Avengerous Tales 1.16 - Avengers #31-#32

To read Avengerous Tales 1.15, go here! 

And now, we return to the Forbidden Land, featuring inhabitants so magical that they can speak Standard English despite being hidden in the wilds of South America for hundreds of years.  Ooooooh… *wiggles fingers*

***The second half of this review contains depictions and discussion of racism and racially motivated violence.  If you'd prefer to skip that, stop reading at "now we can get to issue thirty-two."

As the remaining Avengers—Captain America, Wasp, and Hawkeye—gear up to rescue Goliath, ol’ High Pockets is busy fighting off the Keeper’s men with his new buddy Prince Rey.  The fight doesn’t last long, though—it’s hard to fight against a ten-foot man specifically trained to smack you down—and Rey takes Goliath to meet his fellow members of the resistance.

 

 

It’s like I’ve always said: tall people cannot be trusted and are to be shunned from polite society and/or long-lost South American civilizations FOREVER.

Rey explains that the Flame of Life is fueled with a dangerous substance called cobalt, and the current Keeper of the Flame has been increasing the amount of cobalt in order to increase his own power, or some nonsense like that.  He also says that the inhabitants of the Forbidden Land are descendants of the Inca, who fled underground to escape the conquering Spanish.  Which would be a cool story except… um…

 

 

A pale, blond, blue-eyed Inca.  YEAH, OKAY.  Also, if they’re descended from the Inca, where the heck are the women?  I haven’t seen a single one in this comic or the previous one.  You can’t descend from anybody if it’s an all-male society, guys.

As Rey talks, Goliath realizes that the exiled prince doesn’t want to defeat the Keeper to prevent the Flame from destroying the planet, but to reclaim the Flame’s power for himself.  He then runs off to destroy the Flame before it can blow up the planet. 

Riiiiiight…

Okay, I’m gonna try to talk science at you for a minute here.  If I get anything wrong, please do use the comment box.  I’m getting most of this off Wikipedia anyway.

First off, cobalt is crazy-flammable, so yes, you could probably make a giant bonfire out of it.  However, elements aren’t monoliths.  For instance, there are many different isotopes of cobalt, including cobalt-59 and cobalt-60.  Cobalt-59 is the only naturally occurring kind of cobalt and is considered stable, meaning it doesn’t give off any radioactivity.  Cobalt-60 is radioactive and has been used in science fiction to make bombs (Journey into Mystery #86, for instance). 

However, cobalt-60 is not a naturally occurring element, so unless the Forbidden Land has a nuclear reactor hidden behind the fridge, there is no way they’re throwing anything but cobalt-59, a.k.a. the non-radioactive stuff, on their fire.  Using cobalt-59 would still be a bad idea, but the Flame isn’t that big.  Even if it did get out of control, it seems pretty well-contained in a series of caves in the middle of nowhere, so I think the world would be fine.  I think what’s happening here is that Goliath is confusing cobalt-59 with cobalt-60, which when treated properly, would theoretically cause a major nuclear explosion, severe nuclear fall-out, etc.

And actually, from what I understand, cobalt-60 is not a nice chemical to be exposed to (the fact that it’s radioactive should have been a hint), so even if these guys have been worshipping cobalt-60 fire for centuries, they should have developed a truckload of health problems that will kill them or turn them into Inca-redible Hulks before long anyway.  Or maybe they evolved so that cobalt isn’t hazardous to them, I don’t know.

TL;DR Goliath is making the right decision by going to douse the fire, but not for the reasons he thinks.

Now that I’ve succeeded in making my own head hurt, let’s get back to the story, where the Avengers have tracked down their missing air car.

That looks exactly NOTHING like the vehicle Goliath used last issue.

 

Either they’ve landed in an alternate universe, or Tony Stark invented a shapeshifting vehicle just to mess with people.  Both options seem plausible.

As you would expect, the police are swarming Anton’s house, but they of course know nothing and the Avengers are left to continue to hunt alone.  They find the Forbidden Land just as Goliath is getting his butt kicked by the Keeper.

 

They aren’t particularly helpful.

Except, oddly enough, for the Wasp, who unblocks the door that was preventing Prince Rey and his followers from storming the Keeper’s control room.  (Apparently the Keeper shut them out at some point?)  It took a while, but I finally get to say… GO JAN!

But there’s still one loose end: the Flame itself, which is burning out of control.  How to defeat it?  Well, you could always smother the explosion of the Flame with an even bigger explosion.  I guess.  Or something.  Is this like how firefighters will sometimes set smaller fires to eat up the flammable material around a forest fire so that the forest fire will burn itself out?  Look, I already did a long science rant today, just go with it.

So the Flame is out, the Keeper and the prince have nothing to fight about now that the Avengers have destroyed the entire basis of their civilization, and Dr. Anton doesn’t have the slightest idea how to shrink Goliath.  Fine.  Now we can get to Issue Thirty-Two.  I’ve been waiting to rip this sucker apart for MONTHS.

