What I Bought 1/15/2025

Diamond filed for bankruptcy apparently. I know that doesn't automatically mean death in business, but it doesn't seem like a good sign. It isn't the worst thing for the distributors to have competition, rather than a monopoly. But I did like being able to go to one place and check out all the comic publishers and what they were offering. Found a lot of books I probably wouldn't have otherwise. Oh well, it's out of my control, unless I get stinking rich and suddenly decide I want to be a businessman (the latter is far more improbable than the former.)

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #2, by Erica Schultz (writer), Giada Belviso (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I guess the back of the claw can't cut.

Elektra asks Laura to let her handle the transfer of a mutant kid. Laura declines. The buyer escapes with the kid, who has the mutant ability to explode, so that's not good. Elektra and Laura alert Mayor Luke Cage (that's weird to type, but preferable to Mayor Wilson Fisk or Jonah Jameson) that the kid is going to be used in the middle of a protest against Cage repealing Fisk's anti-vigilante laws. Cage asks Laura not to get involved. Laura declines. Then she nearly starts a fight with a bunch of protestors, and the kid blows up. Great hustle, Laura.

So, in a continuation of last issue, Laura's very angry and taking it out and everyone. Especially anyone advising her to exhibit patience, caution, good judgement, you name it. It's funny to watch her complain that people think she heals instantly, but gunshots take time to heal (and still hurt), without considering that maybe the way she's fighting is why her healing factor is having so much trouble keeping up. Laura knows how to be silent and sneaky, I've seen it in other stories. She's the one choosing to leap into every fight yelling and hacking away like she's in a particularly lucid berserker fury. She jumps on top the getaway car instead of maybe slashing through the tires to slow it down.

And now it's literally blown up in her face - assuming that last page wasn't some sort of fakeout - so we'll see if that prompts some sort of reflection or adjustment. Or maybe she'll just keep barging ahead, trying to help people to escape her frustration with how Krakoa fell apart. Either/or.

Avengers Assemble #5, by Steve Orlando (writer), Jose Luis (penciler), Oren Junior (inker), Sonia Oback (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Cap-Snake, he's gonna get you! Cap-Snake, he's. . .I don't know where I was going with that.

It's the Avengers against the Serpent Society (plus Cap-Snake.) That's it, that's the issue. The key seems to be the Avengers do demonstrate teamwork and cooperation, where each member of the Society fights on their own. Anaconda's clearly not going to be able to hold Hercules, but no one leaps in to try and blind him or poison him for the time he is caught. Meanwhile, because Hawkeye's holding back against Cap-Snake, Night Thrasher steps in to get Cap-Snake off his back. Which frees up Hawkeye to give She-Hulk some back-up against Titanoboa.

This feels like a place where the mini-series needed more space, because as unfamiliar as some of these characters ought to be with each other, you'd expect teamwork not to come so easily without practice. Also, speaking of Titanoboa, I kept expecting a surprise reveal on that guy's identity. He's strong and large, and able to shrug off punches from She-Hulk and attacks from the Wasp and Photon. But he also keeps boasting about how well he knows the Avengers and their tendencies. Which made me think it was some typically more cerebral villain who ganked Pym Particles or something. But if it's supposed to be anyone we've ever heard of, Orlando's not telling.

Wonder Man deals with the Serpent's Tears by. . .inhaling the lot of it, reasoning that he's not really flesh and blood, so it might not affect him. Given Pit Viper claimed it would affect the soul as well, the fact Simon's gamble works out would seem to imply certain things about his existence. I guess all the dying and returning has to have some drawbacks, depending on how critical you think a soul is.

Maybe Pit Viper can expound on it, if he's in any state after the one-two punch of feeling shocked that Mephisto might have sold him a bill of goods (shocked Pikachu face), and getting his body crushed by Lightspeed's rainbow trail. I though that trail was just light, immaterial, not solid like the trails that follow the bikes in TRON. Learn something everyday, too bad so much of it is of little use.

What I Bought 12/7/2024 - Part 2

I went to the next town over to try some local store Christmas shopping, and in between that, stopped at the comic stores. The guy at one store remembered what town I was from - surprising, considering it feels like a year since I've been in - and asked if I visited the shop here. He said he asked because he heard the guy wasn't doing too well. 

He may have meant healthwise, though I haven't noticed anything in the brief stretches I'm in the store, but assuming he meant financially, I said there never seem to be new releases on the shelf these days. Which, of course, was why I was looking for last week's books in this guy's shop. Still, if the word's getting around to stores in neighboring towns, the local shop's probably not long for this world.

Avengers Assemble #4, by Steve Orlando (writer), Valentina Pinti (artist), Sonia Oback and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo (color artists), Cory Petit (letterer) - All that Kirby Krackle is gonna ruin the finish on Mr. Doomsmore.

Victorious, Doom's herald and wife is trying to bust through the magic barrier he placed around Latveria. Just for the heck of it, I note that Pinti draws the barrier as a green wall or partially transparent energy, while in Fantastic Four it was a solid, metallic-looking dome.

Even with the Power Cosmic, she can't get in, but her punches are wrecking stuff in all the neighboring countries. So most of the team goes to try and talk her down, or punch her down as necessary. The punching doesn't go terribly well, but the talking eventually gets her to stop and fix what she did.

But, suspecting this is more cover for a heist, the rest of the team look for different activity and find something happening at an old mine in a neighboring country. The Serpent Society's there, but it's actually a trap, as they have their Serpent's Tears ready. Viper says each ampule can infect a city, then wastes one throwing it specifically at Shang-Chi, knowing Captain America will dive on it first. So now Cap's a snake-guy.

OK, so here's the thing where I trip up. The whole running bit has been the Serpent Society goading one person or another into starting something, which draws the Avengers' attention, giving the Serpents cover for their heists. So am I supposed to be believe they somehow goaded Victorious into trying to punch her way back into her homeland right now? Because otherwise, they sat around waiting for some sort of big problem, so they could go cause trouble nearby that the Avengers would notice and investigate, all to spring this trap on one guy. And yeah, Sidewinder's a teleporter, so mobilizing isn't that difficult, but still. It's thin.

Some of the faces Pinti draws look a little strange - mostly mouths, and mostly in smaller panels, maybe the lines need more space - but the panel of Captain America mid-change, is solid. Although I do wonder why transforming into a snake-guy made his fingernails become more clawlike. Snakes don't have claws, or hands.

