The Avengers #85
Avengers #85 (February 1971) marks the first appearance of the Squadron Supreme, the heroic alternate-universe team from Earth-712 that Roy Thomas deliberately designed as a point-for-point analogue of DC's Justice League of America — giving Marvel its own in-house 'Distinguished Competition' to revisit whenever writers wanted to explore that conceptual space. The issue also introduced the idea, foundational to decades of Marvel storytelling, that the Squadron Sinister (introduced in Avengers #69) had been modeled by the Grandmaster on a pre-existing team of genuine heroes from a parallel Earth, retroactively deepening both groups' continuity. That single creative decision planted the seed for Mark Gruenwald's celebrated 1985 twelve-issue limited series, which used the Squadron to deliver one of the medium's earliest sustained superhero deconstructions — a lineage that runs directly back to this issue. The cover itself became a minor piece of editorial lore: Marvel's own production department mistakenly blurbed it as a return of the Squadron Sinister, when in fact the Squad on the cover was the heroic Supreme team making its debut.
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Writer Roy Thomas scripted the issue with co-plotting credit later acknowledged to a young Len Wein — Wein went uncredited in the original printing, but Thomas named him as co-plotter in the introduction to Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Vol. 9. John Buscema handled interior pencils with Frank Giacoia on inks, and the cover was a collaboration between Buscema and veteran artist Bill Everett; Stan Lee edited. Thomas has stated in interviews that the Squadron concept grew out of conversations he had with Denny O'Neil about staging a secret unofficial crossover between Avengers and Justice League of America — Thomas executed his side with the villainous Squadron Sinister in Avengers #69–70, but O'Neil's editor Julie Schwartz shut down the JLA half before it ran, leaving Marvel alone in the field with these JLA-pastiche characters and eventually prompting Thomas to introduce a heroic mirror-team in this issue.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of the Squadron Supreme (Earth-712), the heroic Justice League pastiche team, cover-dated February 1971 (on-sale December 8, 1970).
- Written by Roy Thomas (plot) with Len Wein as uncredited co-plotter; penciled by John Buscema; inked by Frank Giacoia; cover by John Buscema and Bill Everett; edited by Stan Lee.
- Debut lineup of the Squadron Supreme in this issue consists of Nighthawk, Hawkeye (the 'Golden Archer' analogue), Lady Lark, American Eagle, and Tom Thumb — analogues of Batman, Green Arrow/Hawkeye, Black Canary, Hawkman, and the Atom respectively.
- Hyperion, Doctor Spectrum, and the Whizzer (Superman, Green Lantern, and Flash analogues) appear in cameo only in this issue; their full roles are expanded in the concluding part in Avengers #86.
- The story's mechanism — four Avengers (Vision, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Goliath/Clint Barton) accidentally shunted from Arkon's dimension into Earth-712 rather than their own Earth — introduced the concept of the Squadron Supreme's world, later designated Earth-712, as a distinct parallel universe in Marvel's multiverse.
- The cover of this issue mistakenly blurbed the appearance as a return of the Squadron Sinister (a known villain team from Avengers #69–70); it was actually the first appearance of the entirely separate heroic Squadron Supreme — an error confirmed across multiple sources as a Marvel production-department mix-up.
- The Squadron Supreme concept directly inspired Mark Gruenwald's landmark 1985–86 twelve-issue limited series Squadron Supreme, widely cited as one of the earliest long-form superhero genre deconstructions, predating DC's Watchmen.
- The issue has been collected in Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Vol. 9 and is included in the Avengers Epic Collection Vol. 5 (covering approximately Avengers #75–97).
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
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The Avengers are scattered after returning from Arkon’s dimension: Black Knight arrives at Stonehenge, Thor and Black Panther reach New York, and the others briefly experience a future Earth scorched by extreme heat before Scarlet Witch restores them to the present. When they regroup, they discover they are in an alternate reality and clash with Nighthawk and the Squadron Supreme, learning their satellite project could doom that world and fleeing to prevent the disaster.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).