Vengeance #1

History

Vengeance was conceived as a six-issue miniseries after Marvel found itself with a set of six stunning villain portraits painted by cover artist Gabriele Dell'Otto, and editor Tom Brennan then invited writer Joe Casey to build a story around those pre-existing images — an unusual inside-out creative process for mainstream superhero publishing. Casey publicly framed the series as an exploration of how a younger generation of Marvel villains might reconcile the morally contradictory legacy of predecessors like Magneto, and he confirmed in promotional interviews that the title deliberately evoked the late-1980s 'Acts of Vengeance' crossover. The book launched on July 6, 2011 — directly into one of the most crowded publishing months in recent Marvel history, competing simultaneously with the Fear Itself event, Spider-Man's 'Spider-Island,' the X-Men 'Schism,' and DC's New 52 relaunch — and Marvel itself was already calling it 'a sleeper hit' by the time the final issue was solicited.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of America Chavez (Miss America), a Latina teenager from the Utopian Parallel dimension, created by writer Joe Casey and artist Nick Dragotta — she would go on to headline Young Avengers (2013), A-Force, The Ultimates, and the 2022 film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (played by Xochitl Gomez).
• First appearance of Ultimate Nullifier (Mayne), a new character introduced as co-leader of the reconstituted Teen Brigade alongside America Chavez.
• First appearance of new versions of Mako and Radioactive Kid, among other newly-created characters debuting across the issue.
• Written by Joe Casey and pencilled by Nick Dragotta; cover painted by Gabriele Dell'Otto — each of the six issues in the miniseries featured a different Dell'Otto villain portrait as its primary cover, with a 1-for-15 retailer incentive variant cover by Mike Deodato for issue #1.
• The miniseries revived the Teen Brigade — a Marvel organization whose previous comics appearance had been in Incredible Hulk #265 — and placed them at the center of a story about the Young Masters of Evil, the Last Defenders, and a WWII-era Red Skull subplot.
• Story is set primarily three months after the Fear Itself event, with its opening page running concurrent to that crossover, situating the miniseries firmly within the post-Siege Marvel continuity.
• The complete six-issue run was collected in a hardcover trade paperback (ISBN 978-0785157632) featuring extras including editorial notes by Tom Brennan and a page of character designs by Dragotta.
• America Chavez's codename explicitly reclaims the 'Miss America' mantle previously held by Golden Age heroine Madeline Joyce, though no in-story connection between the two characters was established.

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Variants (2)