Avengerous Tales 1.27 - Avengers #51-#52

To read Avengerous Tales 1.26, go here!

Who thought it would be a good idea to let the Grim Reaper dress himself?  Even for a supervillain, that’s super-tacky.  Also, for crying out loud, someone get the painting supplies away from Batman.  He keeps painting all the Avengers’ backgrounds yellow.

We start with Hank trying to regain his growing powers and failing miserably.  Not long after, Jan decides to go swimming but is interrupted when Hank and Clint announce that Captain America is trying to contact them.  Just before she gets out of the pool, Jan notices an unfamiliar comb on the floor and grabs it.

 
It’s going to be one of THOSE issues, isn’t it?

The comb drags them up to an alien-looking ship, where they are promptly attacked by a Venusian tentacle monster.

 
Yep.  Definitely one of those issues.

So who’s responsible for this ridiculousness?  Why, the Collector and Thor, of course!  Wait, what?

You can probably guess that the Collector is mind-controlling the heck out of Thor right now.  See, Thor was peacefully flyin’ along one day when he spots the Collector’s ship and basically walks right in to investigate.  The Collector then invites him for dinner.  Thor, apparently, was never taught not to accept gifts from strangers no matter how snazzy their spaceships are, and he agrees.  The Collector slips some obedience juice into his drink and now Thor has no choice but to do whatever the Collector tells him to, although he can still verbally protest and he does so when he’s ordered to throw his friends into a cell… except for Goliath, that is.

 
You remember that scene in Toy Story 2 where Al kidnaps Woody to restore him to mint condition?  That’s basically what’s going on here.  But restoring a dude’s ability to grow is a lot harder than slapping a fresh coat of paint on fifty-year-old plastic, and the Collector’s first attempt at restoring Goliath’s powers fails.  So the Collector decides to move on and go find some other Avengers to add to his, um, collection.

He uses a spying machine thing to check out the most recent exploits of the other Avengers.  Captain America, as recounted in Captain America #100*, is in Wakanda with the Black Panther (or just the Panther, as the Collector calls him—either way, we’ll be talking about him soon enough), so Collector skips him for now.  With the Hulk in Asgard (Loki’s fault, of course—see Tales to Astonish #101) and Hercules in Olympus (see Avengers #50), there’s just one Avenger left…

 

Boy, what a nice guy that Iron Man is.  Even in the middle of a fight, he takes the time to exposit for any newcomers in the audience.  What a trooper!

While Thor curb-stomps Iron Man, the other Avengers manage to escape their cells.  The Collector sends a “robotoid… from another solar system” after them, but it goes crazy after Hawkeye destroys the controls and attacks the Collector instead.  You’d think he’d have installed a failsafe for that sort of thing, but no, the Collector has no choice but to quickly transport himself to another time period with his “temporal assimilator,” leaving his captives—and his collection—behind.

Oh yeah, and the robotoid.

 
“Dangit, Hank, have you been eating pesticide again?!”

No, actually, Hank can finally grow big again, which would have been a nice surprise if the cover didn’t give that particular plot twist away.  Anyway, we find out later that this is a delayed reaction to the Collector’s experiments—and he takes advantage of that to defeat the robotoid.  But there’s more bad news: the spaceship is on fire thanks to the robotoid’s attacks.  Luckily, that’s when Thor returns, carrying a still-unconscious Iron Man, to fly them all to safety before the ship explodes.  Huh.  A villain’s hideout blew up and Cap wasn’t responsible for once.

So that’s the end, right?  The Collector’s gone for now, and Goliath can grow to be twenty-five feet for fifteen minutes at a time, just like before.  But let’s not forget: all these shenanigans started because of a call from Cap.  What does he want?

 
T'Challa is Captain America's “special friend.”

Considering all the hullaballoo that normally signifies the addition of a new Avenger, cramming the Panther’s debut into the end of an issue in which he took no part seems kind of rude, especially since he’s the first black member.  You don’t think that deserves a tiny bit of ceremony?  Hell, Hercules became a member at an ACTUAL CEREMONY.

But I’m sure the newest Avenger will distinguish himself soon enough.  He gets his chance the very next issue when he arrives at Avengers Mansion, but he ends up having to sneak in because nobody answers the door.  Well… maybe they’re all planning a surprise party to welcome him to the team?

 
…SURPRISE!!!

Moments later, SHIELD agent Jasper Sitwell arrives, sees the Panther standing over the Avengers’ bodies, and calls the cops.  I’m sure some of you know Sitwell from the films, but the comic book version is slightly different.  Just imagine a blond Jimmy Olsen-looking guy who was assigned to be a sort of bodyguard for Tony Stark.

