Looking back on the Avengers/Defenders crossover battles from 1973--a conflict that collectively (and likely for TPB purposes) became better known as the Avengers Defenders War--it almost seems more accurate to label the fights we witnessed in those comics as skirmishes rather than knock-down drag-outs. With the exception of the event's climax, each issue was either devoted to a double-header of meetings between opponents which portioned off their page count, or there were other matters needing issue space to move the overall story along. As an example, the penultimate battle between the Hulk and Thor, as action-packed as it was, only took up seven pages in an issue of nineteen.
And yet, even the first of these skirmishes would have us believe that both teams are out for blood--that:
But since each of these teams has gone up against the deadliest of enemies without resorting to the use of lethal force--and with each battle only allocated a few pages--how serious are these matches likely to get? Well, you and I may get the impression that all of them boil down to relatively harmless hit-and-run encounters--but on the other hand, would we want to slug it out with someone in the middle of a live volcano?
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