PANEL THREE: Avengers fighting the Space Phantom (AVENGERS #2). CAPTION: We LIVED for the battles. We fought CROOKS and SUPER-VILLAINS and COMMIES and guys from OUTER SPACE... PANEL FOUR: X-Men fighting Vanisher from X-MEN #2. CAPTION: We thought it could go on FOREVER. CAPTION: We thought there was NOTHING that a SUPER-HERO couldn't handle. PAGE TEN: Full-page scene: Motorcade in Dallas, Jack Kennedy being shot to death. (Try for a frontview on this, I don't want to see the President's brains.) CAPTION: Wrong. PAGE ELEVEN: PANEL ONE: Peter Parker watching TV, astonished; Walter Cronkite on the screen; Aunt May in the room, looking on, drop-mouthed. CAPTION: How could something happen in DALLAS? PANEL TWO: Iron Man, Giant-Man, Thor, and Wasp watching Cronkite in Avengers H. Q., in degrees of astonishment. Wasp is crying. (Iron Man has his pointy mask. Remember, as Tony Stark, he undoubtedly HAS met Kennedy...though possibly the other Avengers have met him as well.) CAPTION: There weren't any super-heroes there to PROTECT him. PANEL THREE: The X-Men, in civilian garb, with Prof. Xavier in the School For Gifted Youngsters, in a darkened room, watching the TV (we don't see the screen). They're grim. As mutants, their existence isn't exactly one of hope. CAPTION: There weren't any super-villains there we NEEDED to protect him from. PANEL FOUR: Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby as Dallas cops take Oswald away. CAPTION: There wasn't any BATTLE. Just some SHOTS one day, and a shot a day LATER... PANEL FIVE: Spider-Man on rooftop, grieving;. wadded-up copy of DAILY BUGLE, with headline visible about Oswald's death, nearby. CAPTION: There wasn't anything we could DO. PAGE TWELVE: PANEL ONE: Avengers in submarine (Giant-Man, Wasp, Iron Man, Thor) looking at Captain America (unmasked, in suspended animation, his tattered uniform clearly showing the Cap suit beneath). CAPTION: A few months after that, as if in EXCHANGE, someone else came back from the DEAD. It was CAPTAIN AMERICA...the AVENGERS found him. CAPTION: Cops cried at the sight of him when he came back to New York. We thought he'd been gone for TEN years...since he was the ORIGINAL Cap, it turned out to be almost TWENTY. PANEL TWO: Daredevil, in his yellow-and-red suit, rolling on a barrel in a subway station toward the fleeing Fixer (DD #1). CAPTION: Then there was DAREDEVIL. Ol' Hornhead showed up about a month after Cap returned...he was a loner, pretty much like me. CAPTION: We worked together a few times. If I'd ever wanted a steady partner, DD would have been my FIRST CHOICE. PANEL THREE: Gulf of Tonkin, in Viet Nam: American ship being fired upon. (Don't show who's firing upon it, because it STILL isn't certain if it was enemy fire or not.) CAPTION: Am I BORING you kids yet? Well, here's something WITHOUT super-heroes. It happened that summer... CAPTION: Two U.S. destroyers in VIET NAM were fired upon...we're not sure by WHOM... CAPTION: We sunk two North Viet PT BOATS and bombed their BASES. PANEL FOUR: American helicopter landing soldiers in Viet Nam. CAPTION: President Johnson asked the Congress to give him power to escalate the war. They did...with maybe ONE dissenting vote. CAPTION: We were into the SIXTIES, kids. For REAL. PAGE THIRTEEN: PANEL ONE: Captain America, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and Quicksilver fighting the Commissar from AVENGERS #18. CAPTION: Do you STILL want to hear about super-heroes, kids? There weren't too many NEW ones after that. CAPTION: Three old SUPER-VILLAINS saw the light, became HEROES, and became the new AVENGERS team when most of the old guard LEFT. Yeah, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch... CAPTION: You didn't know they'd been BAD GUYS? Read your HISTORY BOOKS! PANEL TWO: Nick Fury, Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, and SHIELD attacking