To read Avengerous Tales 1.9, go here!
Today’s tale
begins not with The Avengers but with
Strange Tales, which at the time
featured stories about Dr. Strange (you probably could have guessed that) and,
more importantly for our purposes, about White Nick Fury.
In Strange Tales #135, a historic event
occurred: Nick Fury was put in charge of SHIELD. SHIELD’s nemesis, Hydra, wasn’t too crazy
about that and put out a hit on Fury, who spent most of #135-#136 running around in flying cars and stuff trying to defeat
them.
Yes, this is
relevant, I promise. Head behind the cut
to find out how! (Was that shameless
enough?)
Today’s tale begins with a guy calling himself Swordsman breaking into Avengers Mansion. AGAIN. Does Tony Stark just have a thing against locks?
Quicksilver and
Scarlet Witch are quick to defeat the Swordsman, who then insists he was
following the Hawkeye method of introductions and “testing” the Avengers to see
if they were good enough for him to join them.
Aaaand then he proceeds to knock Quicksilver on his butt. Geez, even Hawkeye knew when to give it a rest.
As soon as Wanda
knocks him out, Captain America shows up (oh, sure, now that the danger is
past, you come running). He looks up the
Swordsman and discovers that he is a dangerous European criminal. The time he spent Googling, however, could
probably have been better spent cuffing the Swordsman, who soon wakes up and
turns off the lights, enabling him to escape.
While Scarlet
Witch and Quicksilver go after the intruder, Captain America slinks off to mope
about how Nick Fury hasn’t written him in ages and why doesn’t he call and what if he doesn’t like me anymore??? Then Hawkeye shows up and is horrified to
hear of the Swordsman’s appearance because, as it turns out, they used to know
each other.
It’s SECRET
ORIGIN TIME!!
Long story
short, Clint was an orphan who was taken in by the Swordsman, a circus
performer, and trained by him to become an archer. One day, he discovers the Swordsman stole
money from the circus—hence the scene above—and that basically sours their
relationship forever. And by that I mean
the Swordsman tries to kill Clint, assumes he succeeded, and leaves him for
dead. And I thought Batman was a tough
father figure. Although this does
explain where Hawkeye got the bright idea to “audition” for the Avengers by
breaking into their house.
Meanwhile, my
synopsis of Strange Tales finally
comes in handy as we see several Hydra agents spying on Nick Fury’s
office. It’s empty, of course, because
Fury is out getting firebombed, but he conveniently left the letter in which Captain America asks for a job, unopened, on his desk.
The Hydra goons read the letter but get upset when it doesn’t contain
any greeting cards with puppies on them and throw it into the street.
The letter is
found by a nameless two-bit crook, who tries to sell it to the Swordsman for a
thousand dollars. The Swordsman promises
to pay up… AFTER he’s used the letter to capture Captain America. Something’s telling me the poor sap’s gonna
be waiting for a really long time.
Speaking of Cap.
Cap happily
ditches the Avengers like a fifth grader who just found some cooler kids to
hang out with. But as we already know,
Fury’s response was faked. Hawkeye soon learns that when he busts a couple of
robbers, one of whom happens to be the opportunistic schmuck from earlier. Hawkeye, still bitter about Cap running off,
debates whether he should act on this information.
The Swordsman,
meanwhile, lures Cap to a warehouse and tries to fight him. It takes him about a page to realize this was
a bad idea. An unlucky incident with a
hydraulic lift knocks Cap unconscious, and the Swordsman takes him to the roof.
But the Avengers
are hardly slackers—they’ve used a tracking device in Cap’s belt to locate him
and speed to the rescue. By the time
they get there, the Swordsman has Cap at swordpoint at the end of a board on
top of a construction site. His
demands? Make him the Avengers’ new
leader or watch Cap fall to his death.
To save the team
from making such a decision, Cap takes the initiative and leaps from the roof. That’s the end of the issue, so technically
it’s a cliffhanger, but I’ve still got room to review one more comic in this
post, so there goes the suspense. I’m
sure none of you could have predicted that the Avengers would use their powers
to slow Cap’s fall until he could save himself.
