What do you think?
Rate this book
Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers #12
Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers, Vol. 12
Earth's Mightiest Heroes fight one of the greatest battles in super hero history in the pages of this Marvel Masterworks spectacular! It's hero against hero in the sensational summer hit of 1973-the Avengers/Defenders War. Cap vs. Namor! Thor vs. Hulk! It's the original crossover clash and there's never been another one like it. But before our heroes take sides against each other, there's even more trend-setting classics in store for you: Mantis makes her first appearance; the Lion God brings the Avengers to their knees; Vision and the Scarlet Witch's relationship blossoms, but not without the intolerant objections of others. COLLECTING: Avengers 112-119, Defenders 8-11, FOOM 6-7
246 pages, Hardcover
First published May 23, 2012
6 people are currently reading
121 people want to read
About the author
Steve Englehart
1,396 books97 followersSee also John Harkness.
Steve Englehart went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. After a stint in the Army, he moved to New York and began to write for Marvel Comics. That led to long runs on Captain America, The Hulk, The Avengers, Dr. Strange, and a dozen other titles. Midway through that period he moved to California (where he remains), and met and married his wife Terry.
He was finally hired away from Marvel by DC Comics, to be their lead writer and revamp their core characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern). He did, but he also wrote a solo Batman series (immediately dubbed the "definitive" version) that later became Warner Brothers' first Batman film (the good one).
After that he left comics for a time, traveled in Europe for a year, wrote a novel (The Point Man™), and came back to design video games for Atari (E.T., Garfield). But he still liked comics, so he created Coyote™, which within its first year was rated one of America's ten best series. Other projects he owned (Scorpio Rose™, The Djinn™) were mixed with company series (Green Lantern [with Joe Staton], Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four). Meanwhile, he continued his game design for Activision, Electronic Arts, Sega, and Brøderbund.
And once he and Terry had their two sons, Alex and Eric, he naturally told them stories. Rustle's Christmas Adventure was first devised for them. He went on to add a run of mid-grade books to his bibliography, including the DNAgers™ adventure series, and Countdown to Flight, a biography of the Wright brothers selected by NASA as the basis for their school curriculum on the invention of the airplane.
In 1992 Steve was asked to co-create a comics pantheon called the Ultraverse. One of his contributions, The Night Man, became not only a successful comics series, but also a television show. That led to more Hollywood work, including animated series such as Street Fighter, GI Joe, and Team Atlantis for Disney.
Steve Englehart went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. After a stint in the Army, he moved to New York and began to write for Marvel Comics. That led to long runs on Captain America, The Hulk, The Avengers, Dr. Strange, and a dozen other titles. Midway through that period he moved to California (where he remains), and met and married his wife Terry.
He was finally hired away from Marvel by DC Comics, to be their lead writer and revamp their core characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern). He did, but he also wrote a solo Batman series (immediately dubbed the "definitive" version) that later became Warner Brothers' first Batman film (the good one).
After that he left comics for a time, traveled in Europe for a year, wrote a novel (The Point Man™), and came back to design video games for Atari (E.T., Garfield). But he still liked comics, so he created Coyote™, which within its first year was rated one of America's ten best series. Other projects he owned (Scorpio Rose™, The Djinn™) were mixed with company series (Green Lantern [with Joe Staton], Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four). Meanwhile, he continued his game design for Activision, Electronic Arts, Sega, and Brøderbund.
And once he and Terry had their two sons, Alex and Eric, he naturally told them stories. Rustle's Christmas Adventure was first devised for them. He went on to add a run of mid-grade books to his bibliography, including the DNAgers™ adventure series, and Countdown to Flight, a biography of the Wright brothers selected by NASA as the basis for their school curriculum on the invention of the airplane.
