West Coast Avengers 1-16

The West Coast Avengers I

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This Page: 1-16

Since I was continuing the AVENGERS and kicking off a VISION & THE SCARLET WITCH maxi-series in the same month, I combined the first two issues of each series for a 4-part opening. More "bi-weekly" stuff.

This group of Avengers was created by editor Mark Gruenwald and writer Roger Stern in a previous mini-series. Mockingbird was first teamed with Hawkeye by Mark for a mini he did himself. She became my favorite in the group, with Hawkeye a close second.

And with Hawkeye as their leader, the West Coast Avengers took themselves a lot less seriously than the East Coast group. They lived up to Avengers tradition but called themselves the Wackos, a permutation on the initials WCA that was perfectly accurate. And soon they were outselling the East Coast group, becoming the AVENGERS book.

The main thread in these early issues was the alarming deterioration of Hank (Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket) Pym's mental state - until, with #16, he planned to commit suicide. AVENGERS fans consider this series Hank's high-water mark, which is fascinating because I never warmed up to the guy.

This time around we had a stable artistic situation; Al Milgrom was the man for the whole run. We still lived on opposite coasts, but this time we didn't try to collaborate by long distance as we had on CAPTAIN MARVEL; since the book was set on the West Coast, where I live, it made sense to let me plot it in the traditional fashion.


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I	^{Written by Danny Fingeroth}

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I^{Collection: includes WEST COAST AVENGERS 15 (and VISION & THE SCARLET WITCH 12)}I

AVENGERS 136-152	COMICS	WEST COAST AVENGERS 17-24

NOTES:

There's a preview of this series in MARVEL AGE ANNUAL 1.

4: Creation of Master Pandemonium, their first major villain - who wasn't a villain at all.

7: The beginning of multiple Ultrons, as the archfiend revved himself once too often and became too close to human, to the fury of his older technology.

ANNUAL 1: Quicksilver is found to be insane.

16: Tigra, who was originally a costumed character called the Cat, meets Hellcat, who took on the costume and developed it - while unbeknownst to everyone, Hank Pym gets ready to pull the trigger...