MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION

Marvel Triple Action was a reprint title from the 1970's, reprinting older Avengers issues (after the first four issues were devoted to Fantastic Four reprints). For us kids who were growing up at the time, older comics were nearly impossible to get (for those of us in the boondocks, anyway), and MTA provided us with some fantastic Avengers stories that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford. By the time I was reading it, the book was reprinting stories from the era when the Avengers consisted of Captain America, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver - a weak lineup, it seemed to me, but the stories were fantastic. Don Heck's art lended itself to dynamic figures, manic action, and fantastic machinery; Roy Thomas was fresh and creative and had a definite vision of super-heroic stories that was a perfect complement to what his mentor Stan Lee had been doing. As time wore on, later issues of the Avengers comic were reprinted. I got to read about the introduction of such characters as Ultron - whom I had always been intrigued with since Fantastic Four #150 - and his creation The Vision, a favorite superhero of mine and some schoolmates. Like Marvel Tales with the Spider-man stories and Marvel's Greatest Comics with Fantastic Four issues, MTA provided kids of the 1970's with beautiful, full-color reprints of classic Silver Age stories that we'd previously only heard about, and all for the same cover price as our regular comics. Even in this day of deluxe Marvel Masterworks and DC Archives, nothing beat the thrill of being able to go to the local comics dealer and pick up classic stories, month after month. Of course, it would help if I could be twelve years old again.