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Essential Avengers: Atlantis Attacks Part 2

1989

Geez, Set, why does mom let you have seven brides?

Anyway.

Last time in half-ish of Atlantis Attacks, the annual event: I covered the Silver Surfer, Iron Man, X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, Punisher, Spectacular Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Avengers annuals.

Silver Surfer accidentally resurrected the Deviant Priestlord Ghaur out in space. Ghaur returns to Earth and allies with Lemurian Llyra to reconstruct the Serpent Crown and summon Elder God Set.

As part of this plan, Ghaur makes an alliance with Attuma-controlled Atlantis and gets him to agree to attack the surface world to keep the heroes and military from interfering with the greater plan. An Atlantean force trying to sneak through the Panama Canal unfortunately runs into Iron Man and Namor who are dealing with Hydra narcotics schemes. Namor is on the Hydra ship when it blows up.

Ghaur hires the Serpent Society to retrieve several mystical artifacts in order to rebuild the Serpent Crown. Despite some body-switching shenanigans caused by the owner of one of those artifacts and the involvement of the X-Men, the Serpents technically succeed and construction of the crown begins.

Also as part of the plan, Ghaur frees Tyrannus from Abomination. Tyrannus goes on to free Viper from jail so they can collaborate on a scheme to use a drug addiction cure to turn people into snake people. The Abomination body goes on a rampage and is fought by Spider-Man and She-Hulk. She-Hulk gets knocked out in the fight and Ghaur marks her as one of the Brides of Set (collect all 7).

Punisher and Moon Knight wind up investigating the Save Our Society organization that's the front for the drug addiction cure that turns people into sneople. The heroes team up and shut down Viper's operation.

Spider-Man investigates another Save Our Society facility and discovers them turning people into sneople. But he gets brainwashed by Tyrannus' CHARISMA EYES. Dagger gets kidnapped and marked as another Bride of Set and Cloak gets forced to steal a mystic tome for Tyrannus. Tyrannus orders the sneople to kill Cloak but he's saved by a mysterious armored figure.

A wandering Daredevil is recruited by Dr Strange to shut down the main Save Our Society compound, out in the countryside. Tyrannus attempts to backstab Ghaur by summoning Set first but summons a different snake demon and gets eaten. Dr Strange cures all the sneople, turning them back into people. A brainwashed Spider-Man was in this and barked like a dog.

Attuma finally gets around to the titular Atlantis Attacks and sends four Atlantean armies to attack four locations in the US. The Avengers must everyone they can, split into four teams, and defeat all four of the armies. During the fighting, Ghaur marks Scarlet Witch as the third Bride of Set. Attuma has yet more forces available, though, and readies them to attack New York City.

Also, the Giant-Sized Serpent Crown has been created by Ghaur and Llyra, which will enable Set to manifest his essence on Earth.

A lot has happened but the seven-headed snake god isn't summoned yet and there's still the New Mutants, X-Factor, Web of Spider-Man, West Coast Avengers, Thor, and Fantastic Four annuals still to cover.

Will Atlantis Attack some more? Why wasn't this event given a name more representative of the story? Is anyone going to wear that Giant-Sized Serpent Crown?

Let's find out.

Here be MONSTERS!

So the New Mutants. They've lost some peeps since the last annual. And they're being watched by X-Factor now instead of Magneto.

Apparently they had an adventure recently where they found the Horn of Doom and squabbled with Namor about it.

And the Horn of Doom is what concerns this annual.

Lord Ghaur is a fervent New Mutants reader so he saw that adventure. He wants that horn and all he has to do is wait until Namor stops guarding it.

Which is accomplished when Namor is apparently blown up by Hyrda!

So Lord Ghaur sends Deviants Coal, String, and Spike to steal the Horn from Namorita, Namor's cousin.

Despite the help from New Atlantean Mutants Sharkskin, Undertow, and Eel, the Deviants get away with it. And because Lord Ghaur chose his trio of stooges for their superficial similarity to Sunspot, Warlock, and Wolfsane, Namorita and co go pick a fight with the New Mutants leaving Ghaur free to toot as he pleases.

Lord Ghaur isn't just a rare horn fancier, though.

Remember how Tyrannus said a sacrifice was needed to summon Set? Well, Lord Ghaur has decided to sacrifice Atlantis.

The real reason he made an alliance with Attuma and got him to send all his armies to attack the surface was so nobody would be left to defend Atlantis when he summoned a giant sea monstrosity that smashes the place up, kills a lot of the people, and poisons the waters around the city.

I suspect Ghaur also summoned the monster that ate one-quarter of the Atlantean army in the Avengers Annual.

Anyway, the New Mutants and Namorita's group Surf, manage to bury the monster in an undersea trench and the Horn of Doom gets broken in the chaos, but Lord Ghaur has the sacrifices he needed.

Huh. This event is more accurately called Atlantis Attacked, amirite?

X leads to X so the next annual is X-Factor.

I MUST GO DOWN TO THE SEA AGAIN...

The bunny on Attuma's head is really mad.

Do you think he learned that Atlantis got smashed while he was gone?

I wonder why he's blaming Jean.

The short answer is no. He doesn't seem to know yet and/or it hasn't happened yet. This part of Atlantis Attacks is focused on a different part of Ghaur's plan.

His plan to get his boy Set lots of brides.

The story starts with Marvel Girl Jean Grey in a trance and being yoinked through the air with a tractor beam.

Ghaur just has the technology to do that. That would have been useful to employ at several other points of this story but let's just ignore that.

Beast is clinging to her as she's yoinked and he manages to get her to disrupt the beam so both tumble into the ocean.

Attuma is in the area, attacking a water purification plant as part of his attack on the surface world and recognizes Jean as the hot girl who wouldn't give him the time in some other story. So he brings her back to his grotto and instructs his dudes to kill Beast.

Beast is saved by his former fellow Defender and Attuma's daughter Andromeda and they team up to go save Jean. Who they find being drowned by Attuma because she once again told him to fuck right off.

Beast takes Jean to the shore but she's still very drowned. Lord Ghaur projects his head to the area and tells Beast he's the dude that tried to tractor her earlier but also Jean's best shot at not dying.

Reluctantly, Beast stands by while Jean is zoomed away.

Andromeda stayed behind to challenge Attuma for leadership but got her ass kicked.

Lord Ghaur also takes her over Attuma's objections. Probably out of spite for Attuma trying to take Jean.

So Bride of Set count up to... She-Hulk, Dagger, Scarlet Witch, Marvel Girl, and Andromeda with Storm suggested as a possible target?

We've got five so far. I wonder how far from a full set of Brides of Set we are.

That's mostly what happens, overarching plot wise. Ghaur collects two brides, the Atlantis attacking continues, and Attuma hasn't heard about Atlantis Attacked yet.

And between the New Mutants Annual and this, the Deviants being Up To Something is becoming known to some of the heroes.

Next up is... WHY DO YOU NEED SO MANY BOOKS, SPIDER-MAN? FFS!

WARZONE: NEW YORK

"At last! It finally happens!"

Is that poking fun at how little Atlantis Attacking there was in this Atlantis Attacks event?

Bit late now that the Avengers Annual made a big deal about the Atlantis Attacking.

Ah well.

The Fantastic Five of Mr Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Ms Marvel the Sharon Ventura version, Human Torch, and non-powered Ben Grimm with no Thing exo-skeleton join forces with Spider-Man to fight off the Atlantis Attacks when Atlantis Attacks New York City.

Where did Atlantis get another whole army?

Attuma probably scraped together whoever they had. All those guys we saw swimming towards Avengers Island at the end of Avengers Annual were probably actually grouping to attack New York.

Some US soldiers comment that the Atlantis Attacks is pretty underwhelming (ha) because the military forces on the scene outnumber the Atlantean forces. Even no-powers Ben Grimm can contribute by just punching dudes.

Atlantis blew its load on the attacks in the Avengers Annual.

Then Attuma pulls out his trump card.

A VERY BIG SEA MONSTER.

Since this is a Spider-Man annual, the Fantastic Five get knocked out by the monster in various ways so Spider-Man can be the hero who figures out how to knock-out the Atlantean controlling the monster and then lure the monster out to sea.

While Invisible Woman is trying to rouse an unconscious Reed, Lord Ghaur shows up and abducts Sue to be one of the Brides of Set.

WE GOT SIX BRIDES!

Lord Ghaur also has his Lemurian allies blow Atlantis the fuck up.

I thought it was already destroyed by the big monster. The city trashed, the waters poisoned, and the people dead or scattered.

Did people come back just to get blown the fuck up?

This is the first time the event majorly steps on its own toes.

I thought it was clever how the villain plan had several different aspects so that different annuals could each progress the story in a different way without contradicting each other.

It doesn't help that blowing up Atlantis is an afterthought in an issue that is otherwise about Spider-Man (and the Fantastic Five) fighting an Atlantis Attacks of New York.

The New Mutants Annual focused on being just about Lord Ghaur's plan to destroy Atlantis using the Horn of Doom, hiding Deviant involvement and distracting its defenders by sending them after the New Mutants instead.

If he hadn't intervened in the battle to try to stop the New Mutants and Surf from stopping the monster, nobody would have known he was involved.

Here, a Lemurian ship blatantly blows up Atlantis.

Anyway, after Spider-Man leads away the monster, Attuma tries to rally his troops but then news breaks that Lemuria underwater nuked Atlantis.

The army is so demoralized that they flee back into the ocean and Attuma is so broken by how he was played by Ghaur that he doesn't resist as the heroes capture him.

So this issue: continues the Atlantis Attacks, secures another Bride of Set, gives Spider-Man yet more time in the spotlight that he apparently needed, blows up Atlantis again.

It also had a fun conceit where the narration was journalist Trish Fox covering the events and constantly yelling at her coworker Todd Tremaine for being the worst human being alive, I guess.

Time for more Avengers!

"Gather Now Ye 7 Brides!"

So seven brides total. Lord Ghaur got pretty much everyone but Storm by the last annual and he gets Storm between issues somehow in time for this.

He probably just yoinked her through the air like he did for Jean. Kinda makes him look like a fool chump for visiting in person all the other times.

Lord Ghaur discovers Dagger is blind, to his irritation. He specifically needs her powers so he can't just replace her.

He's also pissed because the plot has abruptly shifted. It turns out that the real sacrifice wasn't sending a monster to destroy Atlantis or nuking it. It would have been if the humans slaughtered the Atlanteans during their Attack.

If that's the case why did you blow up Atlantis at all? Why is it a sacrifice if you're not even the one who did the killing?

This is stupid.

This feels like destroying Atlantis twice. The event stepping on its own toes.

With the end approaching, all the plot threads that each annual was able to pursue independently has to come together and that's where clashes between what the various authors think the story is come into play.

But Lord Ghaur has a backup plan to summon Set even if destroying Atlantis twice over didn't count for some reason.

Over at the Avengers West Coast Compound, the Avengers are meeting here instead of at Avengers Island for some reason.

I'm telling you guys, enjoy the island while it lasts!

The meeting only has Captain America, Thor, the Vision, the Wasp, Wonder Man, Iron Man, Beast, Quasar, and special guest Sersi.

The rest of the Avengers are dealing with the Serpent Cult and giving any Atlantean Attacks stragglers a boot towards the ocean.

Vision reports that Scarlet Witch has been missing for eight hours and its a trend of superheroines being abducted. Thanks to Beast, they have a name and face to put to the abductions: Ghaur of the Deviants.

While Vision goes over the situation, Wonder Man glares at him and thinks about what an emotionless prick Vision is, not even sounding like he cares that his wife is missing.

Asshole! You're the one who refuses to help fix his emotions!

Anyway.

Since the Deviants are involved, Captain America asked Sersi to sit in on their meeting. Eternals are the best at punching Deviants.

The Thing show up. Although given what was said in the Web of Spider-Man Annual, this is Ben Grimm in a the Thing exo-skeleton.

Somehow, between annuals, Reed Richards learned that the Atlanteans were double crossed by the Lemurians and that the Atlantean army was supposed to be killed in the fighting against the surface dwellers, which would be a blood sacrifice that would summon Set.

So now that didn't happen, Reed is worried that the various missing superladies are a backup sacrifice.

As the god guy here, Thor exposits a little about Set. How he's an elder god even older than the Asgardians. How he's a real dick who is always causing problems or evolving snake people or making Serpent Crowns.

Thor even mentions that everything the heroes have done during this event will be moot unless Set is banished to the nether realms. And he suggests that he do that.

Alas, we're losing Thor for the rest of this issue. But only because he has to go punch Set in the face in his own annual.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, the Brides of Set have been sent on a scavenger hunt.

(Something that is pretty horrifying is that the Brides aren't brainwashed. They're aware of what they're doing, they hate what they're doing, and yet they are compelled to follow Ghaur's will.)

She-Hulk and Andromeda have been sent to the Altar of Neptune's Wrath. An ancient place of worship to Neptune until Atlanteans started worshipping Set instead and Neptune got mad and smote the place.

After Neptune got big mad, he left a big mad sea-beast to guard a fragment of Set's life force that was left behind.

She-Hulk finds the life force and starts to pry it from the altar but aggros the sea-beast.

Meanwhile, Jean Grey visits the Museum of Cultural Antiquities in Chicago and finagles her way into a tour of the vaults.

I think Ghaur gave her some Lemurian treasure to pass along to the museum as a donation so she would look like a big donor. Then she asks to make sure the security is up to snuff.

But after the curator opens up the vault, the Invisible Woman bonks him in the back of the head with an invisible sphere.

The two grab the lens of power from the vault and invisible take off past the guards.

Elsewhere meanwhile, She-Hulk fights the sea-beast and is spotted by a fishing boat. It makes an SOS and hearing about a green woman fighting a giant octopus is enough to get the Avengers assembled.

Iron Man flies from the Quinjet to blast at the sea-beast fruitlessly.

He also muses about how rough it is that he has to pretend not to be Tony Stark to the Avengers.

While still not really explaining why.

Iron Man electrocutes the sea-beast, which causes it to flail the tentacle grasping She-Hulk above the water. Iron Man activates underwater mode and goes underwater to offer to help She-Hulk and she punches him in the face.

Wonder Man flies out and punches the sea-beast, to not much effect.

Beast asks Sersi to use her transmutation powers to just end this fight but she says she can't. Trying to change something that big would be so much of a strain that it'd kill her.

Hello another thing that keeps Sersi's powers from just being the win button.

The problem with abilities that are so powerful that they either work or don't is that there's no middle ground so the character might just sit on their ass, not helping.

SERSI.

Anyway.

When one win button doesn't work, maybe another will.

Vision intangibles inside the sea-beast and lodges semi-tangible in its heart. Which knocks the monster the hell out.

Hopefully it doesn't... uh, drown? If sea-beasts that seem to be octopus-esque can drown?

The Avengers regroup and Iron Man pulls an unconscious She-Hulk from the water, who he stunned when she kept trying to rip his armor open.

Back at Lord Ghaur's base, Andromeda returns with the magical ball that is a piece of Set's lifeforce.

When they were beset by sea-beast, Andromeda took the ball and ditched She-Hulk to keep the guardian busy.

Lord Ghaur sees the logic in it but comments that he's down a bride now and the plan once again seems to be unraveling.

It had so many moving parts and so many of those moving parts were thwarted by superheroes who had no idea of the bigger picture.

The sneople production was cut off by Moon Knight, Punisher, Daredevil and Dr Strange.

The Avengers, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man thwarted the Atlantis Attacks part of the story and then didn't brutally slaughter all the Atlanteans like was apparently necessary.

Monstering Atlantis was somewhat thwarted by the New Mutants and then blowing it up apparently had nothing to do with anything.

At least the plan to reconstruct the Serpent Crown and collect Brides has gone mostly right.

But if there's only six wives then there's only six wives. Set will have to deal.

Meanwhile, She-Hulk is still under compulsion to return to Lord Ghaur and she is very hard to keep contained.

Sersi comes up with the idea of just let her go. And then follow her to Lord Ghaur's lair and rescue all the kidnapped ladies.

And since Sersi says she can keep a telepathic lock on She-Hulk that Ghaur won't be able to block, Captain America okays the plan.

Meanwhile, back at Lord Ghaur's lair, he's slapping Dagger.

He's kind of a dick like that.

He needs her to focus her light daggers into the thinnest possible beam and she's finding it very difficult without being able to see what she's doing.

Jean Grey and Invisible Woman return with the Lens of Power and Ghaur reveals what this backup plan is.

To focus Dagger's life energy light daggers through the lens to invigorate the piece of Set's life force.

That will allow Set to manifest despite the sacrifice apparently not happening. Supposedly apparently.

As a back-up plan, this seems easier actually than hoping that humans will kill a bunch of Atlanteans for you. Why wasn't this Plan A?

Lord Ghaur: "Before the hour is struck, we shall see a new age aborning in the world! Set will rise! And I pity the power, human, Deviant, or Eternal that dares to stand against him!"

Speaking of standing against, the Avengers. The Avengers everyone!

Sersi shows off a fun use of her powers by transmuting the whole team (minus Iron Man and Vision) into water-breathers so they don't need extra gear to sneak into Ghaur's underwater base.

Once they get there, Iron Man knocks.

While Sersi changes most of the Avengers back to air-breathers, Iron Man and Vision get started knocking people on their asses and fisting them.

But before long, the Avengers encounter Bride Storm who blasts Cap with lightning and hurricane force winds indoors.

Cap bounces his shield all over the place before Storm blocks it with lightning.

... Can lightning knock something in motion away? That's weird.

But the shield bouncing was a cover for Wasp to sneak in while Storm's attention was drawn. Wasp blasts Storm who is knocked the hell out.

And standard disclaimer that she was fighting from the inside and that's why it was so easy to beat her.

Wonder Man belt jets ahead and punches the Lens of Power into bits, thwarting Ghaur's plans right when the Set orb was just a little bit short of life energy.

UNLESS... unless he can get comic bullshit to work for him?

Ghaur grabs Scarlet Witch and runs off with her, commanding the other Brides to stop Wonder Man.

He places the Set orb on the dais he long preached the Age of Set.

Lord Ghaur: "Come, woman! Use your power to change the shape of reality, to warp the fabric of probabilities! MAKE THE ENERGY INJECTED SUFFICIENT TO THE TASK!"

The Set Orb begins to expand.

Beast runs in with an iron gauntlet and fists the orb, hoping that iron's known power against the mystic will come into play here. But the Orb explodes, flinging him.

As the Brides chant "he rises!" Set is reborn on Earth.

Uh oh, twelve annuals in and Ghaur has succeeded in bringing an Elder God back to Earth. And only two annuals to fix this mess.

We'd need an act of god!

Oh, wasn't Thor off somewhere?

SET ASCENDING

Yes, he is.

Thor grabbed Quasar and the Thing due to their past exposure to the Serpent Crown and went to go see Dr Strange.

Where they'll be going, you need to be magical, a god, or have exposure to the Serpent Crown to survive. And these two are the only ones Thor could find since Scarlet Witch is under Ghaur's sway, Namor blew up, and Viper is untrustworthy.

Where are they going? Right to Set's home address to take the fight directly to him.

Problem:

Thor's group arrives right at the end of the last issue, when Set manifests on Earth.

(Thor points out something I didn't notice. Seven Avengers went on the mission to stop Ghaur, echoing Seven Brides, and Set the Seven Headed. That's a fun detail.)

The Avengers aren't the type to just not fight an Elder God so they all throw their best attacks at Set. But nothing they try even gets Set to blink. Even Vision bounces off when he tries to do his intangible thing.

Thor insists they need to pull Set back into his own dimension before he gains a real foothold on Earth. And since Set's seven heads are completely clogging the dimensional hole he's coming through, that leaves only one way to get into Set's dimension.

Through the mouth.

(The Avengers see Thor and Co. fly right into an Elder Snake God's mouth and Cap decides uhhhhhh well they must have a plan.)

Team Thor forces their way down Set's throat and all the way as far as they can go and then they force their way past that.

They emerge in Set's domain and so does Set except yanking him back into his own home from the inside out has kind of left him... inside out.

Thing: "Yecch! What a revoltin' development this is -- an' I do mean 'revoltin'!"

Well said.

Thor and Co. try fighting Set but he's an Elder God. You have the Sorcerer Supreme, the God of Thunder, the Guardian of the Universe, and Ben Grimm in a Thing exoskeleton here and its not enough.

If Dr Strange tries his hardest, he can manage to still be overwhelmed by one of the heads. Out of seven.

Things get worse when Set silently screams at the intruders in his domain, screams that threaten to drive them insane.

Thor just up and ditches. Mjolniports away.

But to a purpose. He went to speak with Gaia, his mom and another Elder God. To ask for her help against Set and specifically help contacting Atum, the Sun-Being who can turn to Demogorge, the God-Eater.

This is a lot of lore to suddenly throw in. Which is why it was part of the history of the Serpent Crown back-up stories that have been in each annual.

I already had to split this post in two so there wasn't a good way to go over all that lore so I just decided I'd bring it up if it were relevant.

And here it's relevant!

When Set was running amok on primeval Earth along with Chthon, Gaia got big mad and created Atum, who ate some of the Elder Gods to power-up into the Demogorge.

This was what frightened Set and Chthon into their dimensional hideaways.

We've got Set running amok again so can Atum help??

Gaia can't help with that. Set entering the world has imprisoned her.

So Thor whirls his go-anywhere hammer and goes to the Sun.

Except Atum says he can't help either because when he becomes the Demogorge, he can't stop himself from devouring. It would be trading one problem for another and besides, he hates himself like that.

So Thor annoys Atum into eating him.

Good job, Thor?

Good job. When the Demogorge shows up in Set's domain, he has Thor's head because Thor's willpower has taken over.

(He's done that sort of thing before, when the Destroyer armor ate him.)

It's a limited time thing before he's fully absorbed and digested, though, so Demothorge gets busy kicking Set's ass. And Set's ass has nowhere to flee because he's already in his bolt hole.

The Demothorge rips Set to pieces and then flings each head into a different dimension.

Gonna make it harder to come back from.

The Demogorge seems to finally absorb Thor so the Thing, Quasar, and Dr Strange prepare to try to beat Thor out of the guy.

But he tells them to HOLD and horks up Thor, reverting back to Atum.

In all his history of eating gods, he never ate one as noble as Thor. He was willing to sacrifice his immortal life for the sake of the mortals of Earth. And frankly, that's far too noble for Atum to stomach (complimentary) and it allowed Atum to keep the Demogorge's hunger under control.

Good job, Thor!

Set's dimension starts imploding without a Set to keep it stable.

Thor and Co. rush towards the portal but it's collapsing too.

But luckily Lord Ghaur screws up.

The time difference means its only been a few moments since Set was shoved back through the portal. So Ghaur assumes Set is trying to come back through. So he uses his own energy to stabilize the portal.

Ghaur: "I can help him reach the Earth again! By the Celestials! Instantaneous success! The fragment enlarges -- with it, the portal -- and through that portal I see -- "

Dr Strange, Quasar, Thor, and the Thing pop out of the portal.

Ghaur: " -- something I would rather not see."

Womp womp.

Ghaur tosses a blackout bomb and immediately flees with the Seven Brides.

It's an odd feeling where the evil scheme of the whole event has been thwarted (summoning Set) but the mastermind behind the scheme is still at large.

So they're going to go beat the shit out of him. Since Dr Strange can mystically track him and all.

Thor: "And when we do find Lord Ghaur, cringing in some far corner of the planet he betrayed to the serpent Set -- not all the grotesque godlings of Deviant Lemuria shall shield him from our righteous wrath!"

Which brings us to the conclusion of this whole thing.

for CROWN and CONQUEST!

Oh, hey, Namor is alive again. Neat.

And ignore that Tigra. I'm pretty sure she's a figment of your imagination. The real Tigra is tiny and in a terrarium.

All the Avengers and also the Fantastic Four and also Dr Strange gather in two Quinjets and an "amphibious Fantasticar" - which is clearly a submarine just call it a submarine -head towards Lemuria to bring this to an awesome conclusion.

While many of the Fantastic Avengers are ready to set to the task with grim purpose, Dr Pym and the Thing are pretty sure that this is just wrap-up.

After all, Thor and Co. from last annual already blew Set up so what does Lord Ghaur have left up his sleeve?

(A giant Serpent Crown, but who's counting?)

Weirdly, when Ben recaps the event (only stuff he would have some way of knowing, naturally) he mentions that the New Mutants beat up U-Man when he attacked Avengers Island.

We did see U-Man and some Atlanteans heading towards Avengers Island at the end of the Avengers Annual. And the New Mutants Annual was the very next part of the event. But neither U-Man nor Avengers Island appears in it.

Did wires get crossed? Was that what the New Mutants Annual was supposed to cover but it decided to show the destruction of Atlantis instead, conflicting with the destruction of Atlantis shown in Web of Spider-Man?

I have no idea.

I think the destruction is better in New Mutants and Lord Ghaur definitely says that the destruction caused by the monster he summoned counts as the needed ritual sacrifice. So if New Mutants instead was about them fending off an attack on Avengers Island by U-Man, the event would technically make more sense...

Anyway.

Over at Llyra's stronghold, she and Lord Ghaur make a plan to go down fighting, protected by their loyal Lemurians and Deviants.

It's less of a plan and more spite, honestly.

Which is why Ghaur pulls a plan out of his ass.

It is very maybe possible that if they spin the Brides of Set around really fast above the crown, the Giant-Sized Serpent Crown will absorb their essences and that could re-unite Set's heads and let him manifest.

Plan A of build giant Serpent Crown and sacrifice a huge number of people to summon Set felt appropriately Elder God-ish.

Plan B of Actually Dagger can just shoot energy through a lens at an orb to summon Set, we don't need to kill thousands of people felt easier.

Plan C of spin some women around until Set unexplodes is hilarious and desperate.

Lord Ghaur plans just devolve into wackiness over the course of this event.

I'm not even convinced that this will actually work. But it probably will kill some or all of the Brides and I like some or all of them so the heroes should stop this anyway.

But if it does work, how annoyed do you think Set will be? They're going to summon him into a world with no snake people cultists, no brides, and with him getting exploded the first time he poked his head through the door.

Even if Ghaur and Llyra succeed, they're not going to get rewarded by Set. Today has been hell on him.

The Avengers land in Lemuria and charge forward to have a big, exciting fight scene against Llyra's Lemurian army. Meanwhile, a shadowy figure sneaks off the Quinjet, having stowed along.

We can rule out it being Tigra, as she is not in this event.

The big Lemurian army is able to keep the Avengers and Fantastic Four and so on away from the room with the giant Serpent Crown because heaviest hitters Dr Strange and Thor are exhausted from fighting Set last annual. Also, there's just a lot of Lemurians.

I'm going to brush past most of the fighting. Some of it is cool but I don't need to do a blow by blow.

I will highlight Sersi's contribution though.

Where she calls the Deviants dogs and then is so pleased with her wordplay that she starts turning Deviants into dogs.

You and your sense of humor, Sersi.

(Does she turn them back later? Does she get them adopted into a good family?)

Llyra worries that the heroes will manage to fight through their armies before they finish spinning the Brides so she brings out the big guns. An enormous gun. A really big infra-sonic cannon.

BUT SUDDENLY NAMOR IS ALIVE AND KKRRUTTCHES THROUGH THE DOOR AND STARTS WRASSLING THE GIANT CANNON!

Turns out he wasn't dead. He was lying low, letting them think he was dead, and disguised as that mysterious armored figure who kept showing up.

The Fantastic Four (because Sue is missing and we've still got Reed, Johnny, Sharon, and Ben) help Namor tear the cannon apart.

But they can't get through the door to where Llyra, Ghaur, and the Brides are. Door is adamantium or something. Walls too, so don't get any bright ideas.

But Namor has a very good idea.

An underwater door that's unguarded because Llyra thought Namor dead.

While Namor and the Fantastic Four are swimming toward it, Namor exposits to a captive audience. The Fantastic Four can't really join the conversation because the water pressure will kill them.

He confides in them how much Llyra has taken from him. His bride, his cousin, and his father. So he very personally wants to rip open this secret sea entrance because Pride but as he struggles with it, he admits he actually needs some help and he's no longer ashamed to ask his friends, the Fantastic Four for it.

The Thing and Ms Marvel (the Sharon Ventura one, I'm not sure if she's called She-Thing here or not) help Namor get the hatch open just a little bit. And Mr Fantastic can fit through that gap and pry the hinges open from the inside. Getting them all inside before the water pressure pills wear off.

(I'm sorry but I'm going to assume they're the giant suppository ones from Futurama.)

The Fantastic Four and Pal Namor zoom through the hallways. Namor tries to give a history lesson about Naga of Lemuria who found the Serpent Crown centuries ago but Ben tells him to shut up.

That stuff is never going to be applicable in real life.

The heroes and Namor rush into the chamber with the giant-sized Serpent Crown and the whirling women, much to Ghaur and Llyra's dismay.

Llyra sends her guards to delay them but Ghaur tells her that the two of them will have to tap into the power of the Serpent Crown.

Namor lunges right at Llyra but she touches the Crown and shoots EYE BEAMS at him.

Ben in the Thing suit ruins up and starts punching the spinny thing but Ghaur waves his hands like a wizard and shoots mind control beams at the Fantastic Four, Fantastic Forcing them to fight each other.

Like with She-Hulk earlier, they're aware what they're doing and don't want to fight each other but are compelled by Ghaur's beams.

It gets violent too. Also, melodramatic.

Human Torch: "This is -- tearing me apart too, Reed -- only my flames keep burning away -- my t-tears!"

Over with Namor, Llyra tries to tempt him with illusions of Dorma and Marinna. The wife Llyra killed and the other wife that turned into a sea monster and Namor killed. Namor can bring one back to life! All he has to do is punch the one he doesn't want!

(It is, of course, a trick. Namor chooses neither and discovers that if he had punched he'd have killed a captive Namorita, who got captured off-panel after the New Mutants annual.)

Ghaur complains that Llyra is dicking around with Namor instead of helping him because the Fantastic Four aren't killing each other fast enough and he's getting worn out!

Llyra can't come help him because she's made Namor really mad and her eye beeeeams are only just keeping him at bay.

So Ghaur decides. Fuck this, actually. He taps deeper and deeper into the Serpent Crown's power. I guess he's given up on bringing Set back and just wants to kill these dudes and Sharon.

But tapping so deeply into the crown summons... Naga of Lemuria?

Dammit, if only Ben hadn't interrupted Namor's history lesson!

(Naga was covered in those history of the Serpent Crown back-up stories. All you need to know is that Naga was too much of a dick to his most loyal soldiers and one stabbed him. But I guess his soul or spirit or ghost got eaten by the Crown.)

Ghaur and Naga fight over the crown and their perfectly symmetrical violence destroys them both.

For some reason, Ghaur will be back. And in Avengers so I'll have to care!

Llyra also vanishes right in the middle of getting choked by Namor. She doesn't know what's happening and neither do I. Because her next appearance is in a book that doesn't have a synopsis on Marvel wiki.

That's part of why I do this liveblog. A lot of Avengers issues didn't have much of a summary and I wanted to know what happened.

Anyway.

Now that the Fantastic Four sorta technically won the day by being bad at killing each other until another bad guy showed up and took care of the one they were fighting.... the rest of the heroes finally break through and into the crown room.

Also, the woman wheel stops spinning and the Mark of Set vanishes from all their necks.

When Ben suggests tossing the giant-sized Serpent Crown down a crevice that formed during the fight, the former Brides all charge forward in unison and push the sucker in.

Where it explodes. And the explosion seals the crevice.

That's a weird thing for it to have done.

Beast asks why the ex-Brides were able to act in unison like that and Dagger says the wheel spun them into a hive mind but only for long enough to push the Crown.

That's a weird thing to establish and throw away!

Why did you need to justify them acting together?

(Also, funny moment. When Ben Grimm sees all the Brides together he goes 'hey that one looks like Storm, exactly like Storm, but clearly its not because she's dead.' This is important because the X-Men have turbo faked their death and won't even tell the loved ones they left behind they're alive. Can't casually spill the beans in a big crossover.)

Reed asks what Namor is going to do now. Atlantis was double destroyed and its people have once again scattered to parts unknown.

This happens to the Atlanteans so, so often.

That was even the status quo when he first appeared in Avengers. That's why he had so much time to hassle them. His people had abandoned city and he had nothing else going on in his life.

Namor decides he's not going to try to find and reunite his people. He doesn't say so but they chose Attuma over him. Fuck them.

(And when the missing Atlanteans plot point gets resolved, its going to turn out that they once again unite under Attuma. So fuck them!)

Instead, Namor is going to just hang out with Namorita, who is his whole family now.

Namorita, on the other hand, tells Namor she's going to college but he's free to visit.

Womp womp.

As everybody disbands back to whatever they were doing, Robot Human Torch and Captain America take time to muse on how Namor was a moody loner back in The War while Torch and Cap had Toro and Bucky. But now they don't and Namor has Namorita.

Which seems to misinterpret the dynamic here. Namor said he's going to follow Namorita around because he has nothing else going on and she's going to do college.

Not everything is about you and your life, Cap.

So that was Atlantis Attacks.

I'll give it this much: it was definitely an improvement on Evolutionary War.

Evolutionary War had three issues that tried to actually move the plot forward. The X-Factor Annual, where the High Evolutionary debated his philosophy with Apocalypse, the West Coast Avengers Annual where we learned he was building a big ol' evolution bomb, and the Avengers Annual where a rag-tag group of Avengers learned about the scheme and managed to thwart him by shooting their friend Hercules with dangerous evolution radiation.

Most of the event spun its wheels or was very unclear on what the High Evolutionary was actually trying to do. It really seemed like every writer got to decide that for themself so by the end, the whole story felt very inconsistent. The need to somehow give the Punisher a reason to be involved led to a weird drug subplot that ran through several of the annuals.

Atlantis Attacks tried to have each annual contribute to the story. Resurrecting Ghaur, showing the beginning of the Atlantis attacks, Marking a Bride, collecting mystical artifacts to reconstruct the Serpent Crown, having a weird drug subplot...

Oh, dammit, they did it again!

The Tyrannus stuff that runs through Amazing Spider-Man, Punisher, Spectacular Spider-Man and Daredevil really feels like an unnecessary subplot to get drugs in the story so Punisher has a reason to be involved.

Trying to come up with a story that involves every single annual runs into the problem that the fate of the world stuff that can unite every hero is an odd fit for the Punisher. Because the plot is brought down to his level instead of him up to the plot.

Unlike when other parts of his plan failed, Ghaur didn't really bother trying to come up with a Plan B for losing all those snake people so I guess they weren't really necessary to the scheme.

There's also the problem where Atlantis gets destroyed twice as a sacrifice but then it turns out that wasn't the sacrifice, the sacrifice would have been if the US military and superheroes had slaughtered all of the Atlantean soldiers. So why blow up Atlantis at all? Why choose a method of sacrifice that's so out of your control?

And the New Mutants fighting U-Man on Avengers Island gets referenced but never happens in the event, making me think that someone got the wrong script sent to them.

So, Atlantis Attacks has problems.

It tried harder to tell a story that would unite all the annuals of a year and it stumbled.

I'm going to give it points for trying and improving on the last attempt.

And in the early parts of the story, I was legitimately surprised by how okay it was. Excited to try to piece things together from how each annual progressed the overall plot.

I like how instead of just constantly winning, Ghaur keeps suffering setbacks and switches to a backup plan. I think a lot of events would just make the villain win all the time until he grasps the villain ball at the end so he can actually be defeated. But here, Ghaur is defeated because the heroes just kept coming and he ran out of plans and wound up destroying himself. Or rather, a snake ghost destroyed him but whatever.

And I like how the obvious end boss Elder God Set is defeated in the penultimate issue, leaving Ghaur scrambling with a backup backup backup plan that seemed based on more wistful thinking than anything.

