WEST COAST AVENGERS ANNUAL #2/AVENGERS ANNUAL #16 (1987): Lots of them die

Hawkeye cheats at sports. But he’s not as bad as Grandmaster, who kills a bunch of team members.

Collector arrives to tell the team that their deaths are due to Grandmaster and to offer them a path to ressurection.

The team members all fight each other (dead vs living) and try to get potions (or something, it’s pretty hard to follow), while Silver Surfer tracks down Death. But it turns out, it was all a trick–Grandmaster just wanted to lure Death into his clutches.

And that brings us to the Mark Gruenwald part of the story. I say that because he is famous for “fixing” (retconning) continuity. It seems there was a big error at the end of the Contest of Champions miniseries. Grandmaster actually won–and the writers just failed to tally the win/loss records correctly. So Mark Gruenwald rewrites history to fix the error and says Grandmaster lost intentionally.

Whatever.

The main point of all this is to see a bunch of heroes–alive and dead–all fighting each other. Which should be fun, but it’s drawn by Al Milgrom and written by Tom DeFalco. Actually, the Avengers Annual half has a SLEW of artists: Bob Hall, John Romita Jr., Keith Pollard, Marshall Rogers, Ron Frenz and Butch Guice. Which is kinda fun. Elevates the story from a D to a C.

There’s a bunch of dead guys.

The ironic twist at the end is that Hawkeye wins by cheating at a game against Grandmaster. And everyone dead (in West Coast Annual) is revived. Not the guys in the earlier picture like Mar-Vell, who are simply billed as a new version of the Legion of the Unliving.

If you’re into big fight jams, this is for you. If you prefer your stories to make sense, it’s probably not.

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