In 1992 Steve was asked to co-create a comics pantheon called the Ultraverse. One of his contributions, The Night Man, became not only a successful comics series, but also a television show. That led to more Hollywood work, including animated series such as Street Fighter, GI Joe, and Team Atlantis for Disney.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 27, 2019
Eh, this was just alright. It's odd but the focus on side characters can be hit or miss for me in these older Marvel comics. I didn't care to focus this much on Swordsman and Mantis. Wanda's rampage against humans didn't seem focused on anti mutant bigots as much as it was anyone who didn't like her robot boyfriend. Again, not super thrilled about her focus just being her relationship with Vision.
Anyway, there were a couple of cool moments with Iron Man, Cap and BP. That's about all I have to commend this for.
Anyway, there were a couple of cool moments with Iron Man, Cap and BP. That's about all I have to commend this for.
April 4, 2018
Things started getting better, more interesting and less stupid and cringe-worthy from previous masterworks volumes.
Great artwork once again! Loving it as always even though I kept wishing for Neal Adams again on every single issue one after the other.
Great artwork once again! Loving it as always even though I kept wishing for Neal Adams again on every single issue one after the other.
May 12, 2012
Avengers/Defenders War reprinted again, but also includes a few issues before and after. Still, it's all classic Avengers and you can't beat that.
September 29, 2023
The Avengers entered the Bronze Age with a bang. The first few issues in this book are Steve Englehart doing his warm up exercises, finding his voice before launching the biggest crossover of it's kind at the time, The Avengers/Defenders War. This ran across four issues of Avengers and four issues of Defenders and was the brainchild of Englehart.
#113 shows a terrorist organization,The Living Bombs, a hate group that targets mutants like the Scarlet Witch and synthezoids like The Vision. To their credit they were a progressive hate group for their time, allowing women and blacks into their ranks. This was possibly the first depiction of a suicide bomber in fiction. The story is timeless, as we still deal with bigotry and suicide bombers today. The more things change, eh?
Englehart introduces Mantis in #114, setting up one of the all-time great Avengers storylines, The Celestial Madonna. I read the trade paperback of it a decade or so ago and am looking forward to reading that one in “high def” in a volume already aging to perfection in my backlog of unread books.
Back to The Avengers/Defenders War, it is more fun to read this when compared to modern crossovers, which are mapped out more carefully. There are times where it feels like not only do I not know where the story is going, but neither does Englehart. I'm not going to bother with the plot synopsis, as it is a very basic story and it can be found on any of the usual sites. My job is to tell you why you need this book, not necessarily what it's about on a page by page basis. I will say that the Hawkeye and Iron Man battle is weak, as Hawkeye is hopelessly outclassed but pulls it off somehow. Lame. There are some legendary hero versus hero throwdowns, namely Thor versus The Hulk. In just a few short months we'll see that come to life on the big screen in Thor: Ragnarok, although I'm betting that it won't be as cool as it is here in this book.
The epilogue to the battle, as well as the book, is the meta-crossover that the guys at Marvel did with their pals over at DC (Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, and Len Wein). Tom Fagan, a part of early comic fandom, convinced the town to have superheroes as a part of the parade. It became a favorite of comic creators and it inspired the first Marvel and DC crossover in 1972. There were several unofficial Rutland Halloween Parade crossovers in comics for a few years. Both universe's heroes wound up in the town of Rutland, VT, with each universe's characters having an adventure at the same time but not really interacting with one another aside from a background shot. Savvy fans were in on the joke, and with no Internet to spread the news it took a few years for people to catch wind of it.
The story in #119 is an absolute blast, one of those it can only have happened in 1973 type of stories. The Collector decides to finally collect all of The Avengers by buying a house in Rutland, VT, spending six months getting it ready to trap the team there for his collection. It's completely, utterly ridiculous, and I love it because it is played straight even though you know that Englehart was pissing his pants laughing as he wrote this.
When people talk about all-time great Avengers writers, a few names should pop up. Steve Englehart's is one of them. This book is the opening salvo of his run and belongs in your collection.
#113 shows a terrorist organization,The Living Bombs, a hate group that targets mutants like the Scarlet Witch and synthezoids like The Vision. To their credit they were a progressive hate group for their time, allowing women and blacks into their ranks. This was possibly the first depiction of a suicide bomber in fiction. The story is timeless, as we still deal with bigotry and suicide bombers today. The more things change, eh?
