AVENGERS #168
(Mar 1978)
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Top Five Avengers Chairpersons
by Brian Cronin
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 10:26 PM EST
The
Avengers did not always treat the idea of a chairperson as a major
thing, and in fact, for the first 100 or so issues, they not only
rotated chairpersons, they did not even always say who WAS the
chairperson! So you could theoretically argue that any number of
Avengers were chairpersons during the early years, but for the sake of
this list, I am just listing the top five Avengers who were
specifically noted as being chairpersons. Without further ado, here are
the Avengers who have been chairperson of the Avengers (counting both
branches) the most issues!
(excerpt)
4. Iron Man
Iron Man only edges out Black Widow because I’m counting him as at
least CO-chairperson during the early New Avengers issues. That’s fair,
right?
He certainly SEEMED to be leading the team.
Currently, as head of SHIELD, he is the technical “head” of the Mighty
Avengers, but I think Ms. Marvel is more of what you would consider the
chairperson of the group.
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AVENGERS #168
(Mar 1978)
|
Subject: Ramblings About Comics and Stuff #81: 30 Years of Comics
Posted: 12/4/2007 4:24:28 PMWhat I’m about to say is extremely difficult, but here it goes anyways.
Last month marked thirty years since I got hooked permanently on comics.
There. I said it. Th-Th-Thirty years.
Yeah, after a few missteps and false starts, I started buying comics on
a regular basis after I set eyes upon, paid for, and read thoroughly
Avengers #168 (Feb 78, but actually hit the racks in November of 1977), the second part of Jim Shooter’s incredible
Korvac / Michael saga.
I still can’t get over it. Thirty. Years. Why, when I started
collecting in 1977, thirty years ago was, gasp, 1947. Three decades
seemed like a long time ago, back then. But this morning, I woke up,
and thirty years had suddenly gone by. Weird.
I remember
asking my dad one time what life was like back when he was younger,
eager to laugh at his anecdotes about washing clothes on a board down
by the river, or hauling a block of ice back home from the corner store
for the “ice box,” or having to milk the cows at dawn before walking
three miles to school every day. But what he said was actually very
surprising. He told me that when he was a kid, people went to church,
and to picnics, and bowling every Friday night, just like they do now.
They just did it while sporting funny looking clothes and hairstyles.
Brevoort's History Of Comics
Tuesday, July 9
By Tom Brevoort
Avengers #168 - February, 1978
It's a perfect example of one of the
problems apparent in many of the comics on sale today. AVENGERS #168
was the first issue of the series I read (after having encountered the
group earlier in SON OF ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS) and I was lost.
This was the second part
of the well-remembered Korvac saga, and as a result, more super-powered
costumed characters were running around than normal. You got the full
Avengers team, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and a guest appearance by
Nighthawk. And all in all, I was confused, and uninvolved. This feeling
was made worse by the fact that many of the characters seemed
shrewish--an ongoing plotline that had Captain America and Iron Man at
each other's throats made both characters look like assholes.
It's not a bad issue at all if you read
it in context to the rest of the run. A long-time reader probably
enjoyed it a great deal. But as somebody's first, it was a non-starter.
I wouldn't look in on the Avengers again for three more months.
It's particularly ironic that this was
the case in that this issue was written by Jim Shooter, who was a
positive demon for new-reader-clarity during his tenure as Marvel's
EIC.
AVENGERS #168 (Mar 1978) 
MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #362 (UK) (Jun 1980)