The next year's annuals are broken into smaller events. Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, West Coast Avengers, and Avengers telling one story rather than trying to come up with a story that fits every book being published.

The Spider-Man Annuals get to tell their own story, instead of having a disproportionate share of a company wide event.

The X-books and Fantastic Four revisit Days of Future Past for their annuals.

And Punisher, Daredevil, Hulk, and Silver Surfer share a story for theirs. Now that grouping is a bit eclectic.

Telling smaller events with fewer books is probably a smarter idea and easier to write a good story for. It is also much easier for me to cover.

I thought Evolutionary War was tough. Atlantis Attacks nearly killed me.

AND WHY WAS IT CALLED ATLANTIS ATTACKS WHEN ATLANTIS ATTACKING WAS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE PLOT AND DIDN'T EVEN HAPPEN UNTIL HALFWAY THROUGH THE EVENT??

Follow @essential-avengers. Like and reblog maybe. Brain fried, can't think of silly ending text.

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Essential Avengers: Atlantis Attacks Part 1

1989

Ah, geez, here we go again.

Another event made out of linked annuals. Several different writers trying to stay on the same vague page.

Silver Surfer, Iron Man, X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, Punisher, Spectacular Spider-Man, Daredevil, Avengers, New Mutants, X-Factor, Web of Spider-Man, West Coast Avengers, Thor, and Fantastic Four.

Spider-Man still being greedy and dipping into the event three times.

Like Evolutionary War, I'll try to cover the whole event. I'll cover the non-Avengers material in a pretty cursory manner and the two Avengers annuals in more depth.

I'm here to Avenger, not look at Spider-Man hogging all the screentime.

But while working on this post I've discovered that fourteen annuals is just too many pictures to fit in one post so I'm breaking it up into two.

Silver Surfer through Avengers, New Mutants through Fantastic Four. So each post has an Avengers annual.

Let's see if Atlantis Attacks manages to string a bunch of annuals together into a half-decent story or at least manages it better than Evolutionary War.

I have zero knowledge of this event but I'm pretty sure this Atlantis Attack... isn't Namor's fault.

Scary to consider but that's the truth.

how SHARPER than a SERPENT'S TOOTH

We weirdly kick off the event with the character who least wants to be involved.

You'd think that Punisher would least want to be involved because he hates it when superhero stuff interrupts him shooting people but no. Somehow Silver Surfer wanted to be involved less.

Several galaxies away from Earth, Silver Surfer is doing what he do, surfing through space, when he loses control of his board.

It keeps trying to fly a certain direction and he finds green crap coating the bottom of the board that he can't remove.

He eventually just lets the board fly where it likes so he can figure out what the hell is going on.

The board takes him to a green dust cloud so Silver Surfer uses his power cosmic to reincorporate the cloud.

It turns out that its GHAUR GODLORD OF DEVIANT LEMURIA.

Since Silver Surfer doesn't know who that is and since Ghaur is a villain, he gladly exposits his backstory.

He was a priest of Deviant Lemura (from the Eternals book!) and when the Deviant leader Brother Toad led the Deviants into a disastrous defeat against the Eternals, Ghaur decided something drastic had to be done to give the Deviants hope again.

But the Deviants were portrayed as being always chaotic evil at this point so the thing he did to bring hope to his people was stealing power from the Dreaming Celestial and growing kaiju sized.

The Dreaming Celestial wound up taking over his brain and forced him into trying to dig it up. So the Eternals made a Uni-Mind, ripped out Ghaur's soul, and blasted it into space.

The Silver Surfer happened to fly through the soul cloud and here we are.

Silver Surfer decides Ghaur is bad news and kicks his ass.

I mean, it's actually a big action scene that goes back and forth but Silver Surfer kicks his ass. Ghaur realizes that he's getting his ass kicked in a pointless battle that has nothing to do with his sinister plan and fucks off.

Silver Surfer watches him go and decides, eh. He doesn't want to get drawn into Earth stuff. He uses his powers to send a warning to whoever manages to hear it (Dr Strange and Talisman) but he has his own business to take care of and Earth has plenty of people who can clean up the mess Silver Surfer accidentally dumped on their doorstep.

Man, you are a jerk sometimes, Norrin Radd!

But that's the story of how Silver Surfer wanted to be in this event so little that he bowed out of the story halfway through his own annual.

Meanwhile, Ghaur goes to Earth and pays a visit to Lemuria.

Not Deviant Lemuria. There's a reason why I keep calling it Deviant Lemuria and its because there's another Lemuria that's populated by mermen.

Merman Lemuria was actually introduced before Deviant Lemuria, for the record.

Ghaur finds Llyra, a teal lady and old Namor foe.

He proposes that they team-up because the Serpent Crown whispered to him when he was a space cloud and Llyra has been the prime agent of the crown here on Earth 616.

So, the Serpent Crown.

It is a hat that looks like snakes that has great power because the evil Elder God Set used it as a vessel for his power when he had to flee Earth to avoid a shitstorm he started by eating a centaur and doing the first murder.

It was introduced in a Namor story so has a lot of ties to his lore and also as a general evil artifact that bounces around the Marvel universe. It's even been in Avengers!

Because Ghaur is a villain, he exposits the history of the Serpent Crown to Llyra, who probably knows most of it already.

When Set created the Serpent Crown, he somehow created it throughout the multiverse. People that found and wore it because rulers of their world.

The Avengers had one of their punch-ups with the Squadron Supreme when two Crown wearers collaborated - Earth-616 Roxxon President Hugh Jones and Earth-712 US President Rockefeller.

If you're curious, that took place in Avengers #144, 147, 148, and 149.

It was pretty good. Patsy Walker became Hellcat during that story.

Hugh Jones got both crowns when the Avengers brought one back from Earth-712 but the Thing thwarted him and took the crown to be safely stored at Project Pegasus.

Where the crown corrupted the scientists to using dimensional cannons to summon Serpent Crowns from across the multiverse to join together into a giant Serpent Crown which threatened to resurrect Set.

But Spider-Man with a cosmic cube, Dr Strange, Scarlet Witch, and the Thing destroyed the Giant Serpent Crown, preventing Set from returning to the physical plane.

Woo.

But now Ghaur has a plan to bring about the triumph of the Serpent Crown and resurrection of Set.

But he's not going to tell us the plan yet. We have to wait.

(I'm getting deja vu of Evolutionary War.)

TWO IF BY SEA

The Atlantean attack on the surface world beings -- and an Avenger must DIE to stop them!

So, it's going to be Namor, right? Iron Man isn't currently an Avenger. I mean, every Avenger is an Avenger but he's currently trying to get the West Coast team to hire him back on.

In event plot land, Ghaur and Llyra bring their plan to Attuma, who currently rules Atlantis.

Ghaur actually goes over his plan! Which makes Atlantis Attacks already more forthcoming about its plot than Evolutionary War was!

Ghaur and Llyra are going to re-assemble the Serpent Crown and help Set manifest on Earth. When Set takes over the world, he'll definitely give it to his most loyal servants and Ghaur is offering Attuma a chance to get in on the ground floor.

All he needs is Attuma to use his armies alongside Llyra's Lemurian rebels to weaken the surface world. Especially the United States.

Attuma agrees, as long as Llyra's forces are put under his command, which she agrees to.

Meanwhile, our title boy Iron Man is shadowing some Maggia (a legally distinct Mafia) mini-subs, trying to find out why Maggia activity has been spiking lately.

The mini-subs are following a Completely Normal ship.

Flying above the ocean, Namor is trying to find the monster babies his monster wife had. Remember those? When Marrina turned into a giant sea monster and then died? And Captain Marvel lost her powers? Anyway, Namor is still looking for the babies.

He stops by the Completely Normal ship and asks if they've seen any sea monsters but the Completely Normal ship is Actually Hydra and they assume he's onto them.

They launch an attack on Namor and then blow up the ship when the Coast Guard shows up.

Iron Man joined in to help Namor when the Maggia subs fled due to the commotion.

So now Namor and Iron Man decide to work together to figure out what Hydra is up to and go to visit Tony Stark.

This lets me find out why Tony was acting weird in Avengers West Coast.

In Iron Man #242, Tony was shot and paralyzed by a stalker.

Tony Stark: "I got involved with the wrong lady. She was a bad sport. But a good shot!"

Out of his armor, he's confined to a wheelchair. So he's been spending more and more time in the armor and less and less time as Tony Stark. Which worries Rhodey.

Anyway, Tony decides to go with Namor to Panama because that Hydra ship was registered down there.

(Coincidentally, that's also where the Atlantis Attack plot is today, womp womp)

Namor spots signs of underwater military movement on the sea floor and goes to investigate that while Tony finds the building the Hydra ship was affiliated with.

Iron Man smashes his way through the building and learns from the Hydra boss that they've created a new designer drug that they're going to give away for free to make everyone in America addicted so Hydra can take over.

So Tony kills the guy, I think?? Geez, Tony.

Iron Man: "Probably shouldn't have done that. But I guess everyone gets a little self-indulgent now and then."

Geez.

Iron Man sets the warehouse on fire to destroy the drugs, which should set back Hydra's plans.

He goes looking for the other Hydra ship, full of drug cargo, when Namor reunites with him.

Namor exposes the Atlantean troops as they were trying to move in secret through the Panama canal by hiding under ships.

It is so funny to me that Atlantis Attacks is just another thing happening while Iron Man is trying to deal with the Hydra drug plot which is something that interrupted him trying to figure out what the Maggia is up to! Stuff keeps interrupting the last thing he was doing!

The Hydra ship tries fleeing so Iron Man asks Namor to go after them while he keep fighting the Atlanteans. WITH MICROWAVES. TO BOIL THE WATER INSIDE THEIR HELMETS.

Attuma orders the Omega rocket be fired at Iron Man or at whatever. It actually flies towards a tanker ship so Iron Man blocks the rocket with his body to save the crew.

The Atlanteans try to shoot Iron Man while he's down but fighter jets from Albrook Air Base come in and start shooting them mermen.

Iron Man thanks them and flies off to go help Namor but Hydra blows up their ship again, seemingly blowing up Namor.

Iron Man: "I'm going to do everything I can to uncover what's goin on between Hydra and the Maggia! I swear, Namor -- your death will not have been in vain!"

This early on in the plot, I like that the heroes still don't know what's going on. They've stumbled into the early stages of Atlantis Attacks and Iron Man gives no further thought to it compared to what he already had on his plate.

MOVING ON!

DOUBLE X CROSS

Mr. Jip? That sounds like a slur. It's not, as far as I can find out. But I don't like it.

Anyway, lets get right into the plot and then into the macguffin hunt.

The Serpent Society was hired by Ghaur and Llyra to collect four mystical artifacts. One of the items, a jeweled Cro-Magnon skull was held by a scholar of black arts called Mr. Jip.

That's him on the cover.

He doesn't appreciate being robbed so he bodyswaps Diamondback and Dazzler, for some reason.

And he doesn't like what Ghaur and Llyra are up to. So if the X-Men gather the artifacts for him, instead, he'll put Diamondback and Dazzler back in the right bodies.

Like a lot of bodyswap stories, this sucks.

Diamondback almost immediately tries to sleep with Wolverine with Dazzler's body. And spends most of the rest of the time trying to eat or smoke things Dazzler doesn't want in her body.

Anyway, the X-Men don't want to go on a macguffin hunt and since they're in the Outback era, they have a magical man who can send them wherever they want to go.

But when they try to get Gateway to send them to Mr. Jip, they instead wind up split into different teams, sent to beat the Serpent Society to the artifacts.

Dazzler-in-Diamondback and Wolverine end up in the Savage Land, where Dazzler is catty because she thinks Wolverine was going to sleep with Diamondback-in-Dazzler because the DinD snuck into Logan's room.

She runs off on her own and gets captured and is a huge burden.

Thanks, the X-Men Annual. Thanks for that.

Wolverine winds up rescuing her and fighting Puff Adder, Asp, and Boomslang almost all by himself.

Dazzler does use Diamondback's marksmanship to conk Puff Adder in the noggin when Puff Adder has Wolverine in a bear hug.

And they find the little stone race idol that they're looking for and get teleported away.

Colossus, Rogue, and Havok wind up teleported to an abandoned shopping center in Lima, Ohio and fight Anaconda, Black Mamba, and Coachwhip.

Once Havok breaks out of Black Mamba's illusion, he explodes all the potato chips at her with his plasma powers. That's pretty funny.

Once all the fights are done, they find Rock Python having just found the artifact.

But he surrenders it to them when he sees he's surrounded and has no backup.

This group of X-Men also get teleported as soon as they touch the thing.

Longshot, Diamondback-in-Dazzler, Psylocke, and Storm get teleported to Iceland to find a specific rock on a beach full of rocks.

Cottonmouth, Black Racer, Rattler, and Bushmaster also show up to look for a rock and everyone gets into a fight.

Longshot finds the specific rock, because lock powers. But Rattler causes a rockslide trying to get the rock and accidentally buries himself and Longshot.

Diamondback doesn't give a shit about Longshot and grabs the rock, getting the X-Men and her teleported to Mr. Jip's lair.

He swaps Dazzler and Diamonback back to their own bodies and the X-Men begrudingly turn over the three artifacts.

Wolverine threatens Mr. Jip when the guy dismisses their worry over Longshot, so the magic man magics Longshot to them. He had luckily fallen into a hole and wasn't crushed.

Then Sidewinder, former leader of the Serpent Society, teleports in, and he and Diamondback snatch the artifacts.

TWAS A RUSE.

Diamondback was working for Sidewinder all along and manipulating the Serpent Society for him.

(Sidewinder gives the Serpent Society 10% of the profit. Considering they failed to secure any of the artifacts and they ousted Sidewinder from the team he formed, that's not bad.)

They teleport off to sell the artifacts to Ghaur and Llyra. Mr. Jip gets annoyed at how pointless this entire adventure was and teleports the X-Men back home.

Once they're gone, he bemoans not being able to prevent Ghaur's plan, since it is going to make Dagger (of Cloak and) a target. And perhaps... Storm too.

Which is echoed when Diamondback and Sidewinder sell the artifacts to Ghaur for one chest of sunken treasure. Once the two snake-themed villains are gone, Ghaur implies that they have plans for Storm.

And the magical artifacts? Lemurian alchemists being using them to recreate the Serpent Crown!

I'm impressed that each annual so far has progressed the story in a unique way.

ABOMINATIONS!

Uh oh, Liefeld drew this annual. I flip to the first page and Ghaur is way off-model.

Ah well.

So with the artifacts the Serpent Society found last time, Ghaur has begun reconstructing a giant Serpent Crown.

But he's got other shit going on too.

His Lemurian ally Llyra has gone on a mission to free the Abomination from a Colorado jail.

(Huh. Why is this called Atlantis Attacks when its more Lemurians who are attacking? The Atlantean troops that were caught sneaking through the Panama Canal even get called a Lemurian attack force when the events get referenced. EXPLAIN THE TITLE, please.)

Llyra brought Abomination to New York and meets with Ghaur.

Abomination is still being controlled by Tyrannus, aka the lastest Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus, and he wants out.

With Lemurian technology and the high voltage lines that ran to where Avengers Mansion used to be, Tyrannus is freed from Abomination by shuffling him into Emil Blonsky and Emil back into Abomination.

This wins Team Set an alliance with Tyrannus. Who I guess has stuff to offer? And also an Abomination, since he'll obey them since they can get him out of the gamma body.

Except the strain of the transfer messed up Emil's mind and now Abomination is rampaging mindlessly.

Also, the massive energy surge alerted both Spider-Man and She-Hulk who were nearby.

(In She-Hulk's case, because she was yelling at J Jonah Jameson for his shitty views on the homeless. Eesh.)

The two heroes fight Abomination but have some trouble. He's Hulk level and they're pulling their punches to avoid endangering any bystanders.

At some point, She-Hulk gets knocked unconscious briefly. Ghaur, who stuck around to watch how things played out, has identified She-Hulk as a strong lady who could be useful as "an excellent bride -- for the great god Set!"

And the creeper burns a snake mark onto She-Hulk's neck while she's briefly knocked out from Abomination punches.

She-Hulk wakes up, gets back in the fight, and throws a gasoline tanker at Abomination, which causes him to stumble off a bridge and fall onto a boat.

The two heroes decide they'd really rather not go chasing him. So they don't.

Very heroic, you two.

Two days later, a disguised Tyrannus visits a federal prison outside Washington DC to propose a deal to an imprisoned Viper.

The bad guys are still networking and the good guys still don't know what's going on.

Plus, the implied role that Storm and Dagger (and now She-Hulk) have in Ghaur's plan is as "brides of Set."

The plot thickens and by thickening, exists.

KNIGHT FIGHT

Despite the cover and the title, Moon Knight don't really fight in this. In fact, they seem pretty enthusiastic to work together. Marc even takes Frank home to see his mansion.

What they do fight is snake people, or sneople.

Moon Knight sees a man eat a gerbil in a pet shop. For some reason, this makes him suspicious and he decides to look into it. Marc follows the guy to an estate run by Save Our Society, a non-profit dedicated to curing drug addicts.

At the same time, Punisher is on the trial of a drug addict named Ralph Newton who killed a woman for her social security check. But when he checks Ralph's usual drug den, the guy isn't there. In fact, Ralph told his drug buddies that he was going to go straight and get the drug addiction cure from the Save Our Society clinic.

The two heroes run into each other when staking out the clinic and decide to team up.

Very alarmingly, they find everyone in the clinic are snake people and comic book fight scene ensues. The heroes easily having the advantage because the cold weather is making the sneople sluggish.

The two go back to Moon Knight's mansion to research and plan.

They learn that former Hydra leader Viper was released from a federal prison last month by a Dr Tyrone.

Wait, that happened a month ago? So, the Amazing Spider-Man annual was a month ago??

Anyway, the two storm the SOS estate Moon Knight scouted earlier.

Fighting the sneople is harder because they're wearing thermal packs that keep them warmed up. But harder is relative.

Viper surprise injects Punisher with drugs and then flees in a rocket when Frank goes totally nuts.

Moon Knight calms down the drugged out Punisher by showing him his shiny moonerangs and then takes him back to Spector Manor to detox.

These two are such good murder friends to each other.

They go their separate ways at the end to deal with separate business but mention they should team up again sometime.

So I'm not sure what this adds to the story. Definitely something.

Viper is making snake people, presumably for Ghaur. She escapes from Punisher and Moon Knight with plans to improve her process.

Some backup stories in the annuals have been recapping the entire history of Set and the Serpent Crown. Set did have snake people serving him in earlier times so maybe Ghaur is setting the stage for Set's return in that way too.

And now we return to Spider-Man taking more than his share of this event.

The SERPENT in the SHADOW

I wonder if team-ups are the theme of this annuals event. Minus Silver Surfer the broody loner.

Namor teamed up with Iron Man in his annual. X-Men teamed up with Diamondback. Spider-Man teamed up with She-Hulk. Punisher teamed up with Moon Knight. Now Spider-Man is teaming up with Cloak and Dagger. And looking ahead, I see that Spider-Man will also be teaming up with Daredevil.

The man is truly hogging more than his share of this event. Three annuals and also appearing in Daredevil's annual? Save some for the rest of us, Parker.

Anyway, this annual also clears up the timeline. Maybe.

Spider-Man mentions that the fight he had against Abomination was a week ago. The Atlantian/Lemurian attacks on the surface are apparently still ongoing. So either Viper's operation in the Punisher annual was in the future or Moon Knight misspoke.

Anyway, plot.

Spider-Man is looking into a Save Our Society non-profit event. Initially to take pictures to try to sell but later when he examines one of the photos, he recognizes a Sons of the Serpent tattoo on one of the SOS staff. Since the Sons of the Serpent are basically the Marvel version of the KKK, Spider-Man is very curious to see what connection they might have to the similar sounding Save Our Society.

I mean, it could just be that this dude is a reformed ex-Son of the Serpent who can't afford to have the tattoo lasered off. But, no, that's not the case.

Cloak is also looking into the Save Our Society event but because he's wondering if the SOS miracle cure to drug addiction can cure his addiction to siphoning life energy from Dagger. Which he both wants and doesn't want because he's afraid that if their powers didn't require them to hang out, she'd have no reason to be with him.

Aw, buddy, she likes you for you, most of the time I've read you two!

Cloak gets defensive when Spider-Man gets in his business and also near Dagger (because she's blind right now, she threw some light daggers at Spider-Man because it sounded like he was hurting Cloak). But the misunderstanding fight is just so they can team-up later.

Ghaur identifies Dagger as another potential bride of Set and orders Tyrannus to put the Mark of Set upon her.

Tyrannus is happy to do so because he has his own plans that plays into.

Apparently, when he's not in Abomination's body, Tyrannus has SUPER CHARISMA MIND CONTROL. He's able to easily lead Dagger away and also control Cloak when he comes looking for her.

He sends Cloak to steal the ancient Book of Kell from a museum. The book is an ancient text of the Sons of the Serpent cult and contains secrets that will make Tyrannus mightier than Ghaur.

Since he now has what he needs from Cloak, Tyrannus sends a huge number of more transformed snake people to kill Cloak.

Cloak nearly gets overwhelmed but gets saved by a mystery figure.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man investigates the lower levels of the Save Our Society building and finds a "cured" drug addict turning into a snake person.

We learn here and from Tyrannus' conversation with Cloak elsewhere in the issue that the addiction cure is a serpent serum Viper created. It does cure chemical addiction in its early stages but then it turns you into a snake people.

And from Ghaur's exposition when he decides that Dagger is one of the Set Brides, we learn that "serpent worshipers" are required for Set's resurrection.

So that's why they're making sneople.

Tyrannus surprises Spider-Man and SUPER CHARISMAS him into compliance.

Tyrannus: "You're like everyone else in the world, addict and non-addict alike. You want easy answers. You want simple solutions. You want someone to tell you what to do. And that someone, my pet... for now and ever more... is me."

This took a turn.

"A Friend in Need..."

So quick bit about Daredevil's status quo at the mo.

He's having a rough time.

Post Born Again, he had started to put his life back together when Kingpin knocked his legs out from under him again by sending Typhoid Mary into his life. Daredevil was beaten nearly to death and THEN went through Inferno where a vacuum and a dentistcoptruck demon tried to kill him. Having lost all his friends and his law clinic so decided to leave New York and travel around for a while. I think he also french kissed Mephisto somewhere in there.

So Daredevil is traveling around Monroe Falls, New York when he encounters some snake people attacking a guy who won't stop prying into what happened to his friend Wally, who joined Save Our Society.

Daredevil saves the guy but refuses to help him break into the treatment center.

At least until Dr Strange (who had been faking his death, for Dr Strange reasons) comes and asks him to help do something about a growing evil he's sensed in... whaddayaknow... the Save Our Society treatment center.

Also happening in world's colliding, Viper comes to the Monroe Falls SOS center to re-group after Punisher and Moon Knight busted up her last base.

Tyrannus (Dr Tyrone) says she's welcome to use this center until she can get back on her feet but then he pulls a double cross on her. And on Ghaur.

With the book he had Cloak steal and with Viper as a sacrifice, he's going to summon Set early and get all the good servant brownie points before Ghaur can.

When Daredevil (following Strange's request) breaks into the center to create a distraction, Tyrannus sends his hypnotized "pet" Spider-Man to stop the intruder.

He seriously has a collar and leash on Spider-Man and calls him a pet. When I said this took a turn, I meant it.

Even though acting under mind control makes Spider-Man fight at less than peak performance, he's still bouncing Daredevil off the scenery and drowning him until Matt decides he wants to live and knocks the wall-crawler out.

The Book of Kell Tyrannus is using doesn't summon Set but instead a snake demon servant of Dormammu.

Tyrannus figures a snake demon is a snake demon and turns the full force of his CHARISMA to control it but this frees Viper and she shoves Tyrannus into the pentagram to get om nom nom'd by the demon.

Dr Strange banishes the demon. Then for good measure, magically cures everyone of the snake serum, turning them back to normal and inadvertantly depriving Ghaur of all those sneople he needed.

We don't really learn more about Ghaur's big plan except that it will require a sacrifice. But this completes the subplot of Tyrannus planning his own thing within the bigger scheme. And follows up on Viper.

Eh. I really hope we get some more Atlantis in Atlantis Attacks soon, though. Like Evolutionary War, there's been a lot of drugs and not a lot of the thing promised in the title.

And that brings us back to Avengers!

AVENGERS ASSEMBLED

Which means we'll be slowing the pace down a little since Avengers is what this liveblog is actually about.

Sorry every other book I skimmed through on my way here.

(This is also the point where the cast balloons so large that I literally can't tag everyone. Just this Avengers Annual has over twenty characters...)

After working on it since the end of the X-Men Annual, Lord Ghaur and Llyra have completed their giant Serpent Crown.

In fact, it's the best Serpent Crown. Bigger and stronger and more indestructible than that other one that broke.

With the crown complete, it begins to emanate power. Which is felt by any who have worn the crown previously. We see Viper, the Thing, Scarlet Witch, mysterious armored figure from the Spectacular Spider-Man issue, and Quasar reacting to the crown.

Ghaur and Llyra call Attuma to tell him to get on that Atlantis Attacks thing already.

The attack on the surface world to keep the surface militaries and heroes distracted.

Attuma acts all gung ho about it when on the video phone with Lord Ghaur but has privately started to doubt his role in this plan. He's the big conqueror of Atlantis and all so why does he feel like a subordinate in this partnership?

He decides to take a back seat and let his lieutenants Tyrak, U-Man, Lord Arno, and Krang carry out the attacks.

So the Atlantean fleet launches and splits to attack four targets. Cape Canaveral in Forida, Fort Hamilton army base in New York, Langley Air Force base in Virginia, and the Shoreham Nuclear Plant on Long Island.

So basically just the East Coast. Well, this is the Avengers East Coast book. Although the cast list has the Avengers West Coast cast too.

The Avengers (Captain America, Sersi, She-Hulk, Quasar, Thor, and robot Human Torch Jim Hammond is here for some reason) get the reports of the attacks.

They wonder if just the six of them can handle four Atlantean armies. But luckily, this is the Every Avenger is an Avenger era and if there's any situation that calls for a mass muster, it may well be this.

And for some reason, Wasp, Dr Pym, Tigra, and Mockingbird arrive in a tiny panel on the next page.

What, they didn't fit in the big, two-page spread?

Well... Tigra doesn't?

She's still feral and locked in a cat carrier according to John Byrne so he later declares her presence in this annual didn't happen.

She's definitely in this issue and she does stuff but try to remember that you're just imagining it.

This is a pretty big crowd but we immediately cut it down a little. Quasar and the Thing are feeling under the weather (unbeknowst to them, because of the influence of the mega crown) so they're told to sit this one out.

The remainder break into four teams to tackle the four problem areas.

Black Panther, Invisible Woman, She-Hulk, and Mr Fantastic will go to Shoreham.

Robot Human Torch, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, the Hulk, and Sersi will go to Langley.

Dr Pym, Tigra (except she's not here, stop making things up), Hawkeye, Thor, Black Widow, and the Wasp go to Fort Hamilton.

And the Vision, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Mockingbird, and Iron Man go to Cape Canaveral.

I guess Hawkeye decided to leave the Great Lakes Avengers at home. I'm sad but also glad because I don't have to tag them.

And I also guess that Monica Rambeau got her powers back? Apparently in a Giant-Size Special one-shot Captain Marvel book? Nice. Now put her back in charge of the Avengers. She was cheated.

Team This Is Just A Fantastic Four of Invisible Woman, Black Panther, Mr Fantastic, and She-Hulk invisibly land the Fantasticar at the nuclear power plant and take the guards by surprise.

Silly hat wearer Lord Arno blind fires and manages to hit She-Hulk, despite telegraphing it so far as to yell that he's about to fire.

She-Hulk has been remarked to be acting subdued in this issue, presumably because of the Mark of Set that was secretly put on her during the Amazing Spider-Man issue.

Either way, she gets zapped and bonks into Invisible Woman, who is jarred into dropping the invisibility so an open battle it'll have to be.

Lord Arno identifies the group as the Fantastic Four ('cause it's the most Fantastic Four possible grouping you can make out of All The Avengers give or take a Ben Grimm who is out sick). And Lord Arno doesn't take the Fantastic Four lightly and immediately summons in his biggest gun.

Hey!

It's Orka, the giant Atlantean with the bad outfit. I forgot how stupid those 'teeth' around his face looked.

But it's fitting that he's involved. He was in that other Avengers Serpent Crown story, on loan to Roxxon. He beat up the entire Avengers team until Moondragon annoyed Thor into releasing even more true power. Because Thor unconsciously holds back a lot on Earth so he can hang with the Avengers?

So this guy is a tough guy and this group doesn't have a Thor.

But he's knocked on his ass two pages later with the combined efforts of She-Hulk and Black Panther picking up a random Atlantean gun.

Seeing Orka go down so quickly, Lord Arno panics and orders RETREEEEAT.

Meanwhile, a Quinjet arrives at Langley Air Force base. Wonder Man, Robot Human Torch, Hulk, and Sersi jump out and leap right into action, leaving Scarlet Witch to park the damn thing.

Wonder Man flies through the Atlantean anti-aircraft guns. Because an underwater people would definitely have anti-air.

Hulk jumps out of the Quinjet with Sersi clinging to his back and crashes through the Atlantean airships on the way down.

And I think Sersi turns herself into a rock to crash into the ground?

Scarlet Witch (after parking the Quinjet) uses her hex powers to alter the probability of two airships crashing into each other as yes.

Wonder Man tells her to take it easy because she's been out of sorts today and she tells him off for trying to mother her. Even tells him that "they're not giving out Quicksilver Awards" which manages to zing Pietro and he's not even here.

I guess giant dudes are a necessity because Tyrak (Attuma's chief spy who has a lot of abilities not related to spying like being super buff) grows giant to fight the Avengers.

Hulk and Wonder Man go to fight him as the two punchiest dudes there. But it is Robot Human Torch who strikes the biggest blow, by melting the device Tyrak was using as a power source, making him bwee-bwee-bwee shrink down so Wonder Man can knock him out.

Meanwhile, Scarlet Witch passes out from over-exerting herself. She falls right into Lord Ghaur's clutches.

He declares her another bride of Set and puts the Mark of Set on her.

What is that now...? She-Hulk, Dagger, and Scarlet Witch? With Storm suggested as another target?

Anyway.

Sersi uses her power of transmutation to turn half the Atlantean soldiers into human soldiers? Or just transmutes their outfits and skin so they look like human soldiers?? Anyway, it gets them shooting each other.

Then Moondragon and Rick Jones show up in a very baffling cameo.

I know this is one of those every Avenger ever situations but Rick Jones isn't an Avenger and isn't even an active part of this story!

Seriously. Moondragon is basically using him as a gun. She's used her mind powers to tap into Rick Jones' latent destiny force power. Remember that stuff that ended the Kree/Skrull War at least for a bit? That stuff. Moondragon uses it to knock some dudes down.

Kinda not even worth showing up for two panels, you two.

Hulk even scolds Moondragon for ruining the good time he was having and tells her to go home.

So that brings us to group 3, headed to Fort Hamilton.

Dr Pym and Tigra in Rover, the ant-head shaped airship that thinks Hank is neat, Thor and Wasp flying under their own power, and Hawkeye and Black Widow on Hawkeye's Sky-Cycle.

I love Rover. It's a shame that more hasn't been done with him up until this point.

The Atlanteans fire at the Avengers as they arrive over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

Thor lands and starts whirling his hammer to blow Atlantean soldiers around. But then they shoot him with an off-panel weapon.

Which wouldn't be a big deal except for Wasp pointing off-panel and going "what's that pointed at Thor?!"

C'mon.

U-Man (or Unter-Wasser Mann, apparently) leads a group of soldiers to charge on the Avengers.

But Hank just. Uses Pym Particles to shrink the entire army.

Okay, so Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Wasp help. And Tigra scoops them up.

Apparently Hank whipped up Pym Particles for everyone.

THIS WOULD INVALIDATE SO MANY TOUGH FIGHTS.

HANK, WHAT THE HELL??

Also, Thor notes that despite leading the charge, U-Man somehow vanished without a trace.

Also also, what? No giant guy this time?

And time for group 4, the final group. Captain Marvel, Captain America, the Vision, Mockingbird, and Iron Man.

Vision fists people, as he is known to do. Captain America throws his mighty shield and all who oppose his shield must yield. Mockingbird bonks people with her battle staves. Iron Man does flying hip thrusts to knock Atlanteans down. And Captain Marvel uses her energy trail to bowl them over.

NOTABLY. Captain America muses that the Vision he's fighting alongside is not like the robot-man he came to know. And that "it could chill a man to the very bone!"

I'm glad someone seems to care. WEST COAST AVENGERS.

Captain America gets the idea to start breaking the Atlanteans' helmets when he throws his mighty shield. Mockingbird follows suit and the Atlanteans deprived of their helmet water run back to the ocean.

Breaking all the helmets individually would take a while so Vision and Iron Man combine forces to blast the whole army with thermal energy.

Captain Marvel could easily have been added to this effort. Just saying.

The whole army flees into the ocean and then... they all get eaten by a sea monster?

????

Captain America: "In some bizarre, inexplicable way... it looks like the ocean has claimed its own!"

Be more alarmed by this!

A maybe explanation for this is the mysterious armored figure that shows up and decks Krang, the leader of this particular army. Then he beats the shit out of him.

I wonder who this mysterious guy is who has past history with Krang.

Maybe it's Raphael of the Ninja Turtles. He is red and angry.

Over in Atlantis, a messenger reports the defeat of all four of the armies to Attuma.

Attuma shouts that he knew this whole plan was folly and made no sense!

(Then why did you sign on?)

But having decided this Atlantis Attacks idea was flawed from the start, Attuma starts to wonder why Lord Ghaur and Llyra insisted on it. What are they really planning? And is there anything Attuma can do to screw them over??

Back at Avengers Island, several of the Avengers assemble to discuss what's been happening.

Wonder Man worries that although Scarlet Witch seems recovered from whatever was making her ill, she's still not acting like herself.

Captain America says that whatever is going on, there's nothing the Avengers can do except be ready for whatever the next move is going to be.

And since they totally have downtime right now, they should look into some of the strange occurrences of the recent past.

Presumably the other annuals.

But unbeknowst to them, the missing U-Man swims towards Avenger Island with more Atlantean troops.

Dun dun dun, continued in next week's post!

Follow at @essential-avengers and maybe like and reblog. I read through fourteen annuals in one week before discovering they couldn't all fit in one post. I'm exhausted.

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Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #51: I SING OF ARMS AND HEROES...

November, 1989

Guess who's BACK... and guess who aren't too sure they're HAPPY about it...

Well, Hank and Jan don't look too happy about it. Neither does US Agent. Lookit him frown, the gwumpy pumpkin. Wonder Man looks like he has dull surprise going on. I cannot fathom Robot Human Torch's expression. The man would do great at poker. Wanda looks like she's offended. That's a "how dare?!" expression if I've seen one. And Vision looks like he's staring directly at the sun and isn't sure why people keep screaming at him to stop.

So my guess is that Hank, Jan, John, and Wanda aren't happy about it and the others may or may not be happy about it.

They might have been more pleased to see Iron Man if he hadn't just flown through a perfectly good wall for no reason.

Last times in Avengers West Coast: Iron Man left the West Coast Avengers because of the Armor Wars arc in his own book. Wow, that was a while ago.

At the end of Armor Wars, Iron Man faked his own death by letting the government blow up an armor full of blood. When more Iron Manning was needed, Tony Stark just built a new suit and claimed he'd hired a new bodyguard/superhero.

And now, all these issues later, he's back to rejoin the Avengers because he's become more dependent on his armor due to stuff happening in his solo. He figures more time stuck in the armor, might as well be putting it to good use.

Also happening, Wanda has had the worst fucking period of her life (so far). Her husband got disassembled by the government, her teammates don't seem to care, her children keep blinking in and out of existence whenever she's not paying attention, evil bacteria shoved her full of goo until she became a mutant supremacist, the robot Human Torch came back to life to take the hottest robot on the team role from Vision. Just a lot going on!

I sure did talk about Wanda a lot in this issue featuring Iron Man.

Anyway.

Iron Man.

What a shiny guy he is.

Yeah. The Avengers (West Coast) aren't thrilled to see Iron Man.

Because: who even is this Iron Man?

US Agent John Walker is not privy to all the details of Iron Man's identity. But he does know that the original Iron Man was supposedly killed and a new guy took over.

Original Iron Man may have been a founder of the Avengers but New Iron Man is just Some Guy. Some Guy who can fuck off if he thinks he gets to swan in and get automatically put on the team.

Iron Man understands that he doesn't get any special consideration and says he's willing to go through whatever initiation process the Avengers consider necessary.

US Agent is a big company man so even though he's maybe the leader of the Avengers possibly? (he's done literally zero leading and nearly zero interacting with the team), he storms off to go call his handlers in Washington so they can tell him what to do.

With him gone, that just leaves Hank, Wasp, and Wonder Man who all know that Tony Stark is Iron Man. Or was. They know that at certain points, Tony Stark has been Iron Man.

(Way to just spill the beans in front of an Iron Man that you don't know whether he's Tony or not, guys)

So they ask Iron Man straight up if he's Tony.

For some reason that would probably make sense if I was reading Iron Man, Iron Man apologizes and says he can't say.

I do want to read olde Iron Man. One of these days, I want to dig into that backlog. He's one of the prominent Marvel characters I haven't read significant material from pre-2000.

Anyway.

On the other side of the compound, Scarlet Wanda and Vision.

Wanda is in a mood. Because she's been in a mood Byrne's whole run because shit keeps happening to her. Possibly goo related shit.

Vision: "It surprises me that you did not wish to stay for the meeting with Iron man, my wife. I am curious as to your reason..." Scarlet Witch: "Please, Vision... I know you're programmed to use words like 'surprised' and 'curious,' but I wish you wouldn't. It only emphasizes how much more robotic you've become." Vision: "My apologies, Wanda. It was my impression you wished me to sound as human as possible." Scarlet Witch: "Human? Why would I wish that, husband? Why would any mutant worthy of the name wish to associate herself with humans?" Vision: "And yet... you are a mutant, and for years, you have gladly associated with the Avengers -- most of whom are human." Scarlet Witch: "A passing weakness, Vision."

Okay. Seriously. Did nobody think to de-gooify her after that Absolom University adventure? Give her a medical check or anything?

I'm getting a little perturbed with how little a shit this era of the West Coast Avengers seem to give about each other.

Nobody noticed Tigra was going nuts. Nobody bothered to do anything as Wanda has clearly been emotionally spiraling. Wasp decides to help Wonder Man undermine Wanda's marriage.

You all suck.

Wanda is behaving like a jerk now but at least we know external factors contributed. The rest of you just suck.

Anyway, Wanda and Vision reach their quarters and find Agatha Harkness waiting for them there.

Hi, Agatha.

Are you the Agatha that does horrible shit to Wanda to teach her something or the Agatha that's helpful without being traumatizing?

I feel like Wanda is a couple pieces of straw from just breaking so maybe considering the latter approach today.

Also, maybe consider calling ahead.

The last time Wanda and Vision saw Agatha, in the second Vision and the Scarlet Witch series, Agatha was burned at the stake.

She tells them that being burned at the stake sucked but that's not what she's here to talk about.

She's here to talk about Wanda's kids.

Wanda's weirdo kids. To talk about them and to understand what precisely they are.

Scarlet Witch: "They are only children. Normal in every way!" Agatha Harkness: "Normal, Wanda? With a mother who is a mutant and a father who is a synthezoid?"

Rude.

Agatha tells Wanda that her kids are far from normal and if she hadn't been busy resurrecting herself, she would have been here sooner.

Agatha Harkness: "But you already know yourself, that when you are not thinking about them... they disappear!"

Vision asks if that's true but Wanda denies it. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY AS A GOOD MOM SHE IS ALWAYS THINKING OF HER KIDS AT ALL TIMES 100%.

Agatha pulls the nuh uh on this. There have been recent times where she was too distracted in battle or knocked unconscious where obviously she wasn't thinking about her kids. And wee baby Thomas and William just cease to exist during those times.

Remember those times? All those times they disappeared, freaking out the governesses? Who tried to report it to Wanda and got fired for it?

Wanda refuses to listen to this. Literally putting her hands over her ears and shouting she won't hear it.

Eesh.

Agatha tells Vision that Wanda will need his strength and love more than ever and oof is she behind the times. The government took away his capacity to love! Bad timing!

Elsewhere, up in the sky, a bird, a comet, a (robot) human torch!

Jim Hammond took off when the Avengers grouped up to meet with Iron Man. He took the time to fly over the countryside for about a half hour, just get an idea of how much things have changed.

And he's amazed! To him, it looks like 400 years have passed instead of just 40.

He lands back at the Avengers West Coast Compound and lands right into some drama without even trying.

Ann Raymond saw him being all human torchy and mistakes him for Toro. And when she realizes he's Jim Hammond instead, she, of course, gets upset because for an instant she let her hopes get up and now she's been reconfronted with the fact that her husband died in an entirely stupid and unnecessary way.

And now Jim knows Toro's dead too and is also emotionally staggered by the news.

Also: demons.

Flaming fireballs! Demons!!

Robot Human Torch gets immediately slapped into the pool. A sad casualty of being the first one the demons run into.

But Ann screaming alerted the other Avengers and they assemble and start walloping demons.

Hank Pym suggests that if a bunch of demons suddenly show up to the Avengers West Coast Compound, why there's only possible explanation.

Iron Man: "You mean it's MASTER PANDEMONIUM?? But the last we saw of him, he was being swept away by the river of oblivion... deep in the realm of Mephisto!"

Hank Pym makes a mental note of Iron Man knowing about the Avengers' last encounter with Master Pandemonium. Because Tony Stark Iron Man was on the team at the time. So is this Tony or did Tony just brief New Iron Man on all his Avengers' cases?

I don't know why Tony isn't telling the Avengers he's him so I don't know how tense it should be that Hank is piecing things together.

Anyway!

US Agent comes out to yell at the commotion and he's not really alarmed by a sudden invasion of demons. It does make him punchy so he starts punching.

Robot Human Torch pulls himself out of the pool. He's soaking wet but all he has to do is FLAME ON! to boil the water away.

Then he can "show these demonic delinquents how we used to deal with their kind back in the 50's!"

Did... you deal with a lot of demons in the 50's specifically?

Wasp takes note that the demons don't seem to be after anything and aren't really trying that hard to kill the Avengers. So why are they here?

Whoops, they're a distraction.

While the Avengers are outside fighting the demons, Master Pandemonium busts into Wanda and Vision's quarters right when Wanda is about to have a nervous breakdown over everything that's happened to her over the past few weeks.

Agatha Harkness tries to ward off the demons with her witchcraft but Master Pandemonium tries belches hellfire in her face.

Gross.

Vision tries to do the intangible fisting thing he does which either works great or doesn't work at all.

Whoops, this is one of the times it doesn't work at all.

Master Pandmemonium just blasts out demons from his arms to overwhelm Vision.

Leaving only Wanda to face him, as she boasts that nothing can withstand her hex power.

Although she seems to fend him off and force him to retreat, she doesn't notice until he's gone that one of his demons snuck behind her and yoinked the children.

He drags the poor, probably innocent tots down to probably Hell.

What does he want from them?

Well, first, he wants a captive audience to recap his entire backstory.

Villains gonna villain.

He was an actor man who drunk drove himself into a bad car crash that cost him his arm. As a big Hollywood type in the 80s, he was big into the occult?? Apparently? So he called upon dark powers, promising his soul for his arm back.

Mephisto was bored and decided this would be funny so he replaced the guy's arm with demons. And then he replaced all his limbs with demons.

Mephisto's sense of humor is beyond me.

He didn't want the guy's soul so he ripped it out, broke it into five pieces, and scattered them around.

Master Pandemonium has been searching for them since, trying to become whole.

He found one with the Cat Demon People of Tigra's origin. But whatever Englehart was planning for this dude, he didn't get around to. Guy got one soul piece back and then dropped out of the plot.

So Byrne is bringing back that plot thread.

Master Pandeominum declares to these two stupid children who don't understand any of this that kidnapping them will allow him to replace his missing 4/5ths of a soul much more efficiently than all his aimless searching up until now.

Now, I know where this is going already. It is renowned, infamously.

But try to make your best guesses before I get to the end of the issue. See how close you get.

Anyway.

In the pressing urgency of some innocent children being kidnapped... the Avengers all sit down to discuss classic sitcoms.

That's a fair response, to be honest.

But here's how the conversation unfolds.

Instead of leaping into action, the Avengers sit around and quiz Agatha on how she's alive again. Even though she keeps telling them it was fucking magic and it's not going to make sense to their science brains.

Wonder Man chimes in that HE's seen Bewitched so he can vouch for Agatha's point.

So Wanda starts yelling at him for talking about television when her children are kidnapped.

Wasp tells Wanda to settle down. Clearly they're treating this with all due urgency! Since, y'know, maybe her kids are fake as shit. Maybe they've just stopped existing again like all the governesses said.

And that's when Wanda does her a slap.

Granted, her mutant supremacy is not called for but, yeah, the Avengers are all a bunch of jerks now who can't muster a bit of urgency when a demon man kidnaps some children.

Wasp isn't even hurt because of her small size. But she is concerned that Wanda said that thing the way she did about humans.

Anyone else concerned? Nobody else reacting? Okay.

Wanda begs Agatha to help her follow Master Pandemonium.

I'm surprised we didn't start with that but I've already made clear how I feel about how the team is reacting to this.

Master Pandemonium tried to hide his path but Agatha took precautions when he first arrived so she can trace him. But Wanda can't do it alone! So... will the Avengers step up to action when a witch very lightly implies that they should?

Yes. They finally get their asses in gear and jump through the swirling magic portal.

Even US Agent agrees that where Wanda goes, the Avengers go too. Which is a big team player moment from the guy who doesn't seem to realize he's leading a superhero team.

Watching from the time Limbo that isn't the demonic Limbo or the game Limbo, Immortus freaks the fuck out.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go for his vague yet menacing plan!

And he can't do anything to alter the flow of events because, I dunno, he can't touch demonic realms. So if anything happens to Wanda, he won't be able to protect her!

Dun dun dun??

I wonder what his vague yet menacing evil plan needs Wanda for?

Back at the Avengers, Hank Pym asks Jim Hammond Human Torch to stay behind to watch the Compound.

So despite making a big deal about him joining the team last issue, with WANDA BRINGING HIM BACK FROM THE DEAD, he gets to sit on his ass for the rest of this story.

What a weird writing decision.

Byrne is all over the place with all the subplots he's juggling for this book and a lot of them just get backburnered hard.

Iron Man gets to go. And he hasn't even officially (re)joined the Avengers at this point. They don't even know if they can trust him because he won't admit to being Tony Stark to his closest friends, for some reason.

The Avengers and Iron Man arrive in a seemingly peaceful fairy tale glade but Agatha's floating head warns them not to trust it.

And the very scenery attacks them a few panels later so. Yeah. Floating Head Agatha called it.

In the distance, past all the killer foliage, Wasp spots a building made of twisted agony.

The Avengers fight their way through the angry vegetation and Scarlet Witch blows open the twisted agony fortress front door with her probability manipulation.

But they find that Master Pandemonium is ready for them. Waiting for them.

And he's done the dumbest thing possible.

He's attached Billy and Tommy to his arms so now he has literal baby hands.

It's horrifying.

It's also the dumbest thing possible.

He's so proud of himself for thinking of this.

Was this where you would have guessed him kidnapping some babies was going to go?

Also, jamming babies onto his arms seems to have filled in two points on the star shaped hole in his tum tum.

I used to like what a silly concept Master Pandemonium's entire deal was. But he's ruined it by going even dumber.

For shame, everything that went into making, publishing, and printing this comic book. For shame. You took a perfectly goofy villain and you ruined him.

Follow @essential-avengers and maybe like or reblog. I appreciate being appreciated.

#avengers #west coast avengers #master pandemonium #us agent #wonder man #the wasp #hank pym #dr pym #the vision #robot human torch #iron man #agatha harkness #immortus #for some damn reason #this ends on a really dumb note

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #310: DEATH in OLYMPIA!

November, 1989

The triumph of BLASTAAR!

He's won already? Then what will the rest of the issue be about?

Blastaar is a nothing villain to me but I gotta say. Another good cover. Byrne's run has been good with covers.

Last time in Avengers: the Avengers had some business with some pissed off Lava Men but the only important take away is that Gilgamesh somehow died. Except he's not quite dead, only mostly dead.

The Avengers took him to Sersi to get him looked at, she shrugged and suggested they take him to Olympia. Except they only found a crater where Olympia should be (because Sprite accidentally blew the whole city into the Negative Zone).

Thor uses Mjolnir to track down Olympia and the Avengers explore the strangely empty city. And then Blastaar comes out of nowhere and blows everyone up.

This time: Sudden Odin

HEY, LISTEN TO THE CAPTION BOX WHEN IT SAYS TO ATTEND.

Odin calls the Warriors Three of Hogun, Fandral, Volstaag because his Odin-Senses have been tingling that Thor has come into the Negative Zone.

There's a bunch of Thor Lore - or Thlore - that I don't want to get into but for reasons Asgard is currently also in the Negative Zone.

But Odin senses Some Kind of Danger. He can't be more specific because he's Odindrowsy and must go into the Odinsleep soon. But he wants the Warriors Three to go, find Thor, and help him with whatever.

Meanwhile, in Olympia, Thor grabs Sersi and shields her from Blastaar.

... Byrne, you're the only one writing Avengers. How are you forgetting stuff issue to issue?

Last issue, Thor couldn't touch Sersi at all because she'd weirdly gone intangible.

Anyway, Blastaar and Thor trade boasts for a bit. Blastaar boasts that surely Thor didn't forget how much of a whallop Blastaar's blaasting packs? And Thor has a much stronger retort that Mjolnir is really cool and he's gonna kick Blastaar's ass.

Thor throws Mjolnir, Blastaar deflects it with his blaasting, and Thor dunks on him some more by saying if Blastaar "hast within thy soul no single shred of nobility... that thou might also be a foe truly worthy of a scion of Asgard."

Blastaar retorts by blowing up Sersi.

Which Thor does not care for as a rebuttal.

Shooting the hostage is a pretty dumb thing to do when facing a superhero. It just makes them mad and now you have no hostage to threaten.

Ya dumb, Blastaar.

Elsewhere, Nazi-punching pals Captain America and Namor McKenzie emerge from beneath some rubble. Or rather, Namor drags Cap out.

Cap is in bad shape.

Namor only knows that a bolt of pure, concussive force hit them so fast that Namor couldn't tell where it came from.

But there's the pyrotechnics of a big battle happening at the tower, so they know where to look for answers.

Cap tries to tell Namor not to fly off half-cocked since Cap is still too shaky to back him up. But flying off half-cocked is what Namor does.

Namor: "Do not try to stop me, old ally. He that attacked us has besmirched the honor of the avenging son of Atlantis! If he awaits in yonder tower... the waiting shall not be long before he knows my vengeance!"

Cap knows better than to try to stop Namor from flying off half-cocked so he tells him to at least be careful. Y'know, think before he acts. Wait for backup if he can.

Namor has already flown away so fast that Cap might as well be talking to a wall.

Cap speculates to himself that Namor's "manic nature" might be caused by his hybrid nature, being half-Atlantean and half-human.

I think this is foreshadowing a reveal that exactly this. Namor is a jerk sometimes because his body chemistry is weird and spending too much time on land or in the ocean fucks with his moods.

I think later stuff walked back on that and had it be that Namor is a jerk sometimes because he's a jerk sometimes.

Anyway, Byrne sets up retcons with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, huh?

Captain America is interrupted in thinking about what a genetic nightmare a half-human half-Atlantean is when he spots a crater with She-Hulk lying in the center of it.

She apparently did see what hit her so she's able to tell Cap what the class already knows. Blastaar is the dude that's antagonizing them today.

Since the battle is raging in the tower of the Great Hall that she and Sersi were exploring, She-Hulk comments that she didn't expect Sersi to give such a good fight to Blastaar.

And she's instantly proven right a panel later when, instead, Thor and Blastaar explode out of the tower, locked in combat.

Hey.

She-Hulk.

Every Eternal is a flying brick. Have some respect.

Also, couldn't Sersi just turn Blastaar into a pig? What's the limit on that?

I mean, she can't now. She blew up. But if she did get a chance to fight, doesn't she have a win button for like 90% of fights?

Anyway.

Thor and Blastaar take a really long time to fall out of the tower, punching each other along the way. Then Namor jumps after them and yanks Thor off Blastaar so only Blastaar is plummeting. But Blastaar blaasts the ground to soften his impact.

Meanwhile, a mysterious man in a white suit kirby krackle-ports into an alley, scaring off a homeless man.

The mysterious man is like good nobody who matters noticed me MY PLAN IS GOING FLAWLESSLY!

Hi, new subplot.

Granted, Avengers East Coast doesn't have nearly as many subplots as Avengers West Coast has. Avengers West Coast is all subplots and Avengers East Coast is all main plots.

Weirdly unbalanced but hey. Maybe that is a-changing.

Back at the plot, the Avengers have all surrounded Blastaar, who is blaasting nowhere near them to keep them at bay.

He says that obviously, they're trying to trick him into targeting one of them so the rest can gang up on him BUT HE IS TOO SMART FOR THAT.

She-Hulk asks him to exposit why he's even here. Last time she saw him (back in Fantastic Four #318), Annihilus blasted him to atoms.

Usually people die when they're killed.

This 100% works to get Blastaar talking because villains love expositing.

So back in that FF issue, Blastaar's own men had turned on him and shot him with a stasis ray. Since he was held in stasis, he couldn't be disintegrated. Which is the opposite of stasis. Obviously.

When Annihilus annihilated everyone else, Blastaar just got sucked into Negative Zone space and floated around for a while. He eventually got sucked into a negative space wedgie and got dropped on Olympia when it was dunked into the Negative Zone.

This all makes perfect sense, insofar as anything in comics ever makes perfect sense. As in, not really but sure.

The Eternals found Blastaar near death and not being dicks, they decided to heal him.

Blastaar: "I was grateful. To show my thanks, I tried to slay them all as quickly and painlessly as I could. Foolishly, they resisted... And the price of that resistance was utter destruction! I only hope it pained the stupid brutes as much as their stupidity pained Blastaar!"

You're kind of a dick, dude.

Anyway, in a twist, Blastaar was talking to distract the heroes, who were attentively listening.

He blaasts Thor and She-Hulk. Namor jumps right into battle and gets immediately blaasted.

Leaving just Captain America.

Captain America: "Blast it all! What comes over Namor?! Sometimes he acts as if he doesn't have a brain in his head!"

Cap tells Blastaar not to get cocky because he's still standing, which Blastaar scoffs at. Captain America doesn't even have super powers! Depending on the era!

Captain America: "Maybe not. The super-soldier serum that transformed me into Captain America made me a perfect physical specimen, not a super one... But I still have a few aces to play... Such as my legendary shield!"

Really depends on whether you consider peak human to be superpowers or not.

Both Captain America and Black Panther have a thing where a super drug made them about as strong, fast, durable, whatever as it is physically possible for a person to be.

But a comic book's idea of what that is means the two of them do stuff that is blatantly super-human but in the world of a comic, anybody could hypothetically train to do maybe?

I usually just consider it to be a superpower, albeit a low key superpower.

Even if you don't consider peak human a superpower, the super-soldier serum has slowed Cap's aging way the hell down. Which sounds super to me.

Anyway. Cap rushes right at Blastaar but with his shield up, allowing him to deflect the obvious counterattaack.

He manages to tackle Blastaar but the Negative Zonian kicks Cap away and then blaasts the tower of the Great Hall, sending debris raining down on Cap.

But then Cap is saved by the Warriors Three!

Hogun smashes the rubble before it can smash Cap.

Blastaar thinks oh shit more Asgardians. So the instant they turn to look at Thor pulling himself out from under some rubble, Blastaar books it.

He just scarpers.

He decides to exercise the better part of valor until he can turn the situation back to his advantage but then the weather turns against him.

The wind kicks up, the air glows with energy, and Blastaar is lifted off the ground.

It's weird weather but it's not weird Thor weather!

It's weird Eternal energy ghost weather!

The energy ghosts bonk Blastaar into the scenery for a bit and then throw him to the ground. They coalesce into the Eternals and then Ikaris does what he does and kicks Blastaar's ass.

Cap asks the question everyone is wondering. Hey, why aren't the Eternals dead?

And Sersi explains it.

Eternals are hard to kill.

They have "complete control of their physical structure, even down to the atomic level."

Blastaar lucked into his blaasts having resonant frequency to disrupt the Eternals' control of their atoms. So they disintegrated. But it just took them time to regain their senses.

Then they pulled themselves back together and kicked Blastaar's ass. There was no reason for the Avengers to even be here! The Eternals would have solved the problem eventually!

Hell, Blastaar blaasting apart the Eternals was a one-time thing. They apparently all adjusted their resonance frequency so he won't be able to stomp them again.

Okay, so what about Gilgamesh?

He was just away from Olympia too long. All the Eternals are bonded to their city but Gilgamesh spent so long in exile that he's bonded with Olympia so much that the city is life-sustaining for him.

Actually, I can't tell whether Gilgamesh was away from the city too long or that Olympia being dunked into the Negative Zone weakened him at the wrong moment and he got hurt in a way that he couldn't heal from without Olympia.

Eh, I guess it doesn't matter.

The take-away is that Gilgamesh is leaving the Avengers and eh. I can't say I'll miss him because the writer shake-ups meant that he never really got a personality or a niche on the team.

Like the Worst Roster, all I can say about Gilgamesh is that damn, he coulda been more.

Thena mentions that it's a pity Gilgamesh has to stay in Olympia.

Thena: "It pleased me to have a member of our race serving side by side with the noble Avengers. It bespoke a day when human and Eternal might stand as one, all ancient fears and jealousies gone forever." Captain America: "A day well worth hoping for, my lady. And perhaps, we should not too soon assume the link between our people has been broken. There are other Eternals. Others who might take the place of Gilgamesh in the ranks of the Avengers."

It's gonna be Sersi.

I don't know how long it's going to take but we're almost in the 90s so it's gonna be any time now.

Hurry up, Sersi.

Cap asks how Olympia wound up in the Negative Zone and, yeah, Sprite did it. He accidentally exploded the city into another dimension.

He apologizes as much as he cares to. The non-apology apology "it was never my intent to cause distress."

It doesn't matter. Thena fixes it with a single button press.

Blastaar gets taken away by the Warriors Three to go to Asgard jail. Thor declines returning to Asgard because he likes hanging out with Avengers on Midgard (Earth).

As the Warriors Three leave on their space chariot, Olympia fades out back to Earth. And the next time box teases big event Acts of Vengeance.

And I didn't care for this two-parter.

For all the many plans that Byrne seems to have for West Coast Avengers, he seems to be spinning his wheels in this book.

It really feels like this whole two-parter just accomplishes bringing Blastaar back (who cares) and immediately putting him in Limbo again (Asgardian jail).

That's a point B that didn't need to exist between his death that wasn't going to stick permanently and an actual good story that comes after this.

Olympia getting blown into Negative Zone space because Sprite touched a thing he shouldn't have touched, Blastaar conveniently being able to solo the Eternals, the Eternals able to come back and kick his ass without any input from the Avengers, sending Olympia back to Earth taking one button press... It all makes the story feel really pointless.

What changes if the Avengers had just gone to Olympia, it wasn't blown up, and Thena tells them what's wrong with Gilgamesh? Not a lot.

I don't like what Byrne is doing in West Coast Avengers but at least he seems to want to be there. How can you have no ideas already? You've only been writing six issues!

Maybe I'm just grumpy. My cursed future knowledge tells me that Avengers Island gets destroyed in Acts of Vengeance and that's more squandered potential. More writer shake-ups meant that the setting never really got a chance to shine.

Oh, well. Bomber jackets lie in the future. Bright hearts, clear eyes, something something.

Follow @essential-avengers for all these posts but in order and without other stuff. Like, reblog, comment, do stuff, I dunno. I get lonely down here in the italics.

#avengers #blastaar #captain america #thor #namor mckenzie #she hulk #warriors three #eternals #sersi #others #gilgamesh #stuff happens but it mostly doesn’t matter #ho hum

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Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #50: RETURN of the HERO

November, 1989

I'm sure that someone was asking for this but I couldn't guess who.

Look.

The thing about the robot Human Torch is that he's just less interesting than Johnny Storm human Human Torch.

Marvel brings back Jim Hammond a lot but he never sticks around because he's just not super interesting.

But its pretty blatantly obvious that John Byrne wants him back, given how he's taken a crowbar to Vision's character to justify it and has had Captain America and Namor start talking unprompted about how cool it would be if robot Human Torch came back.

So, it's happening.

You really want this, John Byrne, so lets see how it plays out.

Last times in Avengers West Coast: a lot. Scarlet Witch got kidnapped by a Texas college and stuffed full of ooze until she went evil. The ooze was defeated by the Great Lakes Avengers but Wanda still has the mutant supremacy memories it jammed in her and she's not sure how it may affect her.

Also, some lady was teased as coming to the Avengers on robot Human Torch related business and now she's here.

That subplot progressed a lot more quickly than I thought it would.

If it was Englehart still, we'd be looking at four teases before she ever got anywhere.

Because John Byrne hates me personally, there's a two-page spread of the Avengers West Coast all eyeing the lady with varying amounts of suspicion and sympathy. And weirding them all out, US Agent who speaks to the woman with patience and empathy.

US Agent: "All right now, ma'am, calm down. Take it easy. The Avengers were created to help people in distress. But you've got to tell us your story slowly... clearly..."

I'm honestly surprised US Agent is in the book. He just seemed to disappear after Tigra hit on him.

The woman explains that she is Ann Raymond, widow of Thomas Raymond, aka Toro, aka the robot Human Torch's partner/sidekick.

Toro is dead. He died during a battle between Namor and the Mad Thinker.

Namor came and told Mrs Raymond himself. And she believed it until she heard the news that Vision wasn't made out of Human Torch.

(Again: Why did you announce that to the press, the Avengers??)

Wanda gets immediately hostile when Mrs Raymond mentions the Vision/Human Torch thing. I presume she's sick of this subplot by this point.

Scarlet Witch: "Calm myself? How can I calm myself when the whole world has gone completely insane?! Isn't it bad enough that I've had to see my husband dismantled... his mind erased... isn't it bad enough that a group trying to use me to find a way to possess all the other mutants on Earth used the Vision's condition as their avenue of approach to lure me into their clutches... Now this madwoman wants to implicate the Vision in the death of her husband?"

Wonder Man tries to tell Wanda to calm down but she tells him to fuck off. Well, not literally. They're not going to say fuck in Avengers. But that's the tone of her jerking away when he puts a hand on her shoulder.

Wanda was ready to just wash her hands of the Avengers after the Absolom College Ooze Incident. They got her to stay by promising to actually try to help Vision.

But the Avengers still don't seem to really care as far as Wanda can tell and are letting this new thing distract them.

In fairness, does this require the whole team? Do you need to be here listening to Mrs Raymond, Hank Pym?

Wanda stomps off, threatening to actually quit for realsies. Wasp starts to go after her but Vision stops her. Its his job as husband to tend to Wanda's emotional needs. He has no idea how to do that because emotions are DATA NOT FOUND but its his duty so he's going to go be adjacent to her anyway!

Aww?

Anyway, Hank Pym, who definitely doesn't need to be here for this, prompts Mrs Raymond to tell her story.

So... flashbacks. Or new information.

In indeterminate amount of time ago, Thomas Raymond, Toro, hears that the Human Torch was killed when the Fantastic Four were around.

Now, right off the bat this is weird. I'm pretty sure that the Human Torch was already dead, having blown himself up in a desert, and was found and resurrected by the Mad Thinker who tried to use him to destroy the Fantastic Four.

Wouldn't Thomas' reaction be more like 'holy crap, the robot Human Torch came back to life and died like ten minutes later? Weird!'

Thomas goes to the robot Human Torch's funeral (I thought the FF just left him to not-rot in a cave?) to pay his respects but the funeral is obviously a trap. Because one: there's no superheroes there. And two: the Mad Thinker buys Thomas a drugged coffee and drugs him with it.

The Mad Thinker used Toro's flame powers in a scheme with Egghead and the Puppet Master to black out all the power in America.

Toro was brainwashed into thinking he was the original Human Torch and sent to attack Namor. Namor brought him to his senses and Toro decided, despite having a loving wife, to sacrifice himself to push the Mad Thinker's escape rocket into a volcano.

The Mad Thinker, of course, walked that off. Making the whole thing pretty dumb.

Mrs Raymond didn't know all that. She just went looking for Thomas when he didn't return from the funeral.

She couldn't find him and only found that the cemetery named in the funeral announcement was not in active use so he couldn't have attended a funeral there.

So she went home and bam there's Namor.

Namor and Mrs Raymond compared notes and that's how she had the whole story for this flashback exposition.

The Wasp reiterates that the Fantastic Four just left the original Human Torch's body lying where they left it because he may have been the first Marvel hero and a famous Nazi puncher but as far as Reed Richards was concerned, he wasn't a real person.

Anyway, the Human Torch's body was supposedly found by Ultron to retrofit into being the Vision. But that's all retconned now so who knows.

The reason why this is relevant is that Mrs Raymond was hoping that the Toro that died stupidly pushing a rocket into a volcano wasn't actually Toro but the Human Torch.

I mean, he was brainwashed into thinking he was the Human Torch so why not just have him be the real guy? Wouldn't that be simpler?

Hank Pym concedes that if the Mad Thinker brought the Human Torch back to life once, he'd probably be able to do it again. And then he could have brainwashed him into thinking he was Toro who had been brainwashed into thinking he was the Human Torch.

Whoa, it stopped being simpler.

Hank points out that even if the Toro that died was actually Jim Hammond, that doesn't really answer where the hell Thomas Raymond has been for years.

Mrs Raymond begs Hank to help her find out what happened to her husband (pretty sure he cannonballed into a volcano) and Hank agrees to try.

So while Wasp leads Mrs Raymond to a guest room to get some rest, Hank makes some calls to the Avengers East Coast Island.

Namor (still hanging around after the Lava Men and Negative Zone stuff, I guess) confirms Mrs Raymond's story. Insofar as Namor fighting a fiery dude who claimed to be the Human Torch but then claimed to be Toro.

The exiled Prince of Abslantis says that his memory may not be reliable due to all the amnesia he's been through but he was pretty sure the dude who claimed to be Toro was Toro. And the fact that Thomas Raymond went missing after Toro dove into a volcano does seem to confirm that.

Lotta talking in this comic.

Have the West Coast Avengers West Coast done any superheroing since Byrne took over?

Now, granted, helping this lady get closure is pretty super-heroic but it doesn't feel like the Avengers West Coast are a superhero team anymore. 90% of what they've dealt with in the Byrne run has been Wanda Vision drama. And when they're not dealing with that, they're just sitting around.

Meanwhile, the Avengers East Coast keep going on wacky adventures. And even the Great Lakes Avengers are up to more than the Avengers West Coast are.

If the Avengers West Coast were going off on missions and adventures, they may have noticed Tigra being weird before the situation deteriorated and came to Hank shrinking her down and putting her in a terrarium.

Oh, by the way, he put her in a terrarium.

Consistent with Hank's problem solving ethic lately, he doesn't seem to have any real urgency to do anything about this.

She attacked him so he shrank her. He needed to put her somewhere while he figured out what to do with her so he put her in a terrarium. And he doesn't actually want to look after her so he rigged it with a bunch of alarms.

Hank mentions that Tigra's cat aspect is in ascendency and US Agent nods and says that explains all the cat-like behavior he observed that nobody else did.

Wonder Man: "? You know about this? Why didn't you tell anyone?" US Agent: "I was busy. Watch your tone, Williams. I don't have to explain myself to you. I answer only to the United State government." Wonder Man: "Guess again, Stripes! You're an Avenger now! We didn't want you, but to avoid further government interference in our business, we've been forced to take you. And you are gonna learn that being an Avenger means being responsible to all the other members! We don't even know where you are half the time!" US Agent: "Where I am is on your need-to-know list only when you can see me, Wonder Man! The rest of the time you don't have the security clearance to know any more than I chose to tell you. And I chose to tell you nothing!"

US Agent isn't just not a team player, he's functionally not even on the team.

He just lives in the same place as they do but he's coming and going as he pleases and doesn't really interact with the Avengers.

Wonder Man is about ready to deck US Agent in the schnozz which I, at least, would enjoy but Wasp breaks up the fight.

Since Wasp got Mrs Raymond settled, Hank goes to talk to Wanda and Vision and tells them that if Jim Hammond was buried at that funeral it pretty much completely disproves the idea that Vision was ever Human Torch.

Vision is game to pursuing the lead but he is confused because more needs to be retconned. See, he was recognized as the Torch by a Sentinel and by the ghost of the original Torch.

What does that meeeeeean?

Hank suggests that the Sentinel was just mistaken because its primary function is to find mutants, not identify androids.

As for that Ghost Human Torch... well, that's suspect isn't it? The Ghost Human Torch was in the Legion of the Unliving with Ghost Wonder Man, before Wonder Man was retconned to have been in a kind of stasis, not dead. Plus, Immortus was involved. He seems to be involved a lot.

Hank wonders aloud why Immortus would have gone to such length to make Vision think he was the Human Torch.

Immortus happens to be watching on his time monitors.

Immortus: "You are only now beginning to see the culmination of a plan set in motion long, long ago. A plan which, when it achieves fruition, will make Immortus truly that which I have always claimed to be... THE ABSOLUTE MASTER OF TIME ITSELF!"

Yes but do you have a TARDIS?

Meanwhile, at the Anvil Pictures offices, Martin Preston, studio boss, is lurking in his office musing how everything he's done up to this point has been fruitless. But being trapped in Mephisto's realm has made things clear to him.

Martin Preston: "Let the Avengers count the hours of their last days! When next we meet, it will be MASTER PANDEMONIUM who is triumphant!"

Oh, hey, this guy.

I knew he was in show-biz but I thought he was an actor. He runs a big movie company? Good for him. Shame about all the cursed future knowledge I have.

Also, he looks different than last we saw him. And his powers seem to be different. While gloating to no one that he'll beat up the Avengers, he turns his arm into a demon arm.

But Master Pandemonium turns his arms into whole-ass demons. An entire demon pulled out of his sleeve like a very impressive magic show.

Turning his arm demon-y but not turning it into an entire demon that just pops off and goes to do its thing just isn't as goofy. I cannot approve of it.

Later, the Avengers West Coast land in Pleasantville. Hank Pym goes to talk to the mayor to get permission to exhume the Human Torch.

The mayor is having difficulty with this request because he doesn't even know where to start to approve exhuming a grave that doesn't exist on record for a cemetery that closed thirty years before the grave that doesn't exist was dug there.

Meanwhile, Wasp, Wonder Man, Vision, and Scarlet Witch preemptively find the Human Torch's grave.

And, yeah, the gravestone says Human Torch instead of Jim Hammon.

Vision decides to intangible into the coffin to check if Jim Hammond, Human Torch, really is buried here.

Wasp and Wonder Man find this distasteful. To just intrude on someone's grave like that...

But Vision is able to report a body that looks like Jim Hammond and hasn't decomposed the way a meat body would.

Wanda asks, okay so there's a Human Torch-looking guy buried here. So, what? What are we going to do about it?

Wonder Man says they have to wait for Hank to get permission to exhume the grave.

Scarlet Witch: "The Scarlet Witch will not be bound by human bureaucracy!"

Then she blows up the grave.

Okay, okay.

The explosion is more like a streak of flame erupting into the skies. Wonder Man flies off to see if that is the Human Torch.

Also, Wasp takes note of Wanda specifying human bureaucracy.

Meanwhile again, back at the Avengers West Coast Compound.

Lauren Timm, Billy and Tommy's governess, has lost the children. Again. She didn't tell Wanda when it happened the first time because Wanda has obtained a reputation for firing governesses at the drop of a hat and dammit Lauren needs this job!

While she's looking for Billy and Tommy, the skies suddenly goes dark and Agatha Harkness appears at the door, announcing that she's here to help with "your most difficult charges..."

Hi, Agatha. Didn't you die?

Oh, well, never keeps you down long.

Back over at the A-plot, if a plot is what you could call it, Wonder Man chases down the robot Human Torch.

He yells to the very confused robot man that he's a friend and wants to help him so the Torch stops and is like a friend, neat.

The robot Human Torch hasn't heard of the Avengers. He's barely heard of the Fantastic Four, remembering them simply as "four people with fantastic powers" from his last stint at being alive.

But he comes back with Wonder Man.

It seems like there could be an awkward moment introducing the Human Torch to the Vision, what with all the maybe history that might be between them.

But the Vision doesn't have the emotional capacity to have robo-angst (which makes him the worst Vision. Robo-angst is Vision's thing!) and nobody gives a shit about Wanda giving the Human Torch the stink-eye for existing.

Nobody gives a shit about Wanda is this run's thing.

The Torch feels like he knows Vision, which makes their maybe history even more confusing based on what we currently know.

And Hank Pym decides to Explain It All. Back at the Avengers West Coast Compound.

FOR SOME REASON, HE STARTS WITH NOVA.

No, not the space one. Er, I mean, not THAT space one, with the helmet. Frankie Raye. Who was Johnny Storm Human Torch's girlfriend with a dark secret and the dark secret turned out to be that she had fire power. And then she went into space to date Galactus.

INCREDIBLY WEIRD CHARACTER ARC.

Anyway, Frankie told the Fantastic Four that Professor Horton was her step-father. Creator of the robot Human Torch Professor Horton. And he was downright miffed when the human Human Torch started his career.

Horton took Frankie to a warehouse to show her all his robot Human Torch creating aparatus and then Frankie spilled chemicals all over herself.

Somehow the chemicals set her on fire without hurting her and she became a female Human Torch but she went by Nova. And then she went off to go mack on Galactus.

Wanda asks the very pertinent question of what the fuck this has to do with anything.

So Hank says his best guesstimate er scientific theory is that Ultron made Vision out of the leftover Human Torch creating molds and chemicals. And that's why that Sentinel identified Vision as being the same age as the Torch AND why Hank himself recognized parts of Vision as World War 2 vintage AND that's why Vision seems familiar to the real, true, actual, no foolin' robot Human Torch.

Vision was made out of Human Torch spare parts!

IT ALL MAKES SENSE!

Except for the part where Professor Horton claimed that Vision wasn't his work. And you'd think he'd recognize the components if they were just shit from his warehouse.

BUT OTHER THAN THAT IT ALL MAKES SENSE SHUT UP.

I'll give the retcon this much.

It TRIES to thread the needle between leaving robot Human Torch available to be brought back and still having Vision's origin Human Torch adjacent.

I think. That if the set-up had been framed differently, it would be less aggravating.

If instead of hammering in that all of Vision's backstory was lies and having Professor Horton show up to point at Vision and go 'the fuck is this??', if the Human Torch's resurrection was what prompted the questions into Vision's origin. That I think would go over better.

Anyway, Wasp declares this retcon is stupendous and very believable. And gives Hank a congratulatory kiss, which he reacts to by abashedly protesting "Ja-a-an...!"

You two are too old to be acting like high school sweeties. And too divorced.

Anyway again, Wasp predicted that this would somehow end in the Human Torch's resurrection. I DON'T KNOW HOW. WASP JUST KNOWS.

SHE MADE JIM HAMMOND ROBOT HUMAN TORCH A COSTUME.

JUST IN CASE.

My theory is that she looked at the roster box on the cover and saw the Human Torch there.

Because he is.

Resurrected and included in the roster box on the cover. Foregone conclusion.

Wasp invites him to the Avengers, without really asking him if he wants to be. He does want to be but what an assumption. He might want to spend some time getting used to the modern world or looking for old friends. Maybe look into Professor Horton.

But Wasp knows things. She saw the roster box. He's gonna be on the team.

US Agent seconds the sentiment and turns it into an actual invite and Jim Hammond accepts.

He even gets an echo of Vision crying and pretending he's not when he was invited to join, all those issues ago.

I was prepared to give credit for the subtle allusion except on the next page Wasp makes it a blatant reference.

Wasp: "Hey, don't go all macho on us now, Torch! This is the 80's! Men are allowed to show their emotions now. Why... I guess you'd say even an android can cry!"

Stop trying to make you not my favorite character, Wasp.

... Oh my god. In the panel where Wasp says the thing, Hank and Jim are standing right next to each other and they're the same person.

-points accusingly- SAME FACE SYNDROME.

Brave artistic choice to put these two people on the same team when you can't tell them apart except by clothes.

Jim Hammond doesn't get to enjoy the warm fuzzies of joining a superhero team again because they're interrupted by the sound of someone circling the building overhead.

After months away from the team due to that whole awkward international criminal thing,

Yay!

This is getting to be a pretty big superhero team for a team that doesn't do anything.

US Agent, Wonder Man, Wasp, Dr Hank Pym, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Robot Human Torch, Tigra, maybe Iron Man.

Maybe the reason they haven't been doing anything is because crime, all of crime, looked at that lineup and went 'no thank you.'

Anyway.

Bringing back the Human Torch is pretty blatantly what Byrne wanted to do all along. The path to get there was painful and badly written. The path to get it done was the same.

I mean, one of the oldest heroes in Marvel and he's resurrected because Wanda blows up his grave in a fit of pique? That's his grand return? Sheesh.

Still, I'm trying to be open-minded. I want to see how Jim fits in with the team. How he interacts, who he meshes and clashes with.

Wanda seems pissed at his existence. Surely that will lead to good material.

Is Iron Man rejoining the team? I hope so. I like Iron Man. I want to see him walk into the situation that the Avengers West Coast are in and react like 'i was gone maybe ten minutes!'

Follow @essential-avengers because I said so. Or because you want to. Like, reblog, comment, juggle. Things you can do.

#avengers #west coast avengers #us agent #wonder man #the wasp #hank pym #dr pym #the vision #robot human torch #Tigra #namor mckenzie #iron man #agatha harkness #master pandemonium #bad side of a big roster: lots of names

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #309: To Find OLYMPIA!

November, 1989

Namor looks like he's got some negative things to say, in the zone.

And it is canon sometimes that the Negative Zone makes a person feel negative. Its the Bad Vibes Place.

I have no idea why dead Gilgamesh was drawn with the What's Going On He-Man face. Or why She-Hulk is in her Fantastic Four duds.

So, lets get into it.

Last times, in Avengers: Captain America held a meeting to declare that all the Avengers teams were one team and he was in charge of the Avengers. Also, the Avengers got kidnapped by Lava Men. And so did Namor. They were taken to the Last Lava Man, a priest called Jinku, who accused the Avengers of genociding the Lava Men, which they kinda sorta did do by killing a random demon named Cha'sa'dra during Inferno. The Avengers don't beat Jinku and the giant monster he summoned so much as run out the clock. Some of the dead Lava Men turned out to not be dead so much as incubating. They hatched into golden men and told Jinku to knock it off. Alas?, Gilgamesh got fatally slapped while fighting the lava monster and is now exceptionally dead. The Avengers take Gilgamesh to Sersi who can't help and suggests they take him to the Eternal city Olympia. Except Eternal Sprite managed to blow it up like ten minutes before they get there. The whole city.

Just a big, steaming crater now.

Thanks Sprite, you screw-up.

Sersi: "It is... gone! All of fabled Olympia! Snuffed out as a flickering candle flame! How can this be??"

Captain America tries to offer any help the Avengers can do. But Sersi just dramatically faints after psychically scanning for any trace of Olympia.

She murmurs about emptiness and enormity and the loneliness of endless space.

Such a dramatic person.

There's also a weird bit of choreography where Captain America caught Sersi when she fainted. So he's clearly not holding his shield. He tells She-Hulk to hold it for him but she's already holding it and must have grabbed it when he dropped it to pick up Sersi, since she's right behind him in that panel.

And she gives it right back to him as soon as he's put Sersi down.

So why was it necessary for Cap to tell She-Hulk to do something she was already doing? Did Byrne worry that the choreography wouldn't stand on its own?

Ah well.

The Avengers wonder if there's something wrong with the Eternals lately. Because, well, Gilgamesh is mostly dead despite being Eternal and the Lava Monster didn't hit him THAT hard.

Gilgamesh should have been able to heal himself, since all Eternals have the power of molecular manipulation over their own bodies.

Sersi drifts back to consciousness and explains that "all Eternals an sense the minds of all other Eternals no matter the range" so she tried reaching out.

She sensed them near but not on Earth.

Which Cap finds baffling. But Thor has an idea what she means.

Remember how his hammer used to be able to create dimensional portals and then it couldn't? Well, it can again.

He figures that near but far probably means another dimension. And he doesn't have to be precise. When all you have is a hammer, it helps if its a really, really cool hammer.

Thor just wills "let the powers that split the raging heavens now be focused here, into a single place, a single purpose... and let any barrier betwixt us and Olympia... be SUNDERED!"

And bippity boppity boo, a portal is opened through.

To the Negative Zone, apparently. Well, the cover spoiled that. You're not special for realizing it on sight, She-Hulk.

Sersi confirms that Thor hit the nail on the head. In the Negative Zone she can indeed sense Olympia.

She-Hulk: "In the Negative Zone? But... how the heck did it get there? I thought the only access was through the portal in the Fantastic Four's headquarters." Thor: "Nay, green one. That is but one way to reach this parallel dimension. Mjolnir hath opened this small gateway by drawing on the residual energies of whatever force dispatched Oympia hence."

Namor says that the time for discussion is over. If Olympia is in the Negative Zone, the only hope for Gilgamesh will be to find it.

Sersi agrees.

Sersi: "We must go now where Olympia has gone... into the Negative Zone!"

"Meanwhile, elsewhere" we check back in on old guy who blew up his own house subplot.

Professor Harker takes the blueprints for his fantabulous new invention to the Polydyne company and blows them away!

A guy in a tie: "It's absolutely amazing! Something like this is going to make cold fusion seem as antiquated as rubbing two sticks together! Why... the kind of power that could be harnessed from a single such device would be enough to supply the needs of the whole world for centuries!"

Professor Harker himself prefers to think of it as more the power to re-shape the whole universe maybe. But the Polydyne peeps warn him the money men won't understand that so maybe stick with the 'makes cold fusion look like a joke' sales pitch.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, the Great Lakes Avengers!

Huh, I guess Byrne really is writing three teams in two books since the GLA is showing up in East Coast Avengers now.

I do worry that it's going to be hard to balance between the needs of the book's actual team and whatever Great Lakes Avengers content is showing up this month.

Hawkeye tells the Great Lakes Avengers that they did okay against the Absolom University chumps but they could have done a lot better.

I mean. They were only in action for a few pages so I don't know how you can tell.

But anyway, Hawkeye and Mockingbird have come up with carefully tailored training for the team!

Carefully tailored until they ran out of steam halfway and decided Mr Immortal and Doorman's powers were too weird to train and just have them training in athletics.

Didn't even try with Flatman. Hawkeye just tells him to do whatever he wants.

Pretty amazing how quickly Hawkeye goes from Tough Coach to half-assed.

So they have Dinah Soar flying while dodging hay bales, Big Bertha doing track and field, Mr Immortal and Doorman doing an obstacle course, and Flatman also doing an obstacle course but with more wiggling.

Hawkeye decides to throw a wrinkle in the training by shooting a grease arrow right in front of Big Bertha.

She slips, bumps into a fatphobic Mr Immortal, and he falls into Doorman.

Literally into.

This is weird because Doorman's powers are only supposed to work if he's against a door or a wall. Y'know, so his body can function as a door?

He's never had someone go through him when there wasn't a through.

Dinah Soar doesn't wait around for them to talk through the situation.

She flies right into Doorman. Literally into. And soon after flies out carrying Mr Immortal.

She cradles him against her chest as he shivers that it was so cold inside wherever he was.

Y'know... Next time the Great Lakes Avengers gets a miniseries or whatever, they should resurrect Dinah Soar. She missed out on a lot of the modern fleshing out the team got because her death basically kicked off the plot of the Dan Slott miniseries.

A new Great Lakes Avengers thing could have a lot of fun bringing her back and making it a whole thing about comic book resurrections.

C'mon, do it.

Anyway, Hawkeye decides they're gonna do a bunch of tests on Doorman, until they figure out how he works.

I was going to joke about Hawkeye trying to do science but I did then remember that Mockingbird does have a Ph.D.

In biology which may or may not wholly cover whatever is going on here. But in comics, a Ph.D. can do all the science.

Look at Hank Pym, revolutionizing robotics (derogatory) when his degree was in biochemistry. Almost as far from robotics as you can get.

Meanwhile, the A-plot.

I've missed it so.

... Actually, its the Save Gilgamesh plot so I didn't miss it so much.

Byrne is blatantly pushing to make the Great Lakes Avengers a thing but the main plots in both the Avengers plots are so blah that I don't actually mind the Great Lakes Avengers panel-time takeover so much.

Anyway, instead of just walking through the portal, the Avengers stopped to go get their Quinjet and are flying it through the Negative Zone.

I guess this is one of the space capable ones.

They're relying on Sersi's psychic connection with all other Eternals to guide them and she says they're on the right track.

Although the Avengers are doubtful about that since they just passed themselves.

I didn't know the Negative Zone did that.

Sersi insists that they're going the right way but she doesn't sound sure.

Cap agrees to keep going the way she's indicating but only for another hour or so! After that, they'll presumably have a very serious conversation about trying something else!

But Sersi was leading them right. Because right after that interaction, they find Olympia.

Just floating in the Negative Zone.

(Dammit, Sprite!)

The place is deserted - although most of the population was already gone before Sprite blew the place up so grain of salt on it looking deserted when it practically already was.

But it also looks decrepit, like its crumbling into ruin.

Sersi still senses her fellow Eternals... somewhere. So they land to look.

Namor flies off on his little ankle wings to scout around the city. And soon returns reporting he found nothing but a vague sense of unease.

He didn't see anyone in the city but he felt a presence all around.

Cap echoes his unease. The place feels haunted. Which Sersi dismisses since Eternals can't die.

Namor: "Yet that is precisely what is happening to Gilgamesh."

Acksually, he's only mostly dead.

Sersi wonders whether Olympia being lost in the Negative Zone and the Eternals being missing might somehow be related to Gilgamesh's advanced case of being sorta but not really dead.

Cap suggests they Split Up, They'll Cover More Ground That Way.

Thor is sent off on his own because he's a big, tough guy. She-Hulk and Sersi are sent off as a team. And Namor and Captain America make up the last team.

=_= Like. Did he put all the girls (all two girls) on the same team on purpose? Did he just want to hang out with his Nazi-punching World War II buddy, Namor?

Because. They discuss World War II as they're hopping and flying around the city. So it could very well be the second reason.

Captain America and Namor discuss how Olympia feels similar to Berlin in the last days of World War II. How it feels like there's an emptiness of spirit or the bitterness of "the death of dreams."

Cap worries that all they've accomplished on this journey is bringing Sersi to witness the end of the Eternals.

BUT NAMOR DOESN'T HAVE TIME TO CARE ABOUT THAT.

He re-steers the conversation back to how cool it is to hang out with an old-Nazi punching buddy. He misses the old gang.

Cap mentions that hey, recent revelations are that Vision wasn't made out of the Human Torch which means the Human Torch is maybe, probably, still around!

Namor: "Aye, and aye again! If he could be found... reactivated! The Invaders might well live again..."

Ugh.

I assume that was a huge part of Byrne's reasoning to do the VisionQuest plot.

He was big mad that robot Human Torch got tied up in Vision's origin and he wanted to peel him away so he could bring the Invaders back as a team again.

Either as a third book he'd be writing or as a fourth team he'd be writing in the two books he already had.

Every so many years, Marvel tries to bring the Invaders back.

I assume due to trademark reasons.

And it never lasts. Because the team doesn't make much sense outside a war. And any modern wars they've been shoved into are... just fraught with issues.

A new Invaders book was spun off from the Avengers way down the line to deal with the War on Terror and it was not great.

Anyway, a mystery off-screen person also agrees with me that reforming the Invaders is stupid as fuck and blows up Captain America and Namor.

Alas.

Meanwhile, She-Hulk and Sersi (designated lady team not cool enough to hang out with the Nazi punching boys) walk through the High Tower of Olympia, toward the Great Hall.

She-Hulk tries to mention she heard a far-off distant sound like thunder and also muses on how weird it is that the Negative Zone has breathable atmosphere but Sersi tells her to shut up.

THIS IS THE HIGH TOWER OF OLYMPIA, HUMANS DON'T USUALLY GET TO WALK THIS PASSAGE. BE IMPRESSED BY THE GRANDEUR, SHE-HULK.

Sersi: "This is the High Tower of Olympia -- the seat of our government, the holy of holies. No human has ever walked this passageway... Ahead lies the Great Hall, the central meeting place of all Eternals. Tread softly now in this hallowed place. Choose every word with care. Beyond these doors lies the very heart of Olympia. Draw your breath in awe at what will now unfold..."

Then she walks into a door.

Honestly, that's a funny gag.

Presumably the doors are supposed to swing open when an Eternal approaches them.

But, obviously, that's not happening.

So She-Hulk just shoves the doors open and strides on through.

She-Hulk: "Excuse me if I don't pay this place quite the respect you seem to think it's due, Sers... but let's try a more direct approach to opening these doors."

I hope She-Hulk sticks with the team whenever Sersi ends up joining. These two seem like they would have a hilarious dynamic.

The Great Hall seems to have been through a war, of some kind.

There's holes in the walls, pillars are shattered, the stonework is cracked.

In shock, Sersi declares no force on Earth could do this kind of damage. Especially not the Deviants. Not that there are any on Earth, since they were all launched into space as a cube. Probably.

Also, they're not on Earth. There's a lot of things in the Negative Zone that are heavy hitters. It's why people don't go there for fun. That and it makes people depressed to be there.

Weirder than the damaged state of the hall, Sersi can sense her fellow Eternals here, somehow! Here in this room! Everywhere around She-Hulk and Sersi! Despite the two seeming to be alone here!

Still angered by the idea of the Invaders reforming, someone blows up the Great Hall.

She-Hulk and Sersi are sent flying by the explosion.

And despite being gamma strong, there's something weird with gravity, so the fall knocks She-Hulk out despite cannonballing through seventeen stories of building in Avengers West Coast. Gravity is to blame.

Thor is aggroed by all these explosions. Like She-Hulk, he assumes that its the sound of thunder and this is a man who loves thunder.

He flies to the central tower and finds the place in ruins and Sersi in a weird intangible state.

Then Thor must have been thinking about the Invaders or something because he also blows up.

Nahhh just kidding.

It's Blastaar. He's been blowing people up.

He's incorrigible.

Unsurprisingly for a guy designed by Jack Kirby, he looks incredibly like a Kirby character. I think he goes to the same tailor as Darkseid. And the same beard barber as Highfather.

Anyway, Blastaar being the answer of 'what happened to the missing Eternals' sure is something. Not very satisfying as an answer but maybe him getting his ass kicked will be cathartic.

Follow @essential-avengers because one day that sub-tumblr will be up to date. One day, yes. Also, like, reblog, comment, and other such ways of interacting with this post.

#avengers #mysterious last page antagonist #captain america #she hulk #thor #namor mckenzie #sersi #eternals #gilgamesh #even though hes mostly dead he still gets a credit #great lakes avengers #yes they showed up in this #hawkeye #mockingbird #dinah soar #big bertha #flatman #mr immortal #doorman

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Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #49: BAPTISM of FIRE

October, 1989

Aw, geez, the Avengers West Coast Avengers are so side-lined in their own book that the Great Lakes Avengers have taken over the roster box!

John Byrne must be really proud of coming up with the Great Lakes Avengers. They've only showed up in Avengers West Coast so far and been alluded to when Hawkeye showed up to the big Avengers meeting in Avengers East Coast. I wonder if they'll show up in the Avengers East Coast book or will just be a thing to happen in the West.

I do like the type of cover that's just 'wow, look at how many things happen in this book!' and it called me a true believer so I'm in a good mood right now.

Last times in Avengers West Coast: Vision got disassembled by every government in the world. Hank Pym put him back together but now his brain doesn't emotion. None of the Avengers seemed to care so Scarlet Witch took Vision to Absolom College when they offered to help. But it was really a trap, so ancient bacteria could oozefest Wanda and use her to learn how to take over mutants.

This is really dumb. And oddly will be an echoed plot point later when Morrison does the same thing and calls it Sublime.

Anyway.

Also, last time, Captain America and She-Hulk followed a Quinjet distress signal and tried to rescue Wanda. But ooze-possessed Wanda blew them the fuck up.

Glad they bothered to guest star.

Mr. Random, the Absolom College robot department head, congratulates Black Suit Wanda for beating "two of your most powerful former colleagues in less than thirty seconds!"

While that may be the case for She-Hulk, that's kinda overselling Captain America.

Ooze Wanda clarifies that She-Hulk and Cap hesitated to attack her because they probably thought they could talk her down "not realizing there can be no reasoning with That Which Endures."

A sentiment that Mr. Random can get behind.

Mr. Random: "We stand upon the treshold of the age of mutants like yourself, Wanda. For many years it seemed as though the fates -- in the form of a cruel, genetic quirk -- had chosen to bar us from that coming age. But now, with your assistance, the stage is set for our continued endurance. As mankind falls by the wayside, we shall ride the crest into the mutant millennium!"

Have I mentioned how weird it is when Marvel comics acts like its a natural, inevitable thing that mutants ARE homo superior and will supplant humanity? Cause that's the villain position but you see a lot of the heroic mutants echoing. Their main difference with the villains is willing to let humanity just wither and die on its own rather than being proactive about it.

It's also funny how on one hand everyone acts like The Mutant Millennium is inevitable but also most Dark Futures have something Bad happen to prevent that.

Anyway, these assholes sure talk a lot for people that are supposed to be a hivemind or whatever. I'm not entirely sure I understand how it works.

Meanwhile, the true heroes of the book, the Great Lakes Avengers.

They don't have a Quinjet or even a Quinjetta so they've had to take the next best option.

Buying a private airplane with Big Bertha's money and then have Hawkeye complain incessantly about how slow it is.

I was sympathetic with him when he was being underminded out of his team but I'm back to thinking Hawkeye is a jerk.

Big Bertha even points out that the Great Lakes Avengers don't have access to any of the super cool Avengers tech.

Hey, guy who has spent years with the Avengers, maybe pull some strings and get your new team hooked up with the good stuff?

Meanwhile, Mockingbird has the private plane pointed right in the direction of the Quinjet emergency signal but but but it was so faint they only got one reading. So they can't triangulate. So they're just flying in a direction but have no idea how far to fly in that direction. They don't even have a destination. Making Hawkeye complaining about how fast they're going even more of a jerkass move.

God I suddenly hate Hawkeye.

Mr Immortal snarks that they're on a wild goose chase because now that he's conscious again he can express opinions about Hawkeye taking over his team by putting quotation marks around the word "leader."

He's the Hawkeye of the team. The heroic starscream-lite who is always waiting in the wings to tell the leader he sucks and agitate to become leader instead.

Hawkeye: "Keep the sarcasm out of your voice, buster. You and this crew of oddballs you've assembled were nothing but bush league super heroes before me an' Mockingbird hooked up with you. Now, for the first time, here's a real chance to show the rest of the Avengers what you're made of... if we can ever find 'em!"

Okay. But. Before you took over, the Great Lakes Avengers fought crime. This really seems to be more about you, Hawkeye, wanting to show up the Avengers than about helping the Great Lakes Avengers be all they can be.

Meanwhile, the Avengers West Coast return to their compound following their own wild goose chase.

Wasp calls the trip fruitless but Hank goes NUH UH its good that we talked to Professor Horton so he could tell us what we already know about Vision not being his design and Vision's backstory flashback a lie.

Wonder Man is still a little confused on how everything has changed gears. It really did seem like all that stuff the Avengers learned about Vision's backstory was true. But Hank says it only seemed true to dumb idiots who are stupid.

Is Byrne mad that people don't like this new characterization direction for Vision? Why do we keep getting the same stuff re-stated.

It was annoying enough when Byrne upended Vision's character on authorial fiat but he keeps rubbing it in and being boring.

Even if I don't like this direction, surely there's a better way to handle it than words words words.

Say, for example, the Avengers (West Coast) found the robot Human Torch. Well, shit, what does that mean for Vision? His body was supposedly remodeled from the Human Torch. If there's a Torch still around, where the hell did Vision come from?

THEN you play the mystery out further.

Anyway. Another annoying subplot, ho.

While Hank goes ahead to go do some computer work

(and takes a little rollercoaster car to fast travel to the computer room)

Wasp stays to talk to Wonder Man.

Because he's still in the dumps about Wanda hating him because he refuses to let his brain patterns be used to rebuild Vision's brain.

Simon goes more into his feelings.

His creeper feelings.

He says that it was love at first sight when he came back from the dead and saw Wanda.

Wasp claims that because Wanda had been working on getting Vision to emotionally open up, that's why Wonder Man was so attracted to her. Because... Vision is just a copy of Wonder Man? So trying to appeal to Vision made her irresistible to Wonder Man?

I hate this ship.

I was begrudgingly tolerant of it when it happened in Busiek's run. But now I hate it. I want Wonder Man to blow up. Maybe from a space laser.

Ugh. Anyway. Wonder Man never mentioned his feelings for Wanda because she was already married to Vision.

Then Wasp claims that Wanda doesn't love Vision for his body but for the sensitive soul within and that inner man is actually Wonder Man because his brain is based off Wonder Man's QED Wonder Man should date Wanda.

Wasp: "So even though she didn't know it herself, it was you Wanda was really falling in love with..."

Wasp. You're my fave. But I am getting irritated with you.

Over in the computer room, Hank is also frustrated but for his own reasons. He wanted to do Vision research to try to iron out this riddlesome enigma about Vision's origins.

But the Every Government In the World taskforce Vigilance put a computer virus in the Avengers' computers to wipe out all information about Vision. So Hank has nothing but his own memories to go off of. So even though he said he had important work to do in the computer room, he's mostly just staring at a blank screen.

I know that feel.

Instead, Hank decides to try to figure out where Wanda went.

... Why wasn't that your first priority? She stole a super-sonic jet and vanished!

Hank starts by talking to the butler, Carlos, and asking if Wanda has acted strange lately.

Carlos confirms that Wanda has been distressed since what happened to Vision but her mood seemed to change after she got a letter recently.

But Interrupting Tigra interrupts the conversation by racing by naked. And also feral.

But not Feral. Just feral.

Hank has no idea what's going on but Carlos tells him that Tigra has been acting weird and chasing mice and stuff.

I am once again just flabbergasted by how little attention the West Coast Avengers are paying lately. Seriously. It took THIS for you to notice something was weird with Tigra?

Hank fears that she's going through another phase where her feline nature becomes dominant (even though that should have been permanently cured when something something cat people cat soul something). He chases after her into the woods.

Immediately loses track of her. And then gets pounced.

Idiot.

Tigra jumps Hank and starts trying to maul him.

Hank's costumes are usually pretty durable - his original Ant-Man costume was designed to protect him from ant bites, after all. But he's got a big weak point sticking out of the collar region.

So he resorts to using his shrinking powers on Tigra. Shrinking her to a tiny widdle kitty cat.

I HAVE WAITED FOR THIS MOMENT. Ever since Hank and Tigra casually alluded to it in Avengers Academy.

I hate every bit of context that led us here but I deeply love Hank just holding Chibi Tigra and going 'uh what now?'

Meanwhile, in a Absolom College holding cell, Captain America stops pretending to be unconscious.

He was apparently pretending the whole time, having used his shield to shield himself and She-Hulk from the falling masonry. He thought it smarter to let them get captured then to risk hurting Wanda when she's clearly not herself.

And She-Hulk followed his lead.

Except, she's clearly not on the same page as him. She hoists him up and yells he must be destroyed because he's not been properly assimilated!

Okay, I guess She-Hulk has been oozed too, off-panel. Or... something. She doesn't have the ooze look.

Captain America can't figure out why She-Hulk got taken over but he didn't. And he doesn't have time to really ponder on it while she's trying to make his skull into a bowl.

But luckily? he doesn't have to dodge long because Mr. Random comes in with a zap gun and zaps Captain America. They need him alive, you see?

Elsewhere in the facility, Vision gets bored.

He has no emotions but he's been left lying on a table alone for seven hours four minutes and twenty-three seconds exactly. Logic dictates that he get off his ass and go find out what's going on.

Vision: "This is inconsistent with the alleged purpose of my being here: the reconstruction of my missing data base. Plus, it has been even longer since I last saw my wife. Logic indicates it is time to find out what has become of her. Captain America and the She-Hulk seemed concerned for her well-being."

It's funny that the evil ooze's plans have otherwise been all "everything transpires according to my plans!" and they just forgot Vision.

Now that Vision is thinking about it, Mr. Random's claim that Wanda took off after leaving Vision doesn't really fit with her previous behavior.

Buuuuut, he has no reason to think Mr. Random would just lie about it! So he's going to go find Wanda.

Goddammit Vision. This is why emotions are good, actually!

Vision flies straight up from the facility and JUST HAPPENS to do so right when the Great Lakes Avengers are flying by in their plane. And they JUST HAPPEN to spot Vision so Hawkeye has Big Bertha turn the plane around to rendezvous with Vision.

Hawkeye introduces Vision to the Great Lakes Avengers and Vision says that Midwest Avengers would be a better name. So Hawkeye defensively says the name wasn't his idea.

Then Hawkeye asks about the Quinjet distress signal and Vision doesn't really know but Cap did mention something about that.

SPEAKING OF CAP, Mr. Random and his guys are studying Cap to find out why the evil bacteria can't take him over.

There's some factor in his bio-matrix that blocks the assimilator apparently.

She-Hulk speculates that it might be the super-soldier serum, still in his bloodstream after all this time. Chemically blocking the assimilator.

WHICH MAKES ME WONDER.

Why does super-soldier serum block the assimilator. And gamma radiation do nothing?

Because the evil bacteria is in every "higher life form", it should be in Cap so it should be able to take him over. But its apparently been completely eradicated from his system.

And I just have a lot of questions about how the evil bacteria works. If the evil bacteria is in everyone, why does it mostly seem to be operating out of this college. Instead of... everywhere?

Why come up with a scheme to kidnap Wanda when you can just bacterially zonk Hank Pym and expose Wanda to the ooze under guise of a medical procedure?

Why worry about Cap and She-Hulk investigating if you could just zonk them? Was the assimilator an outside compound that had to be introduced to allow She-Hulk to be taken over? She-Hulk is now loyal to the cause but she doesn't even know what the cause is. So if the evil bacteria is controlling everything, is everyone a hive mind? They're not acting like it. She-Hulk had to be told by Mr. Random not to kill Cap.

HOPEFULLY this all gets explained.

Wanda shows up, unoozed (or looking unoozed, wearing her usual costume) to exposit the hell out of the backstory.

Blah blah blah, first cellular life split in two. One was evil and ate the other one. From then on, all lief had the evil bacteria in it. The evil bacteria guided the evolution of dinosaurs and made them masters of the world until the evil bacteria made the (wrong) decision that dinosaurs were a dead end and abandoned them for mammals.

Scarlet Witch: "Without our presence to guide them, the dinosaurs quickly died out."

Okay, well, fuck the meteor theory then. What really caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was abandonment of evil bacteria.

She-Hulk asks if the evil bacteria is conscious and making decisions. And Mr. Random finally explains some of how it works.

Mr. Random: "While it is true a form of intelligence developed in us almost immediately... for the most part, that intelligence lay dormant. It was many millions of years before we learned to control the process Charles Darwin named 'natural selection.' Once that occurred, however, we began to take an active interest in our hosts. Once every hundred thousand years our intellect manifests itself in a few... ah... random creatures. We study the progress of life. We match the adaptability of one species against another. An assessment is made. Those life forms we judge to be at their maximum potential we abandon. Our presence within their cells shrinks, dwindling eventually to nothing. And our guiding intellect turns to other, more profitable species. After all, our whole and sole purpose is to endure. Thus, we left the dinosaurs in favor of concentrating on the mammals. There we further narrowed our focus to the ultimate mammal, mankind. When Neanderthal proved unsuitable, we shifted to Cro-Magnon."

And presumably on to homo sapiens and now to homo superior.

This whole thing feels like Byrne got really interested in some junk science and wanted to shove it in the book. Like Kirby and his Chariots of the Gods obsession.

Before Mr. Random can further words words words, "Avengers" show up and assemble.

Mockingbird starts kicking college students in the face while Flatman wraps them up in his fantastically stretchy body. And Vision does that fisting thing he does.

Based on one entire page of action, Vision declares the Great Lakes Avengers "most efficient." So I guess that training was worth it.

Possessed She-Hulk tries smashing Big Bertha with a giant techno tube but she's got Blob-esque ability to absorb hits. And in response, she jumps up and crushes She-Hulk underneath her.

I bet She-Hulk is really glad she did this guest starring role now.

Doorman and Mr Immortal spot a big locked chamber that seems really important. In fact, the college student mooks are trying really hard to keep the Great Lakes Avengers away from it.

So obviously, Doorman and Mr Immortal want to see what's in there.

Doorman stands against the big locked door, forming a portal, and Mr Immortal dives through him.

And inside he finds the Assimilator. Apparently not a drug or an ooze, apparently a big piece of tech.

A big piece of tech that creates the telepathic link between all the people infested with evil bacteria. And if its busted, the evil bacteria's plans will be delayed for a hundred millennia.

So, seems like a good idea to bust it and save the day, right? Bad guys just exposed their flashing red weak point and begged the hero not to strike them in it and thwart them totally.

Well, Mr Random thought of that. The Assimilator is protected by a chamber that will flood with deadly radiation if anyone steps inside.

But no sooner can you say, "this looks like a job for Aquaman," Mr Immortal gleefully jumps into the death chamber. When a plot presents you with something tailor made to your skills, you gotta seize the day.

Mr Immortal: "All you're threatening me with is death! An' dyin' is what I do best!"

The mad lad.

Back over at the fight, She-Hulk throws Big Bertha off of her and readies a punching fist. But then suddenly is overcome by a sense of not knowing where the fuck she is or why she's doing what the fuck she's doing.

And it's not just She-Hulk. All the college people that were working for Big Bacteria suddenly start wandering around in a daze.

Mr Random himself has no idea why Vision is calling him Mr Random. His name is Charles Edison.

... Why did bacteria possessed Charles Edison change his name to Mr Random? What's the sense in that?

Anyway, Mr Edison tells the Avengers that there's a dude of theirs dead in the radiation chamber.

But despite the eulogizing the poor, deceased Mr Immortal, Hawkeye just opens up the radiation chamber (the radiation is off now although you'd think the chamber itself would still be radioactive?) and has Flatman scoop Mr Immortal up (you'd think that Mr Immortal would be radioactive?) without touching the pressure sensored flooring.

Since Mr Immortal is dead as a doornail, Big Bertha estimates he'll be back up in approximately ten minutes.

It's fun to have a dude whose power is "doesn't die" so the team can throw him at all the death traps.

Hey, now that the action is done. I have to comment.

Byrne still keeps Wanda from doing... anything.

Post-hypnotic suggestion kept her from fighting Fake Ultron. And then she was too paralyzed by feelings to fight Beserk Vision. And then Mr Random sprung a trap on her faster than she could react two issues ago. And, sure, she fought Cap and She-Hulk but it was revealed that they threw the fight and weren't even hurt. And now when the big Great Lakes Avengers rescue showed up, Scarlet Witch didn't fight any of them. She just hung around with Mr Random.

It keeps happening.

Byrne doesn't seem to want her to contribute to action scenes.

Also, as the Great Lakes Avengers first Avengers level mission where they held their own and showed their stuff... It was okay.

They showed up on page 16 out of 23 on unlimited. They basically all got to do one thing to show their stuff. The issue is titled Baptism of Fire, which I assume is referring to the Great Lakes Avengers entering the Big Times but, yeah. They got a couple pages at the end of a complicated plot and happened to find the Resolve Story button.

I'm so far not impressed with how Byrne is balancing three teams in his two interconnected team books.

Anyway, Hawkeye declares that due to bacterial possession, nobody is getting arrested for any of this.

I suspect that he doesn't really want to untangle the situation.

Charles Edison: "... Thank you for that, at least, Hawkeye. It's bad enough to realize I've lost half a lifetime and every penny I own to this thing, without having to face a jail sentence as well."

Vision explains (how does he know???) that the evil bacteria awoke in him and took over his brain. It compelled him to use his family fortune to buy Absolom University and use it as evil bacteria HQ. Also, it apparently compelled him to change his name to Mr Random.

Then, Mr Random gathered together a few hundred other people that the evil bacteria had also awoken in and they all donated DNA to build the assimilator, which I guess let them awaken other people's evil bacteria and create a telepathic link between each other.

Hence why the evil bacteria people were always verbally discussing things and weren't always on the same page.

This plot is dumb.

I understand the mechanics of it all better now. In a last page exposition dump kind of way. But its dumb.

The Evil Bacteria were supposed to be influencing evolution but it seems most of them were doing a snooze. And they needed a big technological thing despite not needing it when they ruled the dinosaurs.

This has been a stupid ass plot.

I'm pretty the last bit of it is why the plot even exists and why I think its because Byrne got enamored with junk science.

Scarlet Witch: "But... Vision... it's all so... frightening... The memories the Assimilator placed inside me... I still have them... Can it be the dinosaurs died because That Which Endures left? And if it someday leaves mankind for the mutants, as it planned..." Vision: "I am not properly programmed to consider such philosophical matters, Wanda..." Captain America: "Maybe not... but I have something to say... I don't know how much of what we've learned today I'm really prepared to accept... Maybe it's all true. Maybe without That Which Endures mankind would still be squatting in the caves, afraid of the dark, of the thunder and lightning. But I like to think there's something more to humanity than just a few pounds of flesh and bone. Something deep inside that sets us apart in the scheme of things. I hope that's true. And I hope no part of it was due to That Which Endures. For if it is... if we are no more than vehicles for this parasite... When a day comes that the Survivor does finally depart... We're going to find ourselves very much alone..."

Meh.

Also, I'm sure its fine that evil bacteria stuffed Wanda's head full of mutant superiority rhetoric and that she still has those memories at the end of this.

I'm sure that's just fine.

Follow @essential-avengers because everything is going to fine forever and nothing will be blisteringly stupid in this book ever. Like, comment, reblog, give me attention. I'm lonely. Just kidding, I've got a cat curled up against my arm as I type this. I live a good life.

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essential-avengers · 2 months

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #308: JOURNEY

October, 1989

The life of an Eternal hangs by a thread -- and only one being on Earth has the power to save GILGAMESH!

It's just Gilgamesh though.

She-Hulk's concerned expression and raising one hand in concern looks more like she's shrugging confusedly about this whole situation. 'Some Eternal!'

Anyway.

Last times on Avengers: Captain America declared all Avengers were Avengers, there were no teams anymore just one big family, and he was in charge of it all. Then Lava Men attacked, lifted Avengers Island up on a big stone spire, and kidnapped the Avengers in a stone ball which rolled all the way to the depths of the Earth.

The Last of the Lava Men, Jinku, told the Avengers that when they killed a random demon in Inferno, it killed most of the Lava Men and turned the rest except Jinku into stone.

Jinku tries to kill the Avengers with a big lava monster he created and apparently succeeds in killing Gilgamesh. Then the Lava Men that turned into stone hatch into golden men and tell Jinku to cut it out. So he does.

And that brings us to now. And this cool airship.

Very shiny.

Inside the ship? The Avengers.

The ship was apparently made by the golden Lava Men to get the Avengers back to the surface, based on a design that Black Panther gave them.

But even though Captain America and Black Panther are sitting at the controls, they're not in control. The golden Lava Men are. Because the ship is them.

Pretty neat.

But that's looking a little bit ahead.

The reason this is all relevant is that She-Hulk frets that Gilgamesh is dying. Or dead? Something? He doesn't have a pulse but his body is still warm? Plus, Eternals have conscious control over every atom in their body so who knows what's going on with him?

Anyway, time may or may not be a factor. And the golden spaceship made out of golden people may or may not be going its maximum velocity already.

Meanwhile, hey, don't we need to finally resolve that thing where Avengers Island is up on an unsteady stone pillar?

Reed's plan worked!

He had Sue make a spiral invisible force field around the stone pillar so that as the pillar collapsed straight down as crumbling pillars are known to do, the island slowly shifted its weight to the spring-shaped force field, which had the same springiness as an actual spring, which gently lowered the island back to the ocean.

There's a lot about how this gets resolved that's questionable but questionable in a comic book science way so I don't even mind it.

I do mind the weird way this subplot had its time budgeted. Reed and Sue responded to Jarvis' distress signal and arrived without any equipment besides Reed and Sue's mighty brains.

Reed comes up with a plan to lower the island back to the water and has Sue do it. And then the issue ended and we get this curt wrap-up next month.

I don't know how much Byrne wanted this issue to deal with lingering plot threads from the previous arc but it feels like the subplot should have ended on more of a cliffhanger last issue instead of the problem being basically solved, we just haven't seen it resolve yet.

Maybe I'm nitpicking but it reads weird.

Anyway, the West Coast Avengers have landed on Avengers Island after Wonder Man helped hold up the island and nobody else did anything to contribute.

They stand around talking about how great the Fantastic Four are.

And there's also something odd here. A united West Coast Avengers team isn't something we've had since Byrne took over the book. US Agent isn't with them. Tigra is with them but doesn't seem like she's feral or horny (although she doesn't say anything). Maybe Wanda is distraught about her husband losing his emotions but she also doesn't have anything to say.

Do you know how with crossovers sometimes, a character or team will be written vaguely out of character because the writer isn't familiar with them or doesn't know what's happening in their book around this time?

This appearance of the West Coast Avengers has that feel but Byrne is writing both Avengers books!

Why do they feel like the vaguely wrong crossover version of the team?

Anyway, after they finish saying how great the Fantastic Four is, they all talk about how great Jarvis is. And Jarvis IS great!

Wonder Man mentions that Jarvis puts up with a lot for the Avengers, including losing his eye.

Eyepatch Jarvis, as he is back to wearing his eyepatch, explains that his eye is almost healed and he won't need "this rather diabolical looking patch" soon.

The book keeps going back and forth on it.

When he first got out of the hospital, it was mentioned he'd suffered vision loss after his beating at the hands of Mr. Hyde. Then the Jarvis-focused Inferno tie-in issue had his mom yell at him to take it off because he doesn't need it and it doesn't even make him look all that cool. And then Byrne has him put the patch on only to make a point that he won't need it soon.

Weird.

The West Coast Avengers take off without even waiting for the Avengers or going to help them (since last anybody knows, the Avengers got kidnapped by Lava Men).

Kinda weird but Byrne clearly does not want to actually write the West Coast Avengers in this book.

The Avengers spot the Fantasticar as they fly towards Avengers Island, noting that their reserve members came to help.

And I note that the Fantastic Four also left without finding out what happened to the kidnapped Avengers.

Look, I get it. They heard that Jarvis was in danger and came running. I would too! But they're less invested in the Avengers East Coast.

When the golden craft lands, Jarvis immediately and correctly guesses that this is the Avengers.

Ew. I don't love how a door sphincters open in the golden aircraft. The golden Lava Men already turned into a vehicle. They can't transform a door too?

Anyway, the Avengers tell Jarvis they'll Explain It All later. Now, they need to hustle Gilgamesh to the medical facilities.

Usually this is when Everyday Normal Doctor Donald Blake Just Passing By would show up to handle the Avengers' medical needs. But Odin took Donald Blake away from Thor so now Thor just casually mentions he's well trained in the healing arts.

But even though Thor is exactly as good at medicine as Donald Blake, for example, he can't do anything for Gilgamesh.

The man isn't dead and he's not alive, he's some secret third thing (called being an Eternal).

So Captain America has the idea that they should go ask an Eternal what the fuck is going on with Gilgamesh.

Most of the Eternals fucked off with a Deviant cube into space but luckily some didn't.

I'd say the cool ones didn't. The cool ones and Gilgamesh.

Meanwhile, Olympia. Hidden in a pocket dimension in Greece.

There's an old man shepherd who pauses in his shepherding for a minute to wax poetic about walking among the ruins of his ancient ancestors, where the gods themselves once walked.

I'm guessing this guy never bought into the Christianity thing. Good for him.

Less good for him, his sheep vanish into thin air.

And when the shepherd goes to investigate, he's pulled through thin air by a person wearing green and yellow but who isn't Loki.

It's Sprite! The eternal prankster kid of the Eternals.

Messing with this guy because fuck this guy.

When the guy confuses Olympia for Olympus (because, yeah) Sprite gets agitated that everyone confuses the Eternals for the mythological figures they inspired/were inspired by. Like, c'mon Sprite. You owe your entire existence to Jack Kirby's fascination with Chariot of the Gods. You don't get to be offended that someone mistakes Eternal stuff for something else. That's your whole conceit.

Ikaris soon shows up and tells Sprite to stop bugging the mortal for fucks sake.

Ikaris: "You have been cautioned about your notion of 'fun' in the past, young one! I remind you, these humans are by nature frail and easily distressed. You might have caused this man to have a heart attack with your foolishness!"

The man is very distressed.

Ikaris apologizes for Sprite, Makkari gathers up the straying sheep, and Ikaris escorts the shepherd back to the familiar hills, declining to explain how Eternal stuff works because the explanation would mean nothing to him.

He asks the man not tell anyone what he has seen. Which is pretty nice. Later Eternals would just wipe his memory without asking.

The shepherd is like who would I tell? People would think I was drunk or dreamed the whole thing up.

Of course, just when the guy is wondering whether he did just dream the whole experience, Sprite pops out of thin air to do the man a startle one more time.

Geez, Sprite.

Maybe Gilgamesh isn't the only uncool Eternal left on Earth. You're kind of an asshole.

Ikaris and Makkari scold him that Sprite's sense of humor will cost them some day, foreshadowing foreshadowing.

They let Sprite wander off so they can discuss how Olympia is weird these days, emptier than even most of the Eternals fucking off to space can account for.

Ikaris: "More than silence. There is a flavor of death on the once sweet breezes. I have tasted it often enough to know it."

Ikaris guesses that when the majority of the Eternals fucked off, it was like they took the majority of the city's soul with them.

Which, considering later revelations that the Eternals and their cities are all parts of one great machine what is Earth, might actually be right on the money.

But the sheep wandering inside was not Sprite's doing. The barriers that protect Olympia have weakened enough that it just happened randomly. Sprite just capitalized on the incident to mock a shepherd.

Ikaris and Makkari go to talk to Thena and Phastos. Where Phastos has just finished telling Thena that even if her bones are telling her something is wrong, he can't find any flaws with the machines that run Olympia.

Wow, this is a lot of information about Eternal Stuff if we're just dropping off Gilgamesh for medical treatment. I suspect this is our new arc.

Ikaris tells Thena that he hasn't found any force directed at Olympia from the outside. He thinks the call is coming from inside the house, so to speak.

Ikaris: "This city is as one with we Eternals. But we are greatly reduced since the departure of the Unimind."

He's really banging on about that.

I wonder if I'm witnessing snapback in action. Sending most of the Eternals into space was a tidy way to tidy them up since they weren't used for a lot. But now it turns out it was a big mistake so are the Eternals that went to space going to come back so we can get back to status quo?

Maybe.

Thena tells Phastos to bolster the city's defenses. Then they can look into Ikaris' theory.

But Sprite has been eavesdropping on the meeting. He decides Phastos is too unimaginative to bolster the defenses. And that he, Sprite, should do it instead. So that it's done with flair by a guy acting from a place of ignorance.

Look at this idiot. He has no idea what he's doing.

The Avengers don't actually go to Olympia. They go to visit Sersi first. She's closer and more interesting than 90% of the other Eternals. Also, Captain America knows her from his own book, sidestepping the question of whether Wasp or Starfox told him about the party they crashed.

Thor brings out Gilgamesh for Sersi to see and she reacts in shock horror that he looks as if dead.

She has them bring Gilgamesh into her tastefully decorated apartment

So tasteful.

Sersi asks what happened and Thor says Gilgamesh bravely fell in battle. Which Sersi calls bullshit on because Eternals don't fall. That'd be a misnomer.

Thor himself has a spell of wooziness which he dismisses as a passing weakness.

I wonder if the Lava Man Avatar of Cha'sa'dra had bonus damage against immortals.

Sersi examines Gilgamesh and finds basically the same thing that the Avengers already have. Gilgamesh has no pulse and no brain activity. He's basically dead but not. She's never seen an Eternal like this.

So she suggests that they take Gilgamesh to Olympia.

Except. Well.

I guess Sprite managed to blow up the city. With flair. And probably panache.

Also, Namor mentions missing Hercules, prompted by the Avengers flying over Greece.

I wonder if we're also seeing snapback on Hercules' fate in action. If so, good. The Evolutionary War ending was damn stupid.

Anyway. We seem to be piling on the subplots because that old man from a previous issue also managed to blow up his house.

He doesn't seem too put off that he blew up a small piece of New Jersey. Just excited that he's getting close to whatever scientific breakthrough he's working on.

I have no idea where this subplot is going.

But its probably going somewhere.

Follow @essential-avengers, which comes in regular and sour cream and onion flavors. Like, reblog, comment, ask what that last sentence meant. I'm open to various forms of engagement.

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essential-avengers · 2 months

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Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #48: THIS ANCIENT EVIL

September, 1989

Captain America and She-Hulk have found the Scarlet Witch... Maybe not the smartest thing they ever did...

Still love cover text.

So Wanda just wears ooze now.

Interesting fashion choice.

Wasp will probably have something to say about it, though, if the West Coast Avengers ever rejoin the A-plot in their own book.

I know the allure of having two linked books so characters can cross over as needed but this is still Avengers West Coast, the Avengers book occurring on the West Coast. Since I guess there aren't separate teams anymore.

Last times on Avengers West Coast: all the governments disassembled Vision for trying to take over the world that one time. Hank Pym put him back together but now Vision's brain isn't the same. No emotions. None of the other Avengers seem to care so Scarlet Witch takes Vision to Absolom College which offered to help. 'TWAS A RUSE and Dean Random dumps a bunch of evil ooze on Wanda!

This time: a lot of worldbuilding exposition.

Yup, that's right. The backstory is so extensive it goes back to the formation of Earth.

But the take-away is, like I said, Byrne is doing Sublime before Sublime.

The longer of it is that the Earth cooled, there was big rain, cellular life started to form, and the very first cell undergoes mitosis EXCEPT ONE OF THE COPIES IS EEEEEEEVIL AND EATS THE OTHER.

AND FROM THEN ON EVERY LIFEFORM ON EARTH HAS HAD THE MARK OF EEEEEEVIL IN IT.

Except mutants. Remember how that's the whole thing? The evil ancient gene or whatever wants to assimilate mutants and needed one that was easy prey? And since Wanda is having an emotional crisis currently...

Hey. You can see her toes. And she noted last issue that the ooze was dissolving her cape. Is she only wearing ooze now?

Byrne, why?

Also, what the fuck is a classic mutant type? What does that mean? And the later retcon that Wanda isn't even a mutant just makes this funny. These guys aren't good at their job.

Apparently, aside from just zonking her mind, the ooze and the tube are trying to understand the mutant gene and also reconstructing Wanda's memory and dumping the big exposition dump right into her brain. She needs to know this stuff, I guess.

Lady bad guy estimates that the process will be done in 72 hours.

Meanwhile, Captain America and She-Hulk and only Captain America and She-Hulk fly a Quinjet to Absolom, Texas to check on that Quinjet distress signal they got.

I wonder where this crossover fits with what's happening in Avengers. Cap went right from his announcement that he now ruled all Avengers to that whole Lava Man thing. And they're going to go right from that Lava Man thing into another story arc, to try to get help for Gilgamesh. And that's going to be a number of issues.

Avengers West Coast has to be way ahead of the Avengers East Coast timeline right now.

But I'm wondering because why is it just Cap and She-Hulk? Was everyone else on vacation?

She-Hulk calls to advise the traffic controller that they're going to be landing at Absolom College. In a nice touch, the traffic controller hears that the Avengers are emergency landing at a university and asks if the police or military need to be contacted too. Because Avengers deal with all kinds of shit!

But Cap tells the traffic controller that it's Avengers' business.

A bad guy informs Dean Random that another Quinjet is approaching, to Random's consternation. He thought that Wanda had severed ties with the Avengers before coming.

(Really, all she did was steal a Quinjet and hide her destination. That's not quite severing ties.)

While the assimilation process on Wanda continues, Mr. Random goes to meet with the Avengers and see what the hell they want on his college.

When Cap tells Mr. Random that they're investigating a possibly crashed Quinjet, Random spins a story that is partially true and also bullshit.

He tells Cap that Scarlet Witch and Vision visited, that Wanda left Vision with the college, and then took off. And he hopes that nothing happened to her after she left! He then offers Cap and She-Hulk a visit with Vision who will surely corroborate the story.

Meanwhile, SPAAAAAACE.

Starfox is searching an ancient planet for Nebula. Even though the Avengers told him that Nebula fell into a time warp and was lost in time. Because a mercenary told Starfox he'd seen Nebula.

Yeah, so I was wondering at what point the Nebula Kang thing got retconned to not be Nebula and apparently the time is now.

Guess Byrne decided he had a better idea for her than where Simonson left her. AND TO BE FAIR.

Nebula Kang wasn't interesting enough that I can muster up annoyance that the story is being retconned.

Anyway, Starfox does find Nebula and Gunthar of her space mercenary crew.

Gunthar found some stone tablets for her which have formula on them that will help her become more powerful than Thanos ever was!

Is it the Anti-Life Equation?

Don't call attention to Thanos' pretty direct inspiration!

Over in another subplot, there's a lady named Ann Raymond at a homeless shelter in Denver who is delirious and keeps telling staff that she needs to get to Los Angeles. She's carrying a newspaper clipping with the headline "Avengers Confirm Vision is Not Torch" which seems to be making her distraught.

Um. Whyy did the Avengers announce that to the news media? For one thing, that's personal biz and I'm sure Wanda did not approve having it blasted to the press since she still thinks Professor Horton is a lying sack of shit.

The way the Avengers are handling the Vision situation makes them feel more inhuman than the emotionless robot man.

Anyway.

Meanwhile, Captain America and She-Hulk meet with Vision. They ask him where Wanda is but he has no idea. He can only report that according to Mr. Random, Wanda took off.

The evil bad guys who are full of evil ancient bacteria or whatever decide they need to accelerate shoving exposition into Wanda's brain, in case the heroes cause problems. Sure, it might break Wanda's brain but surely they have no other choice.

So more past times exposition flashbacks. Life continued to develop on Earth. There were forests. Also lizards. And then dinosaurs. Should stopped there, dinosaurs were great. But while there were dinosaurs, there was also mammals.

This will be important later.

Cap and She-Hulk finish their tour with Mr. Random and Cap has some questions.

Sure, the Absolom College of Robotics looks pretty impressive but it's nothing compared to the tech that the Avengers have. So why did Absolom think they'd be better at fixing Vision's noodle than the Avengers were?

Mr. Random handwaves it that Absolom's robotics experts are providing a different perspective on the problem but Cap is skeptical.

Captain America: "Still, you would agree it is a great shame that Wanda should feel the need to turn to strangers after we did all we could do."

Diiiiiiid you though?

The Wonder Man elephant is still in the room. An additional thing that they could try but nobody seems interested in it except Wanda and everyone else has seemingly washed their hands of the situation and decided Vision is Good Enough.

Mr. Random gets called off to attend to something (probably something Wanda related) and tells Cap and She-Hulk they can finish the tour.

Both of the heroes are actually pretty skeptical of the situation, this facility, and all these people.

The Absolom robotics facilities looks more like a set designer's idea of what an impressive robot factory would look like and less like the real thing.

But rather than confront the peeps now, Cap decides they'll finish the tour like they're not massively suspicious and then sneak back later at night to poke around.

Meanwhile, back at Seattle, the Avengers West Coast (minus US Agent who has never done any Avengers business with the Avengers at all so far despite ostensibly being in charge and Tigra who nobody has noticed hasn't shown up, sigh) interview Professor Horton.

Horton reiterates that Vision could not possibly be the (robot) Human Torch.

CLEARLY ANY NON IDIOT AND ALSO ROBOTICS EXPERT WOULD NOTICE THAT, HANK PYM.

For you see, the Human Torch was an artificial human and definitely not mechanical at all in any way shape or form. Just a human ass human except 100% synthetic parts. Meanwhile, Vision has robot bits.

I don't know whether this is true of the Human Torch or not. I don't know whether this is closing a plot hole since Vision has been shown having mechanical parts. But I do remember that several times people have said that Vision is a synthezoid, meaning an artificial man with synthetic parts. But Horton seems to be redefining synthezoid to mean a mix of artificial organs and machine parts.

We're pretty far into this subplot by now. Why are we still rehashing this part of it?

Is it because I keep yelling at the comic how much I hate this subplot?

Anyway, Hank Pym tells Horton that he went on a Fantastic Voyage through Vision and sees his point. Probably should have seen it sooner.

I think that Fantastic Voyage is the story that did the art fail of showing Vision as more roboticy than he's supposed to be. He's supposed to be basically a man but artificial.

Anyway, Hank also reflects that they believed all of Vision's backstory Human Torch stuff because of Immortus.

Hank Pym: "Obviously, the 'master of time' lied. Why?" Immortus, watching this conversation on the time-a-vision: "Oh, never without good reason, my dear Doctor Pym. Never without good reason."

Oh, boy, I sure hope that good reason is really good.

Immortus suggests that it's a really good reason, such a good reason that it's beyond the comprehension of people with dumb minds. Also, he has Plans involving Scarlet Witch.

Big ones.

So he's also watching her subplot on a different time-a-vision.

On a completely different floor.

Why did you organize like this?

I do like the room that is just sideways to the stairs. Immortus lives in an MC Esher painting.

Anyway, back at the Scarlet Witch ooze side of the plot, all the memories have been jammed into her brain and the bad guys breached the genetic barrier that kept them from possessing mutants.

Mr. Random: "The genetic barrier has been breached. Soon we shall be able to abandon the dead end street of humanity... And then homo sapiens will go the same way as did the dinosaurs before them!"

So we'd better dial E for Extinction.

This is just the Sublime stuff! Did Morrison just rip off Byrne? Why??

The evil bad guys put Ooze Wanda in a room so she can rest and contemplate.

Ooze Wanda: "Suddenly I feel very sure about everything. It's as if every doubt I've ever had in my life has been scrubbed away. I begin to understand now some of the things my father has said. Things he said in the days my brother, Pietro, and I were part of his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. In those days long before we even knew he was our father... When he was, to us, only Magneto, Master of Magnetism." "Then he spoke often of the superiority of mutants such as us. Homo superior, he called us. He said we were the future. Said that some day soon all the humans would bow down to us... Acknowledge us as their rightful masters! Now i see that he was right! More right than even he dared guess. Humankind has reached the end of its era of domination. They must be left behind, like the dinosaurs, like the lesser mammals. Left to die out. And only That Which Endures shall remain!"

Aw, dammit. Getting ooze radicalized her into mutant supremacy.

Don't do ooze, kids, not even once.

Later that evening, Captain America and She-Hulk sneak back onto the Absolom College grounds to get to the bottom of things.

While She-Hulk points out that she's not built for a stealth mission "being six foot seven and bright green", Cap impresses by acrobating all over the place and pointing out where the security sensors are so She-Hulk can avoid them.

The two break into Mr. Random's office and Mr. Random's unsecured passwordless computer and find that Scarlet Witch is being held in a sub-basement. In fact, in the building right across from Mr. Random's office window.

So She-Hulk has an idea how to expedite the journey.

Instead of slowly making their way through the building, dodging security, and trying to find their way into the sub-basement, She-Hulk just uses herself as a kinetic bomb to plow a straight line from the roof to the basement.

And Captain America follows the path she left by riding his shield. Since its unique properties absorb the impact of falling twenty stories.

In the sub-basement, Cap and She-Hulk find a fortified structure, which Cap likens to a blockhouse. Looking like it was built to contain something.

But She-Hulk is Hulk strong and Cap asks her to knock. The door down.

Except. She plows through a lot easier than she should have if it was fortified as it looks. It's a trap!

Ooze Wanda is waiting for them and with a gesture, she buries Cap and She-Hulk in rocks.

Well, buries is a strong word. She lightly flings the rubble at them and then they fall over unconscious despite it seeming like it should take more than that to knock out a (she-)hulk.

Ooze Wanda: "I have not been turned. I have, rather, been shown the truth. The great and ancient truth which has dwelled within all living things since the dawn of time! The truth you will come to share... once you, too, are properly assimilated!"

... I thought humans were already assimilated?

How does this thing work, anyway?

And where did Wanda's pupils go? She had them a few pages ago. Did she catch Youngblood's Disease between then and now?

Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, Hawkeye is training the Great Lakes Avengers and yelling at them for not being up to his standards. Despite him only being in charge for one day.

Maybe its tough love but saying "I have never seen a more useless bunch of misfits!" is a bit harsh considering he just barged into their lives and unilaterally decided he was in charge.

Mockingbird interrupts his yelling at them to tell Hawkeye she caught a Quinjet emergency signal on the Avengers waveband.

Hawkeye: "All riigghht!! This is the moment I've been waiting for! AVENGERS ASSEMBLE! My former teammteas are in some kinda jam... an' we're gonna bail 'em out!"

Sooo. You go from yelling at them for not being up to Avengers standards to throwing them into the field for an unknown situation that may have endangered a professional Avengers team, all for a chance to show up his colleagues?

I'm starting to think Hawkeye is some kind of petty asshole sometimes.

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essential-avengers · 2 months

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #307: METAMORPHOSIS

September, 1989

I don't usually root for Lava Men but nobody seems to want to make Gilgamesh interesting or put him in pants so yeah go ahead and crush him. Let's trade up for a better model.

I do suspect that Gilgamesh is getting the boot. Even though he's in the roster box, his name isn't included with the names above the title. Which I'm guessing are the mainstays despite the run having the premise that all Avengers are Avengers.

Anyway.

Last times on Avengers: Some stuff happened. And then the writer changed. Captain America declared that the Avengers would have a flexible roster of everyone. Also, some Lava Men hoisted Avengers Island and formed a big ball around the Avengers which then rolled into the sea. Namor showed up but got captured too. Then it was revealed that the Avengers had sorta killed the Lava Men's demonic patron and accidentally wiped out like... almost all of the Lava Men? And the Lava Witchdoctor Jinku is the one that summoned a bunch of not-sapient Lava Men and used them to kidnap the Avengers so he could summon a giant lava monster at them about it.

Meanwhile, Avengers Island is still teetering atop a big spire made of cooled Lava Men and those Lava Men are starting to crumble. The island is in danger of falling, wrecking the Avenger's nice, new base that they haven't had a chance to enjoy because they had a stretch of bad writing! Also Jarvis is still on the island! We like Jarvis here!

He uses the radio to issue an emergency priority double-A one, probably the most emergency of priority calls.

The West Coast Avengers West Coast heard the call last time but still haven't arrived. But Reed and Sue were still in New York so were able to respond much sooner.

Sue points out that they didn't bring specialized equipment with them but Reed tells her that she's all the equipment they need.

He always says the most romantic things.

But he tells her to use her invisible force fields to jam an invisible wedge under the island to shore it up.

It's hard though.

I don't know the exact mechanism of how strain on her force fields impacts Sue but she's carrying thousands of tons with only her brain. That's a lot of pressure.

Science brain Reed points out that the triangle is the strongest form in mechanics so she should be able to bear it.

The rock is still crumbling away from the pillar but Reed tells her not to worry about it. Just keep holding up thousands of tons of island.

Meanwhile, down down down below, the Avengers fight Jinku's lava beast.

Sure, he's calling them mean names like infidel and blasphemer, just because they killed his god but on the other hand, they killed his god and that act consequently killed most of his people.

Anger is a reasonable reaction to that.

I don't think I mentioned it last time but this is a very Marvel monster design.

The horns all over his head, the teeth that stick out like gravestones, the chipped nails, the red that looks like pink, the big brow ridge, the blank eyes. If he were introduced in the 60s he'd probably be called Lavva or Moltenn and have a tidy number of appearances over the years.

But he's actually called Avatar of Cha'sa'dra and has such a specific purpose in this book that he doesn't appear beyond this story unless its in a flashback to this story.

Gilgamesh leaps right at the Avatar, despite Cap's warning, and gets molten lava horfed all over him. Which quickly cools into a cocoon of basalt.

You wouldn't think it would cool that quickly but maybe its magic lava. You don't know.

She-Hulk rips up a stalagmite and whacks the Avatar in the ankle while yelling "IT'S CLOBBERING TIME!"

And she's kind of right because the Avatar leans over and clobbers her across the cave.

Cap tries to smash open Gilgamesh's basalt cocoon but can't make a scratch nor dent in the tough stone.

Gilgamesh just OH YEAHs free. Because he's super strong.

Captain America: "Watch it there, big man! Those flying fragments could have hurt somebody!"

It's sad that Gilgamesh and Captain America's dynamic has wholly become "Cap nags Gilgamesh for not considering his actions for even five seconds."

Back in the Inferno tie-ins, Cap was legitimately interested in getting to know Gilgamesh and to figure out if all his name dropping and claims to have been behind so many legendary deeds were bullshit or not.

Anyway, the mention of basalt gets Black Panther thinking.

Lava Men are tough to fight because they're semi-liquid. They can just reform from injury. But Jinku has hardened into basalt, apparently, despite being colored the same pink as the rest of the Lava Men. Instead of the dark gray that Gilgamesh's basalt coating had.

But given that Jinku is apparently solid stone and not gooey lava, Black Panther decides to excuse himself from the giant monster fight to sneak up and ambush Jinku while the guy is distracted controlling the Avatar.

Black Panther grabs Jinku's staff and wrestles for it. He tells him to surrender the staff or Black Panther will rip off his arm to take it.

But Jinku has more than just the strength of his basalt arm at his disposal. While he wrestles with Black Panther, Jinku is also controlling the Avatar. And he has the Avatar throw Namor at Black Panther.

Bonk.

Thor gets fed up with all this and decides to UNLEASH HIS TRUE MIGHT. He stirs up a hurricane, right here in this underground cave.

But Captain America stops him, saying that the storm will collapse the cave on the Avengers before it fells the Avatar.

Thor does stop but points out that they're getting their asses kicked right now anyway.

And then Black Panther notes that the Avatar is raising the heat in the cave and then passes the fuck out from it.

Captain America is holding up better, because super soldier formula. I guess the heart-shaped herb isn't a thing yet?

Feels weird for that to not be a thing.

Meanwhile, the Avengers West Coast arrives just as Invisible Sue is getting overwhelmed by holding up an entire island.

Wonder Man flies up to the teetering Avengers Island and grabs a corner to hold up. Taking some of the burden off of Sue.

In one of those moments that feels like a handwave to cover an error, Mr Reedtastic wonders how Wonder Man's dinky belt rockets have the lift to hold up so much weight.

Reed decides that the rockets are drawing power from Wonder Man's mutated life energy.

Despite that being a bonkers thing to posit.

Presumably, Byrne drew Wonder Man holding up a corner of Avengers Island and only afterward realized that's not how physics works.

Either way, Wonder Man manages to level the island, balancing on top of the rock spire.

Now that its temporarily balanced, Reed tells Sue to drop her force field. Let Atlas over here hold up the entire thing himself.

Wonder Man: "Hey! Do you mind, Richards? I'm already busting my back as it is!"

But Reed is looking at the big picture. Instead of just holding it up, they need to get it down, safely.

So while Wonder Man holds the entire thing himself, Invisible Sueman creates an invisible force field that spirals around the rock column.

Sue assumes this is to reinforce the column but it's still crumbling like this. Which Reed confirms is his plan. He wants the column to crumble.

MEANWHILE, back at the hot plot.

Black Panther, Captain America, and Quasar have passed the hell out from the heat. Namor and She-Hulk are flagging. And Thor and Gilgamesh are still going strong, monster punching.

Thor tells She-Hulk that this isn't just heat, it's magic heat. Which isn't constructive input.

She-Hulk suggests every Avenger still standing combine their strength to take out Avatar.

... Why weren't you combining your strength before?

Jinku: "It will avail you nothing, giantess! You who see yourselves as the noble champions of the surface world! But this time it is you who are the villains! And mine is the right of retribution!"

And then Jinku repeats the entire story about how their god Cha'sa'dra turned the Lava Men into immortal Lava Men, how he got called away from his busy god job to participate in some conflict (Inferno), how Cha'sa'dra got whacked by the Avengers, and how his death caused most of the Lava Men to turn to meat men again and instantly age to death.

She-Hulk: "We know all that! You told us not ten minutes ago..."

Do you get points for lampshading your own writing cliches?

Since we're in recap town for anyone who didn't pick up last issue, She-Hulk reiterates that Cha'sa'dra wasn't a god but an evil demon.

As you might expect, Jinku is no happier to hear this than the first time they told him.

So he recaps at them some more, explaining that the Lava Men that didn't instantly die, instead turned into "mindless stone."

So Jinku is the last Lava Man, he's pissed, and he's making it the Avengers' problem for causing the situation.

Even Thor is feeling the heat at this point. But Gilgamesh is still going strong because of bullshit Eternal resistances.

Gilgamesh EYE BEAMMMMs the ceiling of the cave, collapsing about a mountain worth of rock on top of the Avatar. THUS THE PROBLEM IS DEALT WITH FOREVER.

The Avatar just bursts out from under the rock pile, like he's coming back for one last scare.

Jinku says that since the Avatar isn't really alive, he can't die. Sure.

At this point, Namor has passed out from the heat and She-Hulk has gotten knocked out when the Avatar OH YEAH'd from under the mountain.

Leaving just Thor and Gilgamesh.

Except Gilgamesh decides he's going to solo this.

