Avengerous Tales 1.7 - Avengers #13-#14

To read Avengerous Tales 1.6, go here! 

In which Europeans are melodramatic and evil, war-like aliens are easily intimidated by shouting, and the Wasp is useless.  So it’s Tuesday, then.

We begin with the Avengers foiling a robbery.  Unbeknownst to them, the robbers are actually members of a crime organization known as the Maggia, who for some reason are unappreciative of the Avengers’ efforts to clean up the city.  Especially ungrateful is the man in charge of the Maggia, Count Nefaria, who punishes his underlings accordingly.

 

“Anything but a Will & Grace marathon!!  Nooooo!”

Actually he just banishes the guy from the Maggia, which seems super lenient given the absolute over-the-top insanity that is his scheme to eliminate the Avengers: he ships his ENTIRE CASTLE from Europe to New Jersey JUST so he can open it to the public, donate the proceeds to charity, and invite the Avengers to attend the opening so he can trap them.  WOW.

Why did he need to move his castle for this?  Do Europeans not like donating to charity?  Do Europeans not like the Avengers?  Does he think the Avengers are scared of oceans and wouldn’t fly all the way out for an identical charity event in Europe?  I admire his dedication to elaborate plans of vengeance, but was spending an “incalculable” amount of his own money and moving to a whole new continent really the only plan he could think of?  No wonder your crime syndicate is in trouble!

Oh, and on top of all that, he has special lights installed in some of the castle’s rooms, so when the Avengers show up, he can basically freeze them in place, create 3D replicas, and send the replicas to the Pentagon to, uh… do this.

 

Again, this plan just boggles my mind.  All this just to stop the Avengers from interfering with your fur robberies?  What would he have done if the Avengers were busy that day and couldn’t make it to the castle opening?

The U.S. refuses to comply with the Faux-vengers’ demands, and war is declared.  Eventually, after the Pentagon has made the declaration of war, issued wanted posters, and come up with a plan of attack, and after newspapers carrying the story have been written, printed and distributed, the Teen Brigade—which was instructed to wait outside the castle—FINALLY begins to suspect that something is wrong.  How long have they been standing there, exactly?

The Teen Brigade infiltrates Nefaria’s castle and rather quickly happens upon the room from which Nefaria has been controlling everything.  Instead of demanding they pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, Nefaria sics some of his goons on them and throws them in a dungeon.  (What, you didn’t think Nefaria would skimp on such standard castle fair as a dungeon, did you?)

While this is going on, Nefaria sends the Avengers on their way, claiming the charity event has been postponed and the Teen Brigade wandered off, which they find odd but not incriminating.  The Avengers get about ten feet away before the army spots them and starts firing.  First, how did they find the Avengers so fast?  Were they staking out the castle?  Second, why are you shooting regular bullets at the Avengers?  One is a god, another has metal armor, another has a bulletproof shield, and two can shrink down to insect size.  What good are bullets going to do?

 

Stop flirting and retreat already, Tony.  You’re getting as bad as Jan.

The Avengers retreat to their heretofore unmentioned emergency headquarters, where they learn from the media that they’re wanted for treason.  They begin to suspect that Count Nefaria had something to do with all this, because apparently his name wasn’t enough of a tip-off.

Speaking of the castle, Replacement Bucky has put together a tiny transmitter he just happened to have in his pocket.  Apparently Nefaria’s men didn’t both to make sure their pockets were empty.

…Why wouldn’t Nefaria have his henchmen search their pockets?  He was willing to go through this whole ridiculously elaborate plan just to eliminate the Avengers but hey, can’t frisk the prisoners, that’d be RUDE.

Not that it matters, since Iron Man’s receiver was damaged in the earlier fight.  Nefaria, however, can hear them just fine.

 

AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?

Nefaria puts them all in a super-elaborate death trap, and then traps the returning Avengers with some sort of paralyzing gas that covers the entire castle and the grounds surrounding it.  I really don’t know anymore.  Only Cap gets through, rescuing the Teen Brigade and instructing them to take the antidote to the paralyzing gas—which Nefaria helpfully left in the same room as the Teen Brigade—to the other Avengers while he goes after the crooked count.  Everyone succeeds in their appointed tasks, and yet…

 

Replacement Bucky’s math is a little off.  It was only a one in a million shot for a male hero.  For females, the odds go up to about one in ten.