The Panther tries to prove he was invited to the mansion by opening up a vault with a combination given to him by Cap.  The combination doesn’t work and he’s taken into custody.

The news of the Avengers’ deaths travels as quickly as you’d expect, with Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America all hearing the news and doing jack-all to help.  You’d think Cap would at least bother to clear Panther’s name, but NOPE.

It’s also during this sequence that we’re introduced to the man responsible for the murders, the Grim Reaper, who provides us with a helpful flashback to his villainous deed.  Basically, he broke into the mansion and attacked everybody, but not before making a few cryptic comments like this.

 

“I’ll teach you to spoil the ending of The Sixth Sense!”

Now it would have been nice if they built up some suspense around just what the Reaper is getting revenge for, but we actually get the answer two pages later in the same flashback.

 

If you go back to my review of Avengers #9, you’ll see that the Reaper’s version of events has a few holes in it.  For example, the death of Wonder Man was a direct result of the process that gave him his powers; Simon didn’t know about that flaw when he agreed to undergo said process, so his death is really the fault of the man in charge of giving him his powers, Baron Zemo.  And while it’s technically true that the Avengers did nothing to try to save him, Wonder Man’s death came on so quickly that there wasn’t time for the Avengers to try to find a cure.

But clearly rational arguments have no place for a guy who thought that outfit was a good idea.

Back with the Panther, he finally has enough of the police and makes his escape, returning to the scene of the crime.  Specifically, he sneaks into that vaulted room he couldn’t get into earlier.  There, he finds the Grim Reaper monologuing to himself and attacks, both physically with his fists and verbally by correcting the Reaper’s warped version of his brother’s death.  That goes about as well as trying to prove the reality of climate change to the Koch brothers, but we do get this handy-dandy revelation from our truth-challenged baddie.

 

Instead of killing the Avengers, the Grim Reaper just slowed their metabolic processes to a crawl, but the process becomes irreversible after a few hours, so the Panther has to hurry if he’s going to save his prospective teammates.

Um.  Why?

Not “why would the Panther rescue the Avengers,” but “why wouldn’t the Reaper just kill them?”  What possible purpose could he have for killing them so slowly, and in a way that could be reversed?  All that does is run the risk of their reviving, or of someone else discovering the ruse.

Anyway, the Grim Reaper falls on his own scythe like the idiot he is, and the Panther leaves him writhing in pain in order to find the Avengers before their time is up.  (Hey, that’s what I’d do.)  He breaks into the hospital where the bodies are being kept (and they weren’t at the morgue because…?) and shocks them all back to life with the Reaper’s scythe.  Unfortunately, by the time they get back to the mansion, the Grim Reaper has escaped.  Geez, when was the last time the Avengers actually defeated a villain instead of the villain just magically escaping?

 
The issue ends with our heroes vowing to do what they should have done two issues ago: find the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.

I enjoyed these issues more than I’ve enjoyed any issues for a while now.  Issue Fifty-One was pure mindless fun, and Issue Fifty-Two actually had some pretty good mystery atmosphere going for it.  Obviously it could have been done better—there really is no reason why the Grim Reaper wouldn’t have killed the Avengers right away, and it would have been nice if his identity was kept secret for longer—but it was still intriguing.  I was genuinely curious to see how the Avengers, especially the Panther, got out of this mess, and the slugfest didn’t disappoint.

The only thing that really bugged me was in Issue Fifty-One.  They keep trying to make a big deal of Hank gaining and losing his growing powers, but this is the second time they’ve done the same subplot.  If they want to make his powers permanently yo-yo, then that’s one thing, but quit trying to sell it as this big suspenseful event when we’ve seen it happen before, we know how it ends, and we know it’ll probably happen again.

To read Avengerous Tales 1.28, go here!

Images from Avengers #51 and Avengers #52

*Teeeechnically this is Captain America #1.  See, originally, Cap had a back-up feature in Tales of Suspense, which also featured Iron Man’s adventures.  But when Tales of Suspense ended in March 1968, Iron Man and Captain America got split up (interpret that however you like) into two separate books.  Iron Man, after a one-shot called Iron Man/Submariner #1, got his own book in May 1968, starting with Iron Man #1. 

Captain America also got his own book, but instead of starting at Issue One like Iron Man, Marvel decided to just continue the same numbering from before.  So we go right from Tales of Suspense #99 to Captain America #100 even though Cap only started appearing as a regular in Tales of Suspense in Issue Fifty-Nine.  So if anything, Captain America #100 should be Captain America #41, and while we’re on the subject, Iron Man #1 should have been Iron Man #62.

Comics are silly like that.