West Coast Avengers #24 Cover by Al Milgrom (Marvel 1987)

I will always think of the West Coast Avengers as my Avengers in a way that a team or title can only be if you picked up the very first issue off the spinner rack and were immediately hooked. Sure I liked the original Avengers, but I felt like the title lacked the personality of the 80s-vintage Fantastic Four or Uncanny X-Men. Until the Hawkeye limited series, that is. And then came the West Coast Avengers!

From the four-issue limited series to the regular monthly title, I read the West Coast Avengers religiously for years and enjoyed every bit of it. The glitz and glamour of the West Coast, a whole new rogues gallery for the team to fight, the interpersonal dynamics of the team members, the fun rivalry with the East Coast Avengers: It was all good!

Al Milgrom’s art was a key part of my love for the West Coast Avengers. He was penciling Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man when I first started reading that comic during the epic saga of Spider-Man and the Black Cat vs. Dr. Octopus and the Owl. (Now that’s a run that needs to be collected in a trade paperback!) After that great Spider-Man run and his pencils on the Kitty Pryde and Wolverine limited series, I was a big fan of Al’s work!

I recently purchased this cover to West Coast Avengers #24 in a private sale by a collector who had owned it for the past six years. It’s a great cover featuring the whole team fighting Lucifer, the alien villain who was probably last seen in X-Men #20 when it was originally revealed how Professor Xavier lost the use of his legs. Blasts from the past and other obscure or off-beat foes were definitely one of the fun parts about the Wackos.

A nice and unexpected bonus on the back of this cover was a rough sketch by Al Milgrom of a potential alternate cover layout. It looks like Lucifer standing victorious in the foreground with the West Coast Avengers team defeated and in shackles lined up on either side. That would have been a cool cover as well, but the version above is certainly more dramatic and energetic, so it’s easy to see why it made the final cut.