I 爱情 Ya But You’re Strange – Rating the Avenger “Hunks” 

I Love Ya But You’re Strange – Rating the Avenger “Hunks”

by Brian Cronin | August 10, 2011 @ 11:56 PM | 58 Comments |

Every day this August I’ll be spotlighting strange but ultimately endearing comic stories, one a day (basically, we’re talking lots and lots of Silver Age comic books). Here is the archive of past installments of this feature.

Today we take a look at one of the dorkiest, but ultimately pretty endearing, back-up stories you’ll see – “Rate the Hunks!” by Mark Gruenwald, Amanda Conner and Christopher Ivy from Avengers West Coast Annual #4, where the Wasp and She-Hulk go through the male membership of the Avengers and assigns them number grades from 1 to 10.

The very fact that this is, well, a THING is bizarre. That said, the artwork is nice, Gruenwald captures the voices of Jan and Jen well and their answers make sense in character. So while it is a really weird story, I think in the end it is a fairly charming tale.

You seem to have posted the same page four times in a row…

I’m not really bothered by it, and the idea is kind of cute, but it seems to me to be in comically poor taste to give your supposedly dead former teammate a 7 after calling him a pretty boy with a lousy personality.

Well, if you recall, before Hercules died all he would do was give Wasp shit because he didn’t like following a woman as his leader, so that likely colors Jan’s perspective (and presumably readers of this comic still had that portrayal fresh in their minds, as well).

It’s interesting to note how Amanda’s distinctive style had yet to develop here. But talk about your word balloon overload.

I wasn’t pleased with this when I first read it at all. Poor Druid always got the shaft, even more so than Herc.

Wonder Man is not only rocking the mullet, but She-Hulk says he has one of the best haircuts of the team.

I think they did another one of these rating the women Avengers in another annual that summer. Ahhhhh summer annual crossovers; you seem so quaint by today’s standards.

is that She-Hulk giving Eros a 6? Didn’t the two of them get down in Slott’s second run on that book?

Just because you “get down” with someone doesn’t mean you give them a 10. Or higher than a 6 at times.

I remember that all the marvel annuals had stuff like this in them. It was pure filler and they were all craptacular. Does anyone remember what the main storyline of the annuals was that year. Im thinking it was Atlantis Attacks but its been a long time and My marvel geekiness has been all but burned away by the 90′s. There was so much bad in the 90′s that i’m having a hard time remembering the good. Peter david’s run on the Hulk stands out, but all I really remember from the 90′s was the collector covers and zero issues…I just took a huge detour from my original point but im sure that you will forgive my audacity.! thing I can honestly say about this particular story[ not much homophobia in the marvel bullpen ] What kind of place do you go to in your head to write a story about hunky dudes…when you are a dude yourself? he isnt exactly talking about kissing the tip of Thor’s hammer but uhhh really? maybe they can redo this story in the x annuals in the future and have Shatter star and rictor doing the reviews…ahhh diversity

The line about Doctor Druid seems a bit gratuitous. It really is just a hair away from “Y’know, I’m glad he’s dead!”

Matthew – To be fair, Druid deserved it. He basically was responsible for the fall of the Avengers in the mid-’80s!

On the other hand, I have to agree with someone else above in thinking it’s in pretty poor taste to be talking so flippantly about the recently KILLED Hercules (yes, Jen was right, he of course came back, but still…).

Also, love that they thought Wonder Man had the best hair. HE HAD A MULLET.

The bashing of Doctor Druid is not gratuituous. You must remember that he had recently betrayed the team and used mind control abilities to manipulate the Avengers in various ways. Would you be kind to a creepo that mind raped and betrayed you?

Randypan, that is why they’re writers. They’re supposed to be able to write from viewpoints other than their own. Yeah, I know many writers, good and bad ones, from Frank Miller to Franz Kafka, are able to write only the same type of stories…

i was going to say they left off hank and the hulk rating wise till i saw the last page explaining why . and can not beleive star fox got a high rating thought the writers would have had she hulk and jan rate him the same as druid.

I love Gruenwald’s writing, but I do distinctly remember him having some horrible hair of his own so that may explain it. Scroll down this link to his name to see his hair in 1990:

As much as we like to mock 1950s and 1960s weirdness in comics — not to mention some of the juvenilia of the 1940s — the long and not particularly distinguished history of 1990s Annual backup strips provides a lot of very strange or ill-conceived material.

Of course, this isn’t as bad as those bizarre Marvel Swimsuit Specials. Back at the time of their publication, couldn’t understand who they were meant for. Later, the Internet came along and things became terribly, horribly clear to all of us.

One thing I do miss was the old, incredibly in-jokey Marvel End-Of-Year recap magazine. It was usually produced as a mockup of a real-world news or gossip magazine, and not only had fake “interviews” and “articles” about major characters and storylines, but lots of easter egg gags like ads for Roxxon Oil or classified ads that were clearly vampires seeking victims and so forth. DC did a few mock interviews in its Secret Files, but the gimmick seems to have faded away, probably because it’s so “inside” and not very visual.

