Avengers jump on the superhero team wagon

Nikki Finke has the details of Marvel Pictures superhero pipeline for the next few years, culminating in the release of an Avengers blockbuster. So the convergence of comics and movies would then be pretty much complete,  closing the circle started, for some reason, with Howard the Duck 23 long years ago.

Don’t hold it against us that we may be a bit jaded — and, strangely, don’t be surprised if we are simultaneously excited — because our personal Avengers journey began 46 years ago with the purchase of Avengers #1, with 12¢ of our own money, likely scrounged or begged (for we weren’t working at the time. We were seven.)

Avengers #1

Check Ironman’s suit of golden armor, which looked like it really was made of cast iron. It was the second take on his suit, though. The first was a drab gray. And It wasn’t long after that that stainless steel must have either became economical enough for Tony Stark to use for the suit, or for the legendary Jack Kirby to draw. The ferric moniker stuck though. “Stainless Steel Man” just doesn’t have the same ring.

We have been anticipating an Avengers adaptation of some kind since at least 1965, when we heard that there was going to be an Avenger TV show come the new fall season. We were beside ourselves with excitement and assumed it would be about the Marvel comic. (We paid a lot of attention to the new fall season back then, as well as the evolving line-up of Saturday morning cartoon shows. That may have been the same year as Milton the Monster’s debut… Lo and behold, it  was.) What else could it be? We were hugely disappointed when the show premiered and it turned out to be about English spies. We watched the show and which, happily, redeemed itself by being good. We didn’t know, either, until we just saw that Wiki entry that Honor Blackman was the original female lead, Cathy Gale. To quote Sean Connery as James Bond: “Puusssseee.”

So it’s part of the the Heroes and Watchmencylce of group superhero projects and hopefully will be on the goodness scale closer to the first two Spidermans rather than the atrocious Daredevil. Talk about your disappointments. Can we get a do-over on that one?