Avengerous Tales 1.9 - Avengers #17-#18

To read Avengerous Tales 1.8, go here! 

You know what this comic has been missing?  Anti-communist propaganda!  Gee, Iron Man sure is going to be disappointed when he learns he missed out on a chance to whale on some commies.

 

So it’s the first adventure for the new Avengers, and literally from the very first panel, it is clear there will be Problems.

 

Only Scarlet Witch seems content with her new position, and that’s just because it’s implied she has a crush on Cap—she helps him stand up against Hawkeye’s impertinence, and later thinks “I shall enjoy being an Avenger” because “Captain America is no weakling.”  Poor Cap has his work cut out for him, I fear.

After some more dawdling beneath Stark Mansion, the plot finally arrives in the form of a giant green robot bursting through the wall.  The Avengers defeat him, but the robot still has enough power left to tell them that the Hulk, who the Avengers have been looking for, is in “the desert.”  Because it’s not like there’s A BAJILLION square miles of desert on Earth alone.  I guess we can infer that he’s somewhere in the American southwest like he’s always been, but that’s still a lot of ground to cover.  Could you narrow it down a weensy bit?

But by now you’re probably wondering what incredibly vague moron sent the robot here in the first place.

 
Uhhh, why is the Mole Man using his secret cameras to spy on Captain America’s butt?  For that matter, how did he get secret cameras into the mansion to begin with?  Maybe one of his subterraneans planted it there during their battle in Issue Eleven.  Good enough for me.

So the Avengers fly off to “the desert” and just happen to stand on the one tiny bit of land where the Mole Man has dug a trap door leading to a giant pit.  Well wasn’t that lucky!  The Avengers stop their fall with the help of a rope attached to one of Hawkeye’s arrows, and they slowly climb their way down to the bottom of the pit.  When they get there, they encounter the Minotaur that the cover promised.

 
You can tell how horrified Quicksilver is by the completely blank expression on his face.

Anyway, the Avengers attempt to battle the Minotaur, but a rockslide separates Quicksilver from the rest of the team.  Quicksilver is captured by the subterraneans and brought before Mole Man, and meanwhile, Wanda develops a bad case of Liefeld feet.

 

Two minutes later, she uses her powers to knock down a wall, which leads them right to Mole Man and Quicksilver, AND she destroys the machine Mole Man was using to hold her brother hostage.  Remind me why she needs the rest of the Avengers again?  She’s clearly more powerful—not to mention better behaved—than anyone else in this comic.

Mole Man, realizing the jig is up, elevates the platform the Avengers just happened to be standing on and sends them back to the surface.  Cap declares that a win and they all go home.  Even though they know exactly where the Mole Man is and could just head back down to fight him some more.

As a debut issue for the new Avengers, Issue Seventeen is pretty weak.  When the original Avengers debuted, they fought off Loki, Thor’s recurring nemesis, and the Hulk, thanks to Loki’s machinations.  And that issue was jam-packed with action.  With Issue Seventeen, the comic drags its feet so that the real plot takes five or six pages to even start, and their first adversary is the flipping Mole Man.  That really isn’t helping the image of these guys as replacement/second-rate Avengers.  Granted, Loki’s defeat wasn’t exactly much to write home about either (except if you were to write “dear ma, this climax was silly”), but at least they DEFEATED him.

Another problem is the Hulk’s “inclusion” in this issue, if you can call it that.  I have no problem with the fact that Mole Man knew the Avengers wanted to find Hulk; there was a news broadcast to that effect at the beginning of the issue.  But throughout the issue, we get short scenes of what the Hulk is actually up to while the Avengers look for him. 

As it turns out, he’s fighting the Leader not far from where the Avengers are fighting Mole Man—which would be interesting if it was leading up to something, but it isn’t.  The Avengers and the Hulk never cross paths, neither party ever finds out about the other’s activities that day, and it never comes up again.  The outcome of the Avengers’ adventure would have been exactly the same if the Mole Man had lured them out to the desert with a promise of ice cream and bouncy castles instead of an enormous green rage monster.  Honestly, the Hulk's inclusion makes it feel like the creators knew the main story was weak and wanted to sucker us into buying the comic with the promise of a crossover that never happened.

