To read Avengerous Tales 1.19, go here!
Okay, so
remember last review when I said that Captain America’s battle with Red Skull
in Tales of Suspense #88 wasn’t
relevant? Well, now it is, so listen up:
First off,
waaaay back in Tales of Suspense #81,
Red Skull got his hands on a doohickey called the Cosmic Cube (nowadays known
as the Tesseract) that granted him unlimited power. Cap knocked the Cube into the ocean, and
Skull supposedly drowned trying to retrieve it.
Obviously he did not, as he returned in Tales of Suspense #88 with his Robo-Bucky.
After Cap
defeats Robo-Bucky in Issue Eighty-Nine, Red Skull turned to Plan B: kill
Captain America some other way. After
that failed in Issue Ninety, he turned to Plan C: he threatened to use his
deadly bubble weapon (he should probably think about rebranding) to destroy New
York unless Cap announced his allegiance to the Red Skull. On live TV, no less. Captain America wasn’t
about to let his adversary go on a rampage, so he did so swear.
We begin with some bad news for the team: the Black Widow was seen stealing plans for an atomic submarine. Obviously this makes Natasha’s ex-beau (hee, beau) Hawkeye very sad, and he wanders off to angst for a while. He stumbles across his old criminal stomping grounds and decides to twist some arms to see if they know anything about the robbery, still unaware that Black Widow’s working as a double agent for SHIELD.
Back at the
mansion, Hercules is left alone with his thoughts and the gym equipment he
inadvertently destroyed until the doorbell rings.
One, I want a
whole comic with nothing but Hercules learning about random stuff. Can you imagine his reaction to stuffed
animals? Sunglasses? Forks?
Garbage cans? The possibilities
for hilarity are endless!
Two, the
Avengers taught him about doorbells but not about tipping? Rude.
We’re never told
explicitly what’s in the boxes, though considering the snazzy suit Herc wears
as he heads out for a night at a Hawaiian-themed restaurant (complete with
fawning waitresses dressed as hula girls), I’d say Jan took him clothes
shopping at some point.
Back with
Hawkeye, his search for clues is interrupted by a cry for help emanating from a
nearby warehouse. If you suspect a trap,
you’re quicker on the draw than Hawkeye here… though he does figure it out on
his own pretty fast.
What Hawkeye
doesn’t know (but we do) is that Hammerhead is working for a villain called the
Mad Thinker, whose schtick is that he thinks… madly. He’s basically DC’s Clock King: a bland-faced
fellow who believes his precision and intelligence make him a match for any
hero. And, in this instance, he’s
perfectly correct: Hammerhead mops the floor with Hawkeye.
Meanwhile, the
other Avengers receive a distress signal—allegedly from Hawkeye, but when
Goliath and the Wasp follow the signal to a construction site, they find
themselves trapped in a Stephen King novel instead.
Anyway, Goliath
and Wasp go down. That leaves just two
Avengers, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.
In order to eliminate them, the Mad Thinker and his final henchman,
Thunderboot, materialize in Avengers Mansion for a fight. The twins lose, and the Thinker decides to
kill all five of his hostages by tying them to some device of Stark’s called an
electro-rod.
But their
victory comes at a price—namely, the house is a wreck and they have to clean it
up. Issue Forty begins with them doing
just that. It all goes very well until
Wanda faints.
We get a brief
glimpse of the Black Widow’s latest activities—she steals a super-fast
government plane to get the stolen atomic sub plans to “the far east”—and then
it’s under the sea we go as our old frenemy Namor stops a torpedo from
destroying a coral reef.
The navy-looking
guys who shot the torpedo are not impressed and give chase. Namor lures them to a patch of seaweed that’s
known for its submarine-trapping qualities.
They call their base for help, but Namor apparently can see radio waves now
and follows them to find out who the sailors are calling and stop any more subs
from coming and nuking his corals.
Back with the
Avengers, Captain America finally manages to snatch a moment between polishing
Skull’s boots to call his team and reassure them that no, he hasn’t gone to the
dark side. He also tells them about the
Cosmic Cube, which was presumed lost near a “small Caribbean island” because
that’s specific enough to be helpful, and asks the Avengers to retrieve it so
it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Hawkeye, Goliath and Wasp take off with Hercules in tow, leaving
Quicksilver behind to keep watch over the Scarlet Witch.
By a staggering
coincidence, that same small Caribbean island is where Namor followed the
submarine’s radio waves to.
Isn’t it amazing how some people can just make friends wherever they go?
The Avengers
arrive not long after, and although Goliath asks Namor what his problem is,
Namor prefers to talk things out with his fists, as per usual, and they worry
he might be there for the Cube.
Hawkeye tries to
defeat his nearly-naked nemesis by throwing him into the ocean, which
presumably earns him a What Did You Think Was Going to Happen Award and also
means that Hercules has to come save his bacon.
Well, that’s
just great. Now we’ve got an angry fish
king with an object that’s power is only limited by its wielder’s imagination. So what’s he gonna do with it? Turn all of the world’s underwater torpedoes
into lollipops? Erase humanity from
existence? Carve his name into the moon? There must be a million awesome things he can
do!
So the Avengers
battle the Amalga-beast while Hercules goes mano-a-mano with Namor. They briefly fight underwater, during which
Hercules tells us that he doesn’t need to breathe. Make your own “I can breathe in space” jokes
as you see fit.
Anyway, Wasp
gets the Cube away from Namor, knocking it down a crevice that apparently leads
to the center of the Earth, as we get a coda showing the Mole Man encountering
the Cube but throwing it away in the belief that it’s just a kid’s toy. OH THE IRONY.
As for Namor, he just runs off.
Er, buddy? I thought you wanted
to stop the military from bombing your coral reefs? Well, he probably wouldn’t get anywhere with
them now anyway.
These issues
were actually a lot of fun, although the Mad Thinker seems both too thinky and not thinky enough. In order
for his plan to work, he had to predict how Wanda’s hex power would work, which
is literally impossible since, at this point, her powers are fairly random. She can point it in a certain direction, but
she can’t dictate what it will do.
But then on the
opposite end of the spectrum, his losing depended on him not predicting
Hercules’s presence—which seems silly, given his ability to predict the
unpredictable—and forsaking his
entire raison d’être for absolutely no reason at precisely the right moment.
Issue Forty
starts out a bit scattered—Wanda’s fainting has nothing to do with anything and
just serves to make her look like the weak link yet again, even though we’ve
already established that’s nonsense—but once we settle into the low-plot slugfest,
it’s pretty fun. I just wish that the
villain was someone other than Namor, who clearly doesn’t have enough
imagination to use the Cosmic Cube to its full potential.
Come to think of
it, the best the Red Skull could do with the Cube was give himself a suit of
armor and create a person-shaped drone to unsuccessfully fight off Captain
America, so this is probably more of a writer problem than a character
problem. They’ve created an object of
unlimited power, but if they let the bad guys actually use that power, the story’s over in one incredibly gory splash
page. Still, there has to be some sort
of happy medium between horrifying yet underpowered lackeys and total
annihilation.
Incidentally,
wave a temporary good-bye to Don Heck, because as of next issue, Marvel
stalwart John Buscema takes over art duties.
Heck will be back eventually, though, so if you like him, just wait. If you don’t, enjoy his absence while ye may.
Images from Avengers #39 and Avengers #40
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