If they made a version of this rating the female Avengers, I’d REALLY like to see it. Pretty please?

“If they made a version of this rating the female Avengers, I’d REALLY like to see it. Pretty please? ”

Of course, this isn’t as bad as those bizarre Marvel Swimsuit Specials. Back at the time of their publication, couldn’t understand who they were meant for. Later, the Internet came along and things became terribly, horribly clear to all of us.

Oh man is this paragraph subtly brilliant. I’m already thinking of ways to appropriate that last sentence for other topics.

I’m afraid that the counterpart to this story was nothing salacious – it was just Captain America doing evaluations of the Avengers. Which is not nearly as odd (although it IS odd). Would you folks like to see me feature that, as well?

Boy, Gruenwald really didn’t like Dr. Druid.

I think he really didn’t like that version of Doctor Druid. When he was editing Avengers Spotlight, he had Roy and Dann Thomas do a makeover on Druid and then Gruenwald used him a decent amount in Captain America, even leading to Druid taking over Secret Defenders from Doctor Strange.

In time, Gruenwald really seemed determined to repair a lot of things about the post-Stern Avengers revamp. He edited the 1989 one-shot written by Dwayne McDuffie that halfway rehabilitated Stern’s Captain Marvel and did an infinitely better job of giving her scaled-back but workable powers after he’d had her lose all her powers in the earlier storyline.

A little over a year later, he also edited McDuffie’s work on Avengers Spotlight (as Brian notes), during which Monica made a brief return and gained powers even closer to her old ones as part of a “women Avengers vs. the Awesome Android” story. Gruenwald also worked her into his “Starblast” crossover, and there her original powers were fully restored as a plot point.

Dr druid taking over the secret Defenders from Dr Strange or Dr Strange seeing an opportunity to get out from under a lame concept? That is why he is the sorcerer supreme and Dr Druid looks like the guy sitting in a porn theatre.Oh my god was secret defenders bad. how is it that DC and marvel championed similar books that both sucked out loud before and after they changed the format from a mission impossible type book to a straight up team book. Dontcha miss the 90′s?

lso, love that they thought Wonder Man had the best hair. HE HAD A MULLET.

Looking at Jan’s hair there, I’m not surprised.

To answer randypan the goatboy’s question this was indeed Atlantis Attacks. I remember because that was the first year I really began buying (having my parents buy) comics. I loved that crossover when I was a kid even all the stupid backup stories.

I had no idea Amanda Conner was around back then.

I really like this. I wish they’d do fun back-ups like this nowadays.

Now that I think about it, isn’t it weird that they left off Hank McCoy?

Early Amanda Conner was great stuff. (And of course, she’s only gotten better with time.) I had a couple art classes with her and was always impressed by her work. I think the first regular/semi-regular assignments she got after this were Barbie and Gargoyles – very different from her work today!

Some of the back up shorts were pretty lame, but this one has a nice charm to it. I hadn’t seen it before (I didn’t buy the Atlantis Attacks! annuals – I was so tired of Marvel’s summer events taking over other story lines… and that was a whole legally-drinking person [i.e., 21 years] ago!)

That reminds me of some random issue from my youth where Tony Stark was walking down the street and you see a random female admirer thinking “He’s got to be 9.5…. maybe even 10!” It didn’t strike me until much later that it was probably a double entendre.

Re: The Beast, I read this at the time it came out and it only had people who were either current Avengers or were Avengers very recently. The Beast had spent some years as a New Defender and was a member of X-Factor for years already by the time of this story, so he wasn’t as associated with the Avengers world at the time.

The counterpart of this story was Cap rating Avengers? I would LOVE to see “Cap rates the babes” (or whatever the female version of “Hunks” was at the time – I know this story predated “hotties”).

“Mantis showed a little too much ankle for my taste, but at least she wore a skirt.”

People seem to be forgetting (or are too young to realize) that mullets weren’t always the punchline of haircuts (in fact, I’m not sure whether the term “mullet” had even entered the common consciousness at the time – see my previous shortcomings in recalling the vernacular timeline). Hell, Superman had a mullet for a while in the 90s. Of course nowadays people in their 30s will insist they never thought mullets were cool just like people in their 50s will pretend they never liked disco.

ZZZ, I think the problem here is that comics were a bit behind the times in fashion, as often seems to happen. Mullets were the height of cool in the 1980s, and by the 1990s their popularity was fading. That was just whet everybody from Superman to Wonder Man to Nightwing to Changeling started using them in comics.

I’m just very thankful that Taurean Blacque was referenced in a Marvel comic.

