Issue(s): Avengers #23, Avengers #24
Cover Date: Dec 65 - Jan 66
Title: "Once an Avenger..." / "From the ashes of defeat --!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Don Heck - Penciler
John Romita Sr. / Dick Ayers - Inker

Review/plot:
Inks in issue #23 are by John Romita, but i can't say i notice a difference, possibly due to the quality of the reprint. Actually, these nice head shots are probably at least partially due to Romita:

    

Captain America has quit the Avengers and is passing the time as a sparring partner at a boxing training camp. Kang chooses this moment to attack, and easily captures the remaining Avengers, leading to a series of "If only Cap were here" and "We were wrong to treat him so disrespectfully" moments.

Cap hears about the Avengers' defeat on the radio and rushes back to save them.

Kang is going through all this trouble to impress Ravonna, a princess in a small kingdom.

Kang has held off on conquering the kingdom because he is waiting to see if Ravonna will marry him. Kang eventually gives up on Ravonna and attacks her kingdom. Captain America leads the resistance, and I was very disappointed to see how poorly his strategy and leadership is depicted.

However, Kang's minions turn on him and Kang is forced to ally himself with the Avengers. At one point Hawkeye says something along the lines of "next we'll be swearing in Dr. Doom" and Kang thinks to himself "Doctor Doom! Little do they dream how closely related I am to the greatest arch-villain of all time", but nothing ever really comes of that.

The Avengers and Kang beat the resistance, but after the Avengers leave, Ravonna is assassinated.

OK, i take it back, the Romita-inked art definitely has more depth to it.

The art in issue #24 is pretty unremarkable and i couldn't find a good image to include. Here's the opening scene:

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first and death of Ravonna

Chronological Placement Considerations: The way i have things placed (coincidentally, not by design), the Fantastic Four's wedding takes place while Cap has quit the Avengers. Nothing in Fantastic Four annual #3 or Marvels #2 makes that an impossibility. Cap is shown arriving to the big villain battle in the FF annual with Quicksilver and Iron Man (also not a current Avenger) and Marvels #2 shows Cap seated at a different row in the church than the others. Not that it matters; placing these Avengers issues where Cap returns to the team before the wedding would work just as well.

References:

• Captain America uses Iron Man's recreator - a device that probes the recent past - to locate Kang. Stan says "We used this gadget issues ago... but if you can remember when, you're better than we are!" I do not recall Iron Man using this device but it sounds very similar to the device that Mr. Hyde created in Journey Into Mystery #104. Maybe Thor gave it to Iron Man after that fight was over?

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Triple Action #18, Marvel Triple Action #19

I first discovered these issues from this site, and I thought, "Holy cow, this sounds like the most Silver Age story of them all!" And, after picking them up in a Masterworks Collection, I stand by that assessment.

But boy, the visual storytelling here is kind of a mess. It's never explained why dudes in the far future have such a feudal society. (It makes sense in light of "Avengers 8" where Kang is the ruler of a post-apocalyptic future, but it's never explained here.) The pacing is extremely fast and it feels like all you're doing is looking at scattered snap-shots rather than a smooth, flowing story.

The geography is also unclear: Kang is trying to conquer Ravonna's kingdom, which apparently contains Kang's time-viewer, time machine, his Avenger-capture-tubes, a zillion death traps, and his army. And maybe also his "turn off my army's guns" machine. Maybe the capital is already occupied, but if so, why do they go to the trouble of shelling it and invading it an issue later?

Don't get me wrong: anything involving Kang disguising his time-trap AS AN EXTRA FLOOR OF AVENGERS MANSION and nobody thinking this is bizarre, and Captain America using Stark's "recreater" machine to shake his fist at Kang, and the crazy saccharine ending, is gonna be entertaining. It's just kind of a jumble to read, is all.

whenever i see Kang, all i can think about is how sweaty and gross his face must be behind that mask.

I keep telling you his armor is probably climate-controlled.

quit ruining things for me!

I think this is Stan Lee's best Avengers story. Unfortunately, Don Heck Drew it

Its ridiculous reading that Kang line considering that the only "relation" he has to Doom is that he's a descendant of Reed Richard's father who had traveled far into the future; thus his "relation" is that he's a distant relative of Doom's greatest nemesis...I think.

There are a lot of "meanwhile, in the 20th century" and "just a few minutes later, in the 23rd century" type narration boxes here. I'm not sure Stan quite understood what centuries are. Not that time travel stories ever fully make sense, but this one basically treats "the 23rd century" as a distant planet.

John Romita confirmed in Comics Interview #89 that #23 was his first Silver Age Marvel art.

According to Dave Sim in Comics Journal #181, there was some kind of promotional film for Marvel shot in 1965 that featured Stan Lee(without his hairpiece). I'm guessing this was done for foreign distributors...is this available on Youtube?

The reason that Kang made the remark about Dr. Doom is that up until Byrne wrote the FF, it was always assumed that Doom was the 20th century ancestor who invented the time machine that Kang found. He had also met Dr. Doom in FF Annual#2 and they had discussed the possibility that they were the same person.

I hoped for more quicksilver action than i got....