Issue(s): What If? #9
Cover Date: Jun 78
Title: "What if the Avengers had been formed during the 1950's?"
Credits:
Don Glut - Writer
Alan Kupperberg - Penciler
Bill Black - Inker

Review/plot:
Roy Thomas is credited with "Concept". Not sure if that means he should be given plotting credits or not.

Technically I could include every issue of What If? in this timeline project due to the fact that Uatu the Watcher from the "real" Marvel universe appears in them. And maybe one day i will.

But for now i'm including this issue, partially because i wanted to include the first sort-of appearance of the Agents of Atlas, and partially because this issue's alternate reality is introduced by Iron Man, who has found an alternate reality in which the Avengers were formed in the 1950s, and he wants to show his friends.

He sees parallels between the 1950s Avengers and the group he's summoned. Captain America's powers are similar to 3-D Man, the Beast is similar to Gorilla Man, the Vision is a robot like the Human Robot, Thor and Venus are both deities, and... well... Iron Man and Marvel Boy both, um, shoot stuff of of their hands.

In the story itself, the group of strange heroes are assembled to foil a Masters of Evil style team of villains...

...assembled by the Yellow Claw...

...to kidnap President Eisenhower.

After they succeed, Eisenhower breaks up the team and covers up their existence because the world isn't ready to handle the implications of their existence.

This being a Roy Thomas comic, there isn't a lot in the way of characterization. As a substitute, there's the Thomas trademark of excessive in-fighting amongst the group.

There's a lot of differences between this group and the eventual Agents of Atlas. The Human Robot can talk, Marvel Boy is a straightforward swashbuckler and not a fish-out-of-water alien, Jimmy Woo is more of a liaison than an actual member of the team, and 3-D Man is a member.

Namora doesn't join the group, but she shows up briefly to lead the team to the location of the Human Robot.

There's some deliberate ambiguity to imply that the 1950s era events of this issue may have actually occurred in the "real" Marvel Universe timeline, but from what we know of the Agents of Atlas, the truth is that something similar happened but not quite the way it's shown here.

Still an interesting concept of assembling a team out of random weird series (and in some cases, single issues) that appeared in the 1950s.

Unfortunately the writing isn't very good. Neither is the art.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 4 - prototype for Agents of Atlas

Chronological Placement Considerations: I've placed the Avengers here before the beginning of the Korvac saga. All of the Avengers appearing are consistent as a subset of the current line-up at the time.

References:

• Iron Man uses a Dimensional Transporter to view the alternate dimension where the 1950s Avengers existed. He says it's based on technology created by the Squadron Supreme, as shown in Avengers #141.
  
• Jann of the Jungle...
  

  ...and Venus get footnotes without actual issue numbers. Both just reference the fact that they had their own series in the 50s.
  

• Namora won't join the team because she's still searching for Namor, who won't be found until Fantastic Four #4.
  
• The Watcher mentions the fact that the 1950s Cap from Captain America #155 had gone mad by the time this team was formed.
  
• Gorilla Man first appeared in Men's Adventures #26.
  
• Marvel Boy first appeared in Marvel Boy #1.
  
• The Human Robot appeared in Menace #11.
  

• 3-D Man first appeared in Marvel Premiere #35. Unlike the other members of the team, he didn't actually exist in the 1950s.
  
• Jimmy Woo and the Yellow Claw first appeared in Yellow Claw #1.
  
• The Yellow Claw's minions include Skull-Face (Mystic #6), the original Electro (Captain America Weird Tales #78), the Cold Warrior (Marvel Premiere #37), and Great Video (Marvel Boy #3).

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

There's a reference to "Tobor the Great", a 1958 science-fiction film, in the story itself so it can't occur any earlier than that historically.

Bill Black at this time was producing his own fanzines, and this was one of his few Marvel contributions. Around 1980 he started Paragon Publications,later renamed AC Comics, whose most notable original characters were Femforce. AC still reprints Golden Age and 1950s stories today.

I hate to go here, but to be consistent shouldn't this be "pulled out of time by the Collector" Thor and not "real-time" Thor?

I have this between Thor #266-267 along with a few other appearances where Thor is actually on Earth. So there shouldn't be a need for the Collector's trick.

I hadn't realized you put any "Thor on Earth" stories prior to the end of the Korvac saga.

His dialog in #170 really makes it sound like he hasn't visited the mansion or seen the other Avengers in quite a while, though.

I'm shocked, shocked to discover that Roy Thomas would do a What If story that used random little known characters from before the Silver Age.

"Unfortunately the writing isn't very good. Neither is the art." Actually, the art is terrible. The Watcher example just below that comment is simply awful, but yet, not nearly as bad as the drawing of Ike.

So, let me get this straight... Iron Man built a Reed Richards-style Bridge in the 70s (or, whenever, accounting for the sliding timeline), then promptly forgot about it when he couldn't weaponize it. Reed Richards built a bridge years later and became obsessed with it since he wanted to solve everything. That pretty much says all you need to know about the differences between the two characters right there.

In the panel where Jimmy Woo gets knocked into some trash cans by a biker gang, you can see magazines titled "Paragon" and "Alter Ego", which were fanzines put out by Bill Black and Roy Thomas.