Sal Buscema

The sixth Avengers omnibus covers the conclusion of Englehart's run, centered on the Celestial Madonna storyline — one of the most ambitious Bronze Age Marvel narratives, weaving Mantis's mysterious origin through past, present, and future while simultaneously resolving the Swordsman's arc with his death in combat. Englehart used the Vision and the Scarlet Witch's relationship as the emotional spine of the era, building toward their eventual marriage in a standalone special that remains one of Marvel's most unusual romantic narratives.

Steve Englehart's Avengers run is the most politically sophisticated in the team's history — he used the book as a direct commentary on the Watergate era, with the Secret Empire storyline revealing a vast government conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of power, a conclusion so resonant with contemporary events that Marvel editorial forced Englehart to leave the outcome implicit. The Avengers-Defenders War gave way to something more psychologically complex: Englehart's Avengers were a team operating in a country whose institutions were actively corrupt.