What I Bought 11/20/2024

I caught a bit of Spider-Man: No Way Home while I was in a hotel last week. Pretty much just the part once all three Spider-Men were in the same place. I found their conversations endearingly silly. The comparing of villains ("let's go back to the part where you were in space") and the stuff about Maguire-Spidey's organic webs. I'm sure the movie as a whole is a big mess, but that part, at least, I enjoyed.

Avengers Assemble #3, by Steve Orlando (writer), Marcelo Ferreira (penciler), Roberto Poggi (inker), Sonia Oback (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I think the Night Stalkers ought to have checked with the Army on what happens when you shoot at a Hulk.

Four Avengers travel to a town where a bunch of vampires live and are under attack by a new team of Nightstalkers. The quartet - She-Hulk, Wonder Man, Living Lightning and Lightspeed - scuffle a bit, but ultimately protect the town. The main thing I took from that, besides remembering someone made Wonder Man a pacifist at some point (and it apparently still holds, for a particular value), is there's no sense of teamwork between this group. Last issue, you could tell Captain America, Hercules and Hawkeye had a track record of working together. This group, everyone just kind of splits up and flails about, fighting individual battles.

Meanwhile, Shang-Chi's figured out someone's been using the crises the team has faced as cover for heists and encounters this Tiger Snake. Who is a good enough fighter to sucker Shang-Chi into getting poisoned, though Shang escapes to alert Captain America. But the Serpent Society's got another new member, a very big one. OK, so? This Avengers squad has Hercules and She-Hulk. They beat up big dudes all the time. This is why the Serpent Society is a bunch of second-raters. "Our secret weapon is a guy on Pym Particles, but we named him after an extinct giant snake!" *extremely sarcastic golf clap*

I guess it's going to be a different artist every issue, then. Ferreira's art is a bit looser than Eaton or Smith's. Maybe a good touch to have when Bloodscream is sporting a mouth that could swallow a watermelon and huge teeth, but some of faces that don't belong to weird vampire-like people look kind of strange. He also likes overlapping panels, and squeezing together a lot of panels that are unevenly shaped. A tilted horizontal rhombus, on top of two narrower panels, all crammed into a quarter of the page. I don't know what effect it's supposed to have when I read it, beyond the sense maybe the page space isn't being allocated well.

Also, why the heck do characters keep saying it as "AVENG.E.R.S." I know, it's an acronym now, in that stupid, Vril Dox, "R.E.B.E.L.S. has another acronym inside it," way, but you can't pronounce the periods. It's just "Avengers." That's what it sounds like they're saying, they are Avengers, so just write it like that.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #2, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I'm confident 8-Ball is not going to stick the landing.

Moon Knight asks Iron Man to look at this new drug, but Stark don't know shit about chemistry, so that's a bust. I was thinking this was a job for Hank Pym, and sure enough, that's who Stark mentions. Too bad he's dead. Or not, since that Avengers Inc. mini-series Al Ewing did established Hank's still alive, I guess. Something Marc knew even before his most recent death, but thus far neglected to mention to Tigra.

Well, I'm sure that's going to be a calm and reasonable conversation. Especially as the cops have decided to barge into the Midnight Mission, I presume being on this Fairchild guy's payroll, or under his thumb, or whatever.

Oh, and Moon Knight tried to hit one of Fairchild's shipments, but got punked by some old foe of his with perception-warping pheromones. Cubist has a nifty design, though it seems like one a lot of artists would get tired of drawing quickly. Rosenberg and Cappuccio have the background tilt to match whatever direction the action is going in a particular panel, so that the characters seem like they're always hemmed in by it. Nice touch.

Sunday Splash Page #346

"Down a Dark Hall", in Marvel Universe vs. The Avengers #1, by Jonathan Mayberry (writer), Leandro Fernandez (artist), Lee Loughridge (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer)

One of a group of 3 mini-series about an Earth where everything falls apart and civilization collapses in a maelstrom of killing. But not zombies! No, everyone is still alive, they just randomly become really angry and really hungry. A bit like 28 Days Later, I guess, though the source of the problem is not disclosed in this mini-series (and I didn't read the other two, which focused on Wolverine and the Punisher, respectively.)

Mayberry uses Hawkeye as the POV character. Probably because he's the most human, or least superhuman. Highlights his exhaustion, the fatigue and frustration at fighting to hold a line that may not even exist, since there's no rhyme or reason to when someone changes. Despite that, he's not really a Hawkeye I find familiar - it's odd to see the Black Widow hesitating at killing former friends, when Hawkeye's apparently accepted the necessity - but it's a big multiverse.

Mayberry takes advantage to do basically whatever he assumes will be emotionally affecting. Captain America dies in the first issue, as the Punisher's hands. Hawkeye has to listen to an infected Luke Cage kill Jessica Jones and their child over the phone. Doom shows up at the end of the first issue, promising a solution. Deadpool hangs around him like a Renfield.

The heroes' numbers dwindle in a series of brief fights that are silent except for Hawkeye's caption boxes, rendered in short panels with a longview perspective. Hastily sketched figures, vaguely recognizable characters, killing each other. (It is funny that Multiple Man keeps popping up, presumably at least one dupe keeps surviving.) It works in the sense this is not the typical hero vs. villain fight but a struggle for survival, so Fernandez shouldn't draw it like a typical comic book fight.

Also, all the fighting is pointless, anyway, so there's really no reason to focus on it. Just death throes. Doom's "solution" is one of control rather than cure. *shocked Pikachu face* Hawkeye faces him down and wins, vowing to keep going forward as the last Avenger. Which could be either inspiring or pitiable, depending on your mindset, but it's ultimately meaningless. Thor, who left earlier in frustration with the moral compromises, returns infected and splatters Hawkeye's skull like a watermelon. This despite the fact the story keeps telling us the problem was something that was inside people all along. Thor's not mortal, so how did it get him? The answer is, of course. . .hey look over there!

Seriously, though, I think Mayberry just wanted to do a Punisher story where Frank can treat everyone in the world as a target, where he didn't have to worry about innocent bystanders and collateral damage. Because all Frank's ever wanted to do was kill, and everything else was just the thin leashes he imposed on himself.

What I bought 10/17/2024

Can't go a day without somebody wanting me to drive halfway across the state to help them with something. People have apparently decided I'm someone at my job who can be counted on to help solve their problems. It wasn't intentional, I swear.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Moon Knight: he'll hit you with sticks. Daredevil's gonna sue for trademark infringement.

Moon Knight (or Mr. Knight) is on the streets, trying to shut off the flow of a new drug, which may in fact be fairy dust. The path leads to some former boxer turned Mista Big named Achilles Fairchild, who also has a chief enforcer named Carver. Carver doesn't talk, just carries a big magic sword, but Achilles talks enough for both of them. The conversation doesn't produce results, but it's probably more of a pissing contest, I mean, marking territory, I mean, a friendly warning.

Cappuccio keeps Fairchild sitting for the first half of the conversation, which means it was a surprise when he stands up and he's got several inches on Moon Knight. He didn't look that big, but it plays well as the moment when shifts from cordial businessman to hard-nosed drug pusher.

MacKay intersperses bits of a conversation between old Moon Knight supporting cast member (former) Lt. Flint, and a new cop, a Detective Frazier. Frazier is the cop who Doesn't Want to Play Nice with Vigilantes, and is openly scornful of Moon Knight's crew, who will therefore have to learn the error of their ways. Or die, I'm good with dying. Especially since Frazier is, gasp, working for Fairchild! Because she's hooked on the drug. I don't know, a bent cop is a pretty farfetched notion to expect me to swallow in this comic about a guy who dresses all in white and beats to shit out of people for his Skeleton Bird God.

I'm not sure if it's Rosenberg or Cappuccio, but the characters are less sharply defined than they were in the previous book. The colors tend to smudge and blur a bit, softens them a little. Or makes them dirtier, I suppose. Although maybe MacKay's going to have Moon Knight ease up a bit after his most recent death. Try a little compassion. You know, not hit people where it causes permanent disfiguring. Only temporary disfiguring.

Avengers Assemble #2, by Steve Orlando (writer), Scot Eaton (penciler), Elisabetta D'Amico (inker), Sonia Oback (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I know Red Ghost can turn intangible, but his positioning on that cover is awkward. It looks like he's punching Night Thrasher, or waiting for Thrasher to run into the back of his knuckles.

A Massachusetts town is being haunted by ape ghosts. Lots of ape ghosts. Is it Silver Age DC month at Marvel and no one told me? So it's Captain America, Hercules, Hawkeye and Night Thrasher to investigate. Herc's the only one able to actually hit ghosts, so it's just as well the apes don't seem to be trying to hurt people. The heroes eventually figure out the apes are smart enough to speak, and that they were the Red Ghost's early test subjects. No powers, save enough intelligence to speak and plead for their lives. Pleas that were ignored.

The Avengers locate Red Ghost's house, let the apes torment him until they're satisfied and then Herc uses his mace's ability to absorb energy(?) to draw in the radiation holding the ghosts in the realm of the living. Another crisis averted, although the Serpent Society stole some bone fragments soaked in magic moonshine, so that's. . .concerning. I guess? I'd say the vocal dissent of members of the Society is going to short-circuit that plot before too long.

Anyway, credit to Orlando for an interesting problem for the team to confront. The ghosts of unethical animal experimentation. I didn't quite understand why, if Hercules can apparently understand the ghosts courtesy of the "All-Speak", why he let Hawkeye keep trying to read their lips. Did Hercules just not think of trying to understand their spectral cries? But that wouldn't explain why he's still letting Hawkeye have first crack even after that. I guess he just thinks it's a good challenge for Clint.

Oback keeps the colors murky while the team is dealing with the apes, then brightens things up considerably once they find the Red Ghost. Maybe because, once the team has a sense of the cause, things aren't so dire. Eaton's ghost apes are suitably anguished and angry looking.

What I Bought 9/11/2024 - Part 1

My allergies have arrived to make everything unpleasant, as usual. But I started coughing yesterday, so I'm probably close to the "hacking up yellow stuff" phase that signals the end of this trial.

Here's a comic that didn't make me hack up yellow stuff, but is that a good or bad outcome?

Avengers Assemble #1, by Steve Orlando (writer), Cory Smith (penciler), Oren Junior and Elisabetta D'Amico (inkers), Sonia Oback (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - I'm sure she's flying, but it'd be funny if Monica was just standing on the leg hidden behind Captain America and pretending to fly. Make "whoosh" noises and everything.

So there's an "Avengers Emergency Response Squad" now. Funny, I thought that was what the Avengers were for. A problem arises, and whoever's available from the cast on the cover rushes off to deal with it. Seems like it wouldn't hurt to wait for reinforcements and/or intel, but OK.

Problem of the day: The Red Skull's daughter found some helmet that makes people angry and then feeds off the anger. Photon, Wasp and Shang-Chi are the only ones who've shown up, so that's who Cap's got. A lot of leaders, and so the helmet plays on that, making them jockey for authority until Shang-Chi numbs some nerve cluster or something. They still aren't getting much of anywhere, but do manage to knock Sin to wherever the helmet hails from.

Meanwhile, Orlando introduces the rest of the team via poker at the Mansion. They were too late to join the mission, so they're waiting for the next problem and shooting the breeze. It's not a bad approach; reinforces the idea there's going to be someone around as trouble arrives and allows a little back-and-forth to sketch characterization and interpersonal relationships.

I think Smith's art works better for the scenes of people sitting and talking with D'Amico is inking him. At least, I'm assuming those are D'Amico's pages at the end of the book, since she got secondary billing behind Oren Junior. The art's less busy, faces not so cluttered with extra lines that seem to stiffen things. That's less of an issue on the fight portions, because the focus is on the action and everyone's tense anyway, but I don't know if it's really needed there, either.

Anyway, the whole thing with Sin was actually a distraction by the new Serpent Society to gather something that's going to gain them favor with Mephisto? Grant them some of his powers? I'm not clear on that part. Bad news, at any rate. So that's the overarching threat, and I guess the question will be if the "Emergency Response Squad" can draw the connections between the different threats and act in time.

Escape Company Events Via Space Travel

In any other fictional universe, that might seem strange.

Cannonball Run is the volume collecting the second half of Al Ewing's U.S.Avengers, where Sunspot agrees to make A.I.M. an officially sanctioned entity for the government.

Unfortunately, the first 3 issues of the tpb are Secret Empire tie-ins, as the group is brought down from within as HYDRA Cap uses all the intel Sunspot so helpfully provided to take the team down. The current Red Hulk - a deliberate dollar store version of Thunderbolt Ross - is being controlled by nanites injected under the promise they'd help him use his "Hulk plug-in" for more than an hour at a pop. The current Iron Patriot - Dr. Toni Ho, genius daughter of the doctor who saved Stark's life all those years ago - ends up in a holding cell with Sunspot, who's barely coherent after being shot in the head. Turns out people who work for AIM don't want to work for the government. Go figure. He activated his mutant power to survive, but he's got that "M-pox" from the Terrigen cloud, so using his powers is killing him.

Those three issues are split between Toni's attempts to MacGuyver a way to get herself and Sunspot out of prison, and Squirrel Girl and Enigma working with a hodgepodge of other heroes in Paris to fight the HYDRA forces stationed there. It puts a spotlight on Toni's reasons for what she does and why, and her deciding that making weaponry, even non-lethal weaponry, isn't a good use of her talents, or a healthy one.

The Squirrel Girl and Enigma thread is the pretty standard, "fascists aren't as strong as they think, their efforts to crush resistance only breeds more, and when push comes to shove, they're gutless cowards." Which is fine, Ewing and Paco Medina bring in a hodgepodge of Euro-heroes - actually, they may have created a few of these, I'm not sure about Outlaw, the non-lethal Punisher, or Guillotine, the lady with a bloodthirsty cursed sword - but there's nothing to it that says much of significance about the core cast members.

Medina's work is pretty much how I remember it from Daniel Way's Deadpool run, allowing for some honing of his style over the subsequent 6+ years. The lines are steadier, and everything's less busy. He toned down some of the excess in character proportions, but to be fair, he was drawing a Deadpool book. Unrealistic proportions were to be expected, especially when factoring in the "hallucination" shtick Way used. That's not an issue here, so Medina keeps it straightforward and easy to follow.

The other three issues - drawn by Paco Diaz - see the team dealing with the fallout from Secret Empire, but mostly rescuing Cannonball, who ended up floating in space at some point. He was sold into slavery, and ended up on that Skrull planet from the Lee/Kirby FF where everyone looked and talked like gangsters. Except now they all mimic "Richie Redwood" and his pals. Meaning Sam Guthrie's hanging out with a bunch of Archie cosplayers.

The HYDRA prison sounds preferable.

This whole thing really seems to be Ewing talking about the people whose concept of being a fan of something locks it into a particular state, and only that state, forever. The Skrull playing Richie only wants to act out the status quo of the earliest transmissions they received. When his brother (playing the Jughead knockoff, Bugface Brown) came back from an outer space jaunt with decades of new stuff, introducing all sorts of new characters and updated ideas, Richie threw everyone in favor of that into prison.

The sheer goofiness of the whole thing is almost enough to carry it, but issue 10 also has a conversation between Sunspot and a senator who says he'll be the new liaison for Roberto's group. The Senator insists Sunspot throw out all the people he currently has as being not good enough or "diversity hires." OK, yeah, we get it, thank you. The time for beating horses to death was when half the team was in France, where they might serve as sustenance.

Diaz, like Medina, is a pretty solid artist. Able to draw make-believe Americana, alien super-tech and gangsters and make it all look like it belongs on the same page. He makes all the Archie knock-offs similar enough you can tell who they're meant to be (assuming you know Archie characters), but different enough to not just be palette swaps.

He does, however, have a little trouble with faces. Not so much if they're glaring or neutral, but shock or surprised characters kind of fall in the uncanny valley. Toni's face looks more like someone badly playacting at surprise than actual surprise, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intent. It seemed more noticeable with Tony, Squirrel Girl or Enigma, but I'm not sure why. The shape of their faces, maybe.

Sunday Splash Page #329

 

"The Tax Man Cometh," in Marvel Adventures Avengers #32, by Paul Tobin (writer), Matteo Lolli (penciler), Christian Vecchia (inker), Sotocolor (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Welcome to Many Months of Marvel! We'll be rockin' titles that start with "Marvel" all through summer and into the blessed relief of a hopefully grey autumn!

In the mid-2000s, Marvel made one of their periodic attempts at replenishing the dwindling audience with comics aimed towards a younger audience, via the Marvel Adventures line. There were a handful of titles, some of which only lasted about a year (the Hulk and Iron Man titles), while Marvel Adventures Spider-Man ran 61 issues.

The one that got the most mention in the comics blogosphere was Marvel Adventures Avengers. Having a larger cast seemed to offer the writers (mostly Jeff Parker and Paul Tobin, but also Marc Sumerak and Tony Bedard among others) the leeway to go with big threats and concepts that used the entire team, or smaller stories focused on just a few. In one issue, the Avengers might try to stop Galactus from devouring Earth by using the Ultimate Nullifier, resulting in opening up the laws of probability to where they could briefly challenge Big G to a game of baseball for the planet's wellbeing. In another, Hawkeye might show up to join, right as the Avengers keep getting shown up by a second-rate Masters of Evil roster. 

The latter story also involves everyone having a good laugh at Iron Man's expense after the Melter melts his iron pants, as most of the issues take a lighthearted approach. The Hulk gets Bullseye to pay his taxes by walking up behind him and saying, "Pay taxes." The rest of the Avengers try to keep Odin from meddling in Thor and Storm's date, except Odin keeps mistaking Wolverine for a troll and whomping him.

Likewise, the stories are usually done-in-one, and while there can be some good old-fashioned superhero punching action, the resolutions usually involve some measure of out-thinking the threat or otherwise being clever. Spider-Man getting a more first-rate Masters of Evil team to turn on each other once they realize Ultron (less genocidal here, more coldly logical about machine superiority) intends leave them with no real authority after they conquer the world.

Random Back Issues #121 - Avengers #1.1

He's fuckin' awesome. Next question.

This was basically a mini-series, retconned into the Avengers' past to set up a larger story Waid was doing with the actual Avengers book (I think this was the volume where Spider-Man was funding the team, before Peter lost all the money Ock made him.) It starts with the four original Avengers trouncing a Masters of Evil consisting of the Enchantress and Executioner (good choices), but also the Melter and Black Knight (oof).

"48 Hours Later," Iron Man's handing the keys to the mansion to Captain America, because the rest of the team is taking time off. They have too much personal stuff to focus on being Avengers, but Cap has no personal life, so he's the perfect choice to lead the people they accepted onto the roster without asking him! Captain America doesn't even know who any of them are, which is kind of hilarious.

Even better, Iron Man set up a press conference for two hours later, so Cap can introduce the team (which he describes as a 'carny with a bow and arrow, a super-speed keg of dynamite and a bombshell whose powers sometimes backfire') to the world. But he takes too long, and Hawkeye seizes the initiative, creating opportunities for each of them to show off their abilities.

One reporter's not on-board, pointing out Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were working with Magneto just last month. Everybody was in a big hurry in the 1960s. Cap tries to wave it off with them being pawns, but doesn't have an answer to a follow-up question about the Avengers' vetting process. Because, "Iron Man, Giant Man and the Wasp accepted the first costumed folks to knock on the door" wouldn't do much to quell concerns.

Hawkeye does a little better when asked about attacking Stark Industries (and that reporter doesn't know it was on the say-so off a Soviet spy), but his smooth answers get the media wondering if he's trying to take over being the leader. Especially when Captain America's sticking to stiff no comments, and Wanda storms off after being questioned on whether she took an oath to subjugate humans. This leaves all three newbies are considering bailing, but Wanda convinces Pietro they need to see this through. Clint, meanwhile, is won over by the fact he's got a butler now. Poor Jarvis (he gets some revenge later.)

No time for lobster (which would probably be Namor's pals anyway), here come the Frightful Four! Fresh off crushing the FF on some deserted island (Fantastic Four #38, according to a by-Gawd editor's note), the Wizard wants to make more of a public show. So he, Medusa, Sandman, and Paste-Pot Pete show up on the Avengers' lawn. Cap makes a lot of wrong calls on who should fight who - weird to see a version of Captain America inexperienced enough at this stuff to make that sort of tactical goof - the Kooky Quartet demonstrate zero teamwork, and the fight's over in two pages.

The Four don't even bother to kill them, content to leave the Avengers beaten in their own driveway. The team would engineer a rematch a few issues later, but they're getting an artificial boost which makes it a cakewalk. Too bad, it feels like a really interesting match-up, 4 vs 4.

{2nd longbox, 9th comic. Avengers #1.1, by Mark Waid (writer), Barry Kitson (penciler), Mark Farmer (inker), Jordan Boyd (colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer)}

Avengers Are on Another Membership Drive

$3.6 million is less than what Stark spends on satellites to erase his secret identity from people's minds, but sure, stiff the kid.

Avengers Power Pack: Assemble, takes a similar approach to Iron Man Power Pack. Or maybe it's the other away around since this was published first. Point being, the first two issues are largely their own, done-in-one adventures that hint at being tied to something larger.

The first involves the Power kids helping Captain America against Taskmaster, the latter written as a mouthy jerk who ridicules the kids for their costumes. This while he's rocking the Udon Studios "casual Friday" look. After getting beaten up by children, he gets beaten up by World War II veterans, for dressing so sloppy. Pull your dang drawers, Taskmaster!

OK, only part of that is true, and Taskmaster got away, but Captain America is reminded not to dismiss people as being capable just because they're young or old. Then Jack suckers his siblings into looking for an Iron Man armor swiped using the passcodes Taskmaster got, in the hopes of getting a reward from Tony Stark. Instead, they run up against AIM. The malevolent beekeepers are ready for the kids, but they're able to get by (with a little help from Iron Man).

The second half is where Sumerak's story comes together, as the entire family visits New York and the kids' attempt to help Spider-Man against some familiar looking metal suits turns in to watching the Avengers get defeated by Kang, who has used what AIM stole for him to build improved weapons. You'd think he could be more stealthy, but oh well. Sumerak takes a similar approach to Kang as Busiek, in having the guy insist he's honorable by not using time travel as a crutch to win, and by not attacking children.

Of course, once the kids attack him, all bets are off and he chucks them into a dystopic future ruled by him. You'd think Kang would keep things a littler cleaner. The child Power Pack team-up with their older versions. Gurihiru don't change the looks much. The costumes are the same, except everybody gets a belt with their logo. Except Jack, who has other issues. Although Kid Jack is more horrified by the fact his older self gets along with the future version of Katie. Likewise, Katie finds out she grows up to like boys.

Either way, the two Power Packs team-up to rescue the Avengers in the future, to have their help sending the kids back to their time to stop Kang there. As one does. The whole mini-series might be worth it just for Kang being hurled back to his time by a little girl in pigtails. That's a hit to the pride he'll need time to shrug off.

Random Back Issues #95 - Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #3

Hank, the last time you didn't hold anything back, you built an android with your memory engrams and it went genocidal.

We looked at the issue after this 2.5 years ago, so let's see how we got to the point of Hank Pym having nightmares about crunching Adaptoids between his giant teeth like mints!

Nick Fury's sent the Avengers - Black Panther, Hawkeye, Wasp, newbie Vision, and leader Giant-Man - to an island that serves as base where AIM may be trying to make an army of Adaptoids. Still blaming Fury for the Black Widow breaking up with him and joining SHIELD, Hawkeye's giving Fury static about why he doesn't just use SHIELD agents. Apparently Fury was ordered to leave this to the superhumans, which Pym leverages to make Fury release Vision from custody, since the authorities have no proof Viz is the original Adaptoid in disguise.

For his part, Vision is grateful the team stuck up for him, and determined to keep them from failing. Hank's, on the other hand, feeling jittery, a feeling that gets worse when they find the Adaptoid replication plant leveled and the machines carving a path through the island, including at least one innocent village. A half-dozen knockoff Adaptoids notice the Quinjet and attack. Despite Vision's best efforts, they wreck an engine. The team bails out, except Hawkeye, who is determined to land the thing. Clint, it's fine, they'll just send the bill to Stark.

But he manages, in the Launchpad McQuack sense, and now he's in the main AIM base, joined by the Panther and Vision. The beekeepers aren't causing much trouble, but Hawkeye's not sure they're actually accomplishing anything beating up a bunch of libertarian nerds

(Hank notes at one point AIM loves to claim persecution when they're listed as outlaws, but they don't care who their experiments hurt. All for me, none for you types. I'm more used to AIM just openly admitting they do criminal stuff in the name of science and not caring, but maybe that mindset came in when MODOK took over.) 

Fortunately, the king and the tin can made a plan. T'Challa hacks into AIM communications and the base layout, using panicked AIM chatter to track the Adapotid, while Vision seeks out the main reactor and overloads it.

Back in the jungle, the swarm of Adaptoids are two miles from another village and closing fast. Pym sends Wasp to help the others and orders the villagers to leave. Then he gets ready to fight the entire army himself. Probably not a good sign he's having to work himself up by repeating that they aren't human, so he doesn't have to hold back. 

Casey also uses the first page of the issue to establish a subplot where certain Wakandan elements contract the Death Tiger to kill T'Challa, allegedly because he's not being a good king, hanging out with Avengers and being a schoolteacher, but probably really just to grab power. That won't come to a head for a few issues yet.

{2nd longbox, 26th comic. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #3, by Joe Casey (writer), Will Rosado (penciler), Tom Palmer (inker), Wil Quintana (colorist), Comicraft (letterers)]

Saturday Splash Page #4

 

"Everybody Wants Magneto," in X-Men vs. Avengers #2, by Roger Stern (writer), Marc Silvestri (penciler), Josef Rubenstein (inker), Christie Scheele (colorist) Joe Rosen (letterer)

No, not Avengers vs. X-Men, the 2012ish tentpole event that gave us Wolverine killing polar bears in Antarctica. I'm not touching that crock of shit with a ten-foot pole. 

This 4-issue mini-series from 1987, running almost concurrently with Fantastic Four vs. X-Men (see Sunday Splash Page #190), which started two months prior. That story focused a little more on the desperate situation the X-Men were in after Mutant Massacre. Hiding out on Muir Island, searching for some way to save Shadowcat's life, especially once Reed Richards turned them down.

That mini-series did spend some time on the difficulty Magneto faced trying to move to the other side of the tracks after joining the X-Men. The FF met his plea for help with suspicion and anything that started to go wrong only reinforced their doubts. This mini-series leans more heavily into that side of things, as well as the fallout of Magneto's interrupted trial in Uncanny X-Men #200. 

Parts of his old Asteroid M base fall to Earth, and Magneto goes to make sure some important devices he left behind are either destroyed, or don't fall into other hands. The Soviet Super-Soldiers are on his trail, determined to bring him in for sinking that Soviet submarine, dead or alive. Preferably dead. The Avengers are not OK with this, for various reasons. Thor thinks it's dishonorable, She-Hulk and Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau) question the legality of it. Captain America just really thinks Magneto needs to stand trial for his crimes, and does not agree with the finding of a previous court that this is a different Magneto from in his early years because of that Defenders story where Magneto got de-aged then grew up again from a baby.

I'm not sure about Roger Stern having Captain America compare Magneto to Hitler, when he says the world must not be denied its chance to see Magneto stand trial the way they were with Hitler. That feels like a bad analogy to use, for a host of reasons.

In the middle of all this are the X-Men, unsure where their responsibilities lie. Magneto is being cagey about what he's after, and keeps taking off alone. He's actually trying to keep the X-Men from being dragged into his mess, but since they're already dragged in, Wolverine feels like Mags is playing them for patsies and ditching them once they aren't useful. Should they make Magneto stand trial? Can he get a fair trial? He's been an X-Man for about five minutes, how much leash do they give him? Do they keep trusting him until he explicitly goes bad, and would that be too late?

On top of all that, they're outgunned. If not by the Soviet Super-Soldiers, definitely by the Avengers. Especially when you consider this is an Avengers' roster with Monica Rambeau, when she's being written by Roger Stern. Stern really plays her up as this weapon neither of the other teams has any defense against. She can slip through Magneto's force fields, and catch up to Rogue or the Blackbird effortlessly. Short out Titanium Man's armor when he's possibly overpowering Thor (who is under Hela's curse of having brittle bones at this point.) Although Stern came up with a vague excuse for Longshot and Psylocke not to be around (they "stayed behind" while the rest of the team went to lounge at a lake somewhere). I suspect a telepath would have leveled the odds at least a little against Captain Marvel, and leveling odds is what Longshot does best.

But this way it plays into the feeling of the X-Men being off-balance and just scrambling to stay alive while under attack from enemies on all sides. There's too many threats, too few people they can trust, no mansion in Westchester or any other safe haven. They just don't have enough firepower to stand up to it. So they have to play hit-and-run, try to hide and sneak around.

The last issue is written by Tom DeFalco and Jim Shooter, and drawn by Keith Pollard and Rubenstein, with three inkers. I don't know if there was some editorial difference of opinion leading to Stern and/or Silvestri getting pulled, or it was just a deadline crunch. It sure feels like they decided to change the ending for some reason.

Random Back Issues #75 - Avengers Spotlight #29

That is the most exposition-laden attempt at a threat I've ever seen.

We looked at the issue prior to this back in February, when Acts of Vengeance was in full swing, but it's into the epilogue now. So much so, the lead story isn't even part of the event!

Hawkeye arrives at the hospital in response to a plea for help. The guy making the plea, former Defenders supporting cast member and general pain in the ass Dollar Bill, specifically requested Daredevil, but supposes Hawkeye will do. 

Dollar Bill's been filming a cable TV show with Madcap, called, creatively enough, "The Madcap Comedy Hour." If the brief clip we see is any indication, it's basically Jackass, as Madcap is standing in a burning trash barrel, to the confusion of assorted homeless people. It doesn't actually harm him, as he hops out, scrubs off, and throws on a fresh costume, all while talking about the pointlessness of life. Then he gets abducted by two guys in a van whose hands turn into tools. Dollar Bill admits Madcap is obnoxious and a menace to society, but will "Mr. Eye" help him?

Besides, their show was just about to get syndicated.

Hawkeye, having either absolutely nothing better to do, or having taken too many shots to the head, agrees. He tracks the license plate of the van to the Scuzz Club, and has barely taken a seat at the bar before he's dumped through a trap door. Madcap's tied up, and there are three guys with tools for hands: Pick Axe, Vice, and Triphammer. Oh god, this is really scraping the bottom of the burning trash barrel. Hawkeye quickly frees Madcap, who gets an arm chopped off by the fourth member of the team, a lady with a saw for a hand. During the fight, he gets her glasses off and is able to use his weird eyes to make her go nuts.

Hawkeye reveals the one behind it, and as we saw, Dr. Malus thankfully introduces himself for people who wouldn't otherwise recognize a scrawny Dr. Octopus-looking dweeb. I'm not sure how he expected Daredevil to show up. Dollar Bill doesn't mention receiving a ransom note or anything that specified Daredevil. Smart guys, always missing the obvious stuff.

