The Monster that Saved Marvel Comics?

The first thought I had upon lifting the considerable heft of Avengers #27 into my hands was, "This feels familiar!" It took me only seconds to realize why--the new 100 Page Monster Format, debuting here, feels like a Dollar Comic.

Dollar Comics were a short-lived format from DC that collected, I believe, 68 pages of story and art by numerous creators all for a dollar, at a time when comics cost considerably less than they do now. The 100 Page Monster, for example, will set you back the cost of three Dollar Comics of yore.

As with most anthology formats, the quality of the tales determined whether you felt you got a value for your money or not. I don't know why DC eventually abandoned the format, but it's nice to once again see a comic book of that sort of massiveness on the stands.

The question is, is it worth it?

Starting at the cover, a close-up shot of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor, we see this issue will be something different. Whether George Perez knew when he designed it that this cover would serve as the first "Monster" issue I don't know. But it has a retro feel to it, right down to the use of a word balloon (spoken by the reflection of Avenger's liaison Duane Freeman).

Would this cover have worked for a regular-sized issue? I dunno. But here, as the gateway to 100 pages of (we hope) fun, it works.

The main story is a continuation of Kurt Busiek and George Perez's ongoing Triune Understanding subplot, which seems to me a sort of "What If Scientology Existed In The Marvel Universe?" I'm not saying that's a bad idea for a plot, in fact for the most part it's been used pretty cleverly here. In the main story of this issue, we manage to learn quite a bit about where it's all going without ever really finding out for certain if Duane Freeman is in on whatever manipulations the Triune's are up to. The narration would suggest Freeman is innocent of any complicity, but it's not, strictly speaking, ruled out.

Freeman is a wonderful creation, too--a government liaison in the tradition of Henry Peter Gyrich, but with the added benefit of being a genuinely likeable character who I would like to see more of. Kurt and George clearly have future plans for him and his relationship with the team, and looking back at his early appearances you can see the groundwork was already being laid for his Triune connections, so I have faith his story will be developed.

Now, The Avengers is my current favourite monthly superhero comic, so it comes as no surprise to me I enjoyed this main tale. The team is (apparently) manipulated into a new lineup, one that for the most part I would have welcomed under any other circumstances. But it occurs under a dark cloud of suspicion on all sides, and Kurt and George convey that mood brilliantly. Everyone that leaves, everyone that stays, and everyone that joins up, has their motivations made clear in a way that , yes, seems forced, but not by the creators, by the Triunes.

The rest of the issue (and gee, there's a lot of it--!) is filled out with significant reprints from the rich history of Avengers back issues. It was nice to see the two-part Perez-drawn "New Lineup" saga from issues 150 and 152, which also includes a significant percentage of the original issue 16 drawn by Jack Kirby. A terrific bonus to this choice is that readers new to the tale will get to see the resurrection of Wonder Man (this, I believe, the second resurrection for Simon, but the first one that "stuck", as it were).

I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why the Harlan Ellison-written story was included, and the art by Rich Buckler seemed dated in a way Kirby's older work did not, but as an example of what the Avengers was like in the early 1970s (I believe that's when this was first published) it serves its purpose.

The other story here is written by, of all people, Kurt Busiek. I found it the most problematic of the bunch.

"The Day The Strangers Came" was Kurt's first shot at writing The Avengers, and he tells a tale of a young boy who worships the team but has to make a difficult decision involving a member of his family. It may be a good story, certainly evocative of Kurt's later work on Astro City and other tales, but damn, the art is awful.

Richard Howell both penciled and inked the tale, and I feel bad saying it, but the sheer amateurishness of the work completely destroyed my ability to either enjoy the story or objectively assess the script. I understand a key factor in these Monster issues is saving money by using reprints, but it saddens me to think what this story might have been like in the hands of another artist…say, reinterpreted by Perez himself?

On the whole, I think the 100 Page Monster idea is a good one. Anything that gives readers more of a value for their money is okay in my book, and frankly, I think the main story alone here was worth three dollars. I like the design of the Monster format, and think that with a little tweaking in regards to future reprint choices, it could be a big success. The Thunderbolts get the Monster treatment next, and I look forward to seeing what Marvel does with the concept in the future.