Avengers #16: Cap’s Kooky Quartet

With the new Avengers movie coming out at the end of the week, I feel obligated to talk about the super hero team. Avengers #16 is on of my favorite issues from the 1960s, as the team gets the infamously known as Cap’s Kooky Quartet.

Why? Because the Avengers lineup changes to Captain America leading four reformed villains as Marvel’s premier super hero team. You have Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver who were last seen running around as members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. And there’s Hawkeye, who debuted as a villain.

I like the way the story is framed around the original Avengers just being worn out and needing to move on. What the story stresses is how the new members of the team wanted to be Avengers. The best part of the story is the last few pages during the press conference with Captain America acknowledged that they have a checkered past and that isn’t a problem. Even better is the last page or so where Iron Man officially leaves the team and walks off. Powerful stuff.

X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men

It’s always amazing what you find when you clean up. I recently unearthed my VHS copy of the 1989 X-Men animated series pilot Pryde of the X-Men. When I rediscovered I owned this, I did the only natural thing: watched it.

I really liked the 1990s X-Men cartoon, but this was much better as far as animation and voice acting was concerned. The plot is pretty straight forward; Professor X has recruited Kitty Pryde to join the academy and unfortunately she winds up being a distraction that lets Magneto steal the mutant finding computer Cerebro. This really upsets Wolverine, who for some reason has an Australian accent. It’s up to the X-Men to stop Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

As a longtime Dazzler fan, I was super happy to see her in this cartoon. They actually did a good job introducing all the primary X-Men and most of the villains, even finding a way to stick in Kitty’s dragon pet/friend Lockheed into the story. Ultimately, this pilot didn’t get picked up. But it was adapted by Konami into an arcade game that is pretty sweet.

Pryde of the X-Men gets a pretty mixed response online for being light on both story and action, and for its weird hodge-podging of characters. So is it worth watching? I guess so, especially if you are an X-Men fan or you enjoy the Marvel/Sunbow style of animation from the 1980s.