 

We start with Captain America attempting to turn his role as team leader over to Goliath, who has seniority over him, but Goliath is still brooding about being a real-life version of Mickey Rooney from that Twilight Zone episode.  Instead of offering the role of leader to the Wasp, who has been an Avenger for just as long as Goliath has, Cap decides he’s going to devote himself to helping Hank feel better.

 

Oh, did I say “helping Hank feel better”?  I meant “attacking Hank for being depressed about his recently-diagnosed terminal medical condition.”  Just to remind you, this is Captain America, who needed six issues before moving on from Bucky’s death, throwing his shield at Goliath for still mourning the end of his life as he knew it a mere three issues after the diagnosis.  I guess his sense of empathy was whipped out of him in the army.

Granted, this was all part of a ploy to get Hank to stop feeling sorry for himself, but surely there was a better way to do that than making him fight you?  But of course when Jan brings that up, Hawkeye tells her to shush and Goliath says Cap did the right thing.  You guys have some weird ideas about friendship.

But there are bigger troubles ahead as a group of guys in silly masks calling themselves the Sons of the Serpent beat the crud out of a Latino.

If they sound a lot like the Ku Klux Klan to you, congratulations!  You spotted the obvious.  One of their new recruits even uses the word “furriner” without irony.  Also, the Black Widow has infiltrated the meeting for some reason.  She doesn’t like what she sees and, eager to prove she can be trusted, runs to tell Hawkeye.

Back with Hank, he’s trying to find a cure for his ailment when he accidentally… oh dear.

 

Well that’s terribly awkward in hindsight, isn’t it.

He snaps at Jan, criticizing her for being a lousy assistant and also a girl.  Look, guy, I was standing up for you five seconds ago, and now you pull this?  Jan apparently feels the same and storms out.  (But don’t worry: she forgives him after no effort on his part in a couple of pages.)  Hank calls up Tony Stark to see if he knows any qualified biochemists, and Tony agrees to lend him one of his employees, Bill Foster, who is HOLY RAO A BLACK MAN.

 

THERE IS A BLACK MAN IN THIS COMIC.

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A BLACK MAN IN THIS COMIC BEFORE.

THAT… is actually really sad.  It literally took us thirty-two issues before they thought to throw in a black guy, and that’s just because he’s useful to the plot.  Even in crowd scenes in the middle of New York City, there’s never been a single black face.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Silver Age comics had the annoying habit of either demonizing or victimizing racial minorities (e.g. Issue Eighteen with the evil Commissar/General Hoy and the innocent villagers), and that’s when they bothered to portray them at all.  Even Foster is introduced just so he can propel the plot for the white folks—just as Mr. Gonzales, the first Latino I’ve seen in this comic, was only around to be a punching bag.  As of this moment, The Avengers has no minority characters, just minority plot devices.

Also, screw you, Hank, for that stealth insult to your girlfriend.

Inevitably, Foster falls victim to the not-KKK, and the Avengers swear their vengeance against the perpetrators.  Pretentious speeches abound.

 

So are you saying racism is bad or…?

A little while later, at the U.N., a General Chen from an unspecified communist country arrives to give a speech, much to the displeasure of the general population.  Someone even tries to attack the general’s car.  There’s no evidence to prove who did it, but everyone (including Chen) blames it on the Sons of the Serpent.  As such, the Avengers make a television announcement telling people to stay calm and that they are going to defeat the Sons of the Serpent.

The Serpents themselves listen to this and, instead of wetting their pants and running away, declare “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED” and kidnap Captain America with their personal cloud.  Well, technically it’s an airship disguised as a cloud, but if I owned that thing, I’d just be calling it my cloud so I could blare Rolling Stones songs at anyone who stared too long.

 

Hostage room?  Ooh, neat.  Did that come with the place, or did you have to have it installed?

The Serpents leave a tape recorder behind (in the shape of a snake, of course) for the other Avengers to find.  Said tape demands that the Avengers leave the Sons of the Serpents alone or else Captain America gets sliced into very patriotic ribbons.  The Avengers… capitulate???  That must mean it’s time for a cliffhanger!

So by this point you’re probably wondering what my beef is with his story.  I mean, it’s actually pretty impressive that the creators would try to tackle racism so early, isn’t it?  This comic was published in 1966, and most comics didn’t try to get political about home-grown problems until a little later in the decade.  So even if they do reduce the KKK to a group of, well, comic book villains in silly costumes, and even if it would be nice if the story included more actual minorities, the fact that Marvel was taking a chance on this while DC was still in its Adam West Batman phase (which was awesome, don’t get me wrong) should be great.

And yet somehow, despite having such an obvious premise—racism is bad, don’t do it—Marvel STILL managed to mess this up, and unless you’ve already read Issue Thirty-Three, I’d be willing to bet actual money that you can’t guess how.  Either way, come back next time to see what happens.

…Please?

To read Avengerous Tales 1.17, go here!

Images from Avengers #31, Avengers #30 and Avengers #32