In this feature, we examine some of the goofiest moments from a given stretch of comics. Here is a list of the moments featured so far.

Today we're looking at the first ten issues of the Avengers, written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby (pencils #1-8), Don Heck (pencils #9-10), Dick Ayers (inks #1, 8-10), Paul Reinman (inks #2-3, 5), George Roussos (inks #4) and Chic Stone (inks #6-7)

As always, this is all in good fun. I don't mean any of this as a serious criticism of the comics in question. Great comics often have goofy moments (Kirby/Lee's Fantastic Four is one of the best comic book runs of all-time and there were TONS of goofy stuff in those 100 plus issues!).

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Oh ye of little faith...

In #1, I love how quickly Rick Jones begins to doubt his pal, the Hulk...



"No way, no how! I have absolute faith in him...okay, actually, never mind, maybe he IS guilty."

She's no Lincoln's mother, but she has some good qualities...

In #2, we learn that Wasp has, essentially, ESP...



As you might expect, this is not brought up again.

Well, blow me down!

I might be off base and bellows are commonly found on circus grounds. I find that hard to believe, which makes the randomness of this scene from #1 amusing to me...



This likely would come in handy frequently...

At least Stan and Jack were equal opportunity providers when it came to inventing powers out of nowhere. In #10, Enchantress "gets away" by traveling through time!!





You would think that she would make usage of this skill more often, no?

10. The Daily Record-Ledger, your #1 source for exposition!

In #5, I love how the headline on the newspaper is designed to give as much exposition as possible...



I don't know if that newspaper knows how headlines work, exactly.

9. Let's do the space warp again!

Speaking of handy powers, you'd think Thor would use the ability to send people into space warps more often, as he does in this scene from #7...



8. Slightly off-balanced Cap...

One of the goofiest recurring bits in early issues of the Avengers was how much Cap would obsess over Bucky (and Rick Jones' similarity to Bucky). Here's a particularly goofy example of this trend...



7. Is that a new power for the Hulk?

In #3, the Hulk decides to break the laws of physics by stopping his upward momentum and turning it downward...



6. "It hurts whenever I do this." "Solution - don't do that."

I thought of that old joke when I saw the bit in #6 where Baron Zemo, distraught over spending decades with his mask glued to his head, first had it occur to him that maybe he could try to come up with something that would dissolve the Adhesive X!



You have to love how novel that idea is to him. "Huh, I could have come up with a way to get this mask unglued from my face?!"

Go to the next page for the top five!

5. Stan sure loved coming up with ways for people to communicate with each other...

In #3, Stan and Jack came up with yet another strange communication device, something they did a lot in early Marvel comics - this one allowing Iron Man to basically astral project himself wherever he chose.



That could cause some unsettling scenes when Iron Man just bursts into your bedroom.

4. Magnets...so dumb...

In #6, we get the goofy idea of replacing Captain America THROWING his shield and catching the ricochet with...magnets.

Yeuch.





I also love that his indestructible shield appears to be easily opened up to put circuitry in it (we dealt with this further here, as we looked at how Cap's shield's indestructibility was a late-arriving aspect of the shield).

3. "Why do I have to sit on the kiddie table?"

In #10, we get this absurd proclamation regarding the Wasp...





Besides the absurdity of Wasp somehow being on a different level than the rest of the team, as seen in moment #5, she sat in meetings with them just a few issues earlier!! So it was a dumb idea AND it was inconsistent with their own past plots!

2. Not a good time in Cap's history...

Cap freaking out about Bucky was bad enough, but as seen in #9, the dude was so freaked out that he started having hallucinations!!!





I love how that is never addressed again, or seen as any sort of real concern. "Eh, people hallucinate sometimes. What are you gonna do?"

1. We sure were lucky this robot showed up...

In #1, the Hulk decides to go undercover...



What's funny is that it would make some sense if the circus owners knew that the Hulk was, well, the Hulk, and they helped him come up with the disguise so that he could hide out and they could make some money off of him. That would make some sense. So, of course, that is quickly specifically ruled out...



I'd love to hear the thinking behind, "Wow, we sure are lucky this robot showed up out of nowhere to join us."

I also dig how, later in the issue, Hulk's elaborate disguise was wiped away and everyone realized that he was the Hulk...



So, the clown lips was all you needed to think he was not the Hulk? I guess that makes more sense than a pair of glasses and parting your hair slightly different convinces people you're someone else...