Us readers don’t
have to wait that long, though. As it
turns out, Swordsman has been abducted by someone who rather forcefully offers
to upgrade the Swordsman’s sword so that he might actually stand a chance against the
Avengers. Swordsman isn’t exactly
thrilled, but hey, whatcha gonna do?
Okay look, I
know the Mandarin is supposed to be “““Iron Man’s Greatest Nemesis””” or whatever,
but I don’t see the appeal. He’s just
another jerk looking to TAKE OVER THE WORLD, and the only thing that makes him
unique is the power rings, which are kinda cool but nowhere near enough to
overcome the character’s hideously racist overtones. I guess if I’d grown up reading the old
comics or watching that hilariously awful ‘90s Iron Man cartoon (in which Mandy
is depicted as a literal hobgoblin, which is clearly okay because it’s not like the U.S. has a history of drawing
Asians as subhuman or anything), I’d be able to put on the nostalgia
goggles and deal. But I didn’t, so I
can’t, so you get to read this long rant about why the Mandarin should have
been permanently killed off decades ago.
Ahem.
The Avengers,
meanwhile, have completely forgotten that they’re supposed to be looking for
the Swordsman and bicker amongst themselves over who should lead the team. The only things Hawkeye and Quicksilver can
agree on is that Captain America stinks at his job and that they hate each
other.
Out of the blue,
Iron Man shows up, insisting that they’ve all misunderstood poor woobie
Swordsman because he himself sent the guy to join the Avengers. Obviously, this isn’t the real Iron
Man—rather, it’s an image projected by the “oriental oddball” (ACTUAL QUOTE) and
his reluctant stabby sidekick. But the
Avengers buy it, at least enough to let Swordsman onto the team.
And of course,
the second the Avengers’ backs are turns, he plants a bomb that the Mandarin
will set off from the safety of his castle hideaway. He has one regret, however, and that is that
the Scarlet Witch is “too beautiful” to be harmed. Geez, she might as well be a statue from the
way he’s talking about her. What is
this, The Swan Princess?
“THANK YOU BUT WHAT ELSE?”
“WHAT ELSE IS THERE?”
At least the
Swordsman is a villain, so he has an excuse for being a clueless jerk.
But the Mandarin
cares not for Swordsman’s obsessions and visits him in the night like the
Ghost of Christmas Racist to say that he will be exploding the bomb tonight. The Swordsman, much like Wonder Man before
him, has an abrupt change of heart and detaches the bomb from the control
panel, which apparently means it can no longer be detonated for some
reason. Unfortunately for him, just as
he's completing his good deed, he is busted by Captain America.
The Avengers attack,
but thanks to his Mandarin-modified sword, the Swordsman escapes into the
night. (All the best products are made
in China. *slaps self*) However, the
minute he’s out the door, the bomb the Swordsman is still holding is detonated
by the Mandarin… even though the Swordsman JUST SAID detaching the bomb from the
control panel meant it COULDN’T be detonated.
And if the Mandarin could have blown it up the whole time, why didn’t he
do it five minutes earlier? Then
Swordsman and the Avengers would all be dead, just like he wanted.
But of course,
the Swordsman managed to get rid of the bomb just in time (he’s Batman?). He laments that he is now enemies with both the Avengers AND the Mandarin.
I’m not really
sure what to make of these issues. The
Swordsman is clearly not a nice dude, but… was his desire to join the Avengers
sincere? Before teaming up with Mandy,
he doesn’t appear to have had any other motivation for trying to join Earth’s
Mightiest Heroes besides genuinely wanting to be a hero. But if that’s the
case, we never get any explanation for why the Swordsman would want to turn
over a new leaf after trying to murder young Clint and terrorizing Europe, and he
clearly wasn’t ready to reform if his first reaction to being rejected was to
put out a hit on Captain America.
Also, I don’t
see the purpose of having the Swordsman be a figure from Hawkeye’s past. After Hawkeye explains the situation to Cap,
it’s never brought up again—there’s no indication that the Swordsman even
recognizes his former protégé. I doubt
it was used as an excuse to make Hawkeye belligerent towards his new team
member. He’s already belligerent towards
everybody else for no reason.
Maybe it comes
up again later, though. Guess we’ll have
to wait and see.
To read Avengerous Tales 1.11, go here!
Images from Avengers #19 and Avengers #20
No comments:
Post a Comment