The West Coast Avengers III

1-39

This Page: 25-39

Mockingbird had killed the Phantom Rider, and I totally supported that decision. But her husband, Hawkeye, was an Avenger, and Avengers don't kill. In the end it not only put their marriage on the rocks, it put their team on the rocks. Unique stuff for the Avengers...

...at a time when Marvel was consciously cutting back on "unique," a move that would drive out their big-name creators, lead the company to bankruptcy, and drag down the entire industry.

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IWritten by Tom DeFalco
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IHalf-written by Tom DeFalco

COMICS


NOTES:

There's a preview of this third year of the series in MARVEL AGE ANNUAL 3.

30 and 38 were fill-ins.

31: The problem with killing the Phantom Rider is, he reincarnates.

35: This is just a great cover! John Byrne had created a situation in which Doctor Doom copied his brain patterns into a child as a safeguard in case Doom was killed. I ran with that: since the kid thought exactly like Doom, he was Doom, which meant there were two Dooms after the first one failed to get killed. And each was a fanatic about killing the other, which was leading to a War of the Dooms that would envelop the world...

37-39: Mantis returned, but Marvel was embarked on its anti-creator crusade, so her dialogue was rewritten without my knowledge. This continued through the two remaining stories, until midway through #39, where her story, already written, was dumped completely and a whole different one substituted. I moved her to FANTASTIC FOUR but the crusade continued. It was a sad end for Mantis and the Swordsman, stars of the greatest AVENGERS epic ever, but I was able to rectify it later in AVENGERS CELESTIAL QUEST. Unfortunately, Marvel has never rectified itself, and now sells one-tenth of what these books sold.