Avengerous Tales 1.24 - Avengers #45-#46

 

To read Avengerous Tales 1.23, go here!

It’s background time!

In Tales of Suspense #84, Captain America went up against an android called the Super-Adaptoid, an AIM creation and blatant Amazo rip-off with the ability to absorb the powers of others.  He quickly absorbed the powers of Giant-Man, Wasp, Hawkeye, and Captain America, and then he followed AIM’s orders by attacking the good captain.  Neither side really won that fight—the Adaptoid threw Cap at the ocean and assumed he was dead, because clearly Cap has no experience with surviving a drop into the ocean—and ran off so that AIM couldn’t deactivate him now that he’d achieved his purpose.

We begin at Avengers Mansion—home sweet home—while the Scarlet Witch prepares for a ceremony in Central Park that’s being held to honor the Avengers for murdering defeating the Mandarin.

 

Pietro’s just cranky because somebody stole the background.  Or maybe they hired Batman and Robin to redecorate.

So everyone—including Iron Man and Thor—arrives at the park right on time with two exceptions: Wasp, who says she has a surprise for everyone, and Captain America, who’s wrapping up another case elsewhere.  Not everyone is happy about Winghead’s tardiness.  Specifically, the Super-Adaptoid.

 

“Greatest foe?”  Dude, did you miss the part where you basically just let him go?  Mole Man has done more to defeat Captain America than you.

Meanwhile, some reporters ask Hawkeye a few questions.  During the Q&A session, we learn from Hawkeye’s thought bubble that Natasha wants to give up being the Black Widow, and Hawkeye wants her to marry him, to which she gave a resounding “maybe.”  (You are now imagining the Black Widow as a housewife.  You’re welcome.)  He doesn’t mention any of that to the reporters, though.  Not that they’d care, because guess who just drove up in a brand spanking new automobile while wearing a new costume?  Yup, Janet van Dyne!

Oh, and you might want to get used to the phrase “Wasp has a new outfit,” because she’ll be doing that A LOT in the coming years.  At one point it was so bad she practically had a new costume every issue.  But for now, this is only the… third?… iteration of her costume.

 Speaking of Jan, she spends the next page or so making comments explicitly designed to make Hank jealous, and I’m honestly not sure how to feel about that.  We do see Hank engrossed in his work a whole lot, but if it’s so bad that Jan is feeling neglected, shouldn’t she have a serious discussion with him about it instead of trying to publically piss him off?  And if it isn’t that bad and Jan’s just doing this for fun, then doesn’t that make her a shameless attention hog who can’t stand her boyfriend looking at anything else for more than five minutes?  Either way, this doesn’t exactly look to me like a healthy relationship.

But enough of that.  Cap arrives and Goliath has a special announcement to make.

 

“Yeah!  Who’d want to face a guy who thinks Aquaman’s color scheme is socially acceptable?”

 After Hercules accepts membership, the Super-Adaptoid gets tired of waiting around and reveals himself to the crowd.  Worse, he’s now absorbed Hercules, Thor and Iron Man’s powers as well, but Thor and Iron Man got tired of waiting for Cap and left before he ever showed up.  Thanks, jerks.

The fight quickly escapes the grasp of most of the Avengers, as Goliath and the Super-Adaptoid both shrink down to ant-size, meaning that only the Wasp can really provide help while the others can only keep the police away so their teammates don’t end up on the bottom of someone’s shoe.

The Wasp actually comes up with a good idea here: grab the Super-Adaptoid, grow to regular height, and then throw the still-tiny android against a tree.  Unfortunately, she’s not quick enough, and their opponent grows to regular size before he can really be harmed.  Still, at least now the rest of the Avengers can get in on the action.

 

I don’t think this has come up before, but in the early days, Steve Rogers didn’t actually have powers; the serum essentially just turned him into an Olympian.  Which still doesn’t explain Hawkeye’s dialogue here, since he doesn’t have any powers either…

The Super-Adaptoid beats everyone up for a while, especially Cap, but Quicksilver gets an idea: so far, their foe has only used one or two powers at a time, so what if the Super-Adaptoid is capable of overloading?  They goad the Super-Adaptoid into using all of his power at once, and he just sort of shorts out and falls over.  The Avengers tie him up and then it’s back to celebrating how awesome they are with their admiring public.  Woo!

I’m not sure where Pietro’s hostility towards humans is coming from in this issue.  Yes, the world sucks for mutants, but we haven’t seen anything in recent issues to explain why he’s so bitter towards homo sapiens all of a sudden.  The last time we saw him truly interact with people was back in Issue Thirty-Seven, when he and Wanda were hanging out with the people of Transia, and everyone there seemed pretty fond of our mutants.  We haven’t seen anyone shying away in fear or throwing rocks at him recently.  Heck, even Hawkeye’s been halfway decent.

