grit that did not seem out of place to a story that benefitted from both. And it was pretty cool to see the Marvel Universe version of an evil Archie Andrews that Buscema dreamed up.

4. Nova
Obviously I will be forever indebted to John Buscema if for no other reason than he visually created my favorite comic book character of all-time and garbed him in one of the coolest costumes ever. Buscema only drew the first two issues of Nova’s first ongoing series, but he made an indelible mark on Richard Rider and his world. Besides establishing the pace for the Human Rocket as far as his action sequences and how he propelled through the air with the greatest of ease, Buscema also eased the John Romita Sr. template of portraying young people in their civilian lives admirably into a new decade.

3. Avengers: Under Siege
Due to a lot of his oeuvre being so centered around action-based characters like Conan or Thor, Buscema has a well-deserved reputation for a guy who can deliver great battles and brawls, but there’s a lot more to his talents than that, and he demonstrates this in one of the best Avengers stories of all-time, Roger Stern’s “Under Siege.” That’s not to say there’s not plenty of slam bang in a tale where Earth’s Mightiest Heroes take on the biggest assemblage ever of the Masters of Evil, and Buscema delivers more than ably on that front, but it’s the quiet moments that set this story apart and where he really makes his mark. Whether it’s the anguished reactions of his charges when Jarvis is tortured or Captain America’s somber resignation following the destruction of Avengers Mansion and his prized heirlooms, Buscema knows exactly what buttons to push emotionally and does so with tremendous skill. And yeah, the fight scenes are awesome too.

2. Silver Surfer
After many years of wanting to, I finally started reading the first Marvel Masterworks collection of Silver Surfer recently, and besides the fact that I’d highly recommend it, I also have to say it’s not tough to see why Stan Lee selected John Buscema to be the artist on the first regular series for his self-admitted favorite character. The Surfer’s not necessarily an easy character to nail, given that he is essentially a naked dude draped in silver (on a surfboard, of course), but like Jack Kirby before him and a select few since, Buscema knew how to navigate the challenges and bring Norrin Radd to life. While Buscema’s nuts and bolts anatomy works perfectly on the Surfer, it’s the care and heightened sense of urgency the artist used in rendering the character’s facial expressions that served to really illuminate the torment, melancholy and bursts of rage Lee made the Sky Rider of the Spaceways’ benchmark. When the Surfer opens up in battle, you can see Buscema come alive, rendering the Power Cosmic with relish and care, not just settling for ill-defined energy blasts, and letting it all hang out when Thor or other come to play. This work really is Buscema—already pretty darn great—at his best, running the gamut from making the Badoon the ugliest mofos in the universe to showing why Norrin Radd is so hung up on Shalla Bal, as she really does seem like the most gorgeous woman ever. Buscema’s splash pages are downright inspirational as well, from the sinister introduction of Mephisto to the iconic shot of the Surfer emerging from Galactus’ hand imbued with his power for the very first time.

1. How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way
The way John Buscema first came into my life—at least in a way I significantly remember beyond odd issues of Avengers from the late 80’s—was via Marvel’s pivotal instructional book on the essentials of cartooning. Released in 1978, “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way” has gone through at least 33 printings at last count and served as a launch pad not only for fans-turned-doodlers like myself, but scores of actually legitimate future comic book artists. Buscema’s style was the one we all aspired to emulate, and he was more than willing to hold our hands through a series of easy-to-follow chapters and in-depth lessons that laid the treasure trove of trade secrets comic artists employed at our fingertips. I not only enjoyed the book for its instructional value though, I confess I also just loved looking at the great art contained within and dreaming of someday being close to that, if not as an artist than in some other way. Indeed, John Buscema’s art was the gateway that welcomed me into this wonderful world of comics. My mother was recently looking for a gift for my young cousin who has shown some proclivity towards drawing comics and I suggested this book; I only hope he can get even half out of it that I did and perhaps want to borrow some John Buscema comics from me.

Cruel Summer: Ultron

Most killer robots that populate the ranks of villainy in comics and just about every other form of action fiction come across their creepiness by being cold and emotionless; terrifying because there’s no way you can hope to reason with them.

Ultron goes the other way.

While he may come across visually with the best of science fiction’s malevolent automatons thanks in large part to his simple but sinister design by the great John Buscema, Ultron is brimming over with emotion. This is a case where the book not even remotely matching its cover defies your expectations and makes for a great villain.

Ultron is Oedipus in the Greek tragedy that is the life of Hank Pym (aka Ant-Man, aka Giant-Man, aka Goliath, aka Yellowjacket, aka The Wasp). Created as a stab at artificial life by Pym using his own brain patterns, Ultron would rebel beyond the control of his “father” and spend the rest of his “life” hating him in a slightly more extreme fashion than most angsty teenagers do their parents. Ultron would go on to try and create progeny of his own in The Vision as well as two would-be brides in the forms of Jocasta (whose brain patterns he based on Pym’s wife, the original Wasp, thus going back to the whole Oedipal thing) and Alkhema; all three would turn against him, with Vision and Jocasta both becoming part of daddy’s team, the Avengers.