Malus sets the self-destruct, everybody clears out, then Madcap goes back in for his arm. There's an explosion, but he walks out fine, determined to find Malus, because whatever his machine was, the energy it produced made him actually feel. Clint regrets getting involved almost as much as I regret reading it.

The second story is actually Acts of Vengeance related. A bunch of villains are being dropped off at the Vault, right as Iron Man is delivering new models of Guardsmen armor. The rest of the Avengers depart, with Captain America asking Iron Man to let his "boss" Tony Stark know they appreciate his work helping make the Vault more secure. You know, after that time Stark broke in and wrecked all the Guardsmen armors. Iron Man says he'll make sure Stark gets the message, and Cap replies, 'I'm sure he will.' Because Captain America's not a dumbass.

Iron Man's just about done walking the guards through using the armor when the Wizard gets brought it, his costume neatly packed in a suitcase, courtesy of Loki. Klaw makes an attempted rescue, kicking Iron Man around with sound-created Triceratopses, but Shellhead creates a counter-frequency with his unibeam to dissolve them and then Klaw. 

The Wizard's suited up by now, not that I expect it to help much. But one of the Guardsmen shows up, wanting to handle things. Sure, should be good for a laugh. Well, he takes everything the Wizard can throw at him and drops him in just over one page. I was right, it was good for a laugh. How embarrassing. It's almost like the Wizard was a third-rate schmuck all along. The Guardsman proclaims this new (really bulky) armor as good as Iron Man's, who replies, 'Don't you believe it.' Tony is no doubt already planning another attack on the Vault to trash these new armors as well.

Inside the Vault, the Wizard, now stripped down to his briefs, can't resist the urge to run his yap. He claims the guard would be no match for him man to man. Has the Wizard looked in a mirror lately? The guard, who was nearly killed by the Wizard in the original breakout, obliges by getting out of the armor. Then he flattens the Wizard with one punch. Trust Dwayne McDuffie to know what I wanted to see.

[2nd longbox, 55th comic. Avengers Spotlight #29, "What's the Point?" by Howard Mackie (writer), James Brock (writer/penciler), Roy Richardson (inker), Mike Rockwitz (colorist), Jack Morelli (letterer); "Tales from the Vault" by Dwayne McDuffie (writer), Dwayne Turner (penciler), Chris Ivy (inker), Mike Rockwitz (colorist), Rick Parker (letterer)]

Random Back Issues #52 - Avengers Spotlight #28

That's it, that's the entire conceit of the story.

The last time we looked at an issue from this series, it was still called Avengers Solo, and focused on Hawkeye being roped into working for Silver Sable to get home after he was abducted and taken to France by his mentor Trick Shot. Now it's Avengers Spotlight, and we've got an Acts of Vengeance tie-in. Which would normally be cause for celebration on this blog, but the first story is pretty lackluster.

As arguments over the Super-Human Registration Act rage, Hawkeye and Mockingbird are committing robberies in Denver. Which is news to Hawkeye and Mockingbird, news they only learn by reading the New York Post (despite living in Los Angeles?). Hawkeye wants to sue someone, but Bobbi suggests they simply investigate, so they hop a Quinjet to Denver. Since they radio the airport for permission to land, the cops are waiting, stunned they actually come back. Clint's ready to throw down, but a convenient radio call informs the police Hawkeye and Mockingbird are robbing a bank.

The heroes rush off, and when they reach the bank, well, Mockingbird thinks she's seeing doubles, but Hawkeye sees Angar the Screamer and Screaming Mimi (the future Thunderbolt Songbird). I don't know if I'd ever really looked at her Screaming Mimi get-up, but holy shit that's terrible. Turns out the two acoustic-based villains figured out their powers could combine to make Angar's hallucinations something other than weird monsters. So they decided to impersonate two Avengers and have a crime spree. Brilliant.

 

Anyway, Hawkeye's immune because he doesn't have his hearing aid turned up (not joking), so he catches them with no sweat. Not sure how he was able to talk with the police or Mockingbird if he couldn't hear the villains' sound powers, but maybe it's some sub-harmonic his hearing aid can't detect. 

The second story is a bit more clever. Makes sense, considering it was written by Dwayne McDuffie while the first one was by Howard Mackie. The mysterious guy (Loki) who convinced all the bigwig villains to team-up, is making the same pitch to the Mad Thinker. Who declines, because he predicts disaster for everyone involved, especially Mysterious Guy when his "brother" figures out he's behind it. Loki freaks out the Thinker deduced his identity and bails, but the Thinker's not quite done for the day. The SHRA passing would be bad for a lot of his schemes, too, so he decides to turn public opinion against it.

Several weeks later in Washington D.C., Wonder Man and the Wasp are supposed to make a speech about why the SHRA is a bad idea, although neither is sure what to say. Great planning there, team. They're saved from needing to be eloquent by the arrival of a large man calling himself, eventually, Gargantua. He starts picking up cars and throwing them around, although he's confused at the reason. Wonder Man's trying to fight him, but he forgot his little jet packs he wore on his hips, so he can't reach the guy's jaw.

 

Really? Guy's only 50 feet tall or so. Wonder Man's supposed to be a strong as Thor. He can't do a Hulk-jump that high? Spider-Man can almost jump that high. Fucking lame, Simon, go back to your crappy Arkon movies.

Anyway, the Wasp figures an attack from inside might go better and flies in Gargantua's ear. Where she hears a voice giving commands. She crawls further in, reflecting this guy never cleans his ears, and finds some little transmitter, which she smashes so she can give orders.

Outside, Simon's climbed a telephone pole, and Gargantua, as ordered, politely bends over so Simon can paste him one. Simon and Janet figure out what to say for their speech, to a crowd already fired up by their heroics, and the Thinker sits in his lab and reflects it was nice to win one for a change, even if helping heroes isn't something he wants to make a habit of.

I like the idea that not all the villains were on-board with this scheme, for whatever reason. I know in Spectacular Spider-Man, they nodded at the fact that some villains didn't appreciate others horning in on their turf so to to speak, and started fighting amongst themselves.

