There is a small, strange fact at the center of Avengers #6 that explains why one of Marvel’s earliest villains outlasted almost all of his contemporaries. Baron Heinrich Zemo cannot remove his mask. During the war, a confrontation with Captain America splashed him with his own Adhesive X, and the hood fused to his face. He has worn it every day since.
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby could have written a conqueror. Instead they wrote a man carrying a personal humiliation for two decades, and then handed him a team. The Masters of Evil — Zemo, the Black Knight, the Melter, the Radioactive Man — arrive in this issue as the first organized villain group assembled specifically to destroy the Avengers, and the structure proved so durable that Marvel has been rebuilding it ever since, most visibly as the Thunderbolts.
Kirby and Chic Stone deliver cover and interiors at the height of the studio’s early Avengers run, when the book still looked like it was being invented in real time. Paste-Pot Pete makes a cameo appearance, several years ahead of his reinvention as the Trapster.
This is a copy that photographs well and holds up in the hand. CGC 8.0, Very Fine, with off-white to white pages — page quality that has become increasingly uncommon on early Avengers issues, most of which were read hard by the kids who bought them off the rack for twelve cents. Certification number 1198619002. A Heritage Auctions lot sticker from a previous sale remains on the exterior of the holder’s reverse; it does not touch the book, and we have left it in place as part of the copy’s provenance rather than swapping the slab.
Ships in a Gemini graded-comic mailer with honeycomb kraft void fill, fully insured, within one business day of cleared payment.
There is a small, strange fact at the center of Avengers #6 that explains why one of Marvel’s earliest villains outlasted almost all of his contemporaries. Baron Heinrich Zemo cannot remove his mask. During the war, a confrontation with Captain America splashed him with his own Adhesive X, and the hood fused to his face. He has worn it every day since.
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby could have written a conqueror. Instead they wrote a man carrying a personal humiliation for two decades, and then handed him a team. The Masters of Evil — Zemo, the Black Knight, the Melter, the Radioactive Man — arrive in this issue as the first organized villain group assembled specifically to destroy the Avengers, and the structure proved so durable that Marvel has been rebuilding it ever since, most visibly as the Thunderbolts.
Kirby and Chic Stone deliver cover and interiors at the height of the studio’s early Avengers run, when the book still looked like it was being invented in real time. Paste-Pot Pete makes a cameo appearance, several years ahead of his reinvention as the Trapster.
This is a copy that photographs well and holds up in the hand. CGC 8.0, Very Fine, with off-white to white pages — page quality that has become increasingly uncommon on early Avengers issues, most of which were read hard by the kids who bought them off the rack for twelve cents. Certification number 1198619002. A Heritage Auctions lot sticker from a previous sale remains on the exterior of the holder’s reverse; it does not touch the book, and we have left it in place as part of the copy’s provenance rather than swapping the slab.
Ships in a Gemini graded-comic mailer with honeycomb kraft void fill, fully insured, within one business day of cleared payment.
