Monday, January 18, 2021

The Avengers #2: The Yaffa edition

 Page Publications' The Avengers #2 was published c.March 1978:


The cover is modified and recoloured from Marvel Comics' The Avengers #4:

The contents:

Captain America Joins... The Avengers!, originally published in The Avengers #4, March 1964

The Invasion of the Lava Men!, originally published in The Avengers #5, May 1964

[The Mighty Avengers] Meet "The Masters of Evil!", originally published in The Avengers #6, July 1964

Captain America Joins... The Avengers! is reprinted complete and intact with minor alterations such as the omission of the job number on the splash page and the intrusion of Yaffa's page numbers.

The Invasion of the Lava Men! has been modified to reduce the page count by one page. This has been done by cropping the splash page and rearranging elements, and removing the first tier of the second page:


Compare to the first two pages of the story as reprinted in Essential Avengers Vol. 1, Third edition Second Printing 2011:


The Avengers Meet The Masters of Evil! has been similarly amended. Here's the cropped splash page with the 'new' title and elements omitted, and the third tier of the second page cropped:


Compare to the first two pages in the Essential Avengers Vol. 1:


This story also has another distinct modification - two pages are edited and merged into one page. Here's a pic of pp 13-14 as per Essential Avengers Vol. 1:


The Yaffa edition excises panels from both pages, crops the large panel of the second page and rearranges the text box so it looks like this:


This is the sort of surgery one would come to expect from Newton Comics but not so much from Yaffa. The Newton Comics reprints of Captain America Joins... The Avengers! and The Invasion of the Lava Men! are mostly intact, however "Masters of Evil!" has it's own Newtonese edits.

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