Every time Ultron shows up, he’s seething with rage; anger towards Pym, toward the Avengers, towards his “children” and against humanity and general. He really is the classic adolescent dressing in all black and listening to Nine Inch Nails except he’s got adamantium skin and several death rays in place of Hot Topic accessories.

The artists who best portray Ultron—Buscema, George Perez, etc.—have gotten a lot of mileage out of the fact that his expression never changes and holds the same Jack o’ Lantern shape as he screeches “Die Avengers!” or cries out in agony because The Scarlet Witch is hexing him to “death”; it’s quite haunting.

As I’ve mentioned more than a couple hundred times on this very blog, I grew up reading comics in the early 90’s, and for me, that meant not too much Ultron to be seen. The Avengers comics I read had them battling Proctor and only Proctor pretty much every issue with occasional respites to team with the X-Men against Fabian Cortez or battle pissed off Kree and Shi’Ar expatriates. Ultron may have appeared in Avengers West Coast, but I didn’t buy that book until the last issue; I also know he played some role in a Vision series that came out at around this time, but again, I didn’t read it.

So I more or less had no idea who Ultron was outside of the passing mention in a Wizard article or Official Index to the Avengers. Sure, I fought him in the Captain America & The Avengers video game, but I didn’t know him as Ultron, just a weird-looking robot who had a strange laugh. I was also out of the comics game by the time Avengers: United We Stand—currently airing on Marvel.com—where he was the main villain took the airwaves, so no dice there either.

My first genuine exposure to Ultron was Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s “Ultron Unlimited” which was one of the bigger epics from their golden period on Avengers in the late 90’s. The story unfolded in 1999, though I wouldn’t read it until a few years later, picking up the trade as I was trying to assemble the whole run.

The entire first issue of the arc is the Avengers and special guests Black Panther and The Wasp running around chasing leads after Hank Pym gets kidnapped by a robot army. One of the cooler things about the first chapter is how hesitant the Avengers—a group that is at full power and includes Thor, Iron Man and Captain America at this point in time—are to even mention Ultron by name, because they’re that scared of him and you can really feel these fictional characters clinging to some hope against hope that he’s not the guy they’re up against; the anxiety crosses the line and even makes you pretty tense with anticipation.

The Avengers actually end up finding Alkhema first and for a second almost breathe a sigh of relief because maybe she’s behind it all (and she’s not so tough)—then they turn on the TV and see Ultron massacring the entire nation of Slorenia, lighting fires across the country in the shape of his face. The whole story is full of powerful imagery like that, and of course nobody does it any better than Mr. Perez.

As we learn, Ultron has kidnapped Pym, as well as The Vision (his “son”), The Scarlet Witch (Vizh’s ex-wife), Wonder Man and The Grim Reaper (Vision’s “brothers” and thus family in some weird way to Ultron). He also grabs The Wasp for good measure and we’ve got a family reunion. The endgame for the bad guy is that he’s going to swipe the brain patterns of his “relatives” to program a new species of self-aware robots that he’ll use to replace humanity. It actually sounds like a standard super villain plan except that fitting with our theme it’s more akin to a kid who feels neglected wanting to run away from home and finding refuge with replacement family figures be they rock stars, movie idols or just like-minded teens.

Also, Ultron committed genocide just to provide a distraction, so there’s that.

As you’d expect, the Avengers end up spoiling Ultron’s fun, battling through a literal army made up of his previous models in a great action scene then busting down the wall so Thor can get the great line, “Ultron, we would have words with thee…” off. In the end, Pym himself gets to score the much-needed kill shot with an assist from Justice, who figures out Ultron has a weakness to vibranium and tosses the good doctor a pair of knucks made from the stuff so he can pound the crap out of his “son” and vent about how he’s not a failure in a most cathartic manner.

“Ultron Unlimited” is certainly Ultron at his best: Shell of a killer robot, insides of a disenfranchised youth and power of a small army, not to mention a well of resentfulness and ruthlessness that can never run dry.

But while Ultron has traditionally been an Avengers heavy through the years given his close ties, he has branched out elsewhere in the Marvel Universe as well pretty successfully. I loved his run as a cosmic big bad during Annihilation Conquest where he took over the Phalanx and led them on a campaign to assimilate the cosmos; the motivation from “Unlimited” remains the same, as he’s still searching for that surrogate family, he’s just widened his scope on a massive level.

It’s fitting that Ultron has expanded beyond the Avengers in terms of who he’s willing to fight, as he’s a unique take on a common theme whose look has become fairly iconic and whose anger towards his “dad” can pretty easily be redirected at whoever is standing in his way as easily as the kids I’ve been referring to this whole entry seem to be fairly pissed at the entire world.

Of course in most cases, disgruntled young adults grow out of that phase and move on into either grown up happiness or dissatisfaction depending on the situation, but Ultron being a robot—and a comic book character—will never get over it, which is just another way he’s one of a kind.