Avengers: The Origin (2010 series) #5

Comments: Future visions of the Avengers’ career include an unspecified outer space adventure, the wedding of Scarlet Witch and Vision, a battle with the Absorbing Man, and being surrounded by an army of Ultrons, with cameos by Captain America, Hawkeye, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Mantis, Swordsman, Immortus, Ms. Marvel, Beast, and Black Panther.

Review: Quite a few differences from AVENGERS #1 in this amped up retelling. There, the fight consists of Iron Man and Hulk hurling auto parts at one another before Thor arrives with Loki; now it looks a bit more realistic with the two exerting their strength against each other in a test of power. Also in the original, the containment tank isn’t mentioned until Loki falls into it; here it was intended from the first by Wasp to trap the Hulk and it nabs Loki by a happy accident. In the new version Loki escapes magically which seems more in character for the villain we’ve been booing for years. So the biggest improvement in this new version is that it gives Wasp a means of contributing to the adventure. The low point of this miniseries is that the actual formation of the Avengers takes up three panels in 1963 and covers nine pages in this new version. With the magic of hindsight, writer Joe Casey can invest it with more gravitas since we all know that this is going to be a significant comic series for the next five (at least) decades. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were just providing cool new comics and never dreamed where this would go and didn’t take themselves so seriously. Final verdict: It’s all much better than the occasionally crude and clumsy original by Stan and Jack—but nowhere near as much fun. Give me the Silver Age any time.