Set Description:
Synopsis: We decided to register our books here so that we would have one place for all our Avengers, but to date we have made no serious effort to finish this one.
Background: The Avengers were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and debuted in September 1963 in The Avengers #1. Labeled "Earth's Mightiest Super-Heroes," the original Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor and the Wasp. Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in Issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him.
Marvel initially published the Avengers bi-monthly through issue #6 (July 1964) and monthly thereafter through issue #402 (Sept. 1996), with spinoffs including several annuals, miniseries and a giant-size quarterly sister series that ran briefly in the mid-1970s.
Writers of the first series included Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, Jim Shooter, David Michelinie and Roger Stern. Artists included John Buscema, Tom Palmer, Neal Adams, George Perez, John Byrne and Steve Epting.
While the line-up often changed, the Avengers were always an all-star ensemble cast of established superhero characters from the Marvel Comics universe. Unlike other Marvel teams like the X-Men or FF, members of the Avengers usually operated individually, but occasionally assembled as a team to tackle especially formidable villains.
Lee and Kirby reportedly created the Avengers to start a new line of books and to cross-promote Marvel Comics characters. Their thinking at the time was that an Iron Man fan might buy an Avengers book because Iron Man appears in them, and in turn take an interest in Thor, who appears in the same book as Iron Man's friend and comrade. The cast usually featured a few highly popular characters who had their own solo books, such as Iron Man, alongside a number of lesser-known characters who benefit from exposure, such as Quicksilver or Hawkeye.
The Avengers have appeared in a wide variety of media outside of comic books, including several different animated television series and direct-to-video films. Beginning in 2008, they were adapted in a series of movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, culminating with The Avengers in 2012, The Avengers: Age of Ulton in 2015, The Avengers: Infinity Wars in 2018 and Avengers: Endgame in 2019, which ended with the deaths of Captain America, Iron Man and the Black Widow. Those movies remain four of the top 15 grossing films of all time.
Our Collection: I actually still own a couple of raw Avengers #1s, at least one of which I bought from the drugstore on the square back in Oxford MS in 1963. Of course, those raw books are just readers, as I never knew about preserving them when I was a kid. But this run has long been a favorite. Strangely enough, despite the success of the movies, these books are still some of the more affordable Marvels with a couple of exceptions, probably because the title originated after many stalwarts like FF, ASM, JIM, TOS and TTA.
We completed our #1-100 Avengers set several years ago and slowly started adding the books #101-200 when we could find some affordable 9.8s. But we still have a very long ways to go taking our collection up to Issue #200. And to date, we have acquired no books in the #201-250 range.
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