Issue Forty-Six opens with the return of both John Buscema and the former Black Widow.

 
Hahahahahahacough

Jan arrives not long after with her new chauffer, Charles.  Hank gets a bit pissy, since it’s against the rules to bring strangers into Avengers Mansion.  As we quickly find out, that would have been a good rule for Jan to follow, because Charles also goes by another name: Dave Cannon, a.k.a…

 

Did he just run out of cloth for his shirt?  Also, yes, for those of you unfamiliar with Silver Age comics, Stan Lee did make a habit of lecturing the reader.  From a modern perspective, it kind of breaks up the narrative to suddenly have some guy telling me to turn the page when yes, I do know how to read a comic thanks, but I guess it gave Marvel a different, friendlier tone than its competitors.

Whirlwind spends the next page recounting his secret origin story, which was originally told in Tales to Astonish #50.  He discovered his ability to spin around really fast at a young age and promptly used that ability to bully other kids and, later on, steal whatever he wanted.  He called himself the Human Top in his first appearance but now he’s changed his name to Whirlwind, presumably because Roscoe Dillon threatened to hang him from the top of the Empire State Building by his chest strap if he didn’t.

So why’s Whirlwind posing as Jan’s driver?  He wants to kill Hank Pym, and thanks to the peek at Avengers HQ he got earlier, he knows just how to get inside HQ again to do it.  Though given the fact that half the state has just waltzed right into the place, why he had to go to all that trouble is beyond me.

Speaking of the Avengers, they all seem to be having self-esteem problems.  Captain America wants a personal life and is thinking of giving up his secret identity (he actually did it a couple of issues ago in Tales of Suspense #95, but we’ll talk about that next time), and Goliath is having issues because Hercules is so much stronger than he is, rendering his main contribution to the team—size and strength—redundant.  As such, he’s looking into enhancing his control over insects, specifically red ants, so he can make a return as Ant-Man.

 

Hey, don’t make fun.  We’ve already seen that that’s a legitimate concern.

With Steve and Pietro at a baseball game, and Wanda, Hercules, Clint, and Natasha out for a walk, only Hank and Jan are at the mansion when Whirlwind busts through the wall.  Whirlwind gets lucky and pokes a button that shrinks Hank and Jan down to bug-size, so he scoops them up and puts them in Hank’s ant farm.  As I mentioned earlier, they’re red ants, a.k.a. fire ants, which you seriously don’t want to mess with at any size.

While hiding from the red ants, our tiny heroes peek through the glass and see Whirlwind setting a bomb, just to make sure they really die.  If he really wanted to make sure, he’d have stepped on them when he had the chance, but judging by that outfit, I’m guessing Whirlwind doesn’t do subtlety.

To make matters worse, before Jan and Hank can escape and deactivate the bomb…

 

“WHAT WAS THAT, PIETRO?  I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF THIS TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR WE’RE STANDING IN.”

Oblivious to the bomb threat, Pietro and Steve quickly changed into costume and confront Whirlwind.

Meanwhile…

 

Yeah, no.  I don’t care what Janet Tyler Moore says, fire ant queens are considerably larger than regular ants, so if by some chance she had killed the queen, she would have known exactly what she was doing.  Did you not watch The Magic School Bus or what?

But real help is on the horizon: Hank suddenly remembers that he installed a cybernetic control center in the ant farm to help him study and gain control over the ants.  He makes his way there and uses the parts to construct a new cybernetic help so that he can understand and control his “six-legged friends” once more.  Not sure you can really call them your friends if they only like you while you’re exerting mind control.  Heck, in Issue Fifty, he refers to them as “my subjects.”  Does he think those words just mean the same thing?

With the ants’ help, Hank climbs out of the tank and makes his way to a “voice-amplifier unit.”  Because apparently scientists can’t just use the word “microphone” like normal people.  He uses it to alert Captain America and Quicksilver about the bomb, and Pietro manages to race it to the river just in time.

At least Pietro has a reason for being bitter now.  Though why he puts so much stock in the opinions of people who clearly shouldn’t be allowed to dress themselves, I don’t know.

Whirlwind escapes, of course, which Quicksilver ain’t too happy about.  Still, Hank and Jan are okay, mostly: something went kind of wrong with the resizing ray but they seem to be alright, though Jan says she feels kind of funny.  I would call this foreshadowing, but I don’t think it actually goes anywhere.  Also, Hank will now be going by both Goliath and Ant-Man.  Geez, this guy changes his name more often than Jan changes costumes.

To read Avengerous Tales 1.25, go here!

Images from Avengers #45 and Avengers #46