Friday, March 6, 2009

The Only Blog Not Talkin' About the Watchman Movie Premierin' Friday!

That's right. I haven't seen a movie in its first run since Unforgiven. Or maybe it was Addams Family Values. Anyway, I don't watch movies until the second run, at best. In a case like Watchmen, it'll probably have to be on DVD because the violence level may be too much for Beloved. As you know, I'm still in the dog house for Sin City. I suspect Friend Kyle will see it and give me the rundown next week.

Meanwhile, let's talk Avengers!

This right here was the first Avengers comic I ever read:


I remember my sister picked it up for me when I had taken ill at my grandmother's. She also brought an issue of Tarzan, which had zero appeal for my "if it ain't got super-heroes, it ain't worth reading" brain (which I still suffer from to a great degree).

I remember thinking that was a really cool name for a super-group, but this issue didn't make me a reader. I liked the Beast and the Vision, but Thor's long hair turned me off, Iron Man seemed boring, and I couldn't make heads or tails out of why a guy named after an insect was growing out of control. So, I chalked it up as an okay comic, but not worth adding to my already-huge reading list. In retrospect, I realize how awesome it was to have the Vision enter the body of Henry Pym, after Henry had done the exact same thing to him years earlier.

But if I had stuck around, I would have realized that big sis was pointing me towards a great comic in the midst of a great run. Check it out:


It's very fortunate that we have the Squadron Supreme Sinister in today's post, because they were a thinly-veiled Justice League, just like the Watchmen are based on a bunch of B-list Charleston characters. Frankly, if DC had used the Charleston characters instead of Moore's made-up counterparts, I think Watchmen would have been ten times more interesting.

But sometimes, you've gotta do what you've gotta do, and if we couldn't get a JLA/Avengers team-up, which we wouldn't for decades, this was an okay substitution. Can you figure out which characters are which? If you can't, I'm sure someone will be happy to tell you in the comments, but prepared to be berated.

But aside from an appearance of the always-entertaining (to me, anyway) Squadron Supreme Sinister, this was a great time in the Avengers because the Beast was there to give us some desperately needed levity on a team that took itself way too seriously up to that point. Here, we see Patsy Walker (the future Hellcat), follow-through on her efforts to blackmail the Beast:


Yeah! Eat that, Patsy!

And you say you're going to get righteous on the Beast? I don't think so:


Y'see, Cap, anyone who ever encourage Rick Jones to stink up a comic can just siddown and shaddap. Go, Hank!

All this, and a smackdown with the Squadron Supreme:


Ok, make that Squadron Sinister Supreme. Seriously, let's pick a name and go with it.

It's the start of some good stuff in the Avengers! Yay!

See you Monday!

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know this is hardly the day to discuss Watchmen, but, while you have a point on the emotional connection we'd have from the original Charlton (well, not me, I wasn't alive, but, you know, other people), the made-up characters are interesting because they have their own particularities, like the moving mask and the blue nakedness.

Man I wish my sister would buy me comics... I'm also obsessed with superheroes, but, I have nothing against Tarzan...isn't he a superhero, in a way?

D.B. Echo said...

I felt the same way when my mom picked up a "Phantom" and a "Rima, Jungle Girl" for me. I mean, white people showing up the natives with their superior jungle skillz, OK, fine, whatever. But give me some super-heroin'* and consequence-free violence any day!


*Not to be confused with "super heroin."

Elrossiter said...

thtats rick jones line was brilliant, eat that cap! she's got grit-another brilliant line.

hank da man! 'more or less'

elrossiter

Darius Whiteplume said...

No Watchmen lust here either. Never even looked at it. I'll wait 'til it's on USA or whatever.

Anonymous said...

My first Avengers was #112, so I'd been reading for about a year and a half when Perez arrived. It was already my favorite book under Englehart and Bob Brown et al, at thirteen I was totally enrapt on all the soap opera.
When Perez came in with the Squadron Supreme and the western heroes time travel and Hellcat... it was as good as comics got back in 1975.

Anonymous said...

The Beast wasn't very articulate back then was he?!

SallyP said...

Gosharootie, I have this one, in fact I have the whole run. And I'm embarrassed to say that at the time I didn't have a CLUE who the Squadron Supreme was modeled after.

Of course, I WAS a Marvel Zombie at the time, but still...!

Jack Norris said...

There's both a Squadron Supreme and a Squadron Sinister.
The Squadron Supreme was a JLA analog who were good guys in their own alternate universe.
The Squadron Sinister were bad guys from our (well, the Avengers) universe who had the same names & powers as the Squadron Supreme, at least the core group of Hyperion, Dr. Spectrum, and the Nighthawk who later reformed and joined the Defenders.
I can't remember which they (the Avengers) met first, but I suspect it might have been the Sinisters, to give an excuse for the "oops, we thought you were bad" fight when they met the Supremes who looked just like their evil versions from 616.
The Squadron Supreme was misidentified as the Sinisters here either because:
a) They thought the Squadron Sinister name was more readily recognized as recurring villains by Avengers readers.
b) They thought that having a group with the word "Sinister" in their name made more sense as villains on the cover than one with the word "Supreme."
c) Somebody screwed up.

De said...

How did you like that eventual JLA/Avengers series, Adam? I thought it was a lot of fun and George Perez's artwork was so very pretty.

Adam Barnett said...

De, I will confess that I *loved* JLA/Avengers! Loved it! Worth the wait, it was!

Anonymous said...

Originally, the plan was to use Blue Beetle, Peacemaker, Question, Peter Cannon, Captain Atom and Nightshade as the leads in Watchmen, but DC decided it was better to leave them apart, 'cause they had plans for pretty much every one of those guys. So, as Beetle, Question, Captain Atom, and in a lesser degree Nightshade, have had a measure of success in subsequent years, I can't say I truly support using the original Charlton characters as the leads in Watchmen. 'sides, Moore's already declared he liked more the idea of using his own interpretation.

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