Kickin It Old School

Here's the deal, over the past few years my fiance's dad has been giving me some really great older comics. We're talking everything from New Adventures of Superboy, pre-Crisis Teen Titans, very early Avengers books and so on. Each week I'll pick a book based on it's weirdness or coolness and give a little write up with at least a cover scan.

Dun-duh-duh-dun. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE. Guess what book I'm writing about this week. You guessed it, the Avengers, sepcifically Avengers #28. This is defintely one of the picks of the litter. This issue came out in 1966. Stan "The Man" penned it and Don Heck handled the pencils. Before jumping into the details of the issue, I've got to say how cool it is to hold the 28th issue of Avengers and read something written by Stan Lee. Even though we all joke about how he's become something of a cariacature of himself in recent decades, there is a reason we all know who "The Man" is. Before reading this issue, I found Stan's writing somewhat...tedious at best, but no more. This is Stan in his prime and it's awesome. So how about we get into the story.

Avengers #28 sees the return of Giant-Man to ranks of Avengers. It seems that the Collector captured his lady love, The Wasp, and wants to complete the set by capturing the rest of the Avengers (Cap, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver). Of course, the Avengers are having none of it. Giant-Man shows up, but tells the team that he's unable to control his size, now he can only grow to 25 feet for no more or less than 15 minutes. Complicated. Luckily, Scarlet Witch spent her free time working on the blue and yellow costume that we have all come to know and love as that of Goliath. Okay, so the whole costume thing was cheesy, but that's what makes the Avengers great. I buy that Wanda would actually sit around, hoping a teammate she never met would come back and need a costume. Maybe I'm gettig soft in my old age.

Anyway, the Avengers lay siege on The Collector's hideout, but before getting to him the face off against Beetle, who looks like an arc welder with wings. Apparantly Beetle has suction cup fingers, or at least he did. That was news to me. My favorite aspect of this book is the banter between Cap and Hawkeye. Man, this made me miss Hawkeye even more (curse you Bendis, just kidding...kinda). I understand that characters have to grow, but I would have loved to have seen more of this back and forth in the Avengers before they got dissassembled. Oh well, he'll be back soon enough. Back to the story: the old Collector throws a whole arsenal of weird and wild tricks at Goliath, but he's able to beat them back for his tiny dancer (or superhero). At the end, everyone's happy, oh except for the fact that Goliath passes out and may be dead (don't worry, he's not).