Avengerous Tales 1.28 - Avengers #53-#54

To read Avengerous Tales 1.27, go here!

 

Oh good, another hero vs. hero battle.  You know how much I love those.

Okay.  Avengers #53 is actually the continuation of a story that began in X-Men #43-45, so we’ll recap that one first real quick.  I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that Magneto has captured the X-Men and is keeping them captive on his private island.  Angel escapes and, after a short delay, makes his way to the Avengers to enlist their help in rescuing his team.

While Angel is out, Cyclops manages to escape also, only to be waylaid by Quicksilver, who tries to convince him to join the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  Cyclops refuses and Quicksilver threatens to straight-up murder him, but Cyclops knocks him out, mostly by accident.  That’s when the Avengers show up, and they’re not exactly pleased about their former member being unconscious, even though Quicksilver plainly abandoned them last issue, but I guess you can’t be on a team with someone for so long without forming some tight bonds.

 

“YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!”

Actually, it’s more like “you’re not the real Avengers.”  Cyclops, under the mistaken and utterly nonsensical assumption that these Avengers are fakes sent by Magneto, attacks the people who are here to help.  Even though HE’S THE ONE WHO TOLD ANGEL TO GET THE AVENGERS IN THE FIRST PLACE, so he should have been expecting them. 

 
I labeled this picture ScottIsADipstick.jpg.

On a side note, I like the new coloring on Panther’s costume.  It’s a lot, well, blacker.

The comic now decides to flashback to when the Angel went to get the Avengers.  Remember, the only reason we already know about that is because I summarized X-Men #44; if I hadn’t bothered with that, we would have had to assume the Avengers just stumbled upon Cyclops on their way to the pancake house.

 

Are the X-Men all this bratty?  Dude, you tried to break into their house when you could have just called them on the phone or, as Goliath said, knocked on the door.  You do not get to play the mutant card in this situation.

The Avengers agree to help anyway, but as they arrive at Magneto’s island, they find a bug in Angel’s wing, meaning that Magneto has been listening in on them this whole time.  As it turns out, Magneto planted the bug and then let Angel escape on purpose, so that anyone the Angel went to for help would distrust him.

Making matter worse is Hawkeye’s “i-spy special” arrow, which he shoots into the castle and—wonder of wonders—he just happens to spot Cyclops and Quicksilver chatting.  Unfortunately, said arrow is not equipped with audio, so everyone assumes they’re having a friendly chat about the game last night.  In case you couldn’t guess, Quicksilver is actually trying to convert Cyclops to The Cause, but the Avengers don’t know that, and they tie Angel up in the back of the aero-car instead.

So I guess this is about where the opening fight scene would go, ending with Cyclops running away to free the other X-Men.  As for Magneto…
 

 

Oh yeah, did I not mention?  That bullet graze to the head took away Wanda’s hex power.  And gave her partial amnesia.  Because that’s how that works.  Quit depowering the most powerful woman in the comic!

Meanwhile, Hawkeye and Goliath get into a fight for absolutely no reason.  One second Goliath is asking after Hawkeye’s welfare, the next Hawkeye’s yelling at him about what a crummy leader he is, and then Panther gets called a “jungle-man,” which I’m pretty sure is racist, although Panther is from an actual jungle, so now I’m offended and confused.  Magneto takes advantage of their bickering by turning the X-Men into Kirby dots.

Actually, the Kirby dots are just an effect to show Magneto is mind controlling them with technobabble.  His orders?  Kill the Avengers!

Hee.  Beast and Panther have a vocab battle.  Can we have more of this?

The X-Men soon lose, at least in part thanks to the fact that the Avengers suspected the bug on Angel was a plant and tied him up loosely enough that he could follow their whispered command to follow them.  They then faked the argument to lure Magneto into making his move.  That still doesn’t excuse the racism, but at least it worked?

Magneto locks them all in one section of his hideout and orders Toad to blow it up.  Toad, sick of being slapped around and abused in return for his loyalty, sets the entire island to blow up instead, and then leads Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver to the safety of a non-metallic getaway ship.  Since it’s made of non-metals, Magneto’s attempts to leap aboard fail and he falls into the ocean, presumably dying with his island (ahahahaha) while the Avengers and the X-Men escape in the aero-car.

Issue Fifty-Four begins with the Avengers finally noticing how easy it is to break into the mansion and testing some new safety features.  They work perfectly, and of course the Avengers make sure to tell Jarvis about the new features so he doesn’t trip them by accident.  But…

 

THE BUTLER DID IT!  Did what, exactly, still isn’t clear, but he totally did it!

We follow Jarvis downtown, and we find out that he apparently grew up poor in the Bronx, which I’m pretty sure got retconned out later on so he could embody the “British butler” trope, but anyway, not important.  He meets up with a group called the New Masters of Evil, under the leadership of a mysterious cloaked villain named the Crimson Cowl.  The other Masters include the Klaw, Radioactive Man, Whirlwind, the Melter, and this familiar face.

 

If you read my review of Avengers #47-#48, you probably smell something funky going on, but we’ll get to that in a second.

Jarvis turns over the plans to Avengers Mansion, but instead of paying him the promised amount, the Crimson Cowl knocks him out and sends the other Masters on their way, vowing to dispose of the hapless Jarvis before they all meet up again to do evil things at midnight (of course it’s midnight).

But back to the Black Knight.  What’s he doing here, anyway?

 

Wait, did the Crimson Cowl figure out the original Black Knight’s secret identity and send the invite to Nathan Garrett’s P.O. box, or did the Black Knight have his own P.O. box?  I hope it’s the last one.  The idea of a bunch of supervillains in full costume going to the bank to sort through various offers to join evil organizations or stand in line for stamps amuses me.

The Black Knight only agreed to join the Masters of Evil so he could figure out their plans and rat them out to the Avengers (even though the last time we saw him, he was angry at the Avengers for not immediately trusting this strange man in a supervillain’s costume and flew off to fight crime alone).  Unfortunately, the other Masters bust him before he can get very far, so it’s up to the Black Knight’s horse Aragorn to summon help Lassie-style.

But as it turns out, the Masters of Evil are a lot faster than a winged horse and get there first.

So he’s back to being the Black Panther now instead of just the Panther?  I think I liked “the Panther” better.  I mean, he’s a black guy in a black costume that’s patterned after a black cat.  Was that not black enough for you?

One by one, the Avengers (and Hank’s assistant Bill Foster—remember him?) fall to the New Masters of Evil, all because they know where the security measures are and how to deactivate them.  Once the Avengers are all tied up, the Masters of Evil put them in front of a screen to videochat with the Crimson Cowl.  CC has a couple of announcements to make.  One, there’s two of him.  The first is a robot…

 

…and the second?  Hold on to your hats, kiddies.

 

“Maybe now you’ll pick up your dirty underwear when I ask you to!”

And on that kickass cliffhanger, we conclude another Avengerous Tale.  And it is a pretty good cliffhanger—I didn’t see it coming, and I’ve read this issue before.  And Issue Fifty-Four was a heck of a lot better than Issue Fifty-Three, mostly thanks to the absence of those whiny X-Jerks.   Also, I don’t know why everyone just let Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch leave again.  You were both in flying vehicles—why didn’t you follow them and make sure Wanda was really there of her own free will?

To read Avengerous Tales 1.29, go here!

 

Images from Avengers #53, X-Men #44 and Avengers #54