Roger Stern Avengers

Watching the replay of the Warriors/Pelicans game.  The Warriors came back from 21 down at the half.  Curry rules all.  Hope the ankle isn't serious.

Avengers 267-269

It’s a three-part Kang saga, culminating in Kang and Immortus spending most of issue 269 speechifying to the Avengers and each other.  If a cardinal rule of comics is "show don’t tell", surely the worst sin "don't just tell, tell in narrated flashback."  What a sub-optimal implementation of story.  

To make today’s read even more grueling, I already had to go through an essentially identical experience a couple of weeks ago; this arc was part of the stultifying Great Kang Retcon that was issue 9 of Avengers Forever.  I went back to take a look, and homage or not, it just feels lazy to me:

I’m happy to have read Busiek’s source material, though, since it gives us this classic, no-where-but-in-comics line:

Bold to be using a straight razor with the possibility of unexpected chronal turbulence.

Other notes:

• Calling out the cover of 269, since I have a distinct memory of it from my childhood:

Now granted, Buscema poses Kang and Immortus rather dramatically, but I couldn’t understand why it was so recognizable to me, since I didn’t buy the issue until college.  Until I saw this page in the issue itself:

Love that X-Men cover.

It was an ad must also have run in Transformers 18, which I definitely read as a kid.  My mind chooses to remember the oddest things.

Regret buying?  No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again?  No

Rating: Okay