The Avengers #6
Avengers #6 (July 1964) is the foundational villain-team issue of Marvel's Silver Age, delivering the first full appearance and formal naming of Baron Heinrich Zemo alongside the debut of the Masters of Evil — a concept that would reverberate through Marvel continuity for decades and spawn multiple successor rosters. By pitting a mirror-image villain collective directly against the Avengers, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby established a narrative template — the evil counterpart team assembled from heroes' individual enemies — that became one of the most durable structural devices in superhero comics. The issue also folds in the wartime WWII backstory of Captain America's feud with Zemo, giving the still-new Silver Age Cap emotional depth and a personal vendetta that would pay off in Avengers #15 with Zemo's death. Thematically, it marks the moment the Avengers series crystallized its own distinct mythology, separate from its members' solo books, by creating a shared rogues' gallery rather than borrowing any single antagonist.
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Written and edited by Stan Lee with pencils by Jack Kirby and inks by Chic Stone, the issue went on sale May 5, 1964, carrying a July 1964 cover date — the last issue the series would publish on a bimonthly schedule before shifting to monthly. Kirby remained on the title through issue #8, after which Don Heck took over penciling duties. Baron Zemo had been glimpsed unnamed in a flashback two issues earlier in Avengers #4, but it was here and simultaneously in Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #8 (also written by Lee) that the character was identified by name as Heinrich Zemo — a retroactive construction that threaded the villain directly into Captain America's WWII history just issues after Cap's Silver Age reintroduction.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First full appearance and first naming of Baron Heinrich Zemo (the 12th Baron Zemo), created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; he had made only an unnamed flashback cameo in Avengers #4.
- First appearance of the Masters of Evil as a team, consisting of Baron Zemo, the Melter (Bruno Horgan), Radioactive Man (Chen Lu), and the Black Knight (Nathan Garrett) — each chosen as a direct counterpart to an individual Avenger.
- The Black Knight (Nathan Garrett) makes his second overall appearance here, having debuted in Tales to Astonish #52 (Feb. 1964); this issue marks his first team affiliation.
- Issue is the last in the series' bimonthly publication schedule; beginning with the following issue the title shifted to monthly.
- The story establishes that Zemo's hood was permanently bonded to his face by his own Adhesive X during a WWII confrontation with Captain America — the body-horror origin detail that defined the character throughout his Silver Age run.
- Paste-Pot Pete (Peter Petruski) appears as an unlikely Avengers ally, providing the solvent to counter Adhesive X in exchange for consideration on his prison sentence — a notably morally ambiguous plot device for 1964.
- The story has been reprinted extensively, including in Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Vol. 1 (1988 and multiple later editions), the Avengers Omnibus Vol. 1 (2011), Avengers Epic Collection: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (2014), Avengers Classic #6 (2008), and True Believers: The Criminally Insane — Masters of Evil (2020).
- The events of this issue were revisited and dramatized in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #3 (2005), and the original Masters of Evil appeared in the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes animated episode 'Zemo and His Masters of Evil.'
Cast · 24 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Zemo forms the Masters of Evil to exact revenge against Captain America.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).