Really good set of Avengers stories. Surprisingly gritty in places, Carol Danvers and the Grim Reaper in particular. A bit of a throwback to the 70s style of comics to be honest so it mightn't convince anyone to change their minds about the Avengers or even gel all that well with movie fans but enjoyable nevertheless.

Me he leído toda la etapa de los Avengers de Busiek y me ha resultado aburrida tópica y sosa. Son fórmulas que se han quedado anticuadas en las que la batalla y las tortas abruman a los personajes. Si esta es la gran etapa de los Vengadores, está claro que no es para mí.

I really wish that there were half-star options because I really wanted to give this book a 4.5 star rating. It was better than "I really liked it" but just a tiny portion below "It was amazing." So I rounded up and gave it a 5 star approval.

The Avengers stories have always been so tricky to do because you have iconic individual heroes and in putting them together can create an expectation so high, it becomes nearly impossible to achieve. DC's Justice League runs into the same dilemma. What made this volume so compelling wasn't the unity required to fend off some great foe against global destruction...no, it was the numerous interpersonal story-lines of multiple characters...and in turn, how they dealt with becoming a new Avengers team in the meanwhile.

I loved it.

My background in Avengers goes back to about 1978 but I only collected comics in spurts so I'm not an expert or anything. Kinda funny then that one of the most memorable Avengers comics I remember from being that young had to do with Wonderman coming back from the dead, it was some kinda of voodoo thing but I don't remember what issue it was or anything.

Of course Wonderman coming back from the dead is a big part of this graphic novel so it felt almost like nothing had changed in all those years. I have read some of Busiek's other stuff and really liked it but I thought this was kinda boring by comparison. Some of the cheesiness was painful. Maybe at the ripe old age of 44 I have just outgrown men in tights?

The other problem I had was all the links to other comics. It made me feel like I had to collect 8 different series just to keep up with what was going on. I realize it's marketing but it's annoying.

I did still like the art a lot, Perez was always one of my favorites.

4.5 stars (because that annual was such a treat!)

After searching around for a great Avengers series to read after the first 2 Marvel Masterworks volumes of the 1963 run, Busiek was exactly what I needed. He mastered the delicate art of how to do an Avengers team book without the 3 cardinal sins: Misogyny, Lack of Representation and Choosing Plot over Character Development. This book has everything: great use of female characters, actual stakes, character moments for just about every character and interesting plot devices.

If you asked me which character shined the most in this book, I'd tell you it was, without a doubt, Wanda Maximoff. Not only was she given the biggest arc, she was written well. She wasn't just here to be rescued or to be the object of desire (although that sort of was part of her plot). She saves the Avengers' asses several times, comes into her powers, finds out more about her origin story and she has agency throughout this book. For an Avengers book written by a man, that is HUGE! This reminds me why I love Kurt Busiek's writing. Although, I must note, I wish someone had stepped into the writers' room to inform them that gy*sy is a slur and shouldn't be used.

I wish there was a little more Iron Man in this book but I enjoyed seeing Cap working closely with and trusting. It reminds me of how the old comics enjoyed showing them as a partnership that loved and trusted each other before Millar came along and made them fight for drama points. In fact, what I loved the most about going back to read old Avengers books was seeing a team that likes and works together. They ribbed each other sometimes (dear god, Clint had something to say about every single thing Cap did) but deep down, they protected and loved each other. It was never mean spirited and it was never just for the sake of one-liners. These old books make me look at all of Marvel's work post 2004 and ask "What the hell happened?"

Anyway, this is most definitely a recommend from me. I don't know much about Firestar, Justice and Wonder Man but this book made me want to. That annual about Jarvis' was so well written and such a treasure for me because Jarvis has been so underutilized from 2004 on, really. This was such a fun series and I look forward to finishing it.

4.5 stars.

The beginning of one of my favorite avengers runs of all time…by two their greatest creators..

Set after the Onslaught and Heroes Reborn, this volume collects the first 11 issues of the Heroes Return Avengers run, including the weird Live Kree or Die crossover and the avengers/Squadron Supreme annual.

