The Avengers: Your Young Men Shall Slay Visions

Ok, firstly, that's a great title for a story.
Apparently there's a bit of kerfuffle around the ol' interweb involving some people insisting that comics shouldn't be political, which I take to mean, they shouldn't try to say anything.
I'm not sure where these people have been for the last 40 years. To quote Skunk Anansie: Yes, it's f**kin' political. Everything's political.
I'm sure Steve Englehart & Bob Brown would agree.
For instance herein, Wanda & Vision openly declare their love for each other to the world, and the world reacts in various ways. Some good, some very bad.
It's the little details that make this one, like the fact that the threatening note Cap opens up is obviously written by an illiterate, a small but telling point. As is Cap's reaction, and Wanda's line about hate for that matter.
It's also a classic pulp set-up, as The Avengers fight to stop the bad guys getting into the operating room where Viz lies at death's door.
Ok, considering they're The Avengers, they seem to have an inordinate amount of trouble fending off a few non-powered thugs with guns, but we'll let that one go.

The Lady Liberators

We've all read this one before, I'm sure, but hey, let's read it again, 'cos it's great.
As a kid reading this issue, I was more interested in the fact that Natasha, Wanda, Jan & Medusa had formed a team, and that the Masters Of Evil were back in town, than in any feminist ideals being expressed.
Nowadays, I find this tale a smorgasbord of delights. It's hysterically funny ( Doc Doom's riposte on p.5, Val's battle cry, THAT last panel ), fascinating for it's time and place ( Roy & Jeanie Thomas at the Rutland con ) and a bit of a missed opportunity.
I would absolutely have bought a Lady Liberators book at the time, as would you, and if Roy The Boy seems to be paying lip service to feminism, well, it's no less clumsily well-meaning than that issue of Lois Lane where she turns black for a day. And certainly it's all preferable to Sue Storm or Marvel Girl fainting every time they used their powers.

Fill-In Issues

Here's something we haven't talked about much: Fill-In issues. Victims of The Dreaded Deadline Doom. Those single editions that appeared, unannounced and unwelcome, right slap-bang in the middle of a story you were really enjoying and couldn't wait to read the next part of.
As much a part of the Bronze Age as those painful looking metal brassieres Conan's girlfriends habitually wore, they were often the result of lax editorial oversight, too much freedom given to creators or said creators' massive drugs intakes, depending on which chapter of Sean Howe's Marvel Comics The Untold Story you're reading.
All of those things were also, natch, responsible for some of the greatest comics ever done by anybody ever.
Probably the most well known, and most divisive, fill-in was Steve Gerber's Howard The Duck #16:

Which he wrote, as he says, while driving to Vegas. When this issue came out, I absolutely loathed it. Though to be fair to Steve, he knew we would...

Even as an adult, even as a massive Gerber fan, I still find this issue boring and pointless, though at least he didn't go reprint. ( Something that was even worse - generally a new Gil Kane cover, with a crap Silver Age reprint behind it )
Here's another one - X-Men #110:

Len Wein, Chris Claremont & Dave Cockrum had just brought the X-Men back from the dead, John Byrne and Terry Austin were now on board and the book was just about to become great. Then we get some completely random bad guy called Warhawk invading the X-Mansion, with Tony DeZuniga on art duties.
Don't get me wrong, Tony was of course one of the greats, but this was blatantly a story that had been sitting in someone's draw for a while. And I didn't want DeZuniga on X-Men, I wanted Byrne & Austin.

More? Here's Marv, Sal and Dave Hunt stepping in on Avengers #169:

Again, nothing wrong with this one. In fact, it's quite a fun adventure for Cap, T'Challa & Shellhead, But it didn't fit. It wasn't part of what we'd been reading. It was another fill-in.
And it sat there in your collection, being slightly irritating, but there was no way you could get rid of it. You couldn't couldn't swap it for something better, 'cos that would mean you didn't have the complete set!
But, but, but .... It was better than a reprint.
Interestingly, whenever the writer was so late they couldn't do an HTD #16, it nearly always seemed to be Bill Mantlo who filled in, like in these two examples. Maybe he was hanging out round the offices a lot.

And you can disagree with me about this one if you like, as it's an interim issue between Len Wein & Gerry Conway's runs on Werewolf By Night, but instead of Mike Ploog you get Werner Roth, and to me, it always smelt like a fill-in.
There were loads of these in the Bronze Age, not necessarily bad comics, just... unwelcome ones.
Maybe it's time for a Marvel Essential Fill-ins?

The Avengers: The Summons Of Psyklop

Here's the first part of a brilliant Avengers / Hulk crossover plotted by Harlan Ellison, then scripted by Roy Thomas.
In actual fact, the finished story is technically a non team-up, as ol' Jade Jaws spends most of this issue unconscious, while Earth's Mightiest Heroes don't make it to the second part of the tale in Greenskin's mag at all.
But Rascally sticks closely to Ellison's draft, ( seen in pre-FOOM mag, Marvelmania ) only really adding a bit of voodoo fun for Cap & Falc for no readily apparent reason, as well as a bizarre bit of dialogue where T' Challa begs off this month's adventure as he has pressing business back in Wakanda and Quicksilver, of all people, tells him that: None shall miss you more than I...
Oh, and there's a Captain Marvel in-joke. But there always is with Roy.