HYDRA in their h.q. (From STRANGE TALES). CAPTION: Then there was SHIELD...it wasn't a super-hero group, just some secret agency run by a W.W. II vet named NICK FURY. They fought a bunch of bad guys called HYDRA...and Hydra wore costumes, so maybe they were SUPER-VILLAINS, I dunno. CAPTION: Yeah, it WAS kind of like the Man From U.N.C.L.E. PANEL THREE: Firefight between Americans and Communists in Viet Nam. CAPTION: That was how we occupied our time. In the ‘Nam, they had OTHER ways of doing things... PAGE FOURTEEN: PANEL ONE: The 1965 Watts burning. CAPTION: Then came the FIRE. CAPTION: In WATTS, black men vented their frustration with a white system. CAPTION: They BURNED. PANEL TWO: Burning building, but we see a kid running past, and a guy behind him with a gun. CAPTION: The FIRE... PANEL THREE: Closeup shot of the hand and the gun going off. PANEL FOUR: Shot of the kid, now dead, lying on the ground, shops and houses burning all around. CAPTION: The Fire. PAGE FIFTEEN: PANEL ONE: Mayor John Lindsay's office. Captain America, Thor, Reed Richards, Thing, and Iron Man are listening to the Mayor's pronouncement. CAPTION: Watts was a LONG WAY from New York City. Nonetheless, Mayor Lindsay had some words for the heroes... LINDSAY: The government has asked that you NOT STEP IN down there. LINDSAY: They're having a hard enough time keeping things contained. And, like it or not... PANEL TWO: Lindsay closeup. LINDSAY: ...All SUPERHEROES currently in operation are WHITE. PANEL THREE: Thor hefting his hammer, Reed Richards behind him. THOR: This doth reek of MADNESS! With but a few strokes of MJOLNIR, I could summon STORM enow to DRENCH yon conflagration... REED RICHARDS: Yes, Thor, but not for LONG. REED RICHARDS: Mayor...what if the dissent spreads to OUR city? PANEL FOUR: Another shot of Lindsay and the heroes. MAYOR LINDSAY: If and when, Dr. Richards, we will rely on NEW YORK'S FINEST to handle things. MAYOR LINDSAY: You folks take care of the SUPER-VILLAINS...we'll take care of the CITY. PANEL FIVE: The heroes filing out of the office. THING: Ya don't suppose the PUPPET MASTER's gotten inta this clambake, do ya, Cap? CAPTAIN AMERICA: Nothing that SIMPLE, Ben... CAPTAIN AMERICA: Not nearly that simple. PAGE FIFTEEN: Montage of Marvel heroes and villains in combat from 1965-68. CAPTION: So we did our JOBS. We were INDEPENDENT of government, but we wanted their approval. CAPTION: There were always SUPER-VILLAINS to fight. So we fought them. CAPTION: We could save the WORLD, on a regular BASIS. CAPTION: But we couldn't much do anything to save AMERICA. CAPTION: It would have to save ITSELF. PAGE SIXTEEN: Overlay these panels on a background of a burning ghetto. PANEL ONE: War protest. Cops busting heads with billyclubs, students throwing bottles and rocks. PANEL TWO: Vietnam. Two soldiers loading wounded into helicopter, while other soldiers lay down covering fire to keep enemy away. PANEL THREE: Student in a college dorm, shirt off, rubber tubing around his upper arm, injecting himself with drugs. PANEL FOUR: Black militants and cops in a gun battle. CAPTION: And it wasn't doing too good at that. PAGE SIXTEEN: PANEL ONE: Divided into two sections. In one, Martin Luther King is shot thru window of his hotel room; in the other, Bobby Kennedy taking fatal shots. CAPTION: Killing was going on EVERYWHERE...but we only seemed to NOTICE when the victims had FAMILIAR NAMES. PANEL TWO: Protesters and cops facing off at the Democratic Convention in 1968 in Chicago. CAPTION: How could this be happening in AMERICA, we wondered? PANEL THREE: Revolutionaries running from a fire-bombed Bank of America. CAPTION: How long would there BE an America, we wondered? PANEL FOUR: Protesters setting an American flag on fire. CAPTION: How long would the FIRE burn? PANEL FIVE: Bigger panel of the American flag burning; no people visible.