Avengerous Tales 1.18 - Avengers #35-#36

To read Avengerous Tales 1.17, go here!

“Big change”?  What, is Goliath going through puberty?
 

Issue Thirty-Five marks the first issue that wasn’t written by (or at least, that didn’t give the writing credits to) Stan Lee.  Say hello to Roy Thomas!  He will be with us for quite some time.

So the Living Laser, being the average-ish villain I accused him of being last time, does exactly what every single other villain has ever done after trapping their mortal enemy in a seemingly unbeatable death trap: that’s right, he wanders off with the Wasp in a jar.  This, of course, means there’s no one to fight Goliath when he barrels through the wall in response to an emergency signal from Wasp.  (The use of emergency signals among the Avengers has been a bit spotty.  Sometimes they have them, and sometimes only certain members seem to have them like in this case.  You’d think if the Wasp had such a signal, Cap and Hawkeye would too, especially since we saw Cap had one back in Issue Twenty-One.)

 

You’d think Goliath would be used to this by now.

In the meantime, Wasp’s signal has stopped transmitting for some reason (we find out later that Laser’s back-up hideout blocks radio waves), so now they have no way to track her.  But us readers can easily jump over to her current location.  There, we see Wasp is being kept in a jar flanked by lasers, so she can’t risk growing larger.

As for the Living Laser himself, he’s conducting a little business with the would-be dictators of a Central American country called Costa Verde.  They agree to pay him lots of gold in exchange for the use of his lasers in the revolution going on in their home country.  The Living Laser immediately hops a flight to Costa Verde to direct the battle himself, taking Jan with him.

 

Why are they all dressed like Gay Pride Pancho Villa?  This isn’t Mexico.  Or 1910.

But the lasers do their job and force the current dictator to surrender to the new one, a guy named Valdez.  This is, of course, reported in all the major newspapers, so the Avengers finally have their long-awaited lead on Laser.  Off to Central America!

The Living Laser sees the Avengers approach his new castle and shoots their aero car out of the sky.  Fortunately, it also doubles as a submarine and they’re perfectly fine.  If this were a modern comic, I’d accuse them of trying to sell toys.  Heck, who knows, maybe they were back then, too.  Either way, doesn’t matter: they swim to safety and approach Laser’s stronghold.

 

But they don’t have much fun storming this particular castle and have no choice but to jump off a cliff into a river to avoid the Living Laser’s lasers.  For the second time, everyone assumes our heroes drowned (you’d think they’d have learned the first time), except of course for the Wasp.  And, of course, three seconds later, the Avengers are back to… get captured.  Go team!

Up in the castle tower, the Avengers are placed in separate rooms, and Goliath has been tied up with super-strong chains.  But remember, Hank and Bill have been working on experiments to enable Goliath to shrink back down again.  Would you believe they succeeded off-panel earlier in this very issue, just in time to help Goliath out of this jam?

 

Yeeeaaah, they did hint at this a little earlier by saying Hank disappeared for a while after losing track of Jan’s emergency signal, implying that he was spending the time perfecting his cure, but this has been kind of a major story element for several issues now, so having it resolved off-screen is kind of… ehh…

Goliath uses his newfound tininess to free the Wasp and crawl inside the Laser’s invincible laser cannon to try to break it.  He succeeds, causing the cannon to backfire and shock the Living Laser into unconsciousness when he tries to demonstrate its power for the rebels.  The rebels, in turn, flee in a panic so the government soldiers won’t kill them when they retake power.

So all’s well that ends well, right?  Hank is back to his regular size, Bill Foster gets himself a permanent job as Hank’s assistant, the Living Laser will be put on trial for his crimes, Black Widow throws stuff at Hawkeye for not taking her along on his Costa Verde “vacation” (Domestic violence!  Hooray!), and Captain America mopes about how he’s completely friendless despite his entire team of friends until a mysterious visitor comes to call.  Who is it?  Issue Thirty-Six has the answer.

 
Yup!  The Scarlet Witch is back with big news: she dyed her hair black!  Oh, yeah, and she misplaced her brother or something.  Really should have invested in a child leash.