Englehart introduces Mantis in #114, setting up one of the all-time great Avengers storylines, The Celestial Madonna. I read the trade paperback of it a decade or so ago and am looking forward to reading that one in “high def” in a volume already aging to perfection in my backlog of unread books.
Back to The Avengers/Defenders War, it is more fun to read this when compared to modern crossovers, which are mapped out more carefully. There are times where it feels like not only do I not know where the story is going, but neither does Englehart. I'm not going to bother with the plot synopsis, as it is a very basic story and it can be found on any of the usual sites. My job is to tell you why you need this book, not necessarily what it's about on a page by page basis. I will say that the Hawkeye and Iron Man battle is weak, as Hawkeye is hopelessly outclassed but pulls it off somehow. Lame. There are some legendary hero versus hero throwdowns, namely Thor versus The Hulk. In just a few short months we'll see that come to life on the big screen in Thor: Ragnarok, although I'm betting that it won't be as cool as it is here in this book.
The epilogue to the battle, as well as the book, is the meta-crossover that the guys at Marvel did with their pals over at DC (Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, and Len Wein). Tom Fagan, a part of early comic fandom, convinced the town to have superheroes as a part of the parade. It became a favorite of comic creators and it inspired the first Marvel and DC crossover in 1972. There were several unofficial Rutland Halloween Parade crossovers in comics for a few years. Both universe's heroes wound up in the town of Rutland, VT, with each universe's characters having an adventure at the same time but not really interacting with one another aside from a background shot. Savvy fans were in on the joke, and with no Internet to spread the news it took a few years for people to catch wind of it.
The story in #119 is an absolute blast, one of those it can only have happened in 1973 type of stories. The Collector decides to finally collect all of The Avengers by buying a house in Rutland, VT, spending six months getting it ready to trap the team there for his collection. It's completely, utterly ridiculous, and I love it because it is played straight even though you know that Englehart was pissing his pants laughing as he wrote this.
When people talk about all-time great Avengers writers, a few names should pop up. Steve Englehart's is one of them. This book is the opening salvo of his run and belongs in your collection.
September 24, 2023
A few things go on in this volume of Avengers Masterworks, the main event being the multi-part Avengers/Defenders War. Additionally, Black Widow leaves the team after only joining the previous issue and Swordsman rejoins, bringing the enigmatic Mantis with him.
The Avengers/Defenders War is quite fun, even if it follows the same sort of story as most team crossovers. Both the Avengers and Defenders are manipulated by big baddies to fight against each other, only to later realise what's going on, team up, and take them on in the climax. It's hardly original (maybe it was at the time, who knows?) but it's still enjoyable. Vision and Scarlet Witch's romance continues to grow and there are slight rumblings of Mantis' mysterious past coming to the forefront.
Overall very readable.
The Avengers/Defenders War is quite fun, even if it follows the same sort of story as most team crossovers. Both the Avengers and Defenders are manipulated by big baddies to fight against each other, only to later realise what's going on, team up, and take them on in the climax. It's hardly original (maybe it was at the time, who knows?) but it's still enjoyable. Vision and Scarlet Witch's romance continues to grow and there are slight rumblings of Mantis' mysterious past coming to the forefront.
Overall very readable.
July 28, 2018
It's great to have Steve Englehart on board and a new era for the team fully underway, but he hasn't really hit his stride yet. He has some interesting ideas, but the crossover is very clunky and personalities are a little malleable in these issues.
June 28, 2020
Avengers Defenders War - its doesn't get much better than this!
February 16, 2016
The Marvel Masterworks volumes are fantastic reprints of the early years of Marvel comics. A fantastic resource to allow these hard to find issues to be read by everyone. Very recommended to everyone and Highly recommended to any comic fan.
April 25, 2015
I enjoyed revisiting stories from when I was ten years old, as well as reading those I missed because I couldn't buy every issue back then!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews