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| Copyright MARVEL COMICS. Look at their scowls - they look more like villains than heroes, wouldn't you say? |
Hail and welcome, fellow Crivvies. And now, if you're all safely strapped into the comfy chairs of our cosmic time-cube, we're going to return (presuming you were alive then) to the end of 1974, when The Avengers Annual for 1975 first went on sale all across the country. The premiere issue of the UK comic had appeared in September of '73, so this was undoubtedly the first Annual tied into its weekly namesake, and I recently obtained a replacement for my long-gone original book from the 'emporium' known as eBay.
I well-remember the Captain America story, which I associate with a shop called W. & R. Holmes where I first saw the book, and from where I presumably bought it back in the day. I recall lingering over the CA pages, and one glance at them now and I'm back in a shop that disappeared sometime in the late '70s, once again a mere teenage schoolboy - though one destined to leave the halls of academia in a few short months and join the working world. So much has changed since then, but everything is reset for a few brief moments when my eyes fall upon that cover and these Captain America pages. Ah, bliss!
I was reminded while re-reading the book that it was where I first learned that William Congreve's adage, oft-misquoted as "Music has charms to soothe the savage beast", should more properly be rendered "...soothe a savage breast". At some point in time, the word had morphed into 'beast' (perhaps to avoid the risk of embarrassing polite society by use of the word 'breast') and it had passed into common parlance, but here, in the book's first reprinted tale, writer Steve Englehart took the opportunity to put things right. I always remembered that, and if ever I heard someone misquote it down through the years (and it happened a few times), I was swift to correct them, pedant that I am.
Anyway, you'll have your own memories of this book and/or the tales presented within, so enjoy reliving them and reconnecting with your long-vanished youth. Is it just me, or were things better and brighter back then, with the present we now inhabit so far-off that we could scarcely imagine it? It seemed like centuries ahead of us at the time, but we somehow arrived here far too quickly, as if we slept through the journey. Not fair, is it?
Feel free to pitch in with any of your own memories surrounding this Annual, should you feel so inclined. (That's if you actually have any, of course.)
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| This page was an education for me |
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| Either Wanda's right leg is too short, or her left one is too long |
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| Not sure why they used this illo twice, but here's the first one |
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| At first I though the background was white and had browned over time, but Cap's costume and shield show it isn't so |