But seriously, Wanda and Pietro spent the past few issues in Europe trying to regain their powers.  After undergoing experiments conducted by a Mark Twain-looking scientist, their powers seemed to improve, and they spent their pointless cameo in X-Men #27 testing their abilities in the Balkans.  It was also in said pointless cameo where we learn Wanda has a trained falcon that never appears again to the best of my knowledge.  Did she gift it to Sam Wilson or something?

Just as they are about to leave the Balkans for home, a flying saucer lands nearby.  Really, are you surprised at this point?  Quicksilver rushes inside it to investigate and the door slams shut behind him, but not before he can shout back to Scarlet Witch to get the Avengers.  You’d think if he had time to yell full sentences before the door shut, he’d have time to escape too, but whatever.

Scarlet Witch hits the ship with her hex powers to no avail, hence the quick trip home (the Avengers were too busy in Costa Verde to answer their phone).

 

Hank objects on the grounds that Black Widow is a former criminal, which would be understandable except for the fact that he let Hawkeye onto the team no question.  Granted, “Soviet spy” has a much more impressive ring to it than “guy who shot arrows at Iron Man,” but still.  The title of My Least Favorite Avenger is up for grabs, big man, so watch it.

Goliath and Hawkeye nearly come to blows before the Scarlet Witch yells at them all for arguing instead of saving her brother.  They shut up quick enough and head out to the Balkans, specifically Transia, where Wanda and Pietro were born.  Well, supposedly.  You really don’t want me to get into their family tree right now.

Anyway, spaceship.

 
Things get even weirder when they manage to sneak into the spaceship via a cave tunnel that runs under the village and therefore under the forcefield.  They discover a huge chamber with a disembodied alien thing named Ixar running the place.  Ancient intelligence, intergalactic battles, blah blah blah.  Point is, Ixar came to Earth to borrow some of our superhumans and steal their powers.  They’ve already captured Transia’s mayor (whose title they rather oddly spell burgomeister, in a combination of the German bürgermeister and the English translation burgomaster) to pick his brain or something, as well as Pietro and Wanda.

Wanda, huh?  If Wanda’s been captured, then who came to the mansion looking for Cap?

 

That still doesn’t make sense.  If she was created for the “sole purpose” of luring the Avengers here as Wanda, why did she just shapeshift?  If her sole purpose was to be Wanda, why wouldn’t Ixar just build her to look like Wanda from the start? 

But we’re entering nitpick territory now, so let’s skip ahead to when the android sics a bunch of other androids, called Ultroids, on the Avengers to make like vampires and suck their powers.  I have one problem with this fight though:

The entire point of kidnapping Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch was so that Ixar could imbue the Ultroids with their power.  Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch have been captives in the spaceship for many hours now.  And yet the Ultroids still do not display any superpowers aside from one possible burst of superspeed.  What have they been doing this whole time?  Sewing each other into their bathing suits?  Polishing their heads?  Boehnering their skin?

 

It takes a lot of effort to achieve the Bald Alien Trump look.

And yet they still manage to pick off the Avengers one by one.  Black Widow and Captain America hold out the longest, but eventually they too are brought down just in time for a cliffhanger.

I’ve kind of gone off the Living Laser story a bit.  It starts out about a guy obsessed with lasers and women, and then all of a sudden it veers off into a story about military coups and Central American politics and where did that even come from?  As for Issue Thirty-Six, the ending fight scene was a little long, but making “Wanda” turn out to be an alien android was a pretty good twist.  I’m a little concerned by the apparent return of Needlessly Belligerent Hawkeye, but at least this time the arguments mostly seem to be someone else’s (read: Hank’s) fault, so at least Hawkeye has a reason for being a jerk.

Also, now that it seems to be over, the subplot about Wanda and Pietro’s waning powers seems kind of pointless.  All it did was cause them to leave the team for a while, but now they’re back and nothing’s different from before.  Their power fluxes didn’t cause them to do any deep soul searching, or thrust them into any adventures they couldn’t have had otherwise, or change anyone in any way.  What purpose did this serve?  How did it contribute to the evolution of the characters or the team as a whole?  They could have gone on a ski vacation and we still would have the exact same outcome. 

To read Avengerous Tales 1.19, go here!

Images from Avengers #35 and Avengers #36