The Complete Avengers: The Full Story of Britain's Smash Crime-Fighting Team!

In my dedicated and often fruitless search for the perfect Avengers reference guide, I have discovered that The Complete Avengers, the first ever reference book dedicated to The Avengers, stands alone as the closest to perfection you will find. The format, unlike The Avengers Files, is very reader friendly, breaking down each segement of The Avengers era, from the Steed-David Keel first season to The New Avengers, with an overview of the season followed by a complete episode review/synopsis guide. The overview of each segment details the characteristics of each of the main cast, and accounts important details of the seasons as they occurred. The episode guide is very easy to follow, lavishly illustrated with over 200 photos, albeit black & white. Unfortunately, no color pictures exist in this volume, therefore The Avengers Companion would be the book to recommend if you're looking for the best photos. Even the supposed flaw of The Complete Avengers should not really be considered a flaw at all. In critical reviews of this book, many people complain that the synopses of each episode vary with the finished product. Some differences are minor, while others alter entire plot twists, yet keeping the main plot resolutions true to the televised version. Rogers opted to give us the synopsis as it appeared in the script rather than the final televised version, perhaps showing great forsight, as most fans of The Avengers have seen the episodes, possibly own the DVD sets, having every story at their disposal to view at their leisure (Rogers in this case predicts the advent of VHS/DVD by taking the "script" route)... They know what happens in the televised final edit. If you know the story, why do you need to read it? In this regard, the episode variations are not mistakes, but how they were scripted. It is great to be able to read about how the episode was originally intended, so you can spot the differences between script and final version with ease. Besides, these synopses go into such great detail that often the only alterations are mere details, with the resolution remaining intact. The book concludes with an Avengers memorobilia guide. Unfortunately, since this book is 20 years old, this guide is two decades outdated. This is the only problem in The Complete Avengers, through no fault of its own. A victim of the passage of time. Perhaps Dave Rogers can write an updated version, since there has been much more memorobilia released in the last 20 years, not the least of which DVD sets, and trading cards.

Peters book covers all the material of The Avengers, his earlier book, and the New Avengers 1970s shows. The photographs are wonderful. There are textual errors in the Avengers Steed and Emma snopsis, story after story.Peters' excuse is that people would prefer the original scripts' not how the show was filmed. The wittiest book is Paul cornell's Avengers Dossier which rates each episode by: wit, kinkiness, champagne, fight scenes, suspense, direction. Peters' book is good but since I own most of the Rigg/MacNee videos I found his many errors jarring. Didn't the publisher care that the book, like Peters predecessor, is riddled with errors? What the Butler Saw-in that episode Steed closes jauntily with "The butler did it!" Peters eroneously says Emma says it. There are many other examples of wrong methods of death. Peters writes that Emma stabbed Cartney with a spear in A touch of Brimstone. Cartney causes his own death by cracking a whip at Emma,his whip curls around a walled item, yanking the secret passage open below him so that he falls to his death. Those are only two of many so the same errors may permeate the Cathy Gale/David Keel episodes as well.

This is a wonderful book for Avengerphiles. It has marvelous pictures as well as complete episode descriptions.

As a fan of the avengers who did not manage to see all the episodes, this book gives the most complete guide to all the seasons and stories that were screened. It has beautiful pictures and has been very thoroughly researched. It provides a lot of information such as how certain actors or characters became what they became on screen. What it lacks is some authors comments on how the individual episodes performed in the ratings. It would have been more complete if the author had commented on how good some of the individual episodes were