Thursday, September 23, 2010

The Mighty Avengers from 1970's (F.O.O.M.)







Occasionally I realize that backlogged stuff really accumulates in the files, and although I had intended to post a comics story today, the one that I pulled would have been an unfortunate repeat. My bad!

As I pondered how best to respond to this gaff, I noticed lots of old items that were in the queue, so no story today. Instead here's a look at some scans of artwork by the late Dave Cockrum. These portraits of "The Avengers" were originally presented in an early issue of "F.O.O.M." (aka Friends of old Marvel), the publishers in-house fanzine during a portion of the 1970's.

I apologize for the poor quality of the scans, since some of the copy bled through from the backside of these pages. As you can see on the Mantis/Swordsman piece, at some point I was trying to clear some of this up.

Oh well, it's still cool artwork by the prolific Cockrum who was one of Marvels premiere "go to" cover artists of the Bronze Age. Dave also drew several incredible issues of Giant-Size Avengers (all of my mint copies are tucked safely away in the Catacombs).

I have to admit that as much as I'm enjoying the current "Secret Avengers" series (which features a team lineup that's loaded with bronze age members), I really miss this particular period of the Mighty Avengers history. Cap/Thor/Iron Man, along with Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Vision, Mantis & Swordsman really were the best Avengers ever.

Take a gander and "enjoy"!

3 comments:

idrawtoons said...

My favorite era as well, read those Englehart scripted stories over and over as a kid. The Giant-size comics were so awesome.

Chuck Wells said...

Now if only Hawkeye and this particular look for Goliath could have been on the team at the same time.

Difficult since Clint Barton wore both of these suits, and I actually liked previous Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Goliath Hank Pym best in the role of Yellowjacket.

Tony Anaya said...

WOW. This is amazing work! Thanks so much! I was doing a search for a "childhood character" for a temporary profile picture on Facebook. I was actually trying to find something with either the Vison or Mantis and somehow your page came up. And I had no idea Cockrum had passed away. I seem to remember that he drew the Giant-sized issue where it was revealed that Mantis was the Celestial Madonna. Thinking back...it seems such a terrible waste of a great character. Mantis could have been as big as Psylocke but no one ever invested the time and interest since Englehart. And I agree -- this era was THE BEST! Thor was the perfect leader and it was "The Avengers", and not "Captain America and the Avengers" which has been the case for the past 15-20 years or so.