Click the above image for a full-size widescreen wallpaper sized 1920×1200. I just scanned this from a 1988 Marvel comics house ad. Art is by John Buscema & Tom Palmer. This was the line-up for much of the late eighties: Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters), Sub-Mariner (Namor), Marrina, Dr. Druid, Black Knight (Dane Whitman) & Thor (Donald Blake).

So I’m about to hit a mile-stone with my comic collection. A little over a year ago my X-Men collecting got side-tracked by Brian Michael Bendis. His work on the Avengers re-ignited my dormant love for Marvel’s Mightiest Heroes in a BIG WAY. Like a lot of collectors my favorite era of the Avengers was the one I was first exposed to as a little kid. That would be the late 70′s & early eighties. The issues must have been 170 or so up through the big double-sized 200. Wonderful art by George Perez and Terry Austin…fantastically detailed and tight. No one does it better than George Perez and no one inks as tight and clean as Terry Austin.

So when I got the Avengers fever I decided that I would at the very least obtain all of the issues from that time. I figured I could conceivably manage to get #150 “and up”. As I got to researching it become pretty clear that I didn’t need all of the “and up” part of the collection. I didn’t collect or read comics during the ’90s and most people tell me I didn’t miss much. What few ’90s books I have read pretty much confirm the idea that the 1990′s for the most part was the worst age of the Super-Hero comic. Like Disco nearly killed Rock-n-Roll in the ’70s the awful excess of the ’90s nearly destroyed the American Super-Hero comic. So I’ve decided to “give myself a break” and simply SKIP all the crappy ’90s issues of the titles I’m collecting. Instead I’m going to focus on the Good Stuff. I decided I would stop at Avengers #300. And now with the order I just placed with Atomic Avenue. I will have Avengers #150 through 300 solid.

And if all goes as planned I will finish reading the entire run sometime in the next couple of weeks if not before that. Right now I’m on #281 smack dab in the middle of the Roger Stern run that featured the always great art team of John Buscema and Tom Palmer. Good stuff.

So I suppose this Spring I can get back to those X-Men.