{2nd longbox, 54th comic. Avengers Spotlight #28, "Denver Doubles" by Howard Mackie (writer), Al Milgrom (penciler), Don Heck (inker), Paul Becton (colorist), Jack Morelli (letterer); "Second Thoughts" by Dwayne McDuffie (writer), Dwayne Turner (penciler), Chris Ivy (inker), Mike Rockwitz (colorist), Jack Morelli (letterer)}

Random back Issues #31 - Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #4

What time is it? Time to reset the "Days Without a Hank Pym Breakdown" counter to 0!

A comic written in the mid-2000s about comics written in the 1960s. OK, that doesn't narrow it down much, but we're looking at the second Avengers mini-series Joe Casey wrote, set at the point when the Vision joined the team. I used a page from this issue for Sunday Splash Page #52.

The first half of the issue is the the Avengers attacking an island under AIM control. While the Black Panther, Wasp, Hawkeye, and Vision try to reach Central Command, Giant Man faces a wave of Adaptoids alone. He stops them, but he went somewhere ugly in his head to do it.

Unfortunately, the Super-Adaptoid escaped, which means Nick Fury isn't happy, and neither is Agent Mirch, who is some sort of proto-Gyrich government liaison dipshit. The type who blames the Avengers for not doing a better job, blames them for the existence of threats like AIM, says the President is used to disappointment, crap like that.

In other developments, Hawkeye and Vision stop a high-tech bank robbery, but get some flack from a mouthy cop. Hawkeye quite reasonably points out that if the police are so sure they can handle guys with disruptor weapons, they're free to do so. Note that I'm not saying Hawkeye says it in a reasonable tone, only that he makes a good point. This is the exact reason I wouldn't last as a superhero. Someone would complain about how I saved them and I'd tell them to fuck off and handle their own problems next time.

On top of that the public hasn't exactly warmed up to the Vision, and neither has SHIELD, which harbors suspicions he's actually the Super-Adaptoid in disguise. Hawkeye notices their surveillance van and knocks on the side, asking if they can have a copy of the footage. Hawkeye's kind of honked off at SHIELD anyway, since he thinks they're stealing Natasha away from him. No Clint, that would be Daredevil doing that. Eventually.

This is also during the stretch where T'Challa is teaching high school under the name Luke Charles. He's worried about one of his students, a quiet kid named Delroy, who misses school a lot and gets bullied by some hotshot everyone calls Mack. Or "The Mack", whichever. Guy is twice Delroy's size and has six guys backing him up, pardon me if I'm not impressed. Anyway, Mack implies that Delroy should just kill himself, or else Mack will do it for him. Lovely.

And then Pym has the nightmare above. It's the Adaptoid in his mouth that really sells the creepiness. He heads to his lab where he thinks about Captain America and Iron Man telling him about the heavy burden of being leader, then begins smashing up his equipment in frustration. By next issue, he'll be running around as Yellowjacket, claiming he killed Hank Pym.

This is the halfway point of this mini-series, and before we're done, we have the Yellowjacket fiasco, the Super-Adaptoid shows up, a certain section of Wakandan society sends a top assassin after T'Challa for apparently abandoning his duties, and the Wasp tries marrying Yellowjacket to shock Hank out of this. . . whatever you'd call it.

[2nd longbox, 70th comic. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #4, by Joe Casey (writer), Will Rosado (penciler), Tom Palmer (inker), Wil Quintana (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)]

Random Back Issues #24 - Avengers #19

With all these panels of reporters, I thought for a second I wandered into an early issue of Spawn. Captain America and Iron Man being bad at handling the press played up a lot in this run in the early going. I'd think Stark would be better at it, but this was after he wiped the fact he was Iron Man from most people's minds. Without, you know, asking anyone if it was OK for him to fuck with their brains, demonstrating Tony Stark's usual level of consideration for anyone other than himself. Also, got to love the reporters complaining about not enough minority representation, but also, that there are too many stinkin' muties. The Marvel Universe press is just as stupid and useless as our own!

Anyway, we're looking at post-Heroes Return Avengers, by Kurt Busiek and George Perez, and this is the start of what I think is most people's favorite story from that run, Ultron Unlimited.

Ultron himself doesn't appear until the final page, as his forces are busy killing every person in the fictional country of Slorenia, but the wheels are turning. The Big Three Avengers are saved from the very awkward press conference seen above by the Wasp smashing through the window. She brings word that a bunch of robots with a familiar face busted into Hank Pym's lab and abducted him.

Jarvis brings more bad news to the party - although he does it as politely as possible, bless him. Something composed of adamantium is attacking the Wakanda Design Group research lab in Long Island. The Avengers haul butts over there, ready to throw down with Ultron, and find. . . Alkhema?

Sorry, Alkhema-2, the second version of Ultron's second attempt to create a wife, this one with a mind based off Mockingbird's brain patterns. She doesn't like him any better than any of his other attempts to create a family do, but she does like the idea of killing all humans. She just wants to do it one at a time and savor the experience. Which makes me a little uneasy about Mockingbird.

She and the Avengers throw down, which mostly doesn't go well for the heroes. Vision tries his old "increase density to maximum and fall on her" trick, but she just grabs his ankle and throws him into Thor. Firestar tries to heat her up enough to melt something inside, but has to be pushed out of the way of an energy blast by T'Challa at the last second. Scarlet Witch ends up saving the day by using her powers to mess with the "molecular rearranger" that keeps Alkhema and Ultron's adamantium insides from locking up. I thought they were only adamantium on the outside, but OK, sure.

In other developments, Justice and Firestar moved their stuff into the mansion, although Vance's leg is in a cast from him dumbly rushing into battle with a concussion a few issues earlier to help Carol Danvers fend off the Doomsday Man. Kind of sad that Vance wanted to be an Avenger for years, and his stint with the team never really went anywhere, while Firestar really stepped up during the same stretch.

Also, Wanda and Wonder Man visit a restaurant from the area she grew up, and Wanda finds out Vision has been coming there a lot in his civilian identity. I wasn't aware he even had one of those. Wanda thinks this is a little fishy, since Vision had told her he didn't retain any of his memories from when they were married, before he got dismantled and turned emotionless or whatever by John Byrne.

Man, between insisting Wanda and Vision couldn't really have kids, and that Namorita was really a clone of Namora, late-80s Byrne had a real thing about who could and couldn't procreate.

{2nd longbox, 27th comic. Avengers (vol. 3) #19, by Kurt Busiek (writer), George Perez (artist), Al Vey (finisher), Tom Smith (colorist), Wes Abbott (letterer)}