Avengers: Citizen Kang

Avengers (1963) #Annual #21

by Roy Thomas, Geof Isherwood (Illustrator), Herb Trimpe (Illustrator)

In the unassuming town of Timely, Wisconsin, the Vision has disappeared, and it's up to the Fantastic Four and the Avengers to save him! But Timely is connected to Kang's city of Chronopolis, which spans the entire history of the Earth and is guarded by the deadliest warrior's of every age, the Anachronauts! Can the Avengers and the Fantastic Four stop battling each other long enough to defeat Kang and the conniving Terminatrix? Guest-starring Gilgamesh and Dr. Druid! Collecting: Captain America Annual #11, Thor Annual #17, Fantastic Four Annual #25, Avengers Annual #2

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 2011

About the author

Roy Thomas was the FIRST Editor-in-Chief at Marvel--After Stan Lee stepped down from the position. Roy is a longtime comic book writer and editor. Thomas has written comics for Archie, Charlton, DC, Heroic Publishing, Marvel, and Topps over the years. Thomas currently edits the fanzine Alter Ego for Twomorrow's Publishing. He was Editor for Marvel comics from 1972-1974. He wrote for several titles at Marvel, such as Avengers, Thor, Invaders, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and notably Conan the Barbarian. Thomas is also known for his championing of Golden Age comic-book heroes — particularly the 1940s superhero team the Justice Society of America — and for lengthy writing stints on Marvel's X-Men and Avengers, and DC Comics' All-Star Squadron, among other titles.

Also a legendary creator. Creations include Wolverine, Carol Danvers, Ghost Rider, Vision, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Valkyrie, Morbius, Doc Samson, and Ultron. Roy has also worked for Archie, Charlton, and DC among others over the years.

Reviews

[Will Cooper · Rating 1 out of 5]

Consists of 4 annuals with this breakdown:
Main story
Top ten villains
Random story
Kang’s history

The first two “main” stories have nothing to do with anything and are very boring. The third one has the Avengers and FF fight for NO REASON. The last ends quickly with no stakes.

Top ten villains is a neat idea, but not amazing.

Each random story I skipped because they were characters I didn’t care about doing things I didn’t care about. And, good grief, the Avengers annual was just an excuse to draw two scantily clad women “fight...?”

Kang’s history starts off interesting and then quickly becomes one of the most convoluted things I have ever read.

Skip this.

[Kris Shaw · Rating 2 out of 5]

The '90s...sigh. (Shakes head.) What were the artists of the day thinking? Did they see the works of Neal Adams, Russ Heath, Steve Ditko, etc., and think Let's do the opposite, because those guys don't know how to draw! The artwork is in this book is atrocious. Lots of Liefeld inspired open mouthed facial expressions. Ridiculously hyper-muscled heroes. Hideous costume designs. Women with boobs bigger than their head. The worst offender is Herb Trimpe because of his defection from his once classic Marvel “house” style of artwork to this dreck. He knows how to draw and chose to draw like this. Larry Alexander's artwork on the Captain America Annual is the only one that didn't make cringe in the book.

The hand lettering in these issues is pretty abysmal. Lettering seemed to go to the crapper in '90s comics. Again, I have no idea why people made these artistic choices and, worse still, why fandom embraced them at the time. I would have gotten torches and pitchforks and stormed Marvel's offices.

The story in and of itself isn't bad, as it was a Roy Thomas spearheaded continuity drenched undertaking. There is some clunkiness and dated aspects to the writing here and there, but it has a decent plot. The nuances of Kang and time travel are mind boggling. There was a point in time where I thought that I had a grip on it, but as time goes on it has become increasingly convoluted. I will sit down and read all of these Kang appearances in order of publication some day and hash it all out.

[Rocky Sunico · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Citizen Kang story arc is one of those weird projects that involved one big story divided across several annual issues of related titles. It was a pattern that was used across different groups of comics and this was the Avengers-related one - although it involved the Avengers, Thor, Captain America, and Fantastic Four comics in this case.

And hooray, it's a big adventure involving Kang the Conquerer again! And I do love a Kang story.

This one had a rather subtle build-up to it, which makes sense since they had different creative teams handling different parts of the story. Things don't really start coming together until the latter half of this 4-part crossover, but from that point, it does get a little exciting if a little messy. This is still a 90s-era comic story after all and there was a tendency to throw things together into a blender to see what would come out.

But this story is still notable since it includes the proper introduction of Kang's Chronopolis and the crazy character of Nebula, but not the Nebula we know from like the Thanos books. Again, this was the 90s and it made more sense then. But you have to love this as a product of its time.

[Raymond Paquette · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice retelling of Kang's life and a good follow up to the story of Nebula in the Avengers and Fantastic Four but not a story I can read over and over. Once was enough to enjoy it.

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

This thing was all over the place. Some parts were good but there were so many that were basically garbage.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I remembered these single issues from when I was younger but after reading the whole collection together I realized that what I remembered were just the covers. Marvel did this type of story many times during the 90s. The idea of connecting several annuals into one big story. Here we’re given a head-scratching story involving Kang. Kang stories can always confuse because of the constant time paradoxes but this was is particularly confusing. The dialogue is what you’d expect from the time period and the art is the same. For pure nostalgic reasons I enjoyed this but if you’re looking for a good book you might want to skip this.

[Devero · Rating 2 out of 5]

Il volume raccoglie gli annual interessati dal crossover Citizen Kang. La storia soffre di una certa carenza di costruzione e motivazioni, ma soprattutto di pessimi disegni. Eppure l'idea alla base non era male, ma doveva essere sviluppata meglio.