Avengerous Tales 1.30 - Avengers Annual #2

To read Avengerous Tales 1.29, go here!

Wow, is it time for another Annual already?  The year just flew by, didn’t it?

Like with the first Annual, we’ve got Don Heck doing the artwork, this time with Werner Roth as well.  Apparently, he’s best known for his work on X-Men and Lorna the Jungle Girl, which explains why I’m not familiar with him.  If you just gave me the name ‘Werner Roth’ with no context, I’d assume he was a German explorer and imagine a dude in jodhpurs and a pith helmet.

So we start a little while after the end of the last issue, when the Avengers returned from the scene of Bucky’s demise in 1945 to Dr. Doom’s former castle in 1968.  Apparently, while they were playing around with the prime directive, someone stole the aero-car they used to get to the castle.  I’m guessing they walked back, since when we first see them, they’re strolling down the street to Avengers Mansion.  To make things more odd, everyone stares at them as they walk.  Not in a “wow look there’s some superheroes” kind of way, but more like a “should I be crossing the street to get away from those weirdos” kind of way.

When they enter the Mansion, things get even worse.

 

The only context I’ve ever really heard the word “fricassee” in is that song from The Little Mermaid.  Which is now stuck in my head.  Thanks, Hawkeye.

The Avengers rush to the meeting room, where they find none other than the original five Avengers—Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and even the Wasp and Giant-Man—sitting around the table.  Naturally, everyone’s first reaction is FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!!  DIPLOMACY IS FOR SUCKERS!  RIP THE FLESH FROM THEIR BONES!  AHAHAHAHA! 

I guess I could understand that if it was the original Avengers who started the fight—after all, the new Avengers did inadvertently break into their house—but no, it’s Goliath who throws the first punch, not Giant-Man or even the Hulk, and next thing you know, everyone’s punching everyone else.

 

Iron Man blasts him in the next panel.  Which maybe wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t stated his escape plans out loud, the ding-dong.

The new Avengers make their escape and take refuge in an abandoned subway tunnel, where Cap realizes that Doom’s time machine delivered them to a world where neither he nor Hawkeye ever existed.  I’m guessing Doom spent a lot of time watching Frank Capra movies.

Back with the original Avengers, they have summoned a mysterious fellow named the Scarlet Centurion, who apparently once prophesied to them about the coming of the newbies, and he’s not pleased that the new Avengers escaped.  Still, he says, all can be made right… as long as the original Avengers destroy their counterparts as soon as possible.  The originals protest, but…

 

Are they getting static on the mystical fiery portal of doom there or what?  Why does his costume have lines across it?

Clearly something funny is going on here, and the newbies, despite not knowing of Scarlet Centurion’s presence, are determined to get to the bottom of things.  They decide to consult with the Herodotron, which sounds like a small dinosaur but is really a computer containing every bit of historical info ever that Goliath helped create (even though he’s a biochemist, not a computer engineer or a historian, but whatever).  After Goliath has a mini-breakdown over their situation—and seriously, who can blame him—they all head over to the Long Island research facility where Herodotron is kept.

After breaking into the facility as quietly as possible, the newbies hook Cap up to Herodotron so he can find the moment where history went wrong.  (“Where History Went Wrong” would make a great name for a TV show.  Probably something on the History Channel about aliens.)

Cap soon finds himself viewing the end of Avengers #2, just as the Hulk was about to leave the team.  In this reality, however, Hulk’s departure was prevented by the arrival of the Scarlet Centurion.

 

“IS THAT YOUR FINAL ANSWER?”

The Scarlet Centurion scolds them all for not being Jesus (he literally puts them down for not being able to make “a lame child walk anew”) and then disappears, promising to return the next day with a simple one-step solution to achieving world peace.  That solution?  Defeat everyone else with superpowers!  And the original Avengers just kind of… go with it.  Yeah.  They don’t know anything about the Scarlet Centurion—who he is, where he came from, what his motives are, how he knows what he knows—but after the world’s quickest vote, they all run off to defeat the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Sub-Mariner, Doctor Strange, Nick Fury, the Howling Commandos, Daredevil… even though those last three don’t have superpowers, but whatever…

 

(You will note that the comic took care to quash the inevitable nerd fights by saying the Avengers only win because they’re cheating, so feel free to keep arguing over whether Iron Man’s science could truly defeat Doctor Strange’s magic, whether the Hulk is really stronger than the Thing, etc., etc.)

Only the Hulk shows any skepticism towards Mr. To Serve Man, but hey, he gets a chance to hit people, so who cares about why he’s doing it?

