The Avengers #93: "This Beachhead Earth"

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As the team spirit spread through comics in the early 1960s, a gang of Marvel characters got together and decided to call themselves the Avengers. Perhaps one of them had been over to Great Britain recently and caught The Avengers show on the telly. The original members of the new Marvel group were the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and the Wasp. The plot for "The Coming of the Avengers" was cooked up by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, scripted by Lee and and drawn by Kirby. The premiere issue of The Avengers had a cover date of September 1963.

Touted as a "book-length super-epic" that featured "some of the Earth's greatest super-heroes!" the introductory episode had the superfolks gathering from hither and yon to overcome Loki, the Norse god of evil who'd already frequently troubled Thor. After dispatching Loki, they decided to work as a team. It was the Wasp, the one female in the bunch, who came up with the name Avengers in the final panel. The Hulk observes, "I pity the guy who tries to beat us!" Thor, magic hammer held high, declares, "We'll NEVER be beaten! For we are... THE AVENGERS!"

By the second issue Ant-Man, who'd grown tired of being teenie-weenie, had turned himself into the towering Giant Man, thus revising the Avengers roll call. Over the next two issues a couple of early Marvel heroes returned. This time, however, the Sub-Mariner was in one of his surly moods and did a turn as a villain in "one of the great battles of all time!" Then in #4 (March 1964) the super-patriot Captain America was found floating inside a block of ice in the Atlantic, where he'd apparently been languishing for twenty years. Eventually thawed out, he joined the Avengers, even though he was a bit fuzzy on current events. This represented Cap's Silver Age return.



Credits

Script: Roy Thomas
Pencils: Neal Adams
Inks: Tom Palmer

Reprinted:

• in Kree-Skrull War Starring the Avengers, The (Marvel, 1983 series) #1 (September 1983)
• in Essential Avengers (Marvel, 1999 series) #4 [black & white]
• in Avengers: The Kree-Skrull War (Marvel, 2000 series) #nn
• in Avengers: The Kree/Skrull War (Marvel, 2008 series) #n