Avengers: West Coast Avengers—Sins of the Past

Comic Info

West Coast Avengers (1) #11

Reprints West Coast Avengers (1) #10-16, Annual #1, and Avengers (1) Annual #15 (July 1986-January 1987).  As the West Coast Avengers continue to try to fill out their roster, they find themselves in battle with Graviton and a team of villains bent on ruling the world.  The Avengers find themselves accused of treason by a former member and must root out the turncoat.  Tigra must make a decision about her future as an Avenger and as a superhero as the final showdown with Master Pandemonium occurs.

Written by Steve Englehart, Danny Figeroth, and Mark Bright, Avengers: West Coast Avengers—Sins of the Past is a Marvel Comics superhero comic book collection.  Following Avengers:  West Coast Avengers—Family Ties, the collection features art by Al Milgrom, Steve Ditko, and Mark Bright.  Issues in the collection were also collected as part of Avengers:  West Coast Avengers Omnibus—Volume 1.

The West Coast Avengers were my Avengers when I started out.  The team had just formed, and I distinctly remember debating buying the limited series West Coast Avengers #1 off the rack at a local drugstore.  With nostalgia, it is fun to read West Coast Avengers, but it still holds up as solid “classic” comic book writing.

For modern readers, the comic might creep a bit.  There is a lot of soap opera angst when has been left behind over the years for fewer internal monologues and less relationship based storylines.  Here you have a lot of Tigra angst with her dealing with her aggressively problematic cat persona.  I am glad this storyline was resolved here because (even as a kid), I just wanted the characters to move on.

West Coast Avengers (1) #14

One of the more interesting aspects of the Tigra storyline and the collection is the inclusion of Patsy Walker who took over Tigra’s original costume while becoming Hellcat.  Their relationship has always been a bit tested and here, we get some real interaction between the two characters.  Unfortunately, readers also get the horrible Hellstorm costume, and the whole Daimon Hellstrom and Patsy marriage went south from there.

I’ve always found annuals a bit of a bore and this volume is saddled with two of them.  The two part Avengers/West Coast Avengers annual crossover once again paints the always questionable (and unbalanced) Quicksilver as the enemy.  It is rather long and entailed with the first part being the Avengers fighting accusations and Freedom Force and the second part fighting Quicksilver and Zodiac.  It isn’t bad, but it also doesn’t feel like it deserves as much time as it gets (it also seems like the Avengers could look at their former roster and pick Quicksilver out as a potential saboteur rather easily instead of spending the time looking at other former members).

Avengers:  West Coast Avengers—Sins of the Past is a so-so collection in a series that often read better than the Avengers title proper.  It is hard to look at this title unbiased since I love the team and the characters so much, but I also see how Avengers were still rather second tier to books like Uncanny X-Men and Amazing Spider-Man at this time.  Still, West Coast Avengers is a fun and different Avengers team with a lot of heart.  Avengers:  West Coast Avengers—Sins of the Past is followed by Avengers:  West Coast Avengers—Lost in Space-Time.

Related Links:

Avengers:  West Coast Avengers—Assemble

Avengers:  West Coast Avengers—Family Ties

Avengers:  West Coast Avengers—Lost in Space-Time