In a feature from Marvel Age #123, reprinted in Avengers West Coast Epic Collection – Ultron Unbound, then Avengers editor Nel Yomtov is quoted as saying, “For modern readers, who are reading titles such as DARKHAWK and GHOST RIDER, the Avengers provide a background to the mythos and history of the Marvel Universe.”
Such a quote betrays that in 1993, the Avengers books were relegated to a sort of bedrock background noise against which the more popular solo titles played. With X-Men and Spider-Man playing with dramatic, universe-altering concerns like the Legacy Virus and alien Symbiotes and the introduction of wild new ideas like Marvel 2099, the Avengers were more often playing it stoic and safe.
Marvel
It was less about creating novelty and more about maintaining integrity. Who better to keep the beat, then, than Roy and Dann Thomas?
Roy Thomas’ career, both at Marvel and during his brief tenure at DC, often felt as if he was maintaining upkeep on the Universe in question. This might take the form of streamlining concepts with his wife and writing partner, Dann Thomas, or handily keeping tabs on the locations and actions of somewhat neglected characters.
Ultron got *swole*.
Marvel Comics
The Avengers West Coast of 1992-93 falls more under the latter category. Though the team is made up of foundational characters like Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Iron Man, the adventures they get up to rarely focus on those larger characters, whose stories were being more fully detailed in solo titles like Wonder Man and Iron Man (and, in the case of Scarlet Witch, the Midnight Sons addendum book, Darkhold).
Roy Thomas had started his career as a sort of continuity specialist he had caught Stan Lee’s eye with his Alter Ego fanzine, which concerned itself heavily with the theoretical nature of shared universes. He often took up the burden of applying a larger connective structure to the Marvel universe. He saw connections between contemporary concerns and the deep history of the Marvel Universe.
Minor teammate Living Lightning receives a quick short in Avengers West Coast Annual #7 to tie him more directly to the Lords of Living Lightning, a proto-AIM/Hydra group created by Stan Lee and Marie Severin in 1967 (and summarily forgotten). It was a minor discrepancy, simply borne out of somewhat meaningless naming decisions, but the Thomases were on hand to tidy up.
Similarly, the pair looked to check in and flesh out those Avengers for whom there were no other outlets. For instance, Julia Carpenter, the second Spider-Woman. Though she was introduced nearly a decade earlier (with no explanation, in Secret Wars #6), it wasn’t until 1992’s Avengers West Coast #84 that anyone bothered to explain her origins. Such a gaping hole in continuity must have nagged at Roy Thomas, and though her entire story is quickly shoe-horned into the issue via a long, convoluted conversation with her daughter, he was sure to fill that void.
Marvel
Not everything in Ultron Unbound does that sort of work. Rather, the book feels like a sort of holding pattern for its team, a way of keeping them active and alive until such a time as they’re needed for bigger, more personal stories. John Walker’s US Agent plays the ever-conservative contention point, Hawkeye plays about with his Goliath persona, and Mockingbird rethinks her divorce from him. Perhaps most importantly, Ultron has a brief moment of freedom in which to make another girlfriend for himself, Alkhema. Almost as if to remind the readership that Ultron was still a going concern.
Despite rather phenomenal artwork from luminaries like Herb Trimpe and Gene Colan, Avengers West Coast Epic Collection: Ultron Unbound feels static both visually and narratively. Regardless, it’s a book that was created with great care by a pair of writers known to be stewards of comic book history.
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