Avengerous Tales 1.14 - Avengers #27-#28

To read Avengerous Tales 1.13, go here!

 

As I’m sure you’re beginning to realize, Hank Pym changes his nom du guerre more often than P. Diddy.  Or Diddy, or Sean Combs, or whatever the heck he’s calling himself right now, I don’t know anything about rap.  You get my point.

The subliminal recall-inducer does its job, and Hawkeye suddenly remember how to operate Tony Stark’s fancy answering machine.  But his hawk-sense is tingling, and he suddenly realizes he’s not alone in the mansion.

 

Actually, it’s on page nine.  Page one is How to Keep Monologuing While Being Punched in the Face.

Our baddie is the Beetle, by the by.  Hawkeye doesn’t have time for his shenanigans and is quick to tie him up, knock him out, read the Avengers’ message, and dash out the door to join his team.

Speaking of the team, Wanda accidentally created a giant hole in Attuma’s sub, causing the place to flood, so now they have to fight a bunch of Atlanteans underwater.  So much for a fair fight…

Quicksilver gets knocked out and floats to the surface, where Hawkeye saves him before the air in his helmet expires and he drowns.  By the time they get back to where the sub was, however, it’s disappeared.  (Gee, it’s almost like a submarine is a moving object or something.) They’re reduced to following an Atlantean patrol car in the hopes it’ll lead them to Attuma.

And then this happens.

 

How many tentacles does that thing have?

Thanks to some quick(silver) maneuvers, they manage to evade the squid, but the patrol cars following them can’t move as fast and become squid food.  But how will the Avengers find Attuma if they don’t have any patrol cars to follow?  Well, by a colossal coincidence, their misadventure just happens to have led them to Attuma’s sub.  Good work, fellas!

Inside the sub, the captive Cap goads Attuma by accusing him of lying about having a tide-rising machine.  Attuma, being the idiot we know he is, immediately takes Captain America and the Scarlet Witch to the control room, where a viewscreen displays the machine.

Back with our would-be rescuers, they manage to crash through the glass of Attuma’s sub, flooding another compartment.  “But,” Hawkeye objects two seconds too late, “if you flood the place, what’ll happen to Cap and Wanda?”

 

Wow, you guys really stink at this rescuing business.  If it wasn’t for sheer luck, every one of you guys would be dead.  But please, tell me again how Cap is to blame for all your failures, and how “frail-looking” Scarlet Witch is the “weakest” link on the team.

But they are good at one thing: creating a distraction.  While Attuma yells about how he’ll murder everybody, Captain America and Scarlet Witch free themselves and join their other, less useful teammates.  Wanda commandeers one of Attuma’s hi-tech tanks (that is, a military-type tank, not a water tank) and sends Attuma and all his soldiers swimming away.  When Attuma attempts one last offensive by turning the flood-tide machine on overdrive, he discovers that Cap rigged it to explode, destroying the entire sub.  Wanton death and destruction!  Wheeee!

Back at the Mansion...

 

Nice going, Hawkeye.

The alarm is actually signaling that the Avengers have a message, but judging by the gigantic WHEEEEEE sound, that seems a little excessive, like programming your microwave to play an air raid siren when your nachos are done.

Issue Twenty-Eight reveals to us the nature of the message: Hank Pym has sacrificed his secret identity in order to call the Avengers from his research ship because Wasp, who escaped from Attuma a couple of issues ago, hasn’t returned to him yet.  Cap sends Hawkeye out to bring Giant-Man back in one of the Avengers’ rocket cars.  Wait, they have rocket cars now?

 

Buzz off, Hawkeye, we all know Cap would never cheat on Iron Man.

Just as Hawkeye arrives with Hank, they receive a call from Jan’s kidnapper, a fellow who calls himself the Collector and takes his hobby waaaay too seriously.  He demands the Avengers come to his house to play if they want to see Jan again, and while Hank wants to leave immediately, the others aren’t even sure he IS Giant-Man and demand a demonstration.  There’s just one giant problem.

 

Unlike before, where Hank could alter his size as much and as often as he liked, he can now only grow to twenty-five feet, and he has to stay that way for fifteen minutes—no more, no less—to give his body a rest before he shrinks to normal height.  For Jan’s sake, he agrees to take the risk, and he even gets a new costume courtesy of the Scarlet Witch, who just happened to have made a costume for him “in case” he ever returned.  Because that’s sure what I’d do in my spare time if I were her: sew costumes for people I hardly know.

Hank renames himself Goliath because even he thinks Giant-Man sounds stupid and they welcome him back with open arms.  Well, except Hawkeye, who mopes because he thinks Hank’s return will make it harder for him to become team leader.  Because screw Jan, clearly Hawkeye’s team status is totally the priority here!

The Collector’s hideout is a castle in a mountain someplace, and it takes the team about five minutes before they’re all captured.  Collector, however, is upset because he doesn’t see Giant-Man among them, and of course he won’t have a complete set without both Wasp AND Giant-Man.

At the mention of his girlfriend, Goliath goes nuts and grows big and strong enough to break his teammates’ restraints, but the Collector just hits him with a boulder and flees.

 

Uh, he’s only had the name Goliath for an hour.  And it’s legend because it’s in the Bible.

Goliath is too big to maneuver inside the castle very well, so the other Avengers race ahead.  They quickly encounter the Beetle, an unwilling part of Collector’s collection thanks to an obedience pill he was given, and a fight breaks out on the stone steps of the castle basement.

While this is going on, Goliath has encountered the Collector, who hurls all sorts of strange weapons at him, like a crystal ball with mind-numbing powers, and the magic beans from Jack and the Beanstalk which somehow grow giants now instead of plant life (?!).

 
And apparently they’re neo-Nazi giants.  Even better.

Goliath makes short work of all of them, thanks to some timely help from Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch (Quicksilver and Cap are unconscious).  He threatens the Collector some more, and the Collector finally reveals what he did with the Wasp: he stuck her in a vial and has been keeping her in his pocket the whole time.  That must have been fun.

The Collector refuses to hand her over, but Quicksilver fortunately wakes up in time to snatch her back at super-speed.  Knowing when he’s been beaten, the Collector takes Beetle and uses another part of his collection, a time machine, to disappear.  Insert standard “if he has a time machine, why can’t he learn from his mistakes, travel back to the moment the battle began, and do it right this time” argument.

The Avengers free Jan, but when Hank tries to shrink to normal size, he realizes the strain of being twenty-five feet for so long has drained him.  He gets stuck at ten feet before passing out.

 
JESUS, could you be any less tactful?!! 

 

You know what, it’s about time I came right out and said it: Hawkeye is an asshole.  He spouts some good one-liners when he fights, but the second he talks to anybody else, he is an arrogant, selfish, insufferable prick.  He had multiple opportunities to learn his lesson and shot exploding arrows at every single one, without exception.  I do not like Hawkeye.  As of this moment, Hawkeye is my least favorite Avenger of all time.  Even the Swordsman was a better Avenger—at least he saved them once without griping.  You know that anti-bullying PSA Marvel did where all the Avengers pick on Hawkeye?  I don’t think they were bullying him so much as they were reacting to Hawkeye picking yet another a fight.  And even if they were bullying him, he 100% deserved it.

Aside from Hawkeye, these issues were pretty good.  I could do without Wasp getting kidnapped a million times, but I like the Collector.  Plus, I’m curious how long Hank will keep the codename Goliath before he gets bored and changes it again.  Taking bets now!

To read Avengerous Tales 1.15, go here!

Images from Avengers #27 and Avengers #28