Issue(s): Avengers #12, Avengers Classic #12

Original Material
Cover Date: Jan 65
Title: "This Hostage Earth!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Don Heck - Penciler
Dick Ayers - Inker

Avengers Classic #12
Cover Date: Jul 08
Title: "Into the great wide open"
Credits:
Bob Burden - Writer
Juan Doe - Artist
Mark Beazley & Alejando Arbona - Editor

Review/plot:
Poor Henry Pym gets no respect. Just look at the title of the book this issue is reprinted in. Marvel Triple Action. The cover promotes The Mighty Thor! Captain America! Iron Man! Giant-Man is stuck on the sidelines with the Wasp, probably stewing and blaming all his inadequacies on Janet.

Janet doesn't have much respect for him either.

Page one:
GIANT-MAN: The Cybernetic Alarm! It's being activated by the ants! Must be serious! I'll get it, Jan!
WASP* (thought balloon): I know he's dead serious, but I can't help feeling there's something ridiculous about having a heart-to-heart with some ants!

Page 2:
WASP: Henry Pym! Aren't you embarrassed? What will you say when [the Avengers] come charging in? They're needed to stop a riot in some ant hill?!

(*When i write WASP in all caps like that, the song Wild Child starts running through my head.)

When the rest of the Avengers show up, they think it's ridiculous too. Iron Man shows up to the meeting on roller skates and even he's laughing at Pym.

So Pym goes off to investigate the threat on his own.

It turns out the Avengers were right. There is no threat. There is only the Mole Man, who thinks he can speed up the Earth's rotation with an "atomic gyroscope". This is, of course, completely delusional. Nonetheless Giant-Man runs into the Moloids and gets himself captured.

Later the Avengers feel bad and go looking for Pym. They rescue him and beat up the Mole Man and his Moloids just for fun.

The Red Ghost also shows up (without his, um, super apes) but contributes absolutely nothing.

Interestingly, the Wasp is the Avenger's chairperson this issue.

While Pym is off doing his thing, Captain America is out stopping real crime, including fighting a guy named "Monk".

Monk will go on to become Ape Man of the Ani-Men.

There's another proto Avengers Assemble yell this issue.

I love the idea of Fantastic Four villains showing up in the Avengers, thus making them simply Marvel Universe villains. This issue also (most likely unintentionally) sets up the idea of Pym being under-appreciated, which will lead to his leaving the team in issue #16. Nonetheless, this was a fairly silly story and the art is really sketchy.

The Avengers Classic takes place during the main story. Right about here.

The story shows the Moleoids having misadventures in the suburbs.

Weird, silly, and cute.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - formative Avengers story. First Monk Keefer, later Ape Man.

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• The FF fought the Mole Man in Fantastic Four #22 and destroyed his empire in Fantastic Four #31.
  
• The Avengers first used their image projector in Avengers #3.
  
• The Red Ghost first appeared in Fantastic Four #13.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? P - reprint back-up story is continuity insert

My Reprint: Marvel Triple Action #6, Avengers: First to Last TPB

i hate janet. it's pretty clear she and pym have no business being together in any kind of relationship. i don't even know why he hangs out with her at all. i wouldn't even want her as a friend, let alone a girlfriend. she's an awful person.

George R. R. Martin has a letter here.

This ish contains a fun letter from a young George RR Martin, lavishly praising Stan and Don Heck, and naming a bunch of villains he thinks aren't worthy of fighting the Fantastic Four (he hated Diablo, Mole Man, The Mad Thinker, and The Puppet Master).

Recently read this for the first time in the Avengers Omnibus. I'm a big fan of Hank Pym and even I thought it was ridiculous when Cap says "Giant-Man's got a temper too and I wouldn't want to see it directed at us." Yo, Cap, Giant-Man is a big guy. Thor is a freaking God! Also makes me think of Ultimates, where Pym grows large and Cap still easily beats the shit out of him.

They do use the "Avengers Attack" battlecry several times over the years.

It's nice of the Moloid who is spraying Iron Man with a flamethrower to actually THINK for Iron Man. I guess he's showing sympathetic tendencies for the Avengers cause?

Kudos for the Wild Child reference \m/

I believe Chic Stone rolled out his ink pens on this issue?! Perhaps this is why our society girl Janet Van Dyne is looking extra uptight as his Red tones are filled with fire

Chic Stone inked the cover, but i don't see anything in the issue or on the UHBMCC or GCD saying that he helped with interior inks. Although it sounds like maybe you're suggesting that he was the colorist for this issue? The colorist credits weren't listed and seem to be unknown.

Monk hear resembles the description of Monk Mayfair in the Doc Savage series.

A few letters after GRRM's there's one from Steve Erickson - address Granada Hills CA. Does anyone know if that's the novelist? (Not malazan Erikson - rather tours of a black clock avantpop novelist)

@Zansmo, it's likely it was him. Here's a link to a column where he says he was an Avengers reader for a while, back when the comic began.

http://www.lamag.com/steveerickson/superhero-complex/

The credits on the scanned page from Avengers Classics toward the bottom say Bob Burden and Juan Doe, not Brian Patchett and Sergio Aragones.

Ah, that explains it. Looks like there was a separate story in the original Avengers Classic issue by Aragones. Thanks ScottR33.

Best Moloid story ever. Bob Burden would have been great on the Avengers.

The Patchett/Aragones story is a silent 2 page story where a Moloid is shrunk down, goes on a brief adventure, then is eaten by another Moloid. No Avengers appear.

I’m probably a crusty old man, but I can’t stand the cartoon looking art in the backup story. Looks like a Disney movie.