There are two major stories collected in the Avengers Epic Collection – The Yesterday Quest, both of which are celebrated and foundational pieces of Avengers mythology. Taken independently, the two stories represent some of the most compelling concerns for the team in the late 1970s; taken together one finds a marked juxtaposition of narrative approach and construction.
The groundbreaking Korvac Saga, which covers nearly a full year of issues (from October 1977’s Avengers #167 to August 1978’s Avengers #177), is a true Marvel saga, all but engineered by writer/editor Jim Shooter (with fill-ins from Marv Wolfman, Bill Mantlo, and David Michelinie) to hit the epic ’70s cosmic-level threat.
Marvel Comics
The story presents a mysterious, unknowable threat who plays with the team without their knowing; the villain’s power and dangerous potential are corroborated by the original Guardians of the Galaxy, who have time-traveled from the 31st century to stand vigil against it. Their presence – and uncertain goal – strengthens a slow-building reveal of the godlike Korvac. This story directly follows the first Guardians Epic, and discounting a handful more appearances, that team would disappear from comics pages for a full decade before their own ongoing in 1990.
Korvac hits all the beats of cosmic peril, establishing a narrative strategy Shooter would later use in Secret Wars: a being of such immense power that their motives are most frightening in their incomprehensible largeness; the Avengers cannot understand what Korvac intends to do, only that his power implies corruption and domination. It’s a story made important by its hollow victory: there is an implication, upon the team’s victory, that they have made a terrible mistake.
Marvel Comics
Contrasting this, The Yesterday Quest abandons the wide-angle lens of the epic in order to tighten focus on character; it also abandons the architectural structure of Jim Shooter for the more organic, detail-oriented care of Mark Gruenwald.
In the back matter of this volume is an editorial essay, originally published in Avengers #180, penned by Gruenwald. The essay provides some rather interesting insight into the near-divine providence with which he constructed now-classic and immutable aspects of the Marvel Universe.
The essay illustrates the confluence of spare details, already extant in the Marvel narrative, that Gruenwald simply gathered together into character revelation: the story attempts to answer questions concerning the origins and parentage of Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. It’s a mystery that still plagues creators – are they Magneto’s children? Are they Magneto’s children only in spirit? – but back in 1979 the Maximoff’s were known as the Frank’s, and were believed to be the children of World War II heroes the Whizzer and Miss America.
Gruenwald, a fan before a creator, was famous for loving the Marvel Universe, and for being a sort of walking encyclopedia of its many convoluted and circuitous narrative pathways. He understood that the Whizzer/America narrative was too full of holes to hold water; the comics had presented a number of clues and red herrings which led attentive readers away from that pat answer. It fell to Gruenwald, as it often did, to iron out the canon.
In his essay, he notes his problems with the twins’ mystery as he begins to examine the key points of their history. Mount Wundagore, a sticking point left untied to the character’s hero-born origins, was a knot of convolution. There were abundant and contradictory forces at play: the High Evolutionary and his New Men, Hydra, and Spider-Woman: the place seemed fated, somehow a magnet for major forces to collide.
Marvel Comics
Trying to establish a reason for this, Gruenwald stumbled upon the Darkhold, which had last been seen in the region of Wundagore in a Werewolf by Night story published several years earlier. This was the key to the mystery, something to resolve the Maximoff mystery and so many things, besides.
One of the most foundational aspects of Wanda Maximoff came about by the happenstance of proximity. The character became ensnared by dark magics because Gruenwald uncovered a disparate narrative device left unused by another creator.
The tender archeology of Mark Gruenwald feels almost anathema to the bold, no-nonsense strokes of Jim Shooter; even the separation between early George Perez’s emblematic Avengers in The Korvac Saga and the more expressive John Byrne work in The Yesterday Quest feels distinctive of the stories’ stylistic divide.
Taken together, the stories in The Avengers Epic Collection – The Yesterday Quest provide the massive and the minuscule, the macro and the micro. Two of the most important Avengers stories of the bronze age, back to back, exemplify the dramatic range of the team at their extremes.
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