Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Vol. 4 - The Sign Of The Serpent Romero Cover

by Stan Lee

Genres: Graphic Novels

216 pages, Paperback

Published August 6, 2024

About the author

Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber) was an American writer, editor, creator of comic book superheroes, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.

With several artist co-creators, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor as a superhero, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, The Inhumans, and many other characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. He subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

Reviews

[Tobin Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, this was mostly more of the same, but with some interesting differences. The first was, Roy Thomas took over the scripting duties about halfway through and, while he was continuing to ape Stan Lee's style, the characters were beginning to mature a bit. Yes, there was still the bickering, but it wasn't quite as overblown as it used to be.

But, for me, the eye-openers were two Stan Lee issues, specifically issues 32 (The Sign of the Serpent) and 33 (To Smash a Serpent). These would have hit the spinner racks around September and October of 1966, so just under 60 years ago.

And yet, Stan saw the future.

I can't tell you the shock I experienced when I read some of the panels. I even handed them off to my wife and, with no context, just said, "read this" and her comment was, "wow, really?"





Replace the green serpent suits with ICE outfits... adjust some of the dialogue from "serpent" and "serpent's robes" to "MAGA" and "MAGA hat" and... well, here we are.

What was a terrifying villain in America 60 years ago... is now the rule of the land.

Terrifying, isn't it?

[Gary Sassaman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite era of Avengers comics, this volume reprints issues #31 through #40, all with art by Don Heck, who also inks some of the stories. Heck is better with a good inker, and he has both Frank Giacoia (good!) and George Bell (bad!) in this volume. There’s a bit too much emphasis in these stories on Goliath, who used to be Giant Man, who used to be Ant-Man. Yep, Goliath is a much better concept and the costume is nice, but he’s just a big strong guy with a lot of angst. With issue #35, Roy Thomas takes over the scripting and somehow manages to be even more wordy than Stan Lee. Thomas would quickly make Avengers his own, and write it for over 70 issues, really hitting his stride with his collaborations with John and Sal Buscema and Neal Adams. Unfortunately, this isn’t those stories, but hey … they’re a’coming!

[寿理 宮本 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've already been negatively influenced against picking up "cape comics" by someone who pointed out that her husband—as a FAN—has to sit with a wiki open while reading in order to keep track of what's going on in the series. So me coming in to a random Avengers title, not even at volume 1, didn't give me high hopes. I had to pick from the free library in order to have space to leave my donations, though, so I took a shot.

Nope, out the gate, the comic is both extremely wordy and deals with things I have no idea what's going on. Even having watched many of the Marvel movies doesn't help, since they streamlined and/or changed stories to fit the limitations of the movie format. I can't get more than a few pages before having completely forgotten whatever it was I just read, since I have no frame of reference for where these events fit into some larger scheme of things.

Review of "meh" accordingly based on it's PROBABLY okay but I can't tell.

[Jamie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this book a go, but really couldn’t get into it. Just very boring and it’s not really the Avengers team I want to read (missing Iron man, Hulk, Thor etc.).
Of the 4 volumes, I’d say the 2nd is the strongest and this one is the worst. Hopefully other people enjoy it more than I did, but it felt like a waste of time - so I stopped reading after 2-3 issues.