Once all the heroes are put away, the villains come next, and once the villains are put away, the Scarlet Centurion announces that the only thing standing between them and world peace is the annihilation of a band of faux-vengers, who will arrive at some unspecified future date.

That’s enough for Captain America, and Goliath lets him out of the Herodotron.  Upon hearing that the world’s supervillains are now gone, the other Avengers briefly wonder if they shouldn’t just leave the world as it is instead of getting back the old world they knew.  Cap sets ‘em straight, of course.

 

 

“Ugh, we get it, you punched Hitler.  Stop lording it over us already.”

They decide that the only way to get things back to normal is to use Doom’s time machine, but Cap learned from the Herodotron that said time machine was recently dismantled.  So now they’ve gotta go find all the parts and put it back together again.  Naturally, they split up: Black Panther with Hawkeye (who probably whined about not getting to go with Cap), Captain America by himself (BECAUSE HE’S ALONE AND ANGSTY AND HAS NO FRIENDS GET IT), and Goliath with the Wasp (duh).

It takes them the length of one flashback to Avengers #56, in which they assume Jan’s napping on the job was the work of the Scarlet Centurion and that their materializing in the past is what screwed up the present, before they run into trouble.  Hawkeye and Panther go up against Hulk and Iron Man…

 

 

He’s a panther, not a tiger.

…Cap goes up against Thor…

 

“I never imagined he’d have such horrible taste in suits, either.  That is the sloppiest Two-Face cosplay I’ve ever seen.”

…and Goliath and Wasp go up against Giant-Man and Wasp.

 

“I Am My Own Killer.”  Another great name for a TV show.  Probably on TLC.  Also, if “girl with my face” is the best banter you can come up with, you should get out of the supervillain business.

But anyway, mission accomplished!  The original Avengers are down for the count, and the time machine parts have been returned to Doom’s castle “in the hinterlands” and reassembled.

Naturally, it can’t be that easy, and the Scarlet Centurion shows up.  If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, after all.

 

Dammit, man, you just undid the two whole paragraphs of theorizing about Cap’s mental issues I did at the end of the last review!  Then again, Centurion does proceed to freeze Cap in ice, so if Cap didn’t have problems before, he sure will now.

And then, as if that wasn’t enough, Scarlet Centurion throws us a curve ball: he basically hypnotized the original Avengers into acting the way they did, and he planned for the new Avengers to beat the originals all along.  See, this whole thing—luring Cap to the time machine, making Jan fall asleep at the controls, manipulating the original Avengers into defeating every other super-person on the planet, and getting the new Avengers to fight the original Avengers with the time machine as bait—was all part of a grand plot to take over the world.  Wow.

But right in the middle of Scarlet Centurion’s exposition, Goliath becomes Ant-Man, slips inside the time machine, and crosses wires until the Scarlet Centurion is sent back to the space between spaces, or wherever he came from.  Ant-Man’s actions also cause himself and the other out-of-time Avengers to get shot back to their own decade.

Then things get weird.

 

What do women call you?  I’m betting “creepy.”

 

Okay now, do you remember waaaaay back in Avengers #8, when I glossed over Kang the Conqueror’s origins because they weren’t relevant yet?  Now they’re relevant.  Sit back and relax, kids.

So Kang is from the 50^th century, which of course is super peaceful with no crime, hunger, violence, or TV shows with names like “I Am My Own Killer.”  Bored, Kang set off for the distant past, where he ruled Egypt as the pharaoh Rama-Tut.  (The Sphinx was his spaceship.  I’m not kidding.)  Eventually, the Fantastic Four put a stop to that nonsense and forced Kang back to his own century.

But it turns out, a lot of things can go wrong when time traveling, and Kang’s time ship made an emergency landing in 1968.  He decided to take advantage of the situation by becoming the Scarlet Centurion and plotting world domination, as you do. 

Sooo does Kang come up with a new outfit for every century he tries to rule?  Because that would be fabulous.

For reasons that involve words like destiny and fate and pretentious bull, the Watcher erases everyone’s memories of this adventure.  Kang continues on his way to the 50^th century (why the Watcher thought it was crucial for him to forget this particular butt-whooping as opposed to all the others, I don’t know), and the Avengers are back in Doom’s castle, fresh from their journey to 1945.

 

“It’s not like you fell asleep at the panel or anything hey wait a minute!”

So there we go!  Another Annual down, and just like last time, it’s a good bit of fun.  I wish they’d utilize the extra pages more wisely, though—instead of creating more complex stories, they just