Was the ASM book referred to #226? You guys made it sound like a much older issue.

I've waited many many years to hear Icctrombone speak. I was not disappointed.

This was the push I needed to start reading these issues. I plan to start within the week and then listen to this podcast (I stopped after the Q&A session in order to avoid spoilers). Thanks for the inspiration!

I did almost the same thing. I got a little bit into the description of #211 before I decide to stop and read the issues. I've read very few of the Avengers from #201 to around #250, but over the past few years I've bought most of those issues. I've tried way too hard the past few years to delay reading classic comics until I have a bunch of consecutive issues to binge. Maybe I should back to the kid mode of reading comics even though I don't know what happened in the preceding issues.

It was interesting to hear from icctrombone. I usually agree with on comic-related posts, but not so much on other topics, so I didn't know what to expect. His enthusiasm and directness was a great addition to this episode.

As far as the content of #211-213, to me the storyline came across as forced. I don't know if there's supposed to be continuing mind control from Moondragon going on (not having read the issues that follow this), but a lot of the behavior seems inauthentic. Like in #211, I don't know if Beast is being more over the top than usual due to somehow being manipulating to annoy people and justify being written out, or if it's Shooter commenting that he dislikes how frivolous the Beast had become. Since his move to the Defenders came shortly thereafter, I wonder how much of the motive was to push him out of the Avengers and how much was to bring him to the Defenders.

To me, the decision by Captain America to pursue the court martial is really galling. It has echoes of the denoument of the Korvac Saga that I hate so much, where the Avengers are made out to be jerks for not realizing something that they would've had a right to be skeptical of. The fact that Gorn and Linnea speak another language and can't communicate with English speakers is a huge point of emphasis in the story. But Shooter (and in a sense Cap) fault Yellowjacket for not having the omniscence of the reader. It's really not clear at all that Linnea was willing to cease fighting. Given the communications barrier, seeking to de-escalate was a risky move by Cap, and reasonable minds could disagree and take Hank's position. 

Of course, #213 vindicates Cap's position by having Hank go off the deep end, striking Jan, triggering the robot, etc., but that's not known to Cap when he initiates the proceeding. I'm not sure what to make of Jan's portrayal. Earlier in the issue (before Hank hits her), she seems very self-effacing and appeasing. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be portraying her as a cowed, mentally abused spouse or if it's a retrograde portrayal of a female character than Shooter thinks is normal. If it's the former, then it's well-done. But given the way other women are dealt with in these issues (and since you guys mention Shooter didn't intend to make the one scene an intentional act of violence), I suspect it might be the latter.

I'm looking forward to parts 2 and 3. I'm missing 5 issues that would be covered in those parts, so maybe I'll get those.

I think Icc makes a good point here, and we discuss this some in the next couple episodes - the fact that some of what Shooter is writing feels like a reaction to the fallout from Avengers #200. 

As I said at the start of this episode, I think this is maybe the best written Avengers arc, especially in terms of character work. However, that comes with the big asterisk that the character work is based on Jim Shooter's versions of these characters, which don't always line up with the previously established characterizations. This is consistent with Shooter's work as a whole - he has his view of the characters and goes with it regardless of how they have been portrayed in the past. This isn't nearly as egregious as Secret Wars, where nobody remotely resembles the characters they have been in any other comic ever, but I do think the big (and for some, fatal) flaw of this arc is that he doesn't spend any time setting up this character shift. Just a few issues of groundwork would have made this all so much less jarring.

But Captain America in particular does act in character with the court martial - it's just that the character is the Jim Shooter version of Cap, as this is very much in line with the way Shooter wrote Cap during his first run in the Korvac Saga. There, he was busting Iron Man's butt all the time for not being a good leader. Shooter's Cap is first and foremost a soldier; he's exacting, demanding, and expects excellence not just from himself, but everyone around him. He expects military discipline. He does soften from this hardline stance over the course of this arc, and we see in #213 he's already second guessing himself, something he will do more of as things deteriorate. But while Cap's actions are jarring for me as well, it makes sense in the context of Shooter's take on Cap as a soldier. 

I do think that after this very abrupt and jarring start to the storyline, Shooter does some fantastic character work with the classic lineup, especially Jan, but also Cap and Iron Man. Hank too, but it's really Stern that delivers the Hank stuff at the end. Shooter's last issue, #224, is one of my absolute favorites, and it's really all character interaction. 

I’m sure that if CB and I properly dissected that run, we could have taken a few more hours. Oddly enough, I never much liked the YJ persona for Hank. It was my least favorite of his ID’s.

The Avengers were faced with an opponent that was much stronger than all of them combined. Once the fighting ceased, Hanks flub was a major error that could have led to a lot of extra carnage. I agree that maybe they should have not had a court marshal, but that's the direction the story had to take in order to create dramatic tension.  But the story indicates that no one expected the things that Hank said and did during the proceeding. They all wanted to let him off the hook. It was Hank at his worst and it made the story great.