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The Avengers in the UK

The Avengers started publication in 1973, in that classic first issue where Captain America joined the Avengers.

Not right? Think I've got Byrne's syndrome? Well it was in Britain it was right, where "The Avengers" was Marvel Comics' third UK reprint title, after "The Mighty World of Marvel" and "Spider-Man Comics Weekly". Yes - Avengers was weekly as well, a thirty-two page black and white magazine published not at the size of US comics but at the dimension of, say, Time Magazine. Each early issue featured a full story from the early Avengers' run, edited to correct the spelling of "color" and to remove references to the Commies. The remaining pages of the early issues were filled out with the Lee / Ditko Doctor Strange series.

British comics at that time had a quite different tradition to American ones, with each magazine featuring a number of comic strips no more than three or four pages long. Marvel therefore compromised by eventually settling on printing around ten pages of each feature in each issue, allowing three half-comics to be reprinted. Hence, by issue 28 of the Avengers, the magazine featured both Dr Strange and Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu as well as the assemblers themselves.

Another strange feature of British Comics is that when they ceased publication, they were "merged" with another, continuing magazine in the hopes of carrying readers across. Hence at one point in its history, "the Avengers" became "The Avengers and the Savage Sword of Conan" - honestly. When the Avengers title itself was cancelled the Avengers reprints continued in a plethora of other UK titles.

Here's a summary of the Avengers UK publishing history:

· "The Mighty World of Marvel starring the Incredible Hulk" #46-49, Aug '73, reprinted Avengers #1-3

· "The Avengers" #1 Sept 22 '73 continued with Avengers #4 and a Dr Strange strip

· This became "The Avengers starring Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu" with #28, March 28 '74, reducing the Avengers strip to half an American issue to make room for half an issue of MoKF as well.

· From #52, Sept 14 '74, the title rotated between "The Avengers", "The Avengers featuring Iron Fist," "The Avengers featuring Dr Strange", and "The Avengers starring Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu". The Avengers, Dr Strange, and one of the other two appeared in half an American comic reprint per issue.

· From #81, Apr 5 '75, the magazine reverts to "The Avengers", but with the same contents as previously.

· From #95 , Jun 12 '75, the magazine is "The Avengers and the Savage Sword of Conan," featuring half issues from Conan #19 onwards (the Thomas/Smith stuff from the colour magazine) along with the Avengers and usually Dr Strange or Master of Kung-Fu.

· The magazine finished with #148, Jul 14 '76. The Avengers strip was "This Beachhead Earth", the first part of American issue 93, the Kree-Skrull War.

· This story was continued the following week in "Mighty World of Marvel starring the Incredible Hulk and the Avengers" (Trips off the tongue doesn't it? The best that can be said is that it obscured some of the cover art). This edition featured the Hulk, the Avengers, Conan, and Daredevil, each one reprinting around a third of an American issue.

· This comic stopped at #213, Oct 27 '76.

· The Avengers strip run continued in "The Titans" #53, Oct 20 '76. This was the same size as other British Marvel publications, but opened and read in landscape format, with two reprinted pages to each leaf, allowing twice as much story but at reduced size.

· This became "The Titans starring the Mighty Avengers" two issues later. The reprinted strips were The Avengers (starting with #99), Ghost Rider, Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and the Inhumans. There was also a two-page Power Man poster evidently drawn by a chimpanzee.

· This comic ceased publication with #58, Nov 24 '76.

· The Avengers continued publication in "Super Spider-Man and the Titans" #199, Dec 1 '76. This also has the landscape format and featured Spidey, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, the Invaders, and the Avengers (#103)

· This became a standard portrait-fold magazine with #229, Jun 29 '77. The reprints in this issue were Spider-Man, the Avengers (actually part 2 of Defenders #8 since this was reprinting the Avengers/Defenders Clash), Captain America, and Iron Man.

· From #231, Jul 13 '77, this magazine became "Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain". Captain Britain was at that time the only British-exclusive comic strip produced by Marvel (this particular one credited to B. Budiansky, J Lawrence, R Wilson, P Marcos, M Esposito, and edited by L. Leiber). The features were Spidey, Cap Britain, the Avengers, and Cap America (who was replaced by the FF the following week).

· From #254, Dec 21 '77 the magazine reverted to being "Super Spider-Man", featuring Spidey, Captain America, the Avengers, and Thor.

· Thus it was until #307, Dec 27 '78, where my British collection ends, the Avengers reprints having got as far as American #151 where my collection then started. The entire Marvel UK line collapsed not long after that, but somebody else will have to chronicle the last gasp of the Avengers in the UK.

Since this essay concentrates on the Avengers I have not gone into too much detail over the minutiae of what other strips were presented. I felt it was sufficient to give a flavour.

One or two other points of interest. Many early covers reprinted the original American version. One or two were specially drawn by established or up-and-coming Marvel artists (e.g. Jim Starlin, Pablo Marcos). Later covers were done by "home-grown" talent who understandably did not make it into the American comics market.

Because the stories were most often reprinted in two or more parts, new splash pages were created for the second part, usually either by one of the "home-grown" artists mentioned above or by enlarging a panel from the original art. I remember being very irritated that some pages of Neil Adams' art were cut from the reprints so that some fumble-thumbed amateur could inflict his new splash page on me.

Because the reprints were not in line with other strips' reprints there were all kinds of strange anomalies. The Avengers were reprinted up to around #50 before the original Iron Man stories including his origin appeared, for example. Hence, the Widow and Hawkeye had reformed before they ever appeared as baddies.

Finally, Marvel UK printed hardbound Annuals which also reprinted issues of the American series. If anyone is really desperate I'll dig them out and document what was in them.

They were cheap and chopped about, but they introduced me to Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I would never have believed in 1976 at the age of thirteen that I would be writing all this stuff up today. Still, the original Lee/Kirby stories and those that followed them had a power which transcended the cheap print and grabbed my attention. It has rarely wavered since.