Wyman’s dead villains differ from the others by more resembling zombies. Wyman’s art that’s screamingly obvious from the far poorer looking pages he doesn’t ink. Inker Tom Palmer brings a professional gloss in tidying up M.C. Beyond that, abandon all hope all ye who begin reading. Len Kaminski’s turn with the dead has just the single redeeming aspect of transforming old villain the Grim Reaper into something more befitting the name. John Romita Jr inked by Bill Sienkiewicz and Jackson Guice inked by Kevin Nowlan stand out. Better still is that some of the art is a real treat. His dialogue never convinces either, but the ending is imaginative. DeFalco matches individual Avengers against well chosen foes, but when Thor dies in the opening encounter it rather destroys any tension as no headliner is going to be killed in an Avengers story. Tom DeFalco’s story originated in an annual and is broken into six page chapters, each illustrated by a different art team. How crap is that? Paul Ryan struggles to accommodate the vast cast in the art. The plot may have a point, but as the story continues in an issue not included here because it doesn’t feature dead opponents, anyone buying this book will be left wondering. Roy Thomas scripted some of Englehart’s story, and had a chance to reprise it when writing West Coast Avengers in the 1980s, with Wonder Man part of the team. Some elements anchor this to its era, but decent art from Sal Buscema, then Dave Cockrum, and an unpredictable plot mean this opener is the highlight. He included Wonder Man, who’d later do so and become an Avengers mainstay for several years from the late 1970s. Englehart must have searched long and hard through the back catalogue to discover enough of them who’d not somehow made a miraculous last minute death-defying recovery along the way. They’re presented in order of publication, and Steve Englehart introduced the idea in 1975, sending the Avengers to Limbo where Kang has gathered an undead crew in the hopes of killing the Avengers. Legion of the Unliving is quite the eccentrically varied collection of Avengers material, but it provides what’s promised on the cover as a series of Avengers teams find themselves facing enemies who’ve died.
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