Friday Night Fights--Ultimo Style!!

OK, so you people didn't go for the Golden Age classic fight I presented last week. Fine. I'm not bitter. I mean, really, Spy Smasher in the Roman Colosseum fighting Nazi gladiators and Nazi lions and Leonardo da Vinci's secret weapon to win WWII? What was I thinking (sob)?

So I've recovered from that tragedy, and in a blatant attempt to win back your votes, the week's Friday Night Fights will be Silver Age-arific!!

And what could be more Silver Age-arific than Avengers Annual #1 (1967) by Roy Thomas, Don Heck and George Bell??

In this story, pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger up to this point in time has gathered, as a number of their old villains have mysteriously appeared and are attacking the heck out of places around the world (SPOILER ALERT: It's the Mandarin's master plan). So, in true JLA/JSA style, they split up into smaller teams, each taking on some of the villains: Iron Man, Goliath and the Wasp take on Swordsman and Power Man; Hercules and the Scarlet Witch take on Executioner and Enchantress (and a Frost Giant!); Hawkeye and Thor head to Africa to face the Living Laser...

Hey, that sounds like kind of a mismatch. Didn't Mandarin give the Laser any backup??

OH YEAH!! Ultimo--the evil robotic Kool-Aid Man of the Marvel Universe!! This is kind of out of Hawkeye's weight class, so Thor takes him on alone!!





Uh-oh! Why is this such a problem? Because at this point in history, Thor was stilled plagued by one of Odin's sillier enchantments--if the hammer's out of his grasp for 60 seconds, he reverts to Donald Blake!! Hey, Odin, what the hell was the point of that (except, of course, to provide easy crises and cliffhangers for the writers? I mean, c'mon, that's just Thor's version of yellow, right?).



Told you.

Anyway, Hawkeye bravely distracts Ultimo, and...

So now, Thor is P.O'd. And you don't want to face a ticked off Asgardian, trust me:






Thus endeth the lesson. Even the powerful Spacebooger couldn't have dispatched Ultimo quite so well, eh?

So go vote, people, go vote!! Restore my wounded pride!!