Avengers #289, "Heavy Metal Horde!"

To continue with the Great Comic book Heroes theme of robots I thought Avengers #289 would be a great issue to feature. In it they feature many of the greatest robotic villains to plague the Marvel Universe.

Reactivated by the Fixer, the Adaptoid, an android that has the ability to take on the powers of any being, takes on the identity of the Fixer and leaves him in it’s place. It gathers together Marvel’s greatest robots and assaults Hydobase, the home base of the Avengers.

This arc is the last one that Roger Stern worked on before leaving his celebrated 5 year run on the Avengers. Roger has said that he plotted the first two issues of this before being fired by Mark Grunwald over creative differences. Ralph Macchio finished the arc but was only ever credited as scripter on the series and yet I feel Roger's presence on this arc is strong and a fitting fair well to a long and glorious run.

John Buscema and Tom Palmer do their usual amazing job. Personally I think that John never did better work than what he and Tom did on this series. John’s pencils are so fluid and yet so strong and sure, while Tom’s inks perfectly compliment John’s pencils by bringing strong, dynamic and yet subtle and delicate inks to it. And they did an amazingly consistent job month after month, year after year maintaining that amazingly high level.