I remember this too from the Atlantis Attacks era of storylines that year. I was a kid then and I would be so excited to buy the summer annuals for the stories. I didn’t even have a comic book store near me at that time so I bought them at the grocery store. I think when Scarlet Witch resurrects the Serpent Set was one of the coolest moments ever! I can’t believe I have been following the Scarlet Witch storyline for over twenty years now and she is still a compelling character. I remember when Magneto had her house floating in space, when her kids turned out to be fragments of Master Pandemonium’s soul and all those other cool Byrne storylines. The art was amazing too. Now she just needs to bring back all the freaking mutants! Maybe she can transport them to a time when they were actually interesting too and not living in San Francisco. ugh. I miss the X-mansion and Xavier and Cerebro and the good old days where the X-men were actually like a family. Then Spider-man can actually go back to being married, the Red Hulk never existed and the Fantastic Four still had Human Torch.

I almost mentioned the line about Dr. Druid and his pot belly in comments on one of the recent postings about that era of Avengers, but I couldn’t remember where I had read it. Thanks for posting this! I think it was very funny, especially the Dr. Druid stuff. He was such an unappealing character! Was he in the book so 50 year old music teachers could identify with him or something? And he was scheming against them from the get-go anyway, trying to throw off Monica’s leadership when she was just starting out and all.

If they included Quicksilver from the Cap’s Kooky Quartet days they shouldn’t have left off Hank McCoy (though I guess the Avengers would only have known him from the blue fur days and never have seen him looking more human, X-Factor being more or less a secret), but Mar-Vell was off the list too, which sort of makes sense with him being long dead by that time. Still it might have been interesting to see how he rated.

Did they forget anyone else? Guardians of the Galaxy were Avengers for about 35 seconds in 1976 or so, so I’m willing to overlook them.

Wow this was sexist AND poorly drawn (what’s up with Wasp’s head??) but it’s also hilarious. I wish comics still had the sense of humor they did back in those days.

“Of course, this isn’t as bad as those bizarre Marvel Swimsuit Specials. Back at the time of their publication, couldn’t understand who they were meant for. Later, the Internet came along and things became terribly, horribly clear to all of us.”

If they included Quicksilver from the Cap’s Kooky Quartet days they shouldn’t have left off Hank McCoy (though I guess the Avengers would only have known him from the blue fur days and never have seen him looking more human, X-Factor being more or less a secret), but Mar-Vell was off the list too, which sort of makes sense with him being long dead by that time. Still it might have been interesting to see how he rated.

Did they forget anyone else? Guardians of the Galaxy were Avengers for about 35 seconds in 1976 or so, so I’m willing to overlook them.

Well, as honorary members like Mar-Vell and the Guardians go, there’s Two-Gun Kid. And they didn’t get into the West Coast Avengers like Rhodey, Moon Knight and the original Human Torch (which is a little weird since this appeared in an Avengers West Coast Annual). But yeah, if they even mentioned Swordsman, it’s downright bizarre that they forgot about Hank–who appeared elsewhere in the same comic!

Don’t they still do silly things like this on message boards?

Seems like a good, harmless bit of fun to me. Nothing to get worked up over. Although I can’t help but wonder what the reaction would have been to a parallel piece of Hawkeye and Iron Man rating the female Avengers.

yes this was loads of fun. Marvel Divas really should have featured Jan , Jen and maybe Tigra! loved Atlantis Attacks when it came out too – especially the Byrne drawn parts

Also, no one buys it when you say you think Clint is a six, Jen. We all know you want Hawkeye bad.

Sidenote: even as a straight guy I feel a lot of those ratings are pretty low. I guess superhero comics really do have unreasonable standards for attractiveness if US Agent is average to below average and Ms Marvel is “fat”.

“Of course, this isn’t as bad as those bizarre Marvel Swimsuit Specials. Back at the time of their publication, couldn’t understand who they were meant for. Later, the Internet came along and things became terribly, horribly clear to all of us.”

I’m shocked GRU gave Hawkeye a 7 with the hard on he had for the character. You can’t read that mini series that he wrote/drew without feeling the homo-eroticism

Kind of creepy, in an odd sort of way. And I can’t imagine they thought male readers would be interested in these ratings…maybe there was some sort of push to make the books more female friendly? Or, at least, what some people thought would be interesting to female readers?

Aww…. they cut the story off before Jennifer and Jan are joined by Carol and Natasha for a lingerie pillowfight….

I wonder why they left out Spider-Man? I know he had teamed up with the Avengers a lot, so I’m pretty sure at some point he got at least honorary membership before his actual membership in the 90′s, and then again from 2005 to now. Is he just too mysterious, since the Avengers didn’t know who he was back then?

Wasp worked along side Vision for years, and she still calls him a “toaster”? Damn – you’re a cold bitch, Janet.

I do like that Jen was still enamored with Herc. It was a running joke throughout “Sensational She-Hulk” that she would fantasize about him. They eventually got together not too long ago.

@matthew I think this annual came out the summer before Spider-Man first formally joined the team during the Nebula storyline. Before that he’d tried a couple of times but never quite made it.

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