John Byrne & others West Coast Avengers (1990)
More eighties superhero comics, but nothing to do with comfort food this time - these made the list because they were written and drawn by John Byrne and are therefore the bollocks. I say these rather than it because this is a run of comic books rather than the same collected as a - cough cough - graphic novel; and even if they were, it still wouldn't be a graphic novel, it would be a collection of comic books, and it would be a collection of comic books because there's nothing wrong with comic books, even comic books which haven't grown up.
I'm sure we all know who the Avengers are by now. This title dates from an era during which there were so many Avengers that they had to siphon a few of them off into a separate team with its own title; and what distinguishes this one is that it was, as already stated, written and drawn by John Byrne, a man with an unusually profound understanding of what makes this sort of thing work, namely the soap opera aspect combined with the juvenile love of things in sets which can be mixed and matched. Caped types foiling bank robberies had begun to look a bit comical by this point in comic book history, hence the soap aspect with an assortment of fantastic beings pitched against one another, or else pulled apart to see what makes them tick. Byrne pulled the Vision apart during his tenure, to memorable effect, then messed with the Scarlet Witch by revealing that her children were imaginary constructs brought about by her ability to manipulate probabilities.
Byrne's comics tend to succeed on their own terms, rather than by, for example, giving Spiderman a dose of the clap. He combines solid, surprisingly conservative storytelling with truly screwy ideas and genuine magic is born of the contrast while remaining faithful to the form, juvenile though it may well be. Byrne takes scrappy throwaway concepts and retells them with the gravity of legends, and should probably be mentioned in the same sentences as the likes of Kirby and others, even if we're mainly talking about the art.
Unfortunately, the baroque intertwined narrative he'd built up here came to an abrupt end with issue fifty-seven due to a disagreement with his editor, following which he downed tools in protest. I'm told Roy Thomas wrapped it all up a few issues later, but I think I prefer the truncated genius of Byrne's run with all of the loose ends left hanging. Considering all which has been sold in the name of the Avengers over the last three decades, I really wonder if it was ever again as good as this.
More eighties superhero comics, but nothing to do with comfort food this time - these made the list because they were written and drawn by John Byrne and are therefore the bollocks. I say these rather than it because this is a run of comic books rather than the same collected as a - cough cough - graphic novel; and even if they were, it still wouldn't be a graphic novel, it would be a collection of comic books, and it would be a collection of comic books because there's nothing wrong with comic books, even comic books which haven't grown up.
I'm sure we all know who the Avengers are by now. This title dates from an era during which there were so many Avengers that they had to siphon a few of them off into a separate team with its own title; and what distinguishes this one is that it was, as already stated, written and drawn by John Byrne, a man with an unusually profound understanding of what makes this sort of thing work, namely the soap opera aspect combined with the juvenile love of things in sets which can be mixed and matched. Caped types foiling bank robberies had begun to look a bit comical by this point in comic book history, hence the soap aspect with an assortment of fantastic beings pitched against one another, or else pulled apart to see what makes them tick. Byrne pulled the Vision apart during his tenure, to memorable effect, then messed with the Scarlet Witch by revealing that her children were imaginary constructs brought about by her ability to manipulate probabilities.
Byrne's comics tend to succeed on their own terms, rather than by, for example, giving Spiderman a dose of the clap. He combines solid, surprisingly conservative storytelling with truly screwy ideas and genuine magic is born of the contrast while remaining faithful to the form, juvenile though it may well be. Byrne takes scrappy throwaway concepts and retells them with the gravity of legends, and should probably be mentioned in the same sentences as the likes of Kirby and others, even if we're mainly talking about the art.
Unfortunately, the baroque intertwined narrative he'd built up here came to an abrupt end with issue fifty-seven due to a disagreement with his editor, following which he downed tools in protest. I'm told Roy Thomas wrapped it all up a few issues later, but I think I prefer the truncated genius of Byrne's run with all of the loose ends left hanging. Considering all which has been sold in the name of the Avengers over the last three decades, I really wonder if it was ever again as good as this.
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