Celestial Madonna - Avengers 134

Avengers #134 (1974)

Doug: The covers have begun to suffer somewhat as Gil Kane took over those art chores. That, however, is nothing compared to what awaits us in the interiors of the last two issues. Sigh…

Karen: I’ve always thought Kane was very hit or miss. I’d agree that this cover is fairly pedestrian.

Sharon: I liked the way the Torch figure was drawn and I believe it's a reference to a Golden Age Torch image.  Kane imbued it with a nice fluidity. Iron Man’s mask looked distorted.

Doug: I felt the first two pages of this issue were wasted space. I wonder if the story was drawn and looking ahead to the end of both the Vision’s and Mantis’ origins the spacing wasn’t going to come out right so they went back and did the two-page recap.

The Kree/Cotati story continued to move along – no real complaints nor compliments at this time.

Karen: My only complaint is that they didn’t color the Kree correctly! They are shown as pink-skinned, but referred to as blue-skinned. This mistake was seen in the previous issue as well.

The idea of the pacifist Kree was another good one by Englehart. I’m sure the influence of Eastern religion and martial arts was a big factor in this. But it works in this story.

Doug: Wanda continues to creep me out. But I will say, if she’s going to creep me out while kicking Moondragon’s butt, then it’s all good.

Even though my next comment is really about FF Annual #4, I’d like to ask: Don’t you think Reed was callous when Ben asked if they weren’t going to bury the Original Human Torch’s body? I mean, at this point in Marvel continuity Reed and Ben were still considered WWII vets, so they’d have probably admired and been thankful for the Torch’s involvement against the Axis. That, coupled with Reeds’ constant quest for knowledge just screams to me that they should have taken the body with them. But, water under the bridge, I guess.

Karen: Yeah, it always seemed awfully cold of Reed to just leave the Torch’s body unceremoniously stashed in that cave. But then, this is the guy that would later shut down his own son’s brain, so anything goes.

Sharon: I think Reed’s reasoning was that the Torch’s body would not decompose, so why bury him in the ground? But once again Ben shows he’s the most compassionate of the FF.

For me, this issue was all over the place—too many strands of stories, most of which felt forced to me. The only sequence that seemed real to me was the Torch said goodbye to Toro and then went nova: very touching.

Doug: Englehart concludes the issue with a nice cliffhanger.