Issue(s): Avengers #77
Cover Date: Jun 70
Title: "Heroes for hire!"
Credits:
Roy Thomas - Writer
John Buscema - Penciler
Tom Palmer - Inker

Review/plot:
This is a strange one. Tony Stark's in trouble financially due to the actions of a Cornelius Van Lunt, so he requests that the Avengers pay the backrent (!) on the Mansion they've been living in. The Avengers go looking for a job... and the only job that works for them is supplied by Van Lunt (the others don't meet their "precise specifications").

They do a few demolition jobs for him before realizing the whole thing is a set-up. In a twist, it's not Van Lunt doing the setting-up, however. It's one of his disgruntled underlings that is trying to frame Van Lunt. Regardless, the Avengers decide to quit their jobs.

Van Lunt will later be revealed to be Taurus of the Zodiac. We've already met him in that incarnation, although there's been no indication that the two are the same yet.

In the opening power-demonstration scene...

...when the Avengers are demolishing a building and the public isn't aware that it's scheduled for demolition, we get a funny clash of the generations.

Two of the goons that the Avengers fight this issue, Joe the Gorilla, and Pecos, will appear again exactly once, in the debacle that was Defenders #64.

    

They're extremely minor non-powered goons. Just calling them out 'cause i like Joe's beard.

Meanwhile, in his Luke Charles persona, the Black Panther teaches kids about witch doctors.

Marvel often claimed that their issues were offbeat, but this one really delivered.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - first Cornelius Van Lunt (later revealed to be Taurus)

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Black Panther's appearance in Daredevil #69 occurs during this issue (between panels of page 11).

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Historical Significance: 1st "Hero For Hire" title at Marvel.

One of the thugs, Sweet William, is a blatant gay stereotype.

Buscema's (unmasked) T'Challa in this issue reminds me of the late Lloyd Haynes, that handsome actor from Room 222.

You call Defenders #64 a "debacle", like that's a BAD thing.

I used to think Sweet William was a gay stereotype, but rereading this story I think he was a really poorly executed spoof of a hippie. He's even got a "flower cild" name and goes on about how he hates violence. Anyway, this story is basically a Scooby-Do plot avant la lettre, and the villains seem like they'd fit right in to the Adam West Batman show. This is one of Roy's weakest efforts on the title to date.

Also, I note out of sheer anal retentiveness that Cap'n Skragg also appears very briefly in Defenders #64; he's in a single panel on the interior, and is oddly prominent on the cover. This was pointed out to me by Jeff Christiansen at the Marvel Appendix site when I wrote up an entry on the Split-Second Squad....well, the original Split-Second Squad, anyway. there have been at least two others for some reason.)