Broken Frontier

When I was six years old, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes died.

I remember it so clearly, it might have happened yesterday.  Sitting on my bedroom floor, flipping through the four-colored pages of a comic my dad bought at Piggly Wiggly, I saw the Avengers die.

The moment burned itself into my brain, branding me as a comic book junkie for the rest of my days.

It was a POW! moment.

If you’ve been reading and collecting comics for even a short while, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  Chances are you’ve come across your fair share of POW! moments yourself—instances when a few newsprint pages filled with static panels and word balloons send chills down your spine or set your heart to racing.

In short, the good stuff.

… Gwen Stacy’s heartbreaking fall …

…Reverend Stryker pointing an accusatory finger at Nightcrawler and snarling, “You dare call that … thing—human!??"

… The Skrulls honoring Captain Marvel at his deathbed …

… Phoenix opening Mastermind’s brain like a can of shaken soda …

… a powered-up Dr. Light trouncing ALL the Teen Titans …

These are the jaw-dropping scenes that hit the reader between the eyes with the force of a runaway semi.  The very best comics have such moments tap-dancing all over them, but even some of the worst comics ever published contain nuggets of greatness, like rays of sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds … or maybe bitter reminders of how good the book should have been.

But for most of us, the love of comics doesn’t end when we bag and board this Wednesday’s batch of floppies.  There are countless defining moments that set the casual reader apart from the diehard comic fan.

… Setting foot in your first comic book shop …

… Hitting a yard sale or a flea market and finding a grocery sack full of Master of Kung Fu for only 25 cents …

… Reading Preacher, or Hellblazer, or Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing for the first time… 

… Meeting your all-time favorite writer or artist at a convention and realizing he or she is an all-around nice person … or a total jerk …

…Sitting in a darkened movie theater as Superman or Batman or Spiderman appears on screen …

In this column, I’ll be spotlighting some of the best moments to grace comics both classic and current, good and bad, and I’ll examine a few of the defining moments that touch the lives of those hapless souls bitten by the comics fandom bug.  

Which brings me to death of the Avengers—an event that colored my views on comics and cemented itself in my gray matter for decades.

And it happened in the first comic book I remember reading.

My six-year-old mind couldn’t quite grasp the idea that these heroes, whom I knew primarily through the homespun adventures of my Mego action figures, were not only defeated, but dead, their bodies carted off by ghoulish, leering villains.  I was appalled, shocked, and terrified.  In all the years since—years filled with issues of House of Mystery and Ghosts and Tomb of Dracula—no comic book has ever frightened me more.  What chance would any superhero have if the Avengers could be slain so easily?

Except they didn’t die.

Avengers #154 kicked off a story pitting Captain America and crew against Attuma and a passel of conquest crazed Atlanteans.  Attuma’s ultimate weapon in his quest was a super-charged warrior called Tyrak.  Tyrak was one tough hombre, mean enough to take down Captain America, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Wasp, and Yellowjacket in short order, and he sported a pair of villainous bat-like ears and shades that would rival the Gargoyles the Terminator would wear years later.  He beat the snot out of the Avengers, and he did it all with a smile and scene-chewing zest.

But he didn’t kill them.

I misunderstood that part.

You see, in those early days, I didn’t so much read the comic as examine the art and scan the words.  So when Tyrak blasts the Scarlet Witch with sleep-spray, I figured he had poisoned and killed her.  When he seizes Yellowjacket and Wasp in his clawed hand, I figured he crushed the life from their tiny forms.  Of course, I could always count on Iron Man to conquer the bad guy.  After all, Iron Man was my favorite action figure.  And he wore indestructible armor, for Pete’s sake. 

But Tyrak punched right through Iron Man’s chest plate, shattering it like a red and gold eggshell, and as the armored Avenger toppled to the ground, the caption read:

“Without energy to animate its micro-miniaturized servo-motors, Iron Man’s armor abruptly goes—dead!”

But all I paid attention to was the “dead” part.

I’m pretty sure I gasped aloud.

Then, to make matters worse, Tyrak knocks a wall down on top of Captain America.  A wall.  In the space of four panels, America’s symbol of hope and freedom was flattened beneath tons of rubble.

I hated Tyrak.  Hated him worse than dentist visits, chores, and the playground bully rolled into one.  As far as I was concerned, this blue-skinned brute had murdered the Avengers.

In actuality, the storyline stretched over the course of several comics, but back then I didn’t have the luxury of hitting the comic shop for the subsequent issues.  And the spinning comic rack in the grocery store, as magical as it was, was unreliable.  Where Avengers sat one week, Richie Rich might wait the next.  So it was years before I got the whole story of the Attuma’s plan to kidnap the Avengers and brainwash them into attacking Namor. 

My only hope was to use my beloved action figures to retell the tale and to put my favorite heroes in the winner’s circle.  (I’m pretty sure the Hulk, Batman, and Superman joined Cap and Shellhead to assure the good guys won the day.)  Maybe that’s why I developed my interest in telling stories. 

But even after I’d rewritten comic history, the image of Tyrak ripping open Iron Man’s chestplate and mashing the Wasp and Yellowjacket in his clawed hand haunted me.  I know the whole story now, sure, and I relish some of the classic Marvel dialogue. 

“You may be stronger and faster,” Iron Man tells Tyrak as he cuts loose with a repulser blast, “but you haven’t got solar-powered armor—and I do!”

Or my personal favorite, from an irate Captain America:

“Mister, you can take your sea-chauvinism—and shove it right up your Sargasso!”

You tell him, Cap!

And eventually, the Avengers redeemed themselves, and the Vision and Wonder Man double drop-kicked Tyrak into oblivion.  But that doesn’t change the way I felt on that winter afternoon, sitting on the floor with my heart in my throat, crushed because the unthinkable had happened. 

The bad guys won.

And if the good guys could lose, I could never be sure what a simple turn of the page would bring. 

POW!

The first of many.