Let’s see if Issue Eighteen gets any better.

 

Awww, no one came to Cap’s birthday party. :(

Actually, he’s sad about the lack of “personal life” (I assume he means sex), as well as the fact that Nick Fury hasn’t gotten back to him yet about hiring him to work for the government.

Meanwhile, in a fictional communist country subtly named Sin-cong, we are introduced to a dictator known only as the Commissar, who does all sorts of dictator-y things like demanding exorbitant taxes and threatening to kill anyone who can’t afford to pay them.

 

Yes, thank you for explaining the significance of that shot.  Symbolism works so much better when the narrator feeds it to you like a mama bird feeding her chicks.

Back in the States, Cap is screwing around with the radio (isn’t that Replacement Bucky’s department?) when he hears a message from a group of underground freedom fighters in Sin-cong.  He decides that the Avengers should help liberate that country and, after Hawkeye of all people gives us the requisite speech about liberty and eagles and such, they make the trip to Sin-cong.

Unfortunately for them, the message was faked by the Commissar himself.  It’s part of a plan to lure the Avengers to Sin-cong so he can defeat them in front of his people and prove once and for all that capitalists are big dumb poopyheads.  (Like most dictators, the Commissar has no apparent self-confidence issues whatsoever.)

On to Sin-cong!

 

“Bring out the cheese platters!”

Before long, the Commissar’s men trap the Avengers in a room with steel doors and attack them.  The Avengers fight them off, only for the Scarlet Witch to be captured by that perennial favorite, the Conveniently-Located Trap Door.  When they hear her scream—probably because she’s sick of being captured by trap doors—the Avengers track her to a dungeon, where she has been tied up and blindfolded.  Apparently, being blindfolded means she’s incapable of using her hex powers because of reasons.  Before the guys can rescue her, however, they’re knocked out by sleeping gas.  E for effort, I guess.

When they wake up, the Commissar commands the Avengers to do whatever he tells them to, or else.

 

Wait a minute, are her hands untied?  Was the Commissar actually dumb enough to untie her hands?  Then why doesn’t she just take the blindfold off and use her hex power already?!!  This is stupid!  Maybe this trap would have worked on the Wasp, since the glass is unbreakable and all, but Scarlet Witch has the power to do pretty much anything—she should be able to bust out of there AND rescue her teammates in seconds! 

But noooo, we have to watch the Avengers take on the Commissar one by one, just as he requested.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because Immortus had them do basically the exact same thing eight issues ago.  Except this time it’s not as interesting because instead of fighting different historical figures, they all have to face off against a really tall guy in a “baggy-looking pair of diapers” (thanks for that image, Cap).

On the other hand, unlike Immortus, the Commissar has no intention of playing fair.

 

Either that, or Hawkeye is trying to make himself feel better about getting stomped.

After the three free Avengers are defeated, Captain America insists that the Commissar try his hand against the Scarlet Witch since, no duh, she’s an Avenger too.  Acting on Cap’s instructions, she goes all Wizard of Oz on us and burns away a nearby curtain, behind which is an elaborate control panel.  She then destroys the panel, which in turn destroys the Commissar, who was a robot controlled by a guy named Major Hoy this whole time.  The villagers are freed, Scarlet Witch is hailed as a hero, and Captain America makes a big hammy “FREEDOM!!!” speech for the road.

Issue Eighteen, while an improvement over the previous issue, is still not very good.  What really ticks me off is the fact that Wanda’s role in this comic is that of Toto.  And actually, she’s less useful than Toto, since she couldn’t escape on her own and needed Cap to tell her something funky was going on behind the curtain.  Great.  Most powerful member of the team, and she’s reduced to being a lap dog.  And that’s ignoring their cartoonish portrayal of the Cold War, which is of course typical of the era but hasn’t aged well nonetheless.  If The Avengers decides to ignore the rest of the Cold War, I won’t be disappointed in the slightest.

Oh, wait, Black Widow is going to show up soon.  So much for that hope.

To read Avengerous Tales 1.10, go here! 

Images from Avengers #17 and Avengers #18