Issue Fourteen starts with the Avengers rushing the Wasp to a hospital, where the doctors announce she has forty-eight hours before her lungs collapse.  BUT WAIT—there is ONE doctor in the world who might be able to save her!  Just so happens there’s a Norwegian doctor who just so happens to be an expert on the human lung.  Thor obligingly flies to Norway to kidnap the good Dr. Svenson, but…

 

Betcha didn’t see that one coming.

Without his mask/breathing apparatus, the alien drops dead (!!!) before he can tell them where the real Dr. Svenson is being held.  With no other recourse, the Avengers split up to use their individual talents to track down the aliens.  They all reach the same conclusion: they can detect no alien life in any civilized area of Earth.  That leaves the North and South Poles, and since Thor’s hammer apparently has its own spider sense, they quickly determine they must head north.

 

“Instead, let’s gossip about him when he’s within hearing range.  Clearly mentioning the potential imminent demise of his girlfriend in his presence will be good for him.  Also, what the heck are those giant pink spheres floating above the ocean over there?  Should we investigate that?  Anybody?”

The Avengers minus Wasp arrive at the North Pole, only to end up falling down a deep pit hidden by the snow.  Fortunately, Giant-Man can grow giant to minimize damage from his fall, Thor can fly, and Iron Man grabs hold of Cap so he doesn’t get turned into a red white and blue pizza on the ice below.

 

Uh, I think you can stop holding hands now… I mean unless you don’t want to stop holding hands.  That’s cool.

Anyway, that pit they fell down is sadly not Santa’s workshop, unless Santa has started hiring little pink aliens because they’re willing to work cheaper than elves.  And unless he gave the aliens guns which, if you’ve seen A Christmas Story, seems highly unlikely.

The aliens use their ice guns to paralyze the Avengers while leaving their sense of hearing intact.  All the better for the evil alien overlord to monologue at them, my dear.  Long story short, the aliens, called Kallusians, sought refuge on Earth from a war against another planet.  Upon discovering Earth’s atmosphere was poison to them, they kidnapped Dr. Svenson to create permanent breathing apparatuses for them and sent one of their own to replace Svenson so no one would know he’d gone missing.  And they aren’t feeling particularly inclined to give him back any time soon.

At this point, Thor decides he’s heard enough and reveals he was faking being frozen the whole time.  He manages to get them to release the other Avengers, but then the Kallusians remember that, oh yeah, they outnumber the Avengers 1000-to-4 and have guns.  Cue fight scene!

Well, most of the Avengers fight.  Iron Man just does parlor tricks.

 

I’d make a joke about how he’s trying to impress Captain America, but I think I’ve already surpassed my daily allowance of Stony jokes.

Dr. Svenson shows up and threatens to stop working for the aliens if they don’t stop picking on the Avengers.  Svenson, as it turns out, has been voluntarily helping the aliens in exchange for them not destroying Earth (which really doesn’t sound very voluntary, but whatever).  Meanwhile, the Kallusians’ enemies have finally tracked them down, and while the Kallusians are perfectly happy to break their word to Svenson and restart the war right here on planet Earth, the Avengers have a little something to say about that.  Thor even introduces a new catchphrase to get the point across.

 

And apparently that was so terrifying that the Kallusians relent, send the Avengers and Svenson back to New York, and leave Earth to face their foe in space.  Well.  That was easy.  And you can probably guess the rest: Svenson saves the Wasp, and the Kallusians take off to greet the enemy in a battle the rest of us will never know about unless later comics decide/will decide to pick up the story.  If they did, I haven’t seen it, so write your own ending.

These two issues are definitely an improvement over the last two, even if Count Nefaria is simultaneously too smart and too stupid for his own good.  Heck, after the Avengers defeat him, he starts blubbering about how “the Maggia punishes failure” even though HE is the head of the Maggia.  Is he such a stickler for rules that he’s going to punish himself?  I really don’t understand this guy at all.

As for Issue Fourteen, you can just insert your own rant about how Jan is useless here.  The least they could have done was shown her getting shot, if only to prove she actually fights and does heroic stuff on occasion, but nope.  We don’t even get to see her heroic sacrifice, just the outcome of it when she has been reduced to an unconscious damsel-in-distress.  On a more positive note, the layouts for this issue were done by Jack Kirby, and it really does shine through in some panels, even if it’s still Don Heck doing the drawing.  We’ll get some more of this duo—and a whole lot more—in the next review.

To read Avengerous Tales 1.8, go here!

Images from Avengers #13 and Avengers #14