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nmcannon 's review for:
Essential Avengers, Vol. 4
by Various, John Buscema, Roy Thomas, Neal Adams
This is the second omnibus of AVENGERS comics I've read, so I was more prepared for what I found. And I liked what I saw for the most part.
From the Sons of the Serpent's white supremacy (an obvious KKK parallel) and Arkon's global nuclear warmongering (Cold War parallel) to Van Lunt's corporation manipulation (parallel to, well, real life corporate tactics), H. Warren Craddock's witch hunt for illegal aliens (parallel to McCarthy's communist witch hunt AND the loud yam's ruthless deportations) and Red Wolf's mission to oust his tribe's oppressors (reminiscent again of real life developer tactics & the #noDAPL movement), Stan Lee and Roy Thomas are not remotely in the area of messing around. These are the Avengers I would love to love, who stand up for minorities and the disenfranchised. They fight the the upper class and even the government itself. This was a good read for this time and place.
However, being a product of its time also includes a hefty amount of unacceptable racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Clint Barton's nicknames sometimes reveled in homoerotic subtext, but more times reveled in blatant sexism towards his female colleagues and racism towards T'Challa. Clint also had a weird moment of homophobia where he thought Thor was coming on to him because Thor sAVED HIM FROM DYING. Thankfully, Thor was as weirded out as me. The Lady Liberators storyline had all the female superheroes suddenly turning into radical feminists who wanted to kill all men. It was dealt with very poorly, not to mention cringe-worthy and cliche.
These bad moments were thankfully outweighed by the good ones, and I came off happier to have read it. My current favorite Avenger, Dane Whitman, aka the Black Knight, also featured in stories about Kang the Conquerer and the second battle with Arkon, where he had smexy smooch times with the Enchantress Amora. There's also a heaping of parallel, primordial, & pipsqueak world shenanigans and the Kree vs Skrull War. Overall, ESSENTIAL AVENGERS, VOL 4 seemed a solid installment in Avengers lore and good for any and all fans.
From the Sons of the Serpent's white supremacy (an obvious KKK parallel) and Arkon's global nuclear warmongering (Cold War parallel) to Van Lunt's corporation manipulation (parallel to, well, real life corporate tactics), H. Warren Craddock's witch hunt for illegal aliens (parallel to McCarthy's communist witch hunt AND the loud yam's ruthless deportations) and Red Wolf's mission to oust his tribe's oppressors (reminiscent again of real life developer tactics & the #noDAPL movement), Stan Lee and Roy Thomas are not remotely in the area of messing around. These are the Avengers I would love to love, who stand up for minorities and the disenfranchised. They fight the the upper class and even the government itself. This was a good read for this time and place.
However, being a product of its time also includes a hefty amount of unacceptable racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Clint Barton's nicknames sometimes reveled in homoerotic subtext, but more times reveled in blatant sexism towards his female colleagues and racism towards T'Challa. Clint also had a weird moment of homophobia where he thought Thor was coming on to him because Thor sAVED HIM FROM DYING. Thankfully, Thor was as weirded out as me. The Lady Liberators storyline had all the female superheroes suddenly turning into radical feminists who wanted to kill all men. It was dealt with very poorly, not to mention cringe-worthy and cliche.
These bad moments were thankfully outweighed by the good ones, and I came off happier to have read it. My current favorite Avenger, Dane Whitman, aka the Black Knight, also featured in stories about Kang the Conquerer and the second battle with Arkon, where he had smexy smooch times with the Enchantress Amora. There's also a heaping of parallel, primordial, & pipsqueak world shenanigans and the Kree vs Skrull War. Overall, ESSENTIAL AVENGERS, VOL 4 seemed a solid installment in Avengers lore and good for any and all fans.