Time for a
little back story here, since this is the first time the Black Widow will
appear in an Avengers comic, and the context of her appearance won’t make much
sense if you don’t know about her previous exploits.
Black Widow
debuted in Tales of Suspense #52. She was created by Stan Lee and Don Heck as
yet another “red” adversary for ToS
star Iron Man. After failing multiple
times to bring Stark Industries secrets to her superiors behind the iron (hee)
curtain, she teamed up with budding criminal Hawkeye, who immediately fell in
love with her and agreed to do whatever she wanted, even though he wasn’t a
communist himself. It all went south in Tales of Suspense #60, when Widow’s superiors
have enough of her failing and mooning over Hawkeye and take her back behind
the curtain for “interrogation.”
As we learn in
Avengers #29, Black Widow was taken to “the Orient” where she was
brainwashed to eliminate any “weakening” effects her time among those pansy
capitalists may have had.
Now it’s story time!
Between this issue and the last, the Avengers managed to haul Goliath’s unconscious ten-foot form back to the mansion. He still hasn’t woken up, though, so they call in a doctor—an old army acquaintance of Cap’s named Carlson. The prognosis isn’t the best: Goliath will live, but if he ever tries to change sizes again, even to get back to normal, it could kill him. Hank doesn’t take the news very well and disappears into the night to be sad by himself. Awww.
And as if we
didn’t have enough problems…
While Black
Widow and the Swordsman plot revenge against the Avengers, Cap hears through
the government grapevine that Black Widow is once again in the U.S. Hawkeye is super-psyched to hear Black Widow
is alive and runs off to greet her, ignoring Cap’s warning that she’s probably
been brainwashed. Captain America
assigns the Wasp to secretly follow the idiot to make sure that his metaphorically losing his head won’t
result in his literally losing it.
Hawkeye heads
out to the mansion Black Widow once used as a headquarters, and what do you
know, there she is. Of course, she’s not
exactly alone…
After refusing
to join Black Widow’s new club, Hawkeye attacks, and one of the Swordsman’s
lines—where he describes Hawkeye as “an apt pupil”—flies in the face of what we
were told in his first appearance, where he didn’t seem to recognize Hawkeye as
his former protégé at all. Oh well. I guess he’s had time to think it over since
then?
Instead of
helping Hawkeye fight, Wasp flies off to get some men the other Avengers
to come help instead. She doesn’t make
it. Want to know why she doesn’t make
it? I’ll show you why she
doesn’t make it.
Oh, and it gets better. When she grows to full size and sits on a branch to rest, the branch BREAKS, and she falls to the ground and gets knocked unconscious. Nothing but thrills, thrills, and more thrills with the wonderful Wasp!
While Wasp is
napping, the Swordsman and Power Man beat her to Avengers Mansion, where they
take Cap by surprise and throw him in a dungeon someplace. He uses his “communi-crystal” (I don’t know
either—it’s never been mentioned before) to call Quicksilver and the Scarlet
Witch for help. They use the fancy
equipment in their Stark-gifted car to track Cap’s radio signal.
When they get to
Black Widow’s mansion, Quicksilver runs ahead of his sister and promptly gets
himself captured. Scarlet Witch,
wondering what happened to him, goes to investigate and gets captured,
too. Teamwork!
While this is
going on, Jan finally arrives at the mansion, only to find it trashed from
Cap’s earlier battle. Fortunately, Cap’s
radio message—or some sort of message; it’s never specified what exactly it is—was
recorded on some gadget or other for Jan to listen to.
But the blanket
SOS signal Jan sends out does apparently reach Goliath, who storms Black
Widow’s hideout. Wasp does eventually
get her butt in gear and frees the Avengers, and it’s a free-for-all that ends rather
badly for the Black Widow, Power Man, and the Swordsman. They do manage to escape, though. Mostly because Widow places herself between
Hawkeye and her cronies, and Hawkeye can’t bring himself to take the shot.
But still, they
beat them, right? Victory! Let’s party!
Issue Thirty
begins with the revelation that the Scarlet Witch wants to leave the Avengers
because of her weakening hex power.
Quicksilver reveals that his powers have also been diminishing, which has never been mentioned before, ever. They hypothesize that they got said powers
from something in their home country, and living so far away from it is the
reason why they’ve been weakening.
Obviously this
doesn’t make much sense from a modern perspective, since we know mutants are
born not made, but the source of such mutations was a bit fuzzier back
then. Initially, Marvel said all mutants
came about due to their parents’ exposure to radioactive fallout. With that in mind, I guess it makes a little
more sense that certain mutant powers could theoretically be linked to whatever
radioactive source created them in the first place. Not a lot
more sense, but a little.