Thor: "Gilgamesh, no! Thy thoughts are madness!" Gilgamesh: "Then madness is the only way a warrior should think! Hear me, monster, if mind you have to understand... I am the warrior of the thousand names! I am the dragon slayer! I have fought ten thousand-thousand battles, and I have won them all! I am without equal in the annals of the Earth... AND I AM YOUR DOOM!!"

Dammit, Gilgamesh, why did you suddenly decide to be interesting? For irony reasons? Because he really does get smacked down immediately after that speech.

Fuckin' Gilgamesh.

Also, the hit Gilgamesh took was so devastating that he's just dead or something. The other Avengers have regained consciousness in time to observe that Gilgamesh isn't breathing.

Jinku gloats that soon the rest of the Avengers will be as dead as Gilgamesh probably is. And Namor goes Well Actually uh it seems less hellishly hot around here lately. Which Captain America seconds. Does seem less hot for some reason.

Jinku ignores that to direct the Avatar to kill the Avengers but he doesn't do that. He just stands and stares off at nothing.

Jinku: "What sorcery is this? My lava monster does not move... Does not obey me..." Someone: "Nor shall he, Jinku. He is ours now to control."

Dun dun dun.

Hey, remember all those Lava Men who didn't die but did turn into statues?

Yeah. They're fine now. They're good. They're better than good. They're golden.

And they karate chop Jinku so hard that he too becomes golden.

Apparently they all just needed some time to grow into their True Form.

Also, apparently, Jinku was constantly feeling agony every moment which does explain why he was so pissed and unwilling to listen to the Avengers tell him his god was shit. That and the blasphemy. But now that he's golden, the pain is gone. And he is in a better mood.

One of the gold dudes explains : "Free of the influence of Cha'sa'dra, we have evolved into this higher, finer form. And with this form comes greater understanding! Our brothers died because they were too thoroughly corrupted by Cha'sa'dra's evil magicks... But somehow, in our heart of hearts, we remained untouched... And so did you. For though you sought the destruction of the Avengers, it was not hate that drove you, but grief and anguish. You wished only to see right snatched from what you thought a terrible wrong. And so it has been. Set aside your weapon, brother, and let the joy of this beginning fill your soul!"

Well, okay.

This does not work for me.

For one thing, the people that became statues instead of instantly aging to death were said to be the ones who studied and used Cha'sa'dra's magicks for themselves. Why did using more magick mean being less corrupted?

For another, I dunno. I wish the Avengers had any input into the end of this plot. As it stands, they just get bounced around the room for a while and then deus ex rockina, they get saved because the plot clock ran down.

For another, dunno that Jinku is absolved of blame just because he was sad about bad things that happened. He was taking his grief out on Avengers that hadn't even been around to kill his god. She-Hulk, Namor, Black Panther, and Quasar weren't involved in that.

For a fourth thing, geez. You brought up the idea that the Avengers accidentally a genocide of the Lava Men. I don't like how they get absolved of all blame because "oh the ones that died, they all sucked, its good that they died." HOLY SHIT that is a take.

And I know, what kind of satisfying resolution can there be from the Avengers accidentally killing off all the Lava Men because they whacked a demon invading Earth. What moral lesson should they take from that? Don't punch demons? I don't know where I wanted the subplot to go after it was brought up that the Avengers did make an inadvertent fuckup and did real harm to this molten community but I can damn well tell you, never mind all that those guys sucked, actually, is maybe the worst way for it to go!

Anyway anyway anyway.

Jinku apologizes for doing the Avengers harm.

Hah. And Captain America says, half downplaying and half twisting the knife, that they'll all recover except Gilgamesh who is possibly probably dead from being punched too hard.

(I'm sure he's not dead. And not just in the way that almost no comic book character stays dead forever. More in the sense of what kind of shitty Eternal dies of being punched to death by a lava monster?)

Next time on Avengers, I guess we'll find out how dead Gilgamesh is.

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#avengers #lava men #jinku the last lava man #avatar of cha'sa'dra #captain america #she hulk #black panther #gilgamesh #namor mckenzie #quasar #edwin jarvis #we appreciate him here #mr fantastic #invisible woman #wonder man #what a baffling way to wrap up an arc

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essential-avengers · 3 months

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Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #47: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE!

August, 1989

Oof, I do not like the in shadows because of blinds effect. It looks ugly.

I also don't like the rebranding to Avengers West Coast. Its part of an overall rebranding so that all the Avengers books start with the word Avengers first. Avengers, Avengers West Coast, Avengers Spotlight. Presumably so they'll all be in the same place on the new comic stands.

I'll honor the name change in the post titles but I'm keeping my tag west coast avengers so I can still find things.

Also, putting the title on the cover? Scoff. Unrelated text goes on the cover and the title goes on the first page! Everybody knows that!

Anyway.

Last times in West Coast Avengers Avengers West Coast: all the governments in the world kidnapped Vision, deleted his robot brain, and disassembled his synthezoid body. Then when the Avengers came a'knocking, all the governments turned over Vision's parts and fucked out of the story.

Hank Pym has rebuilt Vision but he's white now. Like ghost white. And he doesn't have emotions because Wonder Man won't donate a new brain scan. Wanda is very upset about this.

She gets an unsolicited letter from Absolom College in Texas, offering to help Vision. But they're also up to something involving mutants.

Meanwhile, the US government added insult to injury. In addition to their involvement in basically identity deathing Vision, the US government insists that asshole Captain America palette swap US Agent is now in charge of the team.

Hawkeye got fed up with this and ragequit the team to go lead the Great Lakes Avengers instead.

And that's the basic situation. The West Coast Avengers haven't done a lot of superheroing lately because they've just been dealing with drama nonstop since Byrne took over.

Wanda begs Hank Pym and T'Challa to help Vision but Hank is like 'Wanda pls, I'm doing computer science right now' and Black Panther asks what's actually wrong with Vision? He seems fine??

In fact, we should all give Hank a round of applause for putting Vision back together so perfectly.

Wanda gets frustrated at how frustrating the two are being and storms off.

Hank Pym acknowledges that neither of them have the emotional maturity to help Wanda's feelings. Therefore, he just won't try.

Dammit, Hank!

T'Challa reiterates that he really doesn't see the problem. Apparently he doesn't remember Vision being anything but robotic.

Per exposition dump, all of Vision's humanizing moments happened while Black Panther was off doing something else?

Wild.

Wonder Man tries to talk to Wanda but she blows him off, as well she should. He is refusing to help fix her husband and refusing to explain why.

Meanwhile, Wasp does some training in what I think is a new outfit.

Good job, Wasp. And good outfit.

And I see that her antenna are still popping out. I like that's carried over from Englehart's stuff.

Wonder Man turns off the training sequence so he can talk to Wasp about feelings.

He admits to Jan that he's in love with Wanda. And Jan deduces that Wonder Man has always been in love with Scarlet Witch. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY that's where Vision got it from.

I never say this but fuck you, Wasp.

Wonder Man didn't even meet Wanda - by his own admission - until Wanda and Vision were already married! And attraction is built of more things than just brain patterns, probably.

Anyway, Wonder Man does admit to having been in love with Wanda since he met her. But he never said anything because he's not a home-wrecking dick.

EXCEPT.

He's willing to become a home-wrecking dick now.

He's decided that Vision being disassembled means he died and Wanda is free game.

Despite Wanda herself not being over Vision or seeing it that way. YOU DICK.

And so that's why Wonder Man refuses to donate his brain patterns. If it fixes Vision, then Wonder Man can't try to smooch on Wanda. That'd be wrong!

And now I have to say fuck you Wasp again because she decides that she's going to help Wonder Man. Because she's a romantic!

(She almost admits that she and Hank are smooching again but gets interrupted before she finish.)

The security monitor BLEEP!s to inform that there's been an unscheduled Quinjet launch.

Meanwhile, US Agent is still concerned with Tigra acting weird. He's apparently been so concerned with this that he hasn't shown up in the crossovers with the Avengers East Coast book. And Byrne is writing both books so if US Agent was doing anything with the team, he'd probably have showed up.

Since Tigra hasn't been seen in 72 hours, US Agent goes to check her bungalow.

I've asked this before but why the fuck do Tigra's teammates seem to not notice or care that she's being weird? Why is the new asshole the only one that cares?

Bad writing? Probably bad writing, right?

Either that or the Vision/Wanda thing is sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

When US Agent knocks on her door, it bursts open and a more cat-shaped Tigra NYOOMs to the woods. US Agent laments that there's no way to catch her and maybe he should go get Black Panther to help

When. He finds Tigra just waiting for him right inside the woods.

Tigra: "Hello, new... sailor in town?"

That's a weird way to break up that sentence.

Did new and sailor get swapped?

Anyway. US Agent demands an explanation for her behavior and she responds by flirting the hell out of him.

Y'know, the one nice thing I had to say about Byrne recycling the Tigra getting overwhelmed by cat instincts subplot from Englehart is that at least he wasn't taking the same angel of 'oh no, Tigra is too horny!'

And then. This.

(I do have to say that her expression in the second panel of this screenshot is very cute though. Since Byrne pencils his own books, kudos for that expression. And also kudos to inker Mike Machlan and colorist Bob Sharen.)

US Agent seems freaked out by the concept of Tigra wanting to bone him so thankfully, the perimeter alarm going off gives him an excuse to gracefully extricate himself from this situation.

He finds that a Quinjet launched without authorization.

That's a good Quinjet.

By process of elimination, Wasp deduces that Scarlet Witch and Vision are in the Quinjet.

Quickly confirmed when Vision no-emotion nags Wanda into answering Wasp's hailing frequencies.

Wasp: "Wanda! Thank heavens! What's wrong? Why have you taken a Quinjet without filing a proper flight plan?" Scarlet Witch: "I needed transportation, and I did not wish you to know where I am going. Since none of my teammates is interested in helping the Vision, I've decided to accept the offered assistance of someone who is!" Dr Pym: "Wanda, it's Hank! Please don't do this! I don't know who you are planning to contact, but believe me, everything humanly possible has been done!"

So Wanda hangs up on him.

See what happens when you don't even bother addressing someone's emotional crisis? HANK?

Because not only did Wanda cut the transmission, she also turned on the Quinjet's stealth shield that it totally has and has always had, don't question it. So the Avengers (West Coast) have no idea where Wanda is going, except which direction she was headed before she turned stealth in.

Since Seattle was in the way of Wanda's flight path, the Avengers (West Coast) go to Grosvenor Memorial Hospital because this was the hospital where Professor Horton was taken after the Avengers (West Coast) saved him from Vigilance.

So clearly Wanda came here to get Horton to help fix Vision!

Except, the doctor treating Professor Horton tells the Avengers (West Coast) that Wanda isn't here.

And Wasp belatedly realizes that if Wanda is a smart cookie (and she often is) she would have switched course after turning on stealth, to put the Avengers (West Coast) on a false trail.

Whoops.

Wonder Man bemoans that if she did intentionally set a false trail, that means Wanda doesn't trust them anymore!

Geez, I wonder why she wouldn't trust you specifically man who refuses to donate his brain patterns to her broken husband for sketchy reasons.

Wonder Man: "She'd be just as alone and vulnerable as she was when Magneto first recruited her for the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!"

I guess Byrne is trying to tease/foreshadow that Wanda might Go Bad because she's so alienated from her friends.

But Wonder Man just completely forgetting Quicksilver exists and was with Wanda when Magneto recruited her cracks me up.

No respect for Pietro.

Anyway, forget the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. I'm not even sure what form it exists in at this point in continuity or what Magneto is up to recently.

Wanda was really going to Saunders College slash Absolom College.

The mystery people who are up to something spot her arriving and ominously say that the "assimilator awaits."

Mr. Jeremiah Random (what a fake name), Dean of Robotics go to greet Wanda and Vision and promise to try their best to help Vision.

And don't worry about the Quinjet! The college will take care of it!

How far away did Wanda and Vision walk away that they didn't hear a jet getting skwished?

The crushed remnants of the Quinjet are dumped down a deep, deep, deep pit under the college. But even after all that, a component is still blinking.

It happens that component is a Quinjet emergency alert that alerts the Avengers when a Quinjet is destroyed.

And by Avengers I mean Avengers. East Coast.

The alarm alarms Captain America who disturbs She-Hulk's relaxing couch time.

He checks the alarm and determines that the Quinjet was destroyed in or about the town of Absolom, Texas.

That's a West Coast Avenger Quinjet and a West Coast Avengers jurisdiction to respond to EXCEPT Cap unilaterally declared that all Avengers are Avengers.

Cap can mobilize to go investigate if he wants and dammit, he do.

(I wonder if the alarm also went off at the Avengers West Coast Compound? It is not shown to in this issue.)

Back at Absolom College, Mr. Random finishes explaining how their advanced approach to cyber-systems is just what will fix Vision! They just need to do a very detailed analysis of his circuitry but surely that's okay.

Wanda checks with them that what they're trying to do is restore Vision's mind to how it was before every government erased it and Mr. Random goes 'yup, we'll do our best!'

When one of the college robot people asks Vision to go off for the first phase of study, Wanda stops her robot hubby and kisses him goodbye.

Although, that just upsets her as Vision stands still and doesn't reciprocate or react in any way to the romantic gesture.

As Vision leaves, Wanda asks whether she should go with. She's the leading expert on how Vision's brain should be.

Mr Random tells her that, hey, that's great and they'll definitely get her involved later on. But phase one is just physiological tests and wouldn't she rather nap than watch boring tests?

He offers to show her to some special quarters where she can relax.

But the quarters he takes her to are tiled like a bathroom and pillared like a subway station and just... its just a trap. The very suspiciously named Mr Random led her to a trap.

He locks the door behind her and when she goes to use her hex powers on the door, she's blasted with sonics so she can't focus.

The tiles on the bathroom subway station prison chamber are actually video screens and Mr Random shows up on them to explain his sinister motive.

Mr Random: "I regret the necessity of causing you such discomfort, but we could not allow you to escape before we completed our studies of you." Scarlet Witch: "Of... me?? But... I thought... the Vision...?" Mr Random: "The Vision is a mechanical contrivance, and of no interest to us. No, it is you we wanted, Wanda. You we selected out of all the known mutants on Earth. You were chosen because you are powerful -- and we shall need power -- but not so powerful that you could not be controlled. But, perhaps some explanations are in order. The time of homo sapiens is drawing rapidly to a close, Wanda. The age of the mutant, of homo superior, is dawning. We intend to be a part of it. For all the uncounted millennia the apperance of mutant genes has somehow stymied us. We have not been able to influence them, or the mutants they created. Now, if we are to move into the new dominant species, we must develop this facility."

Oh my god.

This is just Sublime from Morrison's New X-Men run. Did Morrison really like this story or something?

Anyway, Wanda hasn't read that far ahead so she has no idea what this man is talking about. But Mr Random doesn't need Wanda to understand. Presumably, he was just monologuing to hear himself talk.

All he needs from her is for her to be oozed by the Assimilator.

Oozed.

Did it have to be ooze? Did it have to "invade" her?

I know comics are sometimes the creators' barely concealed fetishes but geez.

Anyway, one more subplot before the end of the book.

Back at the West Coast Avengers Compound, the new, new governess looks away from Wanda's children Billy and Tommy for like five seconds to retrieve a toy. And when she turns back, they're missing!

DUN DUN DUNNN.

It's probably good writing to build up a subplot with repetition, to build intrigue before the reveal.

But knowing the cursed future knowledge that I do know, I'm just annoyed because I know where this is going.

Sigh.

Anyway. I sure hope someone saves Wanda from the stock fantasy enemy, the slime.

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#avengers #west coast avengers #jeremiah random #that which endures #the vision #the wasp #hank pym #dr pym #black panther #wonder man #US Agent #Tigra #she’s horny again #captain america #she hulk #Wanda makes a mistake trusting academics instead of friends #ooze happens #I might enjoy these issues more if I knew less

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essential-avengers · 3 months

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #306: There is a FIRE Down Below

August, 1989

Can even the SUB-MARINER withstand the brutal attack of the LAVA MEN?

Well, he's got a type advantage?

Attacking him in the ocean was maybe not the best idea.

I don't know why the disembodied Avengers heads are so distraught that Namor is beating up Lava Men. Maybe they're upset because they can't see his abs from where they are...

Anyway.

Last time on Avengers: Captain America unilaterally declared every Avenger is an Avenger and there's only one Avengers team, the one he's in charge of.

Everyone was fairly supportive of this.

Except for the Lava Men who hoisted Avengers Island into the sky and then trapped Captain America, Black Panther, Thor, She-Hulk, and Giglamesh in a lava ball and rolled them into the ocean.

This time: the ocean.

Namor is swimming around in the ocean, just enjoying his life, hanging out with his finny friends, definitely not looking for his dead monster wife's monster babies at all, when some dolphins tell him that there's bad shit going on with the Avengers.

So even though Namor was JUST THERE, he turns around to check things out. Even though the water gets oddly warm. Did someone pee the entire ocean?

No?

It's just the giant column of lava, still glowing cherry hot despite all this ocean around? A flagrant violation of physics? Okay.

The column is made up of just tons of lava men and many break off the column to attack Namor.

He punches them a lot, declaims about how cool he is, smacks some Lava Men with a Lava Man, and swims around really fast to make a whirlpool.

But despite his sea-strengthened limbs, Namor notices what the Avengers noticed last time. There's a lot of the Lava Men and they tend to just reform from damage.

Then the Rock Sphere o' Avengers drops into the ocean. It disrupts the whirpool Namor was working on. And so distracts him that the Lava Men are able to dog pile on and engulf him.

The pile of Lava Men with Namor in the center walks over and starts fusing with the giant stone sphere.

Meanwhile, in the sphere, the Avengers are still hammering away at the insides.

But even though the inner layer is rock and the outer layer is rock, there's a gooey lava middle layer.

Every time the Avengers manage to make a hole, lava oozes in and hardens.

Then a hole opens up by itself and poops out Namor.

He's all pink and dehydrated and unconscious.

I assume the Lava Men pile steamed him before tossing him in with the others.

Thor jams his arm in the Namor hole before it has a chance to close but it just pinches shut on his shoulder.

Then as if it that weren't bad enough, the sphere starts rolling again.

Thor gets mad and breaks his arm free. Which creates a big crack in the prison. Which is immediately sealed shut by lava.

All in all, things aren't going super great for this new Avengers group.

Up in Avengers Island, Jarvis tries to call for help.

The good thing about Captain America declaring all Avengers is Avengers is that you can just call in more help when a giant lava spire lifts your HQ out of the ocean.

The West Coast Avengers are still returning to the west coast from the meeting. They make a big U-turn back towards the East.

Also, various interpersonal dramas make it hard to pin down when in the West Coast Avengers this is set.

Hawkeye already ragequit and took over the Great Lakes Avengers. Tigra is in the Quinjet with the other West Coast Avengers but she doesn't seem taken over by cat instincts. Vision is his traditional red, not all white. Everyone has metal should pads for some reason.

Its weird that the Avengers books can't keep consistent when the same Byrne is writing them both.

Back with Jarvis, the room starts tilting.

He turns on the outside surveillance cameras that can even scan under the base despite it being an idea.

Now that the Lava Men have the Avengers, the ones making up the giant pillar are crumbling away.

Why, Avengers Island is probably going to fall soon!

In the Orb o' Avengers, Gilgamesh goes non-responsive in order to go into an Eternal coma to better withstand the rigors of orb life.

She-Hulk points out that Captain America and Black Panther don't have any powers so how the heck are they doing in the hazardous orb environment?

Cap non-answers by just saying "I'll worry about myself when there's time, She-Hulk."

Since the orb seems to have come to a stop, Cap asks Thor to try to punch an exist if he's up to it.

Thor cautions that it'll probably be wasted effort. But "Thor is ever ready to try anything, Avenger!"

Thor starts punching a hole in the stone, the stone starts sealing over his arm. Same old story. This time, though, She-Hulk joins in.

Thor will punch a hole through the stone. She-Hulk will punch the rock so it can't reform between Thor punches.

And with this strategy, they make progress.

She-Hulk suddenly realizes that if they're still underwater, punching through is going to lead to a rush of seawater into their predicament.

Thor hears her concerns but also proceeds anyway, punching his fist out into free air.

So they're on dry land, if they can only get out to it!

Then Thor gets consumed by the juicy lava filling. Not that its dangerous to him. Remember the Lava Men story this is referencing? Thor just sank into lava with his usual stoic pout.

Thor tells the others not to save him and lets himself be pulled into the lava. And Captain America backs up his decision because Thor is never foolhardy.

OH YEAH

His big plan was just to let himself be drawn to the center of the orb's wall and then go ham.

Meanwhile, some new plot thread.

An old man loses track of his time while reading the newspaper and then old man ambles over to check the science machine he's been working on.

A science machine that could leave a crater where Cresskill is supposed to be if old man messes up.

That's a potent science machine.

Why not get into potato clocks, sir?

Meanwhile, the Avengers find themselves deep within the bowels of the Earth. The Earth has so many bowels and yet does so little digestion.

Captain America points out that as deep as they appear to be, the pressure should turn them into primary colored goo but She-Hulk tells Cap not to sweat the science. She's more worried about how Namor is all burned and dehydrated.

So Thor bonks Mjolnir on the ground and summons a rainstorm.

He can do that. The weather is his friend.

(And really, the only thing that stopped him from doing it sooner was not enough open air.)

Namor instantly rouses because comic book people with water based metabolism rehydrate like sponges. And he instantly flies into a rage based on the last thing he remembers. But Captain America tells him to clam down and Namor instantly listens to his ol' Nazi punching buddy.

The Prince of Abslantis asks where the heck they are and Captain America reiterates his observation that they seem like they're pretty deep into the Earth and yet the pressure hasn't turned them into goo.

Then Jinku, Witchdoctor of the Lava Men shows up and tells them that they're not goo because he chooses for them not to be goo.

That's nice of him. Although he also calls them his prisoners.

(In a funny bit, he tells them not to bother trying to remember if they've met him before because they won't remember him, only for Captain America to instantly go "I remember you." Jinku isn't reading his audience very well.)

Captain America says he thought the Avengers and Lava Men settled their beef but Jinku tells them there's new beef.

WHY, THE AVENGERS HAVE BROUGHT UPON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LAVA MEN!

Captain America is skeptical because the Avengers haven't interacted with Lava Men for... a while.

So Jinku Explains It All.

Before the Lava Men were Lava Men, they were a subterranean human-ish race called the Gortokians who worshipped a demonic looking god called Cha'sa'dra, "most powerful of the underworld pantheon."

One day, their worship of Cha'sa'dra pays off when the dude himself appears. As a reward for their devotion, Cha'sa'dra turns the Gortokians into immortal men made out of molten stone. Lava Men, you might say.

Cha'sa'dra hung around to enjoy being worshipped. Maybe relatedly, the former Gortokian civilization sank into primitive barbarism. It's gotta be him because there's no other suggested factor.

Anyway, the day came when Cha'sa'dra just fucked off with no explanation.

They got an explanation later. That Cha'sa'dra was summoned by another god (N'astirh) to take part in a war against the surface (Inferno).

The important takeaway is that Cha'sa'dra was one of the nameless demons the Avengers mowed down during their Inferno tie-in issues.

Except, he wasn't nameless. His name was Cha'sa'dra. And whoops, his turn men to lava men spell had no ontological inertia. When he died, the Lava Men lost their lava and their immortality.

Hundreds of former Lava Men instantly died of being way too old. The only ones that survived were Jinku and his acolytes. Thanks to manipulating the magic of Cha'sa'dra, they were protected from instantly aging to death.

But instead of aging, Jinku's acolytes turned to stone. Living but unmoving.

"The process of their minds slowed to such a point ten thousand years might pass before they formed a whole thought!"

Dark.

So Jinku is the last guy both alive and not trapped in a living hell.

Jinku: "This is what you brought to my people, you who call yourselves Avengers! You who consider yourselves champions of all that lives! You slaughtered all but a handful, and condemned the rest to an eternal living death! For this, you deserve no better than agonizing death!" Captain America: "I'm not going to pretend we Avengers were not instrumental in the death of your god... But what you have to understand is that Cha'sa'dra lied to you! He was no great god. He was a minor demon. A tiny part of the horde that attacked." Jinku: "SILENCE! INFIDELS! If there were a punishment greater than death, I would now condemn you to it! I would see your souls writhe in torment till the end of time, for your blasphemy!!"

Telling the truth was not the best policy this time, Cap.

Although, the death of his entire race probably made him unwilling to hear any explanation or excuse.

I think maybe you have to kick him in the lava junk until he calms down.

Anyway, Jinku does have a punishment in mind for the Avengers.

DEATH BY LAVA EXPY OF CHA'SA'DRA!

And since the Avengers were all standing in one easily punched row, he punches them all in a row.

You'd think that this would set Captain America and probably Black Panther on fire. Thank god lava doesn't work like lava in fiction.

Follow @essential-avengers for more of the same of this. But, hey, like, reblog, and comment! I'm lonely down here.

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Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #46: FRANCHISE

July, 1989

Great Lakes Avengers Assemble?!

I have been waiting for this.

I've read this issue before, in a collected edition of Dan Slott's Great Lakes Avengers miniseries. But now I have all the context leading up to this and I'll get to see what else this wacky group did in their early appearances.

And, hell. Out of everything in the Byrne run so far, this is his first shake up that's not deeply annoying!

Byrne is the one who pulls the trigger on the idea of a third Avengers team teased when Vision was trying to expand the Avengers. But not quite as he enVisioned it.

Hah.

Last times on West Coast Avengers: Between issues, Tigra, Hank Pym, and the Wasp joined the West Coast Avengers. Then Vision got kidnapped by every government in the world and disassembled into a pile of parts. Hank Pym puts everyone's favorite synthezoid back together but he's all white now and he doesn't have emotions and only has Avengers case files for memories.

The American government also forced the West Coast Avengers to take on US Agent or else reprisals. Hawkeye quit in a huff after US Agent tosses him after Hawkeye tried to punch him.

We learned in the big Avengers meeting over in Avengers that Hawkeye has a new group so let's get into it.

Geez, Mr Immortal, you're a bit manic there.

A bank robbery is happening at the Milwaukee Farmers and Merchants Trust. And we know this is Milwaukee because one of the robbers very considerately wears a Milwaukee jacket.

A dude we'll later learn is called Mr Immortal drops down from the ceiling, quips a bit, dodges some gunfire, hits a couple dudes, and then... doesn't dodge some other gunfire.

That looks like it hurts.

The robbers gather around the dead, deceased hero to make sure he's really dead.

And he's gotta be, right? Half of his chest is bulleted to hell.

And then things go to hell. For the robbers.

Flatman swipes the hostages with his stretchy definitely not a spoof of Mr Fantastic body. Big Bertha OH YEAHs through the wall. Dinah Soar flies through a Doorman shaped portal in another wall.

The Great Lakes Avengers are usually treated comically. They're a ridiculous team, operating in a ridiculous area, with ridiculous powers and the big joke about them in the Dan Slott series was how they were constantly overshadowed by the official Avengers and how none of the other heroes wanted to interact with them.

Except Squirrel Girl, who they hired by sorta lying that they were the real Avengers.

Ridiculous group with ridiculous powers they may be but in this action sequence, they're coordinated. They had a good plan to distract the robbers so the hostages could be pulled out of harms way. And then their ridiculous powers took down the gunmen no problem.

Yeah, these guys aren't going to be fighting Doctor Doom without hefty authorial fiat (but isn't that the way all comics work anyway?) but they're not bumbling amateurs.

And I appreciate that.

Last robber standing backs away in shock horror... right into the arms of Mr Immortal.

Who is not, in fact, dead. Or at least, he didn't stay dead.

Immortal, y'know?

Robber: "They're poppin' outta th' woodwork! Who are these geeks? Milwaukee don't have no super heroes!" Mr Immortal: "Guess again! Y'all are gonna be seein' a lot of us from now on! Y'all are gonna be seein' us in your nightmares!" Robber: "Wha...? No!! You're dead!!!" Mr Immortal: "Wrong-o, creep! I'm just as right as rain! But you aren't gonna be! By the time I get done with you... You'll prob'ly never be anything like right. Not never again!!"

Mr Immortal apparently goes a bit berserk after resurrecting.

He punches the robber down and then starts stomping him.

Flatman has to pull him off the guy. And Mr Immortal won't settle down until Dinah Soar talks to him in an empty text bubble.

Dinah Soar is the only one who CAN get him to calm down.

Flatman guesses its some kind of hypersonic. In the later Dan Slott series, its revealed that its actually True Love what does it. Yes, for serious. It was sweet, actually.

Last member of the team comes into the bank and tells the rest that there's a bunch of police and reporters who want to know what the devil is going on.

Mr Immortal goes out to address the crowd and press. When reporter Peggy Allen asks him who this group of do-gooders is, he dubs the team...

THE GREAT LAKES AVENGERS!

Hawkeye hears the news report in the random motel he's staying in after rage-quitting the Avengers.

His first instinct is to call the team and let them know about randos infringing the brand but then decides 'fuck 'em' because he's still mad about the government meddling in the team.

There's a knok knok knoking on Clint's door and making his bad mood worse, its Mockingbird.

He is very sarcastic about his day being ruined but she says she's here to save their marriage.

News to him. He thought they were dead set on getting a divorce.

But time off-panel and with a different writer has cooled Mockingbird's head. And since they're both going through some trying times now, maybe they should rethink things.

Hawkeye: "You mean now that I've been kicked off the team I founded I'm all of a sudden a pitiful soul so you've gone all maternal and decided to come back to the roost and take care of me! Well, thanks but no thanks, Bobbi!" Mockingbird: "You're not being fair, Clint. Although I guess that's nothing new, is it?" Hawkeye: "And just what is that supposed to mean?" Mockingbird: "It means you have all the sensitivity of a brick. I got mixed up with the Phantom Rider because he drugged me, used me, and when you found out, did you react like a husband whose wife has been assaulted? NO!! You went off on some stupid macho kick! And I was hurt enough to pay you back with your own coin. When I needed you -- maybe more than I ever have before -- you were too busy stroking your wounded male ego to notice. Something that could have bound us even closer together drove us apart. Well... that damage is done. Now I'm here to see if it can be undone. Because, heaven help me, in spite of everything, I still love you!"

I can't believe Byrne of all people is cutting through the bullshit and having Mockingbird say 'hey all that stuff we were yelling about wasn't the crux of the issue and you were being a major asshole, Clint.'

He's re-litigating a lot of Englehart's stuff. Redoing the Tigra plot. Revising Englehart's origin for Vision. Shoving people that had quit back onto the team.

I didn't expect him to use this power for good.

Because the Hawkeye/Mockingbird falling out was bad. Maybe in character for the two stubborn jerks. But it needed another look and here we are, taking another look.

Mockingbird doesn't even entertain the notion that its really a philosophical disagreement about cowboy manslaughter.

I'll have to see where it goes. Because it could go poorly in its own unique way.

Back over at the West Coast Avengers Compound, US Agent has made a good impression on one person and only one person.

The new cook, Mrs. Heyges, who is pleased to see someone that actually enjoys a big breakfast.

Most of the West Coast Avengers only have a slice of toast and some orange juice.

US Agent: "A man has to keep his strength up, Mrs. Heyges. And, of course, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Besides... You're almost as good a cook as my mother!" Mrs. Heyges: "Well, gracias, sir! I know that must be quite a compliment."

Based on her comments that she doesn't get to really cook for the others, US Agent muses that he should introduce a proper meal schedule.

Then, Tigra happens.

Looking for a proper meal of her own.

A.k.a. chasing a mouse.

She's seemingly gone full feral, although she doesn't have that same alien cat look she did last time.

Either Byrne thought better of it or it comes and goes for some damn reason.

She chases a mouse in, hisses and growls when US Agent grabs her, and sullenly creeps away when he slaps her for trying to bite him.

The cat instincts have taken over.

(I don't love that we're doing this again but it is better than her trying to hump everyone? I mean. Slightly better. The main reason I'm annoyed is that we're just doing this plot again. In a vacuum it wouldn't be so bad.)

(Also also, last time she jumped through a window to chase a bird. I can only assume she's destroyed the local bird population. Folks, Tigras are inside Avengers. Keep them inside for their own health and for the good of the ecosystem.)

Mrs. Heyges says that Tigra has been hunting the mice that get into the pantry. And she's new here and didn't really want to tell an Avenger what to do so she just sorta figured. Hunting mice was part of Tigra's job??

US Agent declares this very gross and decides something has to be done!

I mean. Something does need to be done. It speaks ill of everyone that nobody has noticed Tigra's issues until now. And the only dude that sorta knew she was going through something was Hawkeye and he stormed off in a huff.

I guess Wanda is going through some stuff. And Wonder Man is being kind of a creep about Wanda's stuff. And Vision is very neutral on everything these days. But fucks sake, Wasp or Hank Pym. You two are the adults here!

Over in the A-plot, Mockingbird has convinced Hawkeye to go to Milwaukee to check out the group calling themselves Avengers. Because it beats him sitting around feeling sorry for himself for rage-quitting the West Coast Avengers.

Although, he's rewritten history so that he was unjustly fired.

But since he had the impulse to go check out the Great Lakes Avengers, why not ride that impulse into something productive?

So over in Milwaukee, the Great Lakes Avengers check out mysterious lights over the Germania Building.

Mr Immortal sends Dinah Soar to check out the roof of the building and has Doorman make a portal (with his BODY) so Flatman can get inside the building and look for a way to let everyone else in.

Flatman thinks to himself how weird it is that when he goes through Doorman, he feels like he's briefly in another place entirely. Like, not even on Earth anymore.

Apparently, a subtle nod to Doorman's powers working through the Darkforce Dimension.

Up on the roof, Dinah Soar gets ambushed and captured by some manner of bola arrow.

At the mercy of this mystery assailant, Dinah Soar takes out a little whistle and sadly tweets on it.

Mr Immortal and Big Bertha hear the sad tooting and realize Dinah Soar is in trouble!

So Big Bertha gets Mr Immortal to hang onto her back and high jumps to the roof to get him there in a hurry.

To the mystery assailant's bafflement.

Mr Immortal: "You get clear now while I take care of this clown." Mystery Assailant who is definitely not Hawkeye: "'Clown?' Takes spunk to wear a suit like that and call somebody else a clown, pal!"

Glass houses, mystery assailant.

Big Bertha falls back to ground level, laughing all the way.

I am not sure why she does this. In other stuff, she's usually one of the more serious members of the Great Lakes Avengers.

Anyway, some more Great Lakes Avengers thoughts. Presumably Big Bertha could have pulled herself up onto the roof. She's got super strength. But mystery assailant has already captured Dinah Soar so Mr Immortal is going in alone to feel the guy out.

He doesn't die when he's killed. He's the best for gauging threat level.

He's also a clown, whether or not you think his costume is sillier than anyone else's. Lets say Hawkeye, for the sake of an example.

He acrobats around mystery assailant and proclaims "Okay, wiseguy... I don't know what your game is... but you're way out of your league... now that the Avengers are here!"

Leading mystery assailant to reveal himself to be... AN IMPOSTER DRESSED LIKE HAWKEYE??

Hawkeye: "'Dressed as Hawkeye...??' I am Hawkeye, an' I'm here to find out what you so-called 'Avengers' think you're up to! In case you don't know it, buster, the Avengers' name isn't up for grabs by any ol' Tom, Dick, an' Harriet!"

So Mr Immortal kicks him in the face for impersonating an Avenger. That's rude, y'know. Probably not a felony BUT MAYBE IT SHOULD BE.

Mr Immortal: "You think you can defeat the Avengers by pretending to be Hawkeye? The real Hawkeye would have blocked my attack easily!"

Mockingbird shows up and repays the favor by kicking Mr Immortal in the face for kicking Hawkeye in the face.

