Hooboy.

Hooboy.

Jul 20

Marvel has been publishing these great Marvel Universe codex-style books, but each one focuses on a particular decade – I picked up the 1970s issue to check it out. So much great stuff. Bios for favorites like The Punisher and Power Man, as well as bizarre rarieties, like Hellcow and Hypno-Hustler. Sooo cheesy good.

The book also takes a look at groups that existed in the 70s and covers their 70s exploits in broad terms – Power Man replaced The Thing in the Fantastic Four, so that’s covered. The exploding roster size of The Avengers was covered, for example. And The Lady Liberators were covered;

The short version can be found online, though I’d recommend the book account as it has more pictures. Here’s my super-short version. Amora the Enchantress appears as Valkyrie and convinces the women members of The Avengers to overthrow their male oppressors – they head off to where the male avengers are fighting the Masters of Evil. They stomp the Masters and then proceed to stomp the Avengers. The whole plot comes out when the Enchantress turns on the Liberators.

Once he wakes up from his thumping, Giant-man chides the women for dabbling in Women’s Lib. The Scarlett Witch retorts, “That’s what you think– male chauvinist pig! One of these days, the Liberators will stage a comeback– right, Jan?”

And they lived happily ever after, until Hank Pym beat Jan, and Wanda (the Scarlett Witch) marries a robot, has two imaginary kids, and goes insane. Sheesh. Nice try, Marvel – whatever it was you were trying. The background of the Valkyrie bears some repeating, but I’ll leave that for another day.