Long story
short, they decide to go back to Europe.
Captain America, who was apparently eavesdropping on them (listening in
on private conversations—the American way!), wishes them the best of luck. He also reassures them that the team won’t
suffer in their absence, since they have Goliath around to make up the
difference.
Uh, did you
actually ask Hank if he wants to
rejoin the Avengers full-time, or are you assuming that he’ll have no choice
because what else is a ten-foot dude going to do besides fight crime or learn
how to play basketball?
By a staggering
coincidence, Hank happens to notice a newspaper article about his old college
professor, Dr. Anton. By an even more
staggering coincidence, Anton has been working on “artificial growth of body
cells,” so Hank hops on a rocket-powered scooter—he calls it an air car, but it
looks suspiciously like a scooter to me—and races off to Dr. Anton’s lab in
that super-specific location we all know and love, South America! I wonder if he’ll run into Baron Zemo down
there. And don’t tell me Zemo’s dead, we
all know that’s not true.
But let’s not
forget our villains: the Black Widow, the Swordsman, and Power Man. We get a page and a bit of padding when the
two men duke it out over whose company the Widow prefers. You could just ask her, you dunces, and doesn’t the Swordsman have a crush on
Scarlet Witch?
We rejoin the
Avengers just in time to see them split up in search of Black Widow and
company.
When Wasp tells
the others, Hawkeye requests that he handle this mission alone, since he’s the
one who loused up last time, and Cap lets him.
But the Avengers
aren’t the only ones on the hunt: Goliath has just arrived in SOUTH AMERICA to
see Dr. Anton, but things are never that simple where the Avengers are
concerned. Anton appears to be missing,
and Goliath is quickly jumped by a bunch of guys in funny costumes. Yeah, I know, not real specific, but neither
are their costumes.
Now we rejoin
Hawkeye, who goes all Batman on Black Widow’s skylight and, in a sudden fit of
character arc, declares he must prove himself the Swordsman’s better once and
for all. Not even the Black Widow’s wiles
can distract him this time… mostly because he only has to fight her for a short
while before the brainwashing magically wears off and she saves him from Power
Man’s bear hug. I don’t think
brainwashing works that way, but who cares!
The erstwhile lovers have a chance again!
Hawkeye
managed to beat up the Swordsman pretty well, though, so I guess that arc is
over.
Back in South
America, we join Dr. Anton and his captors, who are part of a hidden society
dedicated to protecting an everlasting Flame of Life they hold sacred.
Back in Avengers
Mansion, the Wasp sees a news broadcast reporting on the disappearance of Dr.
Anton. She recognizes the fancy scooter
as their missing air car, and she and Cap resolve to fly down to South America
and find Goliath immediately. We end
with one final look at the Keeper, who swears vengeance on both Prince Rey and
Goliath for daring to exist.
The portrayal of
Jan annoys me as much as ever, but we’re finally getting some personal
conflicts that don’t involve someone being a jerk (Wanda and Pietro’s power
fluxes; Hank’s height headaches), so it’ll be nice to see that develop. I mean, I’m still not happy about Wanda being
downgraded even if there is a “good reason” for it, and that’s assuming this
was planned out from the start and not just thrown in after the fact. But as long as Hawkeye keeps up his newfound
goodwill towards his teammates, I’ll deal.
(Like I have a choice.) And I am
curious if we’re ever going to see a resolution to Cap’s unhappiness about his
personal life and lack of employment. He
was really upset about that for a while, but I don’t think it’s been mentioned
since the Swordsman’s debut. If it was just a plot device to make him write the
letter to Fury and move the Swordsman’s plan along, I’ll be disappointed.
As for the plots
in today’s issues, Black Widow’s plans seem oddly reminiscent of the Masters of
Evil, what with the whole “powerful female villain teams up with two male villains
to defeat the Avengers” thing. They even
have similar dynamics with their adversaries: whereas Enchantress and
Executioner are closely associated with Thor (and Amora is in love with him),
Black Widow and the Swordsman are closely associated with Hawkeye (and Natasha
is in love with him). Heck, Power Man is
basically Wonder Man with fewer scruples.
These new Avengers seem to spend a lot of time covering
ground already broken by the old Avengers.
Marvel can’t be running out of ideas for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
already, can they?
Images from Avengers #29 and Avengers #30
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