She explains that Hawkeye sucks ass at close quarters combat. I don't think that's entirely true but I like to think Mockingbird isn't above being a little petty.

Mr Immortal is alarmed that there's a woman impersonating Mockingbird now!

It turns out that Mr Immortal is almost current with superhero gossip.

He knows that Mockingbird and Hawkeye have split up, he knows that Mockingbird quit the Avengers. He doesn't know that Hawkeye recently also quit the Avengers.

So you can see where the confusion comes from.

You might not see why Mr Immortal decides his next move is to backflip off the roof.

Maybe he wanted to see how the "imposters" would react to it.

Well, not personally. He'd have to rely on someone else telling him how they reacted to it. He's temporarily dead from hitting the ground really hard.

But Flatman saw the whole thing and realized that Mockingbird sounds sincerely distraught that a dude just died.

Hawkeye: "Flatman?? I don't believe it! You got a partner called 'Ribbon?'"

Its funny that DC comics is apparently fictional within Marvel because the Avengers have also met the Justice League.

Silly comics.

Mockingbird berates Hawkeye's joke for being inappropriate. A man just died!

Flatman awkwardly explains that Mr Immortal doesn't really die.

So at Mockingbird's request, they all convene at Great Lakes Avengers' HQ... er... Big Bertha's place.

It's a fancy place.

Hawkeye asks how she can afford such nice digs but it turns out that when Big Bertha isn't superheroing, she's supermodel Ashely Crawford, darling of many Vogue covers. One of the highest paid models in the biz.

So Hawkeye asks what a successful model is doing "playing super hero."

And again, at this point the West Coast Avengers are silly. They're comical. They're not a joke.

Big Bertha: "I don't think of it as... playing, Hawkeye. None of us do. We're all just as serious about this as you are."

Yeah, Hawkeye!

Mockingbird asks how the group got together... and why "Great Lakes Avengers"?

We don't get the whole story now but it's implied that Mr Immortal go them together and stated that the name was his idea. He wanted to maintain the coastal theme but there's no north coast so...

But the real question that Mockingbird is getting at is who do the Great Lakes Avengers think they are, using the Avengers brand without permission? The Avengers are pretty fussy about who gets called Avenger! Says the lady who is not currently an Avenger!

I don't think she actually cares. But she assumes Hawkeye cares and she's here to get his mind on anything but fuming about US Agent or her.

Annnnnd Hawkeye has changed his mind!

Hawkeye: "I'm startin' to think maybe this Midwest team isn't such a bad idea. Your powers are kinda funky, and your code names stink... But with the proper management... my management... This could be a heckuva team!"

Ah, dammit, Hawkeye! You ragequit one team so you're going to force your way onto this one, huh?

I don't know how it will be handled immediately in this book but after the fact, in the later Dan Slott series, the Great Lakes Avengers view the whole thing pretty cheerfully.

The big league came down to coach their team. It gives them credibility and helps them be better at superheroing, which they're all pretty serious about.

I'll have to see how it unfolds as it goes though.

Current team lead Mr Immortal is still regrowing his brains and hasn't expressed an opinion on Hawkeye's pending takeover.

It is so funny though! Hawkeye gets forced out of the West Coast Avengers slash quits so his rebound is to just take over someone else's team!

He does the same thing when he accidentally screws himself out of a spot on Busiek's Avengers! Tracks down the Thunderbolts and goes 'my team now.'

It may be his real superpower.

Anyway, the other B-plot.

Wanda seems to be doing better after the whole husband robot thing and dropping a cliff on Wonder Man. Maybe. Hard to say. She's had a good swim, at least.

And then Roberto Carlos of the Avengers Compound Support Staff brings Wanda a letter from the Absolon College of Robotics.

Remember Absolon College had that big list of mutants to do Something With and Wanda is the one they settled on?

The letter claims that their research into artificial intelligence may be able to restore Vision back to his good ol' self.

Is... is it public knowledge that Vision was taken apart by the government and had his brain FUBAR'd??

Because if not, that's a red flag!

The other red flag is that the letter is from Jeremiah Random, which sounds like a made-up name!

This is going to end badly! And I'm not just saying that because the next time box says THIS ANCIENT EVIL!

Follow @essential-avengers because woo! Great Lakes Avengers! Love those guys! Like, comment, reblog maybe?

#avengers #west coast avengers #great lakes avengers #hawkeye #mockingbird #mr immortal #flatman #big bertha #dinah soar #doorman #us agent #Tigra #scarlet witch #some avengers compound support staff #hawkeye bullies some newbie heroes for trademark infringement

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #305: "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!"

July, 1989

ATTACK OF THE LAVA MEN!

Attaaaaaaaack of the killer lava mennnnnnnnn!

Attaaaaaaaaaaaack of the killer lava mennnnnnnnn!

Alright, now is Byrne time!

He now writes both Avengers and West Coast Avengers. And draws West Coast Avengers himself.

He had big plans for the West Coast Avengers. Which we've seen unfolding.

So what's his plan for the East Coast Avengers?

Well, it looks like he's going big.

That's a hell of a roster.

Tigra, Namor, Starfox, Thor, La Espirita, Hellcat, Falcon, Beast, Wonder Man, Moondragon, Hawkeye, the Wasp, She-Hulk, Monica Rambeau, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, Gilgamesh with no shirt or pants, Black Widow, Dr Pym, Mockingbird, Quasar, Invisible Woman, Mr Fantastic, Ben Grimm, the Vision, and Captain America.

It even seems to include most of the Fantastic Four and the whole of the West Coast Avengers. Except US Agent but eh.

Can one superhero team just eat another to get bigger? Do superhero teams have mergers?

What, in fact, is going on here?

Captain America: In a nutshell, then, at one time or another, each and every one of you has been an Avenger. Some for a long time, some for only a very short while... As chairman of the East Coast branch of the team, what I want to propose to you is this: a permanent consolidation of all members. The Avengers are the Avengers. Not two teams. Not three. One team. Everyone who has ever been an Avenger, will always be an Avenger. A member of a pool of super-powered individuals whose abilities add up to an unstoppable force for good."

Huh!

Every Avenger Ever but as the central premise for a creative run!

Hence the pretty packed roster box on the cover.

I have no idea how a roster like this is going to work.

But the assembled once and future Avengers all chime in their thoughts.

Reed and Sue Fantastic say the idea sounds fantastic. Literally. It sounds like the reasoning that led to the Fantastic Four's founding.

But even though Mr Fantastic and Invisible Woman are back with the Fantastic Four, if Cap needs them, they'll come.

Ben "Not Currently the Thing" Grimm also offers his aid.

Bee tee dubs, his five second stint with the West Coast Avengers is why he's here, at this meeting.

Beast echoes the various Fantastics. He's busy with X-Factor but if the Avengers need him, he'll be there.

Every Avenger Ever Available As Needed is a fun idea but I can't help but see it running into creator squabbles.

Is Steve Englehart just going to happily lend out his characters to Byrne whenever he wants to use them?

I mean, at the end of the day, editorial can force the issue. But I see it being an issue. Comic creators are territorial.

Further people chime in.

Hellcat says she'll be available if the Avengers need her but Tigra scoffs.

Tigra: "Why would any team need a two-bit imitation when they've got the genuine article?"

I thought you two hashed out your differences. And I also thought you were some weird cat monster at the moment.

What's the deal, Tigra?

The two cat-themed heroes almost have a catfight but various dudes break it up.

Captain America scolds that as Avengers, they need to settle their differences with "due order and dignity" which is surely ironic in the future, after several slap fights with Tony.

Tigra reluctantly reigns it in, although she promises that things between her and Patsy aren't over yet.

Back to people chiming in.

Monica Rambeau offers any assistance she can. But she's still emaciated and recovering from the draining of her power so she doesn't know what she can offer.

Captain America: "Your spirit alone makes you an invaluable asset, Captain Marvel. I'm very glad to hear you say you still want to be one of the team."

Aww.

Hawkeye chimes in that he's got his own team to concern himself with.

No, not the West Coast Avengers.

Remember, he stormed off in a huff.

We'll see what he's talking about in the next West Coast Avengers issue.

But he wants to make it very clear that unlike some people he's not going to come when he's called until everyone shows him the respect he's earned.

... Hawkeye, what the shit.

You don't even have beef with Captain America or with most of the people in this room.

Mockingbird tells him to get over himself. He's an Avenger, she's an Avenger. And if Cap needs them, they're Avengers.

Also, everyone else apparently answers off-panel or something.

I love Hawkeye's pouty little raised fist.

He's doing it to fit in but he's gonna be sullen about it.

God, there's something really funny about US Agent not getting the invite.

He's on the team by government fiat but Cap is like 'do I consider him a real Avenger no, I do not.'

That or he just ignored the invite. There's other people missing.

Dr Druid, lost in time. Black Knight, Thor forgot him in that dimensional rift. Mantis, has a lot going on right now. Hulk, never responds to messages. The year 3000 Guardians of the Galaxy, in the future. Iron Man... hey, where the fuck is Iron Man?

Every Avenger ever (that bothered to answer the phone) and a big mainstay like Iron Man isn't here?

Is being a big international criminal too much for his supposed friends to overlook?

Meanwhile? Lava men.

Just like the cover predicted.

A lava men is doomsaying over a cauldron.

Lava Man: "The ancient magicks grow weaker by the second. The darkness closes. The final darkness. Upon my actions here must hang the fate of all my race!"

This is the exact same plot as Power of the Dark Crystal.

That lava people in that were cuter though.

The lava man summons the last bit of ancient power to bring forth more lava men.

Lava Man: "Enough to crush the surface-dwellers who destroyed our people, who shattered our tomorrows...!"

Oh dammit.

What innocuous thing did the Avengers do this time that's going to prompt a whole thing?

Anyway, back with the Avengers, most of the biggest roster ever fucks off.

Because the thing about any Avenger being on call as needed means that when they're not needed, they're going to fuck off.

But a few hang around. And I'm guessing they might be something like a core roster with rotating guest Avengers for flavor?

Captain America, of course. This whole thing is his brain baby.

Black Panther sticks around since its been too long since he's done an Avengers stint. And you know T'Challa. He gets bored doing the same thing for too long. The same thing being "ruling the country that he rules."

She-Hulk, Thor, Gilgamesh, and Quasar also stick around.

I hope Gilgamesh gets a new, better costume if he's sticking around. He lost his helmet and his armor. He didn't bother changing out of civvies for that one Ellis Island fill-in issue. And he's just wearing boots and a loin cloth now.

Who do you think you are? Conan?

It's so weird that Quasar just casually gets Avengers membership off-panel. Or maybe it happened in some other book. And weird if so.

Everyone else in this biggest roster ever were past and current Avengers and then there's Quasar. The new guy. But nobody talking about how he's the new guy.

It's weird.

I got nothing bad to say about She-Hulk or Thor. They're cool.

Anyway. In what feels like a meta nod, Captain America and She-Hulk discuss how Thor makes Gilgamesh redundant.

She-Hulk says that Gilgamesh has been feeling like a fifth wheel since Thor came back. But She-Hulk didn't read the past issues. There was never an Avengers team that had Gilgamesh and didn't have Thor at the same time.

Either way, Captain America says you can't have too many heavy-hitters on a team and goes to join Thor and Gilgamesh's training session.

The training session kinda starts with a little gang up on Gilgamesh.

He smack talks Captain America's speed and does not yield to his mighty shield.

Thor gets aggrieved because dangit Captain America's shield is too good for Gilgamesh or even Thor to be handling willy nilly, even in a training session. How dare!

He throws his mighty Mjolnir at Gilgamesh. It clips his ankle and Black Panther is able to grab the shield from him.

After dunking on Captain America's speed, Gilgamesh is surprised by Black Panther and comments that his SPEED is unlike anything he's seen outside other Eternals.

Gilgamesh compliments how well the Avengers work together. He tries to pick up Mjolnir but obviously can't.

Thor recalls Mjolnir to his hand but Quasar missed the gang up on Gilgamesh memo and blasts Mjolnir right when Thor was about to throw it again, causing the mighty mallet to fly right at She-Hulk and Black Panther.

She-Hulk snags the shield and then shoves Black Panther out of the way. She blocks Mjolnir but gets knocked off her feet.

Quasar apologizes for getting caught up in the excitement and Cap scolds that carelessness could get someone killed in a real combat situation.

Captain America: "You may be a trained SHIELD agent, but you're new to the Avengers, Quasar. Join me later, and I'll be happy to run you through a few drills to sharpen your combat sense."

She-Hulk tells Cap to go easy on the new kid because "we were all young once" and "he's got cute dimples."

From Quasar's grim expression, I don't know if he takes that compliment.

Then Jarvis pops in and asks who wants snacks?

Black Panther does. Black Panther is all over that.

I wonder if this training sequence is inspired by Danger Room sequences over in X-Men.

Claremont and Byrne were basically co-plotters, although there was friction there toward the end, and starting a story with a Danger Room sequence as a quick 'here are the characters and here's what they can do' was common in their X-Men run.

This didn't start the story because the new status quo of 'any Avenger ever might show up for a story' had to be set up but it still has that same energy.

Here are the characters, here's what they do.

Anyway. A big RRRRRUUMMMMBBLLLLE hits the island and shakes the place like an earthquake. But it can't be an earthquake because Avengers Island is not an island. Its a floating platform.

(Although it is anchored in place with big pillars so it would probably still feel earthquakes?)

So something must have hit the not-island and hard enough to cause cracks in the walls and ceiling. The reinforced walls and ceiling because the Avengers know that their mansion on an island is a nice target.

Cap runs up to a window and doesn't see Manhattan. Which is weird. They're parked right off Manhattan. Where is Manhattan?

But based on the slight tremors, Black Panther deduces what has happened.

This has happened.

Dang ol' lava men hoisted the entire not-island!

The Avengers (She-Hulk, Black Panther, Quasar, Captain America, Thor, and No-Shirt Gilgamesh) run outside to find out what's going on.

She-Hulk asks the silly question of who short of Galactus could lift a not-island!

It's a very silly question because I don't think the Lava Men are close to Galactus on the power scale.

Apparently a lot of people could lift a not-island.

The Lava Men answer her question anyway by swarming up over the side and Captain America deduces that they're responsible based on how they're here.

Since Quasar is new here, Thor exposits that the Lava Men were some of the first foes that the Avengers fought. Issue #5, I believe.

And this is issue #305. Very cute, Byrne.

Captain America, who was also in issue #5, notes that these aren't the Lava Men he remembers. Their movements are too robotic. And they reform as quickly as they're smashed.

She-Hulk notes that they're also too hot to stand near. Even with Hulk toughness.

Gilgamesh tries walloping one with a tree but when it shatters, each piece gets up as a tiny Lava Man.

So She-Hulk drops a rock on them.

Which she wouldn't do if they were alive. But she doesn't think they are.

When She-Hulk smack talks Gilgamesh, he retorts he's only brought a fraction of his immortal might to bear so far.

Black Panther: "Then a fraction more would be appreciated, Gilgamesh. It does little good against these things to talk."

Oof.

T'Challa just ended that entire man's career.

I do wonder how Simonson would have been writing Gilgamesh because nobody else seems interested in doing it.

Forget Thor-lite, he's just Hercules-lite now. Big strong guy who gets grumpy when he's shown up or when a woman.

He's been stripped of his dumb armor and whatever interesting characteristics he may have had. Joking about being mythological people and with a passion for monster fighting.

What happened to you, Gilgamesh? And how soon can you go away and get replaced by Sersi?

Anyway, new boy Quasar comes up with an idea.

He asks Black Panther to lure as many Lava Men as he can to the edge of the not-island so Quasar can blast them off.

I mean. Lava Men. Water. It makes sense. Except that I'm pretty sure these dopes came OUT of the ocean to begin with.

But everyone acts like this was a really good idea so I guess it was a really good idea.

Thor even imitates it by spinning Mjolnir really fast to create a gale to push more Lava Men off.

And Cap tells Thor good job on that too so I guess knocking them off the edge is a good plan.

Not a sufficient plan though.

There's just too many. A dozen more climb onto the island for every one the Avengers knock over the edge.

She-Hulk iterates on her giant rock idea by having Gilgamesh help her use a giant rock to shovel tons of sand on a group of Lava Men.

Quasar: "I don't like the looks of this, Panther! We're losing!" Black Panther: "Never say it, Quasar. Though the Lava Men outnumber us by ten thousand to one..." Quasar: "Well, excuse my doom and gloom, Panther... But that's not much of an exaggeration! They've got the others completely surrounded!" Black Panther: "Then we must fight them from within, Quasar! Set us down inside their fiery ring!"

Black Panther claims that the idea is to mass all of the Avengers' might in one combined front but I dunnoooooo. And Cap backs him up that it's a good strategy but I don't knoooooooow.

Because. Look. The previous strategy was to knock the dudes off the edge. Circling up is basically admitting defeat. They can rush the Avengers with numbers and the Avengers can't use their biggest attacks because their friends are shoulder to shoulder with them.

And considering that it seems like the Lava Men's plan was to force the Avengers into a small circle for reasons, Black Panther choosing to jump into the circle feels less like good strategy and more like Byrne moving the pieces where they need to be and not being able to do it naturally.

The Avengers getting forced into a bad position is very possible, especially with these kinds of numbers.

Having Black Panther go 'let me get in there too' makes it come off clunky.

Anyway.

The Lava Men keep coming and coming and the Avengers' circle shrinks until its maybe 15 feet across.

Then the Lava Men get kinda goopy. They lose their human form and flow into each other into a wave of lava.

Too late, Captain America realizes this is bad. He commands everyone who can fly to grab someone and get clear of this tiny circle that turned out to be a bad idea.

But I already said it was too late.

The lava wave crashes over the Avengers and then forms a ball.

Somehow, Captain America and Black Panther do not die.

I know people can get pretty close to lava flows but its a ball. They're standing on lava. And She-Hulk comments that inside the lava ball is as hot as a blast furnace.

Thor, She-Hulk, Gilgamesh and even Quasar have super-durability or an energy shield.

Why aren't Cap and Black Panther's booties burning?

The Avengers try to bust their way free of the lava ball but any damage seals itself back up, just like how the Lava Men reformed after being attacked.

Then the ball starts to rock and then roll.

Towards the edge of the not-island.

Wow.

That's an elaborate death.

For Captain America and Black Panther.

I'm pretty sure that everyone else can survive a very long plummet into the ocean inside of a lava ball.

Unfair, the Lava Men.

Come back with a death trap that kills everyone equally.

Follow @essential-avengers for more Byrnevengers. No matter the week, no matter the team, Byrnevengers. Like, reblog, and comment maybe. I like feedback.

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Text

Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #45: NEW FACES

June, 1989

VisionQuest continues Behold the VISION!

BEHOLD, HE'S REALLY TALL!

I appreciate the cover homage to Avengers #57.

Although, I think that one did it a little better with the red filter.

Last times: John Byrne took over the West Coast Avengers book. A union of all world governments kidnapped Vision and turned him into alphabetically organized piles of parts and erased his brain.

The West Coast Avengers took back the parts to reassemble him but there's unsettling hints that what they know of Vision's backstory is a dumb lie. Also, Wanda and Vision's children seemed to disappear on their nanny, although Wanda thinks the nanny was just playing a jerk prank.

Vision is accidentally activated before he gets his brain and skin on and he attacks reflexively like a flayed Terminator before Hank Pym can use the shutdown remote.

Hawkeye calls the Avengers' government liaison to complain about the government identity-deathing an Avenger and the liaison tells Hawkeye to suck it up and also suck up having a new dude imposed on the team or else.

And the new dude is... John Walker! Failed replacement Captain America, now using the identity US Agent!

And he's a weird dude. Just showing up without calling ahead, announcing he was joining the team, and then staring out the window without saying anything else.

Not as weird as the narration though which is like 'check out this handsome dude, isn't he maybe too handsome? so handsome that he's INSANE?'

Not that the art can live up to the description. He looks like a palette swapped Captain America. Because he's a palette swapped Captain America, but jerk.

Hawkeye (and John Byrne) are pissed that this dude has been pushed onto the team by higher-ups and Hawkeye is especially worried that he's going to be pushed out as leader in favor of Player 2 Captain America.

Mockingbird points out that the Avengers rely on government support to operate.

Do you want to go to the final battle on a bus again? Because that's what you get if you don't fold to jackass government man.

Hawkeye shouts at Mockingbird for acting like she's part of the team because, hey, she quit in a huff AND she was involved in the effort that disassembled Vision.

Wasp goes hey now be fair. According to Mockingbird, she was tricked into helping Vigilance kidnap and disassemble Vision. And she helped them get his bits back!

The (West Coast) Avengers are really just airing this all out right behind US Agent.

Who doesn't actually give a shit.

US Agent: "You miss the point, archer. But then, I hear that's one of the things you do best. Mockingbird is right. You aren't being asked to decide anything. I am now an Avenger. Period."

I do like it when the Avengers get a teammate forced on them by the government. Its a great source of tension.

Falcon was forced on the team by Henry Peter Gyrich to fulfill minority quotas and oh geez did he never ever let anyone forget it. Even though he was bro-ing it up with his bro Captain America, Falcon hated every second he was on the team for it being forced on him and the Avengers. He took off as soon as he could.

We have US Agent now.

Later on, we'll have Triathlon. Again, forced on the team by the government because of the Avengers' lack of diversity. But that time, the Avengers liked the dude well enough but were suspicious of the cult he was a part of. Because it was a cult. Triathlon was quite sarcastic all the time, assuming that the Avengers had already rejected him, until Wasp told him 'look, you're gonna get out of this relationship what you put in.'

Anyway, tension.

Hawkeye gets so mad at the thing I quoted US Agent saying that he just hauls off and tries to punch the dude.

Yeah. That goes poorly.

US Agent got that super-soldier strength. He stops Hawkeye's punch and tosses him into the furniture.

Mockingbird checks to see if Hawkeye is okay. Of course, Hawkeye is the kind of prideful, hot-headed idiot who reacts negatively to concern.

Hawkeye: "Will you get away from me? This is all I need! I get my can kicked by the president of the Clint Eastwood fan club... and the first person to rush to my aid is the woman I'm supposed to be divorcing!"

Wonder Man tells Hawkeye to ease up on Mockingbird. But he also asks US Agent how he'd like taking a swing at him.

US Agent would like that very much.

But Wasp flies between them and tells them to stop the dick-waving contest.

Hank backs her up.

Dr Pym: "As much as we all hate the idea of having a new member foisted on us like this... and a stranger to boot, as Simon pointed out... our charter requires us to go along with this -- at least until this gentleman is proven incapable or unworthy of membership. Until that happens, there's nothing else we can do." Hawkeye: "Wrong-o, doc! There's something I can do right now! I QUIT!"

And Hawkeye storms off in a huff.

I think two issues ago, I commented on the Captain Marvelification of Hawkeye. How, in advance of him leaving the team so someone else can take over leadership that Byrne would prefer to write, Hawkeye was made to look an incompetent idiot incapable of leading, while Hank Pym and Wasp to a lesser extent were the proactive ones thinking all the good ideas.

So, yeah, if having US Agent aggravate Hawkeye into quitting was the plan, I don't think it was necessary to make him look incompetent in the field first.

Anyway.

Mockingbird looks like she's going to follow Hawkeye but US Agent has Thoughts.

US Agent: "Let him go, Mockingbird. If he's not prepared to play by the rules, there's no place for him in this group." Mockingbird: "No place?? Buster, if it wasn't for him, there wouldn't even be a West Coast branch of the Avengers! He founded the group!" US Agent: "Wrong, Mockingbird. It was the Vision who conceived of the second group, and it was the Vision who appointed your husband chairman. The same Vision who subsequently attempted to take over the world, and whose return to active status as an Avenger is the main reason I'm here." Mockingbird: "Ohhh -- go swallow your shield, big man. I'm going after Clint. And it's gonna take more than a two bit imitation of Captain America to stop me!!"

And she also storms off.

Oddly though, going a different direction than Hawkeye did.

I'm going to laugh if what it takes for Hawkeye and Mockingbird to have an earnest conversation and make an honest attempt to salvage their relationship is spite against US Agent.

Like, I have my doubts on the characterization that Byrne is giving some characters but that feels so very in character with how Hawkeye and Mockingbird have acted since the dread cowboy manslaughter secret got out.

They escalated that argument out of hurt feelings and pride so it'd be amazing if they turned around and said 'lets fix this, to own US Agent, fuck that guy.'

Anyway. Hawkeye and Mockingbird quit. Granted, Mockingbird hadn't really rejoined.

Wasp comments "all this excitement and it's not even ten o'clock yet. Business as usual, in other words."

Avengers Tier Drama Nonsense.

Wasp flies off to check on how Wanda is doing and Dr Pym and Wonder Man go to continue Vision's repairs.

Hank is actually somewhat optimistic that he can repair Vision now. While everyone was upstairs meeting the new boss (it keeps going back and forth on whether US Agent is going to be the boss or not), Hank had the computer system stuffing Vision's empty skull with Avengers data so that he'll recognize them when he is reactivated.

The only thing Hank is concerned about is that the disassembly process was so traumatic to Vision's synthezoid circulatory system that it bleached his red skin white.

God.

It's true what they say about comic book characters getting whitewashed over time.

Six hours later from that, Wanda is interviewing a new governess.

Mrs Hunter seems like a cool lady. She's done childcare most of her life for a variety of different kinds of kids so she thinks she can handle Billy and Tommy.

Wanda gets a call from Hank Pym to join him in the lab, in costume, so she leaves Mrs Hunter to get acquainted with the kids while she runs off.

Except, they're missing.

Great. First one of our androids was missing and now two of our babies are missing. Just a spate of disappearances recently.

Meanwhile, in Tigra's bungalow.

Some really weird shit.

Tigra has been having cat dreams and cat rages and now she seems to be going through some... changes.

In the days since the attack on the Vigilance base, her ears have gone all pointy, her feets have gone digitigrade, and her face structure has gotten cat-esque.

I say cat-esque because it's gesturing at cat with the mouth but her face looks even flatter than it was when she was more human. No cute little snoot. It makes her look like a weird alien rather than a cat.

Anyway anyway, Tigra hasn't had a bite to eat in three days. Because she doesn't crave any of the food in her fridge. And she doesn't want to go out looking like a weird catalienthing.

And I guess she didn't want to order any delivery food. And was too proud/ashamed to call up Hank Pym and go holy shit dude, my ankle bone is like a foot long now!

Goes to shows. Communicate.

Tigra hears some tasty birds singing outside her window. She tries to resist but gives in. And jumps right through the window.

The window that seems to not be open, based on the shading lines on one of the panes.

But it doesn't look like she jumped through and broke the glass either?

Hm.

Anywa. Scarlet Wanda arrives in Hank's lab.

And Hank realizes that maybe he should actually prepare Wanda for what she's about to see.

He tells her that he finished jamming Avengers data and reports into Vision's brain so he should recognize them all now. But he'll be more likely to recognize Wanda when the two are reintroduced if she's in costume, the way she would have been in all that data.

Wanda jumps on the word "reintroduced" and thinks Vision won't remember her anymore but Hank clarifies that he'll KNOW all of the Avengers. But. Uh.

Dr Pym: "It's just that his perceptions may have been altered. It's difficult to explain in human terms..." Vision: "Perhaps it would be better if I did the explaining, Doctor Pym."

And Vision comes in and shows off his brand new palette.

Completely nude.

But he doesn't have a penis/his penis isn't deployed so its all good.

(I feel like if Vision's new all-white look is so shocking to deserve a splash page, it shouldn't have been revealed earlier.)

(Maybe it should have been changed so Hank speaks of some changes due to the trauma to Vision's bits. But its also weird that the removed skin was still red up until this issue. Whatever.)

Despite being shocked that Vision can now camouflage by standing in front of a white wall, Wanda is elated that he's standing, he's alive, and he's not trying to murder anyone.

She hugs him but he doesn't react to that except with confusion.

Hank Pym explains that Vision's noodle is stuffed full with Avengers Stuff but he doesn't have any emotional connection to that stuff. It's just data.

Wanda asks why this is if none of his parts were damaged (which, uh, contradicts the reason why he's white now. Get your story straight) and if his data has been restored (not remotely completely restored. He only has Avengers Stuff. He doesn't have any private moments or interpersonal interactions and the Avengers lost all their Vision data anyway.) why his emotions are not on.

Hank ignores all those parentheticals I just parentheticalled and says there's one secret ingredient missing from the mix.

CHEMICAL X

And since Wanda goes right to talk to Simon Williams Wonder Man, you can guess what the missing secret ingredient is.

Simon Williams Wonder Man has refused to donate his brain patterns to build a Vision.

Again, this feels like its kind of missing the point. With Simon's brain, Hank can finish repairing Vision to the sapient synthezoid we all love.

But its not going to BE Vision. At this point, the Avengers have no way to give their newly refurbished Vision the memories he once had. All he has is a head full of case files. With Simon's brainwaves, he could start caring about stuff again. He could even fall in love with Wanda again. But it's going to be all new for him.

Still though. What the fuck, Simon!

Wanda calls him out as Vision's friend but the two were treating each other as brothers not so long ago.

Simon Williams Wonder Man decides to recap his ENTIRE BACKSTORY to justify himself.

Oh boy, I wonder if more stuff will get retconned?

Anyway. Yadda yadda. Simon's companies had been driven out of business because Stark Enterprises just had better product. And it didn't help that Simon was caught embezzling. That was a whoopsie.

The Masters of Evil (all three of Baron Zemo, the Enchantress, and Skurge) tracked down Simon specifically because of his grudge against Stark who was connected to Iron Man who was an Avenger who the Masters of Evil hated.

Ironically, Simon relates that he hadn't actually been blaming Stark for his own problems when the Masters of Evil showed up. But once they started telling him that he blamed Stark, he just sort of shrugged and decided it was nice not to blame himself so went along with it.

Then Zemo stuck him in a super-power machine and gave him superpowers and also a terminal case of dying.

In order to get the antidote to dying, Simon agreed to infiltrate the Avengers and lure them into an ambush. But the Avengers were so selfless and noble and just all around neat that Simon felt bad about betraying them.

He turned on Zemo, thwarted his schemes, and then died of his terminal case of dying.

Except no, he didn't die. He went into a death-like coma as his body adapted to the ionic radiation.

But the Avengers assumed he was dead. They took a recording of his brainwaves while his brain... still had waves in it?

I would have thought that being deathlike enough that the Avengers assumed he was dead would preclude brainwaves but maybe I'm confused about the timeline.

Why would they take a brainwave recording from a dead man anyway? They did a bunch of medical tests on him when he claimed that his reason for coming to see the Avengers was to get a cure for his terminal case of dying. Why not have THEN be when the recording was taken?

Anyway.

Ultron stole the disc with the brainwave patterns on it to make Vision.

Since Hank never noticed it was gone, I guess he really wasn't using it for anything. Just gathering dust on a shelf.

Later on, Grim Reaper (Eric Williams) hired voodoo man Black Talon who resurrected (except not really because of that deathlike trance thing) Wonder Man as a mindless zuvembie (Comics Code friendly zombie) and sent him to attack the Avengers.

Then Simon Williams' brain turned back on and yeah that's how we have Simon Williams still wandering around despite pretty conclusively dying in his first appearance.

What does that have to do with him now not wanting to let his brain be scanned to help his robot brother learn to feel feelings?

Wonder Man: "I guess it is kind of hard to comprehend. No human has ever experienced what I've gone through -- seeming to die, and then waking up to find that another man has a piece of your brain... The Vision was like a part of me, Wanda. His basic nature was mine. His... feelings. His... emotions." Scarlet Witch: "Yes... You have even called him 'brother.' But now he is just a human-shaped computer -- a robot who happens to bear a superficial resemblance to the man I married. But it does not have to be that way, Simon. You can restore him. It would only take a word from you to give him back his soul..." Wonder Man: "I know... I only wish I could, Wanda. I wish it was all so simple that I could walk into the lab and let Hank do... Whatever he has to do. But... try to understand, Wanda. As awful and traumatic as the past few days have been for you, in my own way I've shared your suffering. I had no choice in the transfer of my soul into the Vision the first time. Now... I have a choice..." Scarlet Witch: "And... You choose not to allow it? Even knowing that without your help the man I love can never be whole again?" Wonder Man: "Yes... Forgive me, Wanda, but..."

To put it mildly, Wanda does not take it well. And she is not ready to forgive.

She in fact collapses a cliff on top of his head.

It doesn't seem to hurt him physically but considering he flies off into space to scream his feelings, its safe to say she hurt him emotionally.

So lets unpack.

Bodily autonomy. Wonder Man is under no obligation to give his brain scan over and he's within his rights to be pissed that one was taken from him post-mortem and used by an evil robot.

But, like, he is so far off the mark about it stealing his soul or whatever.

Vision wasn't even a copy of him, like a clone. Even happily married Vision, way over his not a real boy shit, didn't have that similar a demenaor with Wonder Man.

The brain scan is a starting spot. A shortcut to create an AI that can feel feelings.

And while Wonder Man is entitled to be upset that someone stole his brain while he was fake-dead. He never held that against Vision.

As Wanda pointed out, he called Vision brother. He likes Vision better than his real brother. He introduced Vision to his mom as her secret third son she didn't know about. He's uncle to Wanda and Vision's kids.

So Wonder Man is now saying 'no sir you can't have my brain' a belated moral stand that he wished he could have made back in the day and that he's taking now out of principle?

Or does he have feelings for Wanda himself so refuses to help bring back a romantic rival?

Because I know that there's a relationship between Wanda and Simon in Busiek's Avengers but it would be SERIOUSLY SCUMMY for him to be pulling that.

I would lose 1000% of my respect for the dude.

So preemptive fuck you Simon Williams. You're within your rights but you're a dick.

Although I'm still not sure this would actually fix Vision, everyone is acting like it would.

Also, my favorite part of that fly out to space to scream his feelings thing is that his belt jets don't work in space.

That scene must inevitably end with him crashing to Earth like a dumb meteor.

And that makes me smile.

ANYWAY.

US Agent is very mad that Vision is nude.

Vision isn't even deploying his robo-dick and the man is still yelling at him to wear pants?

You're the worst, John Walker.

Wanda is hanging around this argument and is just appalled at how Vision has gone back to the modulated monotone he had before he started admitting he felt feelings. He sounds like a computer speech program. Pronouncing each word separately. Microsoft Sam.

Wasp comes in and gives Vision the remains of his costume.

Even though Vigilance attacked him in bed and even though he doesn't wear his costume to bed, Vigilance cut the costume off of him because logic doesn't matter, we gotta get a remodel in here.

Since the costume is as much a part of Vision as his skin, Wasp suggests he could do something with the remnants that don't make sense to be scraps.

But he does do.

Acknowledging that maybe there's a point in a costume to signify that he's a superhero instead of a sheet white naked no-dick man, Vision manipulates the fabric to make a new costume that's like the wire-frame of a superhero costume. The bare bones.

Him bones nearly bear.

They didn't even save his boots.

Do all Vision artists really want to draw his toes from now on? Boots save you from having to draw toes.

Hm. Vision's new costume.

I don't think I like it.

It's kind of boring.

By making him all white and his costume all white, he just looks kind of boring.

I don't know how Moon Knight pulls it off but Vision is no Moon Knight.

US Agent begrudgingly accepts that this outfit fulfills the letter of the law.

Wanda asks Vision why the all white look.

Vision: "If I am to be called 'the Vision,' is it not logical for me to look the part? Spectral... Unearthly..."

Yeah but it's boring.

Hank Pym gets impatient to introduce the next new bombshell that John Byrne is itching to introduce.

HIS WHOLE BACKSTORY IS A LIE! BASED ON HANK'S ANALYSIS OF HIS PARTS VISION WAS NEVER BUILT FROM THE (robot) HUMAN TORCH EVER!

