Savage Avengers #0: From the Bronze Age With Love

Savage Avengers has long been a sought-after series for me. I love to see how Marvel twists its established characters to fit a more savage and brutish setting and this issue doesn’t disappoint.

Retelling Uncanny X-Men issues 190 and 191, the story is of how evil from outside our universe pops in and messes with reality in a big way. My dad was kid when this issue first hit shelves, but I can remember seeing it in a X-Men compilation many years later and being spellbound by the idea of the Conan comics I used to “borrow” out of my uncles office containing characters from the X-Men, Spider-Man, and Avengers comics that I read so religiously in the early ’90’s. I had seen Stan Lee travel to the apocalyptic future and change characters into something more akin to cyber punk, I had seen Charles lead his mutants into the Savage Lands, I’d seen Arcade take the X-Men and put them in strange and new situations, but this was something different even from that.

These stories also serve a time capsule of sorts to a time when Marvel comics had very different views and very different agendas. Its important to look at them through the lens of time and see what the dialogue between characters tells us about the values and climate of the time. I know many new comic readers tend to discount older comics as “relics” with nothing of value to add but its always important to remember that this is the ground work for the stories we love today and without them the Marvel universe might be a very different place.

{Climbs off soap box and returns to review}

The story is well-written. Chris Claremont and Gary Duggan are veterans of their craft and stories like this are a chance for them to really flex their muscles. The art is very reminiscent of the old style, and it really gives you a lot of reference for how far the media has come. Fans of the new Savage Avengers and classic Marvel fans a like will find a lot to love about this particular issue.