The vacillating quality of stories crammed into Avengers Epic Collection: The Crossing Line is a telling illustration of how outside the spotlight Marvel’s premiere super-team was in the pre-MCU world. Originally published in 1990 and 1991, these stories feature baffling rosters, nonexistent chemistry, and almost pointed neglect for its over-burdened cast.
Marvel Comics
It also illustrates the Marvel Universe as it teeters on the somewhat wholesome, Bronze Age shenanigans of the 1980s and the gimmick-laden 1990s; over the course of the collection, we see two different crossovers, a heavy reliance on guest stars, and the uneventful first appearance of a character so obviously created in the ’90s that he’s all but disappeared since.
For all of that, it’s also a book eager to show off just how cosmically strange the team was back then, with galactic threats, demons, and enlightened abstractions around every corner. It seems that for every Russian terrorist that Captain America can throw a shield at, there must be one sanity-threatening Godhead on hand to necessitate the need for a space god, Eternal, or what amounts to a knockoff Green Lantern.
The book begins with the titular story, penned by pinch-hitter Fabian Nicieza. The more ’90s comics I re-read (and Epic Collections from this era that I find myself reviewing), the more I realize how often Nicieza wrote short stretches of books on the verge of transition; he had come onto the book to wrap up an unfinished John Byrne story and found himself stuck with a six-issue gap until new series lead Larry Hama could come on board.
The Crossing Line is very tepid Nicieza. Using the tried-and-true “Soviet terrorists steal a nuclear sub” plot convention, the story slowly becomes an excuse to cram as many other super teams into the book as possible. Cap’s five-Avenger team ends up butting heads with—and then fighting alongside—not only the Soviet People’s Protectorate, but also the oft-unweildy Alpha Flight (a book Nicieza was also filling in on at the time) and a small Atlantean task force. Before the action can even quite justify them, there are a total of twenty super-beings on hand for the sub-napping.
Marvel Comics
Does that seem like too many? Yes. Particularly when most of those characters spend a full evening trying to decide how to sneak aboard the air-tight submarine without alerting anyone. . . and Vision is standing right there.
Marvel Comics
How does the story justify the expenditure of characters, then? Simple. Two of the terrorists evolve into an enormous, glowing, wrathful deity.
Marvel Comics
Throughout all of this, a string of Mark Gruenwald-penned backup stories is telling a much more interesting story of the Avengers Mansion staff (in part: Jarvis, Peggy Carter, and John Jameson), who is slowly being hypnotized by Mother Night. The payoff is so classically Gruenwald that the preceding submarine story is completely overshadowed.
Next up is the story that I would have expected the volume to be named after, The Terminus Factor, one of the Annual Crossover stories of 1990; the main story of that year’s Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, West Coast Avengers, and Avengers annuals involve the monstrous evolution of a new Terminus, who Original Recipe Terminus must battle for supremacy before being booted off of the planet by the obligatory Too Many Superheroes.
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The story, once again, leans heavily into the cosmic—a threat that no single Avenger could handle on their own. Made up of shorter parts than The Crossing Line, Terminus Factor feels punchier, more evenly balanced between the threat and the heroes.
Marvel Comics
Finally, the book jumps into the beginning of Larry Hama’s run on the title with the introduction of hip, new, progressive hero Rage, angry at the Avengers for not having any black team members; the team’s charter is also in question, with the UN taking over from the US and demanding a more international roster.
Marvel Comics
Is that too grounded? Well, don’t worry—there’s a cadre of demons, a tetrad of trans-dimensional deities, and a quick appearance of Doctor Doom to balance out all that social-justice-forward malarkey and remind us that these are, indeed, problems no single Avenger might tackle on their own. No matter how easily Vision could get onboard that damn submarine.
Marvel Comics
What matters most, in reading The Crossing Line, is to remember that every character is someone‘s favorite character, no matter how relegated to the background. In 1990, Avengers might have been the only place a diehard fan of, say, Stingray, could get their long-awaited glimpse. To that end, these comics were essential reading for a lot of fans. The Crossing Line might have characters to excess, but never without those fans in mind. It’s a great cross-section of styles and concerns in superhero books at the time.
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