Kurt Buseik and George Perez are solid gold regardless of what they are working on, either together or seperately. While Perez has sadly left us, his work continues to live on in all the wonderful stories he’s drawn from marvel and DC. Naturally, Buseik gives him a LOT to draw as he reunites or references virtually every avenger up to that point as part of his run.

The Avengers assemble due to the rise of various monster threats that appear linked to Asgard (as this was during a period when Al the gods were missing and Asgard was a broken realm, a trope that has been repeated MANY times since then, but this was the first time carrying on from Thor’s status quo before he died against onslaught).

Basking the amazing art as dozens of characters work together and fight a range of foes from across marvel canon including Morgan Le Fey, whirlwind, Moses Magnum, the Squadron Supreme, and the Grim reaper.

Not content to only use existing toys, the creative team also introduces two other new members that meet some minor success with the avengers, Silver law and Triathalon, two characters that have sadly been rarely seen (though triathlon has been part of some good stories with Avengers the Initiative and Agents of Atlas).

Meanwhile new names are added to the avengers ranks with Justice and Firestar (putting them on a higher tier than their new warriors days).

This was the start of something special. While the later stuff may have gotten a little long near the end (the final Kang arc went way long than it needed to, and this was before Kang became the over exposed mess he’s become in the last ten years).

This is my recommended starting point if you want to see the avengers at their best and not the mess that the comics would become after Disassembled and prior to Hickman taking the reins.

I just told Goodreads that I finished this book on February 30. That's because I will likely never finish this run of Avengers comics unless I'm sucked into some parallel dimension or time travel is involved and I'm stuck in the late '90s.

Something about Busiek's declared love for continuity and the infinitely expansive, interconnected titles in either of the big two's universes that just turned me off. Or never drew me in to begin with. More recent Avengers Assemble books by Brian Michael Bendis and Kelly Sue DeConnick I've LOVED, and they grabbed me within the first few pages and let me know why they'd be good and get better.

Or maybe it's something about the decade from which this run came. I'm learning more and more that Great '90s Comics could have a LOT wrong with them and still be comparatively greater than most of what was published in that decade.

Anyway, I tried reading both this and the following massive volume that collects all of Kurt Busiek's run on the Avengers because it was the first assignment for an online Marvel comics reading discussion group, and it was supposedly a "fan favorite," which I'm also learning sometimes means "only good if you've obsessively consumed years of garbage with the same branding."

There are some elements of cheesiness, and a '70s/'80s throwback style, that are occasionally stumbling blocks for the Busiek/Perez (and later Busiek/Davis and Busiek/other artists) new millennial run of Avengers.

However, as someone whose definitive Avengers was the Roger Stern/John Buscema era, who still thinks Mark Gruenwald wrote the definitive Captain America, who would hold up the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition as one of the best comics Marvel ever published? Well, that's me, and that means this stuff was pretty much up my alley. Certainly more than the all-new, all-different (and sadly, all-so-much-better-selling) New Avengers, in which everyone sounds like the same character in a Woody Allen movie, Marvel is currently peddling.

I've got my problems with this run, including the awful new characters of Triathlon and Silverclaw, the obsession with "fixing" Hank Pym and any use of Morgana Le Fay, who was interesting in the Arthurian myths but sucks as a supervillain (no matter what universe she's in). But it's also got gorgeous art, makes use of the classic Avengers while also trying to move things forward a bit (true, Busiek's version of New Warriors' Justice and Firestar is a bit grating to long-time fans, but at least he tried to move them up to the big leagues) and is generally solid slam-bang superhero action.

really like this. by the end it gets a little exhausting just how much every conflict has to be big and world-ending. wish they'd spend a bit more time going into the avengers' characterizations like they did in the last couple issues with wanda, but i see how they'd leave that stuff to the individual books

SPEAKING of wanda though, why do she and carol always get written such tragic arcs. like c'mon guys, i'm tired of my girls getting treated like villain/emotional punching bags. is their heroism supposed to come from their resilience against all the bullshit y'all write to throw at them cuz it ain't cute and they need a fucking break