When Avengers Masterworks Vol. 5 arrived from Edward R. Hamilton, what a pleasure it was to see that great run of issues again, from 41 to 50, including the first annual reuniting all the characters who’d been on the team.
In tune with the fans, Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Don Heck created a run of crowd pleasers. The Red Guardian issue in particular (Avengers 43, Aug. 1967) is a series of delightful vignettes, whether I’m in my teens or my sixties — Quicksilver’s enthusiasm at learning to fly (something I wish they’d kept), Hawkeye in civvies showing the guys in the bar why it’s not wise to mess with a guy trained by Captain America, Cap lithely schooling Hercules, the mysterious Black Widow, and finally the revelation of the Red Guardian himself – a communist Anti-Captain America, a character who fed into comic book fans’ deep, longstanding need for mirror images and polar opposites.
A decade later, my old pal David Anthony Kraft would refine a memorable and sympathetic female Red Guardian during his long stint writing The Defenders.
And why the rather odd title of Color Him… The Red Guardian? It was a wink at Barbra Streisand’s seventh album Color Me Barbra, as well as the title of her 1966 CBS TV special (her first in color, when that was still a TV novelty).
Marvel Comics was all about topical references, another angle that Stan Lee used to set it apart from its Distinguished Competition.
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