The Avengers #200

Name: The Avengers #200
Brand: Marvel
Price: 89.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Oct 1980 · Marvel · 0.75 USD

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“The Child Is Father To...?”

★ 1st appearance — Marcus Immortus

About this Issue

Published as a double-sized Bronze Age milestone in October 1980, Avengers #200 is one of the most critically scrutinized anniversary issues in Marvel history — not for what it got right, but for what it got catastrophically wrong. The story removed Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel) from the Avengers roster under circumstances that fan-critic Carol A. Strickland immediately identified in her LoC #1 essay 'The Rape of Ms. Marvel' as depicting a non-consensual assault framed as romance — a critique that proved enduringly influential on how the industry reads and discusses the treatment of female characters. The issue's harm to the character proved so substantial that writer Chris Claremont, who had originally shaped Carol Danvers' solo voice, used Avengers Annual #10 (1981) the very next year to explicitly reframe the events as assault and restore Carol's agency and anger — making that Annual one of the earliest examples in mainstream superhero comics of a creative team formally correcting a predecessor's misogynist narrative. Together the two issues form a before-and-after case study in how Bronze Age editorial culture treated women heroes, and the controversy has only grown louder in the decades since, receiving renewed attention ahead of the 2019 Captain Marvel film.

In "The Child Is Father To...?", Ms. Marvel gives birth to a son named Marcus in a matter of days—only for him to rapidly mature into an adult, already displaying an uncanny talent for constructing intricate machinery. The mystery deepens as Marcus becomes obsessed with building a strange device, hinting at forces far beyond human understanding. George Pérez and Dan Green bring the emotional intensity and striking visuals to this pivotal issue, with cover art by Pérez and Terry Austin.

writer Shooter · writer Pérez · writer Layton · writer David Michelinie · artist George Pérez · artist, inker Dan Green · colorist Ben Sean · letterer John Costanza · cover George Pérez, Terry Austin

ComicBooks.com Value

Our Model is In Beta

Raw (Fine) $7

CGC 9.8 · 235 in census $159

CGC 9.6 · 211 in census $71*

CGC 9.4 · 109 in census $51*

CGC 9.2 · 54 in census $42

CGC 9.0 · 31 in census $32*

CGC 8.5 · 30 in census $26*

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CGC 8.0 · 35 in census $22*

CGC 7.5 · 11 in census $20*

CGC 7.0 · 14 in census $20*

CGC 6.5 · 7 in census $20*

CGC 6.0 · 8 in census $20*

CGC 5.5 · 5 in census $20*

CGC 5.0 · 3 in census $20*

CGC 4.5 · 1 in census $20*

CGC 4.0 none in existence

CGC 3.5 · 2 in census $20*

* estimate — limited direct-sales data at this grade

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History

The issue's deeply troubled genesis began several issues earlier, when writer David Michelinie planted the seed of Carol's mysterious pregnancy in Avengers #197. The original plan, corroborated by both Michelinie in interviews and by Mark Gruenwald in a 'Mark's Remarks' column, was for the Kree Supreme Intelligence to be revealed as the source of the pregnancy, creating a human-Kree hybrid — a concept that fit Carol's established Kree connections neatly. That plan was vetoed when a nearly identical hybrid-birth storyline appeared in What If? Vol. 1 #20 ('What If the Avengers Fought the Kree-Skrull War Without Rick Jones?'), forcing a last-minute, deadline-driven rewrite by committee. Michelinie has stated in interviews that 'a last minute alternative was hammered together' under extreme deadline pressure, which explains the unusual four-person plot credit shared by Jim Shooter, George Pérez, Bob Layton, and David Michelinie, with Michelinie writing the final script alone. In 2011, Shooter publicly called the finished product 'a travesty,' accepted editorial responsibility as Editor-in-Chief, but stated he had no memory of approving the specific story that reached print.

Trivia · 8 facts

Published October 1980 by Marvel Comics as a special double-sized (52-page) anniversary issue titled 'The Child is Father to...?' — a title drawn from William Wordsworth's poem 'My Heart Leaps Up.'
Plot credited to four people — Jim Shooter, George Pérez, Bob Layton, and David Michelinie — with script by Michelinie alone, pencil breakdowns by George Pérez, finishes by Dan Green, and a cover by Pérez and Terry Austin.
First and only appearance of Marcus Immortus (also called Marcus Danvers), the extradimensional son of longtime Avengers antagonist Immortus, who is both born from Carol Danvers and the agent of her assault — making him his own father in a deliberately paradoxical, Oedipal plot.
The issue ends with Ms. Marvel willingly departing to Limbo with Marcus — with no meaningful objection from the assembled Avengers — effectively removing Carol Danvers from the Marvel Universe for roughly one year until Avengers Annual #10 (1981).
Fan-critic Carol A. Strickland published 'The Rape of Ms. Marvel' in the fanzine LoC #1 in January 1980 (shortly after the issue shipped), which became one of the earliest and most cited critical essays on sexual violence in superhero comics and directly inspired Chris Claremont's Avengers Annual #10 response.
In Avengers Annual #10 (1981), Claremont formally retconned the story: Carol returns to Earth having been mentally manipulated throughout, confronts the Avengers for their complicity, and loses her powers permanently after an attack by Rogue — setting up Carol's Binary transformation and her years with the X-Men.
The original intended plot — Carol impregnated by the Supreme Intelligence to create a Kree-human hybrid — was scrapped because What If? Vol. 1 #20 had already published a similar concept, forcing the entire ending to be replaced under tight deadline constraints.
The issue has been collected in Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Volume Nineteen and in the Ms. Marvel Epic Collection: The Woman Who Fell to Earth, the latter pairing it directly with Avengers Annual #10 for context.