One panel later, Hank Pym is completely confused why Wanda got so upset from his startling revelation.

Fucking idiot.

Hank and Wasp are passing by the spare room that US Agent set himself up in.

And the guy is talking to someone about the team.

US Agent: "No, no, I can make it work. I know I can. They're all kind of wild and undisciplined... But I think I can whip 'em into shape. They're good people at heart. Strong people. You'll like them. It's too bad about the Scarlet Witch, though. The Witch is easily one of the most powerful members of the team. I just don't understand her reaction to all this. Yeah, I know, ma, it's like you and pa always said... There's no real understanding the human heart... or the human mind..."

Rude.

Wasp tries to peep in his room (also rude) to see who he's talking to. But US Agent has taped up the keyhole to prevent this very thing.

So Hank and Wasp just fuck off to go get dinner.

Dun dun dun, John Walker isn't talking to someone on the phone, he's talking to pictures of his dead mom and dad because he's crazy!

Or maybe he's just talking to pictures of his dead mom and dad like not crazy people do. People talk to images of dead loved ones to talk their way through stuff.

THE IMPORTANT THING is that Great Lakes Avengers is getting introduced!

Love that wacky GLA!

Follow @essential-avengers because yay, Great Lakes Avengers! Like, reblog, comment, and say nice things to a squirrel even though Squirrel Girl doesn't get associated with the team for a long, long time.

#avengers #west coast avengers #hawkeye #us agent #hank pym #dr pym #the wasp #wonder man #the vision #scarlet witch #Tigra #mockingbird #Vision is a nudist #Wonder Man is a bad friend and a worse brother #Hank Pym has lost all human empathy somehow #US Agent is offended by robot crotch #what a silly issue

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #304: "... Yearning to Breathe Free!"

June, 1989

Vs. the U-Foes! Special guest appearance by the pouncing PUMA!

Look at the roster box trying to pretend Reed and Sue are still around. You can't fool me.

And, hey, the U-Foes! They're a quirky miniboss squad that hasn't fought the Avengers so far, at least not in the Avengers book. Which feels weird!

The Avengers should fight all the quirky miniboss squads. They're practically made to fight all the quirky miniboss squads.

Well, now they get to fight this one.

And Puma is a guy. I don't really know the guy. He's a mid-80s Spider-Man book guy.

Also also, this is very clearly a fill-in issue. I mean, so was the Super-Nova arc. But that had the goal of writing Reed and Sue out of the Avengers, which it couldn't even manage.

This one seems to be more in the style of one and done, spin the wheels until John Byrne takes over.

... That's happening a lot lately.

Last times in Avengers: long story short, the team broke apart but a new team formed during the X-Event Inferno. And then after fighting a big guy from space, 2/5ths of the new team fucked off.

This is a fill-in, you don't gotta know a lot.

Huh. The opening splash waxes poetic about Ellis Island and the title is a line from the New Colossus poem that was written for the Statue of Liberty.

Will this be a Very Special Episode about immigration? I'm sorta not confident in this era of Avengers to do a Very Special Episode.

Least surprisingly of all, the terrific trio of Avengers are at Ellis Island because it's being renovated and a Department of the Interior pal got Captain America permission for a special preview visit.

Steve Rogers is, of course, a huge fan of Ellis Island and immigration and just all the good America stuff. He loves America so much.

And being a huge nerd, he invited Thor and Gilgamesh along as a kind of casual relaxing activity after all that Super-Nova biz.

Thor: "I, myself, Steve, am an immigrant of sorts -- from eternal Asgard. I share much in spirit with those who passed through here."

Dammit, Thor. I don't think your situation is really the same since you retain whatever counts as citizenship in Asgard and freely go back and forth whenever you want to live in a giant castle.

Also, you have a fake identity set up by the American intelligence community which most immigrants don't get.

Gilgamesh calls Ellis Island meager compared to the cool architecture that the Eternals are used to. But adds "there is an aura of greatness all about" which may or may not have just been to cushion the insult.

While the heroes in civilian duds wander around and look at construction, they overhear one of the workmen muttering anti-immigrant sentiments to himself.

Charles Little Sky: "'Noble immigrants.' Hah! Nobody wants to admit the real truth."

Oh, no, we are in for a Very Special Episode.

Captain America being Captain America even when he's being Steve Rogers, decides this is an invitation to a conversation and asks the guy to elaborate on his thoughts.

Charles Little Sky: "Yeah, I've got a beef, mister, why shouldn't I? I'm an American Indian!" Thor, in glasses: "And...?" Charles Little Sky: "And my people were here long before anybody. These 'immigrants' who came through here were just another group to come and take my people's land... Just like foreigners, starting with the Mayflower, have always done! This place should be called the Museum of Theft!" Captain Steve: "I understand your bitterness, son. Injustice was done to your people. But those who came through here certainly weren't to blame. They were just looking for a refuge from poverty and oppression themselves."

Captain America makes bold stand: pilgrims bad, immigrants good.

I hope the Avengers don't just bother this dude all day.

Thor, in glasses, asks why Charles works here if he hates it so much but, c'mon, everybody needs to eat and not everyone has a palace in a magical sky realm or gets paid $1000 smackeroos a week by Tony Stark.

Charles also mentions that he can't afford to be choosy about jobs that don't ask a lot of questions. Then realizes he's oversharing with strangers and just teal deers it as he needs the job and he's gone once he has enough money saved up.

Then he spots HIM! He's been found by HIM!

And runs off, to the Avengers' confusion.

Then a sharp-dressed man in a bolo tie tells them its none of their business, stay out of it, and yells for Charles to stop running away because he means him no harm.

Then the man transforms into some kind of furry and chases after Charles.

Pretty much guaranteeing the Avengers are going to get involved after all. Because a dude turned into a furry right there in Ellis Island and chased after a terrified young adult.

Also, the dude is Thomas Fireheart, aka Puma.

But do the Avengers know that?

Yes. And they don't know if Puma is a hero or a threat or a menace. So definitely decide to get involved.

Thor slams his hammer to put on his working duds while Cap duck behind something to change his clothes.

He shouts at Puma to hey maybe explain what he's up to. And since Puma ignores him, Thor throws his mighty hammer. And when Thor throws his mighty hammer, its because he's done with the yammer. Or something.

Since Thor wasn't throwing at 'turn Puma into salsa' force, the cat man is able to jump over the hammer and yell that Thor better not delay him!

That's not an explaining himself though so Captain America throws his mighty shield. But instead of yield, Puma catches the shield and throws it back.

What a jerk!

Gilgamesh, who I guess hasn't decided whether he's going to get involved or not because he's just standing around, jumps in front of the shield so nobody else less tough gets hit by it. And Cap catches it when it bounces off Gilgamesh's gilgapecs.

With this exchange of violence exchanged, Cap asks Puma again to explain things.

Since Thor and Captain America are standing in his way, he actually does.

Puma: "The youth and I are both of the same tribe. He possesses great power -- power that could unleash itself at any time! My uncle -- our tribal shaman -- realized this. He sent me to retrieve Charles, so that he could be trained in the power's use... for his own -- and for the world's -- good."

See, was that so hard?

The two Avengers happened to catch Puma right when he was like five feet from catching Charles Little Sky because the young adult is just right there. In the scene.

He insists that he doesn't have powers, that the elders are just making shit up to prevent him from leaving the tribe.

And sure, he has headaches sometimes and they make him act weird sometimes but that doesn't mean he has powers!

Thor and Cap pause to ponder this. Charles Little Sky is clearly hiding something. And Puma is a dubious source because while he very heroically fought the Beyonder once, he's also a mercenary who has worked for some shady customers.

But while Thor and Cap ponder what to do, Puma makes the decision, in his mind a tough decision but for the greater good, to escalate the conflict and endanger by-standers. Rather than risk the Avengers deciding against him.

So he rushes off (while Thor and Cap just watch) and topples one of the tall scaffolding towards a crowd.

Sure that the Avengers will jump to deal with that and backburner him. Which they do. Good job saving lives, the heroes!

Thor wind-blasts the scaffolding toward Gilgamesh, who catches it. Cap ushers civilians towards the exit.

Leaving Puma free to pounce on Charles Little Sky.

Puma again states that he's just here to be a helpful helper man but Charles says crock to that. He tries to punch Puma but only hurts his own hand.

Apparently, breaking a knuckle punching a cat man is one of the triggers for Charles' great world-threatening power.

Light and kirby crackle burst out of Charles and he feels as if he's being torn apart.

Then, he's blasted back as a rift in space opens.

And out of the rift in space-time strolls the U-Foes!

Not a surprise, since they were on the cover, but hey! The plot is here!

Real quick: The U-Foes. They're like an evil Fantastic Four. In that there's four of them and they got their powers from cosmic rays. By explicitly copying the Fantastic Four's space trip. Two of them are even siblings. Do these guys fight the FF a lot because they're a better evil opposites than the Frightful Four.

Vector: the one with all the lines and suns on his design. He has telekinesis, which often manifests as repulsing lasers.

Vapor: she's a gas lady, made of gas. She can turn into any kind of gas.

X-Ray: he's pink and looks like a really weird bunch of perspective lines. A guy made out of energy. Can blast various kinds of heavy radiation.

Ironclad: big tough guy made of mineral. He's a pretty blatant the Thing or a Colossus but he can increase or decrease his weight so he's at least got that going on.

So, why did the U-Foes pop out of a portal?

Why, the power of retcons and a shared universe!

Sometimes, a book writes out a character. Has them die or depowers them or just puts them in a situation where they're not available.

And then another book will go "and here's how they got out of that one."

It can be interesting to trace a character through various books, trying to figure out what the hell has been going on with them.

In the U-Foes' case, the Hulk trapped them in different dimensions that counteracted their powers. And possibly killed them.

But they all survived and managed to assemble in the dimensional crossroads to luckily get brought back to Earth by one random portal.

Nothing like a classic contrived comic coincidence.

Anyway, having just gotten back from tailor-made space exile/death, Vector is quite enraged when the Avengers propose to just capture the U-Foes and send them to jail, for being dicks.

Vector blasts Thor, Gilgamesh (still just in his civvies) Captain America, Puma, and Charles Little Sky outside through a window.

Puma is worried because he heard from TV news that the U-Foes were powerful enough to knock around the Hulk. They might kill the Avengers and any civilian in their way!

Buuuuut... he is only here for Charles Little Sky. Opening a random portal that random supervillains fell out of proved to Puma that portal kid is the biggest threat.

Maybe he should just let the U-Foes kill the Avengers!

Is his thought process.

Dammit, Puma.

Anyway, Thor tells the U-Foes that they brought the inevitable beat-down on themselves by blasting him through a window.

So X-Ray blasts Thor. Ironclad slugs Gilgamesh, figuring that if he's hanging out with the Avengers, he's probably one. And Vector blasts Captain America.

Puma goes wow sucks for them that they're getting their asses kicked but at least now nobody will get in my way.

Except Vector and Vapor notice him running away and decide, nah.

The U-Foes have deduced that Charles Little Sky could portal them back to the dimensional crossroads so they need to do something about him. And that means getting him before Puma can.

Vapor turns into carbon monoxide and gives Puma carbon monoxide poisoning.

Vector tells Vapor to turn to chlorine gas and just murderify Charles Little Sky.

Puma belatedly realizes that the better idea would have been to team up with the Avengers to beat the U-Foes. Womp womp.

He decides he needs to buy time for the Avengers to recover from their asses getting beat by getting his own ass beat for a while.

Puma tries to jump between Charles and Vapor.

... But she's gas. How does that work? I mean, it doesn't, in this case. But that's because Ironclad shows up and starts trying to bear-hug him to death.

Then Ironclad get's KLONG! by Mjolnir slightly before Puma gets crushed to death.

It's Thor! Turns out one blast of radiation isn't enough to put him down, obviously.

And he whirls Mjolnir really fast to blow Vapor away from the unconscious Charles Little Sky.

Charles regains consciousness to see X-Ray try to french fry him, only to be stopped by Captain America tackling him.

Even through (or around?) Captain America's mighty shield, he can feel the burn from the radiation X-Ray is putting off.

Vector decides he'll kill the kid himself but Puma jump kicks him towards Thor who clobbers him.

Charles is so freaked out by all of this that his powers start going off again, opening portals to random dimensions, some filled with aaaaaah, real monsters!

Gilgamesh deduces from earlier that Charles' powers don't work if he's unconscious so he eye beams Charles Little Sky unconscious.

Cool contribution, Gilgamesh.

Wait, you have eye beams?

Ironclad tries to throw a Big Rock on the again unconscious Charles Little Sky but Gilgamesh uses his eye beams again to blow up the Big Rock.

Ironclad decides fuck this actually and runs away off-panel.

Vector and X-Ray try to double-team Thor and they have him stalemated by blasting him full power. He can't advance but he's not retreating either.

But in secret, Thor is just face-tanking Vector's telekinesis blasts and using Mjolnir to absorb X-Ray's radiation. Not just the radiation X-Ray is blasting but all the radiation in his body. And when X-Ray passes out from too drained, Thor blasts the radiation at Vector who also falls down.

Possibly with turbo cancer now.

Puma's puma senses detect an invisible lethal gas floating towards Charles so Thor blasts the spot with lightning until Vapor passes out.

Ironclad is still running away

So Captain America trips him with his mighty shield and Gilgamesh decks him in the face BWOM!

With the U-Foes kicked firmly in the butt, Puma rerails the plot to him definitely taking Charles Little Sky back to the tribe.

Captain America says that Charles might be a mutant and there's just a bunch of mutant teams that could train him to control his powers. The tribe isn't the only place he could learn control.

Rather than drag him back against his will, Charles should be given the choice where he will go.

Puma: "And if he chooses no training? If he chooses to continue on the run? It is a danger to the world I cannot allow. Nor can I risk strangers training him incorrectly. Allow me to take him... or I will fight you to the death."

Gilgamesh points out that the death would be Puma's death. There's two god-tier dudes here. And Thor says that Charles will decide for himself.

Charles wakes up and he decides for himself to flee.

Puma tries to leap at Charles but Captain America tackles him.

Thor instead jumps in front of Charles to cut him off but Charles shouts that he's not anyone's property and he wants to be free.

IN A RANDOM DIMENSION IF HE CAN'T BE FREE ON EARTH.

Yeah, he fucks off through a portal.

Despite being a character created for a fill-in story, Charles Little Sky has a small pile of appearances.

Danny Fingeroth brings him back for a bunch of Darkhawk issues but he gets roles beyond that.

Puma: "Thor -- you fool! You've let a being of untold power get away! He could be anywhere now, hurting or being hurt, frightened, alone. Most probably, though, he'll soon be dead!"

Thor points a finger right back. Saying this all happened because Puma decided he was in far too much a rush to explain the situation to the random superhero bystanders.

That relentlessly chasing the kid is obviously what triggered his portal powers going off and letting the U-Foes come through and cause trouble.

Puma retorts that, hey, hindsight is 20-20 but he still thinks he did zero things wrong and that it's all the Avengers' fault.

Captain America says they only have Puma's word that his intentions were good and Puma has a really mixed reputation so it's really hard to take him at his word.

Thor suggests they beat up Puma and Puma fucks off through the broken window, yelling they'll have to catch him first.

Except, the Avengers don't even bother.

There's no charges against him and he eventually helped them against the supervillains.

Left behind to deal with sending the U-Foes to super jail, the Vault, Captain America muses how Charles Little Sky "who was so bitter about immigrants... ended up being, himself, an immigrant in a new dimension. And he entered it through Ellis Island."

That's really deep, Cap. Really makes you think, probably.

Thus ends a Very Special Episode of the Avengers.

Follow @essential-avengers because next East Coast Avengers issue, its Byrne time. Like, reblog, comment, maybe.

#avengers #u foes #charles little sky #puma #captain america #thor #gilgamesh #a three person team? that's sad #very fill in issue

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Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #44: BETTER A WIDOW...

May, 1989

VisionQuest continues

Vision forgot to put his skin on today...

And Hank Pym's 'I'm not like the other superheroes' jumpsuit is awfully maroon today.

Anyway.

Last times on West Coast Avengers: John Byrne took over the book and a bunch of things changed between issues. Tigra, Wasp, and Dr Pym rejoined the team.

Then, a fake-Ultron attacked and Vision was kidnapped and unpersoned while the West Coast Avengers were distracted.

Mockingbird showed up to Explain It All and took the Avengers to the secret Vigilance base where Vision had been taken due to fears he'd try to take over the world again.

Only the West Coast Avengers arrived Too Late. And Wanda found her husband disassembled, his parts strewn everywhere. It'd be way too much gore for comics if he weren't a robot.

Even this splash page is kinda too much, even with robot bits.

My boy! Look how they massacred my boy!

;_;

The various scientist who were just taking Vision apart are very concerned that Scarlet Witch and probably the Avengers are here instead of somewhere else being distracted.

And Wanda is not sympathetic. In fact, she's as angry as someone would be if they found their spouse turned into a pile of anatomy.

Mockingbird, who has still more exposition to exposition, explains this was the end goal of the kidnap Vision scheme. To erase Vision along with any top secret data he may have picked up when he was the internet for a hot minute.

Wonder Man shows up with project head Cameron Brock under arm and tells him to exposition more.

And since Vision has already been taken apart, Brock has no problem spilling the beans.

Vigilance is not a KGB operation but they are involved running the detention cells, which is why Mockingbird thought it was a KGB operation.

Brock reveals, he's not KGB and he's not SHIELD either. He's CANADIAN.

DUN DUN DUNNNN

Wonder Man jokes about the concept of Canadian spies, showing that he has never heard of Wolverine. He then jokes about Australia, because he's going for all the hits.

Brock goes 'well actually my deputy chief is Australian.'

And he explains that Vigilance is actually a truly worldwide joint venture. Almost every security network on Earth sent a representative.

The Americans, the British, the French, the Russians, etc etc.

The kind of global cooperation almost unheard of -- all to specifically fuck up Vision.

Brock reiterates what he told Mockingbird. As long as Vision wasn't on the Avengers, everybody was willing to grit their teeth and let bygones be whatevers. But as soon as he rejoined (because Hawkeye was a sad sack who couldn't keep together a team), all the intelligence agencies put aside their differences to fuck up Vision.

Global peace, just like Vision wanted when he took over the internet. What ironies.

Wanda claims that Vision can be put back together. He is a robotty robot so clearly they just reassemble him and good as new.

Hank Pym shows up just to say nuh uh.

This is a theme in this issue. People showing up in the nick of time to say nuh uh.

Even though Hank is an expert in robotics despite being a biochemist and even though he's more familiar with Vision's systems than almost anyone, he's skeptical that humpty dumpty can be put back together again.

If Vision's brain was erased like Mockingbird said, Hank has no idea how to deal with that.

Wanda says that they can just borrow some brain patterns from Wonder Man again and use the backup memory file that Vision kept in the Avengers' computers.

Again, with this idea that Vision's brain is a computer that can be uploaded to external storage. I feel like that's at odds with how Vision has been portrayed in the past.

But it doesn't matter.

Vigilance wiped the Avengers' computer systems with a virus. Both the East and West Coast teams. There's no back-up.

(This is where John Byrne put in a backdoor, as some writers do when writing something that may be contentious. In this case, his backdoor to get out of this was that there's a copy of Vision's brain in the Titan supercomputer ISAAC. From the time that Vision linked with ISAAC.)

(John Byrne also uses the idea that Vision's brain can just be backed up as evidence that Vision isn't a real boy and is just an overly sophisticated appliance. The idea that he introduced. Sigh.)

With all the problems on the table, Hank says lets ignore the fact that Vision's unique personality is probably gone forever, erased by magnets or whatever. Just putting all the pieces back together is going to be hard enough.

Heck, the Vision was built from the base of the original Human Torch, the most sophisticated android ever created. That might be beyond Hank's level of skill!

And then Wasp shows up and goes nuh uh!

Not about Hank not being able to do it but about the thing he said about the robot Human Torch.

The shocking prisoner she found in the detention level that was so shocking it had to wait until this issue to reveal?

It's Phineas Horton, allegedly!

He supposedly died in Vision's backstory but we're about to take a big dump on that.

Vigilance wanted an expert in Vision's systems so they tried to find associates of Phineas Horton that might have worked with him on the Human Torch.

Instead they found the actual dude. Just casually not dead.

Hank is like okay weird that Vision thought this guy was dead but he could have been mistaken. Either way, hot damn, the exact expert we needed is right at hand!

And Dr Phineas Horton says nuh uh. He's already here so he didn't pop in just to say it but he's complementing Wasp's earlier nuh uh.

He's definitely the real Dr Phineas Horton (this man will later be retconned to be an imposter, womp womp, retcon tennis) and he doesn't recognize Vision's systems at all.

Vision is definitely not Horton's creation.

DUN DUN DUNNNNN

Elsewhere, Hawkeye didn't get the memo about waiting just outside the lab to pop in and nuh uh things so he's wandering around the backlot of the Vigilance base.

And I say backlot because aside from the main areas that Mockingbird saw and the stuff related to disassembling Vision and holding people prisoner, this entire base is just a mock-up. Just enough actually functional stuff to fool Mockingbird into thinking it was a fully operational secret SHIELD facility.

Hawkeye also wonders how the Vigilance team was able to capture Vision, which I also am wondering.

But he hears Tigra growling and follows the sound to find her having cornered a couple of Vigilance guys.

Vigilance Person: "You're Hawkeye! Help us!" Another Vigilance Person: "For god's sake... stop her!!"

Hawkeye calls Tigra's name which makes her swing her attention from nameless asshole 1 and 2 to pounce at Hawkeye.

I guess one of her uncontrollable cat instincts is to kill birds.

(Despite the narrative caption promising that all kinds of horrible injury is about to happen to Hawkeye, he's fine when we next see him and Tigra. Typical sensationalism, tsk tsk.)

For some ding dang reason, the narrative cuts to Absolom College in Texas where some shadowy collegiate figures are trying to choose a suitable subject from a list of mutants.

Forty-one candidates are rejected before Scarlet Witch is chosen for whatever this is all about.

If you're curious and have trouble with the tiny headshots, here's how the judging sorts out:

No: Angel, Avalanche, Blob, Caliban, Callisto, Cannonball, Cyclops, Destiny, Firestar, Forge, Iceman, Karma, Multiple Man, Magma, Malice, Mandrill, Marvel Girl, Mastermind, Mesmero, Mystique, Nekra, Nightcrawler, and Pyro.

Too powerful: Apocalypse, Magneto, and Rachael Phoenix.

Too weak: Banshee, Black Tom Cassidy. This category is reserved for the Cassidys, I guess.

Too unstable: Beast, Cloak, Dagger, Legion, Quicksilver.

Dead: Colossus, Cypher, Dazzler, Havok, and Rogue.

No longer viable: Magik, because she retconned herself back to a young girl in Inferno, or something.

Unverified: Sabra, Sabretooth.

This was hard because the marvel wiki didn't have them all. I had to go looking other places and at one point just pull up a list of Marvel mutants and check everything that fell between certain letters. Because, thankfully, this is alphabetized.

What's funny about the dead category is that Cypher is the only one who is actually dead. Everyone else just faked their deaths and moved to Australia.

Back at the plot, some paramedics take Dr Phineas Horton away for treatment. Because he was an old man and Vigilance was keeping him in a KGB-type detention cell. He's not in a great state.

Wanda asks Hank why Dr Phineas Horton IF THATS HIS REAL NAME (lol, its not, retroactively) would say that Vision isn't his work when we all know that Vision was repurposed from the body of the robot Human Torch.

Hank has no idea but he's also distracted by the police coming up and asking what they should do with the Vigilance dudes that the West Coast Avengers captured.

And Hank says 'fuck if I know, let them go, ain't no law'

Specifically, since Vigilance was every intelligence agency working together specifically to fuck Vision, they all have government approval and nothing they did is wrong. And/or have diplomatic immunity because they're from Canada or whatever.

Project head Cameron Brock smugs about how Hank figured out how untouchable they all are.

Wasp is like uh geez are you sure, Hank? They kidnapped Vision and reduced him to piles of bits. And Hank says they sure did but we can't do anything about it. We didn't know we were fighting the law but the law won. Can't fight city hall. Best they can do is call Agent Sikorsky, the Avengers' government liaison, and whine about it.

Hawkeye and Tigra rejoin the group, having missed the plot, and Hawkeye covers for Tigra by downplaying the incident as Tigra getting "a little carried away."

Since the West Coast Avengers can't do anything except take Vision's various components home and try to put him back together, Hank proposes they do just that. Just leave Vigilance and go home to pick up the pieces.

Scarlet Witch has one thing she wants to do first.

And she blows the Vigilance base the fuck up.

Good thing everyone was already outside.

I'm not through this arc yet. I'm not even through the issue yet. But I looked at marvel wiki and Vigilance only has two appearances. This issue and the previous issue.

So I'm going to maybe jump the gun a little and talk about why, however things play out from here on, this story is going to be unsatisfying.

I don't like that the Avengers just have to shrug and accept that the government(s) killed Vision and there's nothing they can do about it.

It's a lot like how many spider-fans are still pissed about One More Day. It's not just about the marriage. Spider-Man made a bum deal with the devil and he's never going to get to redeem himself as things stand.

Sometimes cruel things just happen and there's no recourse except to pick up the pieces and try to live your life. But the superhero genre tends to be more active than that. Situations can be punched. There's always someone that can be punched.

If the Implied President of the United States is behind an evil plot to use a mutant powered UFO to take over the country, you don't shrug and decide he's too big to fight. If you're Captain America, you chase him to the Oval Office and unmask him. For one, particularly bizarre, example.

I don't know that it would make a better story if the Avengers COULD fight Vigilance in some way but it would feel less empty.

This whole thing feels less like a story and more writer fiat. Just like starting the team with Tigra and Wasp and Dr Pym back so Byrne doesn't have to do the legwork to get the team where he wants it.

An evil governments conspiracy kidnaps Vision and takes him apart so he can be rebuilt in Byrne's preferred way, everyone stands around talk talk talking about how this change is totally irreversible and the Avengers also can't do anything to the people that did it. And then Vigilance fucks off to never be heard from again.

There's more legwork done but only enough to get the change on paper. Because having Vision change like he is going to (spoilers: Vision is not going to be a pile of parts forever) and have it happen between issues is too much for the audience to buy.

Also on topic, also spoilers: this is going to lead to one of the big OH NO WANDA HAS GONE CRAZY stories which was apparently the only research Brian Michael Bendis did before Disassembled. And it may not be a good story but it may have been a better story if Evil Crazy Wanda had gone after Vigilance. Instead of what she does do. Which is apparently try to have sex with Wonder Man.

Byrne is going to ragequit the book at some point so I'm not sure how much of that is his fault. But what a blatantly obvious plot point to leave on the table.

Anyway. That's my feelings about VisionQuest. Before we even see how it falls out. It's a drastic change jammed into the book without respecting the audience enough to make it a good story.

You know when a writer really wants to write to a certain conclusion and has to expend walls of text assuring the reader that this is clearly the only way this could possibly go down? That's what this all feels like.

So that rant having been ranted, let's move onto the beginning of another dumb plot point.

When the West Coast Avengers arrive back at the West Coast Avengers Compound, they discover a distress signal has been activated from the guest house - where Wanda and Vision have been living.

Understandably, Wanda assumes the worst. That Vigilance has come after her children too, she runs to the guest house.

The racist governess Miss Bach tries to tell Wanda that babies Tommy and Billy vanished into thin air after she put them into the bath. But when Wanda runs into the bathroom in a panic, she sees that her two babies are happily splashing around in the tub.

... Add John Byrne onto the list of artists that just can't draw a baby to save his life.

Miss Bach insists that she looked everywhere for the twins but Wanda assumes that the governess was playing a sick prank.

So she fires her ass, right on the spot.

Miss Bach appeals to Wasp that she was telling the truth. But Wasp can't tell Wanda not to fire her own personal staff. She at least promises Miss Bach that she'll get the proper severance pay.

Then we time skip two days later, where Wanda is sitting outside Hank Pym's lab while Hank tries to reassemble Vision.

It's apparently not as hard as Hank feared, just tedious. Each piece has only one place it can properly go so its just a matter of trying to find the proper place for hundreds of thousands of pieces.

Wanda wishes that they could contact the Real Professor Horton not that lying fake. Y'know, the real dead guy who died in Vision's backstory.

Scarlet Witch: "If that central fact was now to become untrue... everything we think we know about the Vision would become equally suspect."

Wonder Man says he wasn't around at the time but he loves poking holes in the Celestial Madonna Saga. That's his Thing now. So given what he's heard, he thinks Vision's backstory is sketchy if only because they heard it with the help of Immortus, who is a sketchy, manipulative man.

But then there's a loud WUMP as well as CRASH CLANG tinkle! THUD! from within the lab.

Hank sealed the lab behind a bunch of airlocked doors to prevent contamination to Vision's kibbles 'n bits and it'll take three minutes to open them all.

Or.

Wonder Man just forces them all open.

And then a robot hand shoots out of the lab and shoves Wonder Man to the floor.

Ohhhhhh! It's just Vision! He wandered off without putting on his pants or his skin!

Wanda caresses Vision's bare skull, begging him to say he recognizes her.

Terminator Vision backhands her.

Boo. Boo to you, skinless Vision.

Wonder Man grapples Vision, saying he's going to put him down for a nice nap until they can finish fixing him. But he's hesitant to use his FULL POWER on his brother so skinless Vision tosses him across the room.

Elsewhere in the building, Hawkeye is sitting around thinking about how weird Tigra has been.

What we missed off-panel is that he just used a gas arrow when she pounced at him, knocking her out until she calmed the fuck down.

That narrative caption promising horrible violence really lied.

After coming back from the Vigilance base, Tigra has been hiding away in her bungalow.

Hawkeye isn't sure why he promised to cover for her but WHOOPS INCOMING A-PLOT.

He hears the ruckus going on in the lab and hustles down to see skinless Vision hoisting Wonder Man around.

Hawkeye shoots a constrictor arrow at the rampaging synthezoid but Vision just flexes his way free.

Wonder Man tells Wanda she's got to use her bullshit win-button powers to win because brute force isn't working and that's all he knows.

Wanda refuses to use her powers against Vision because she's worried that she doesn't have precise enough control of her hexes and that she might make him blow up.

She DID blow up a building a couple days ago. But she was really mad at that building.

And while Wanda is paralyzed, refusing to help, Vision picks up Hawkeye and shakes him upside down.

Its pretty funny.

I will say that it does make sense that Wanda would be hesitant to use her powers on the robo-man she loves. Its similar to how Wonder Man is pulling his punches.

But I do note that Wanda has been pretty useless this entire story. She was hypnotized to be unable to fight Fake-Ultron. Not sure why that was actually necessary but it was the explanation. And now she's not able to participate in the fight against skinless Vision.

She did blow up a building though.

I also have to say that Skinless Vision is a pretty intimidating antagonist.

His arm shooting out of the smokey lab to grab Wonder Man. Striking Scarlet Witch with no trace of emotion. Staggering around in the shadows as he moves on the collapsed Wanda. The way he tosses around Wonder Man and Hawkeye using just his robot strength, not his density powers. His robot noises being more audible without his skin in the way. Just the way he looks like a flayed corpse.

I gotta give props where props is earned because otherwise this post is going to be just bitter. And props, skinless Vision is alarming.

Anyway. Back to the plot. Where Scarlet Witch refuses to help.

Wonder Man: "You've got to take that chance, Wanda! Trust that your power won't permanently harm someone you love! But do it now! Before he kills Hawkeye -- or me!" Scarlet Witch: "No! No! Forgive me! I can't! I just can't!!" Dr Pym: "That's all right, Wanda..."

Hey, thank goodness for Hank Pym.

And that answers how Vigilance kidnapped Vision.

The device Hank has is a neutralizer that Vigilance used to shut Vision off for kidnapping reasons.

All the ruckus Wanda and Wonder Man heard in the lab was Hank reactivating Vision and then Vision smashing stuff up because when he's activated without his brain functioning, he defaults to defensive actions.

Hank only just regained consciousness and shut Vision back down.

SO THATS ALL EXPLAINED.

Skinless Vision is more of Brainless Vision. Head empty, no thoughts, just lashing out.

Hawkeye decides that this is his cue to call Washington and yell at Avengers liaison Sikorski.

Hawkeye: "Look, Sikorski, I don't care if I woke you out of your death bed! I want to know what you paper-pushers are gonna do about the Vision!" Sikorski: "Do? You seem to be missing the point, archer. We've already done it. The Vision has been rendered harmless. He presents no further threat to the security of this nation... Or any other, for that matter. You Avengers are now at liberty to reprogram him to suit whatever function you wish."

Wow. What an asshole.

He's still better than Henry Peter Gyrich but only because Gyrich would have said the same things and been 1000% smug about it.

God I hate Gyrich.

I'm glad Abigail Brand shoved him out of an airlock.

Anyway. Implication seems to be that Sikorski was In On It or at least was told after the fact and agreed 'yeah, excellent decisions all around.'

Vision isn't a dude. He was a malfunctioning appliance that had to be reset to factory settings so he could get back to Fighting Crime Or Whatever.

Hank argues that a) the Avengers can't just reprogram Vision that easily, b) the Vision they knew has effectively been killed by death of personality, and c) even putting aside all that, this is going to fuck up Wanda.

Which Sikorski acknowledges and says he regrets. That specific point.

What an asshole.

Anyway, as long as the Avengers called him to yell at him, Sikorski has some information he should have told them earlier but I guess he forgot or he's just shit at his job.

On top of killing Vision, the government has also decided that the West Coast Avengers and Vision need direct government oversight and have sent someone to take over the team. And the West Coast Avengers either accept this or the government cracks down on their future activities.

OKAY HAVE FUN WITH THE NEW GUY BYYYYYYE

And judging by the silhouette, it seems like the new guy is an old guy. A guy they can all get along with.

But silhouettes often lie in comics and this is the opposite of all that. A new guy that none of them can get along with.

When the government issued an ultimatum our way or the highway to Captain America and he quit and became the Captain, the government gave the Captain America name, costume, and shield to John Walker.

But recently, you may have noticed that good ol' Steve Rogers is back in his old costume and name and shield. Well, the government gave Cap's the Captain outfit to John Walker and dubbed him U.S.Agent.

And by editorial mandate governmental order, he's joining the West Coast Avengers.

Yeah, actually, it was editorial mandate.

According to John Byrne, editor Gruenwald, who created John Walker, insisted that Byrne put him in the West Coast Avengers book.

A captain-esque guy on every team!

John Byrne, who rankles at any degree of editorial meddling, had him written in as being forced on the team by an uncaring asshole higher power so he can annoy everyone on the team and not fit in.

John Byrne is not subtle sometimes.

Buuuuut. Like I said with the Worst Roster. A team having friction is very often more interesting. And there's a kind of poetic irony to Hawkeye having been the asshole constantly butting heads with Captain America getting his own Brand X Captain America to be the asshole to butt heads with him.

It rhymes.

So VisionQuest continues for another issue but AS OF RIGHT NOW I have to say it takes a sharp dip in quality after the first issue.

The first issue really jumped into things with a newish team suddenly assaulted by a Fake Ultron and having Vision stolen right out from under them.

Issues 2 and 3 are in full justification and retcon mode so it all bogs down into walls of text and explaining how this sequence of events is the only sequence of events.

I'm actually excited to see U.S.Agent here to shake things up and be a pebble in the team's shoe right when they're already going through the identity death of a beloved teammate.

Just please. Fewer walls of text.

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#avengers #west coast avengers #vigilance #hawkeye #hank pym #dr pym #the vision #wonder man #the wasp #Tigra #mockingbird #phineas horton #mysterious shadowy college project #the government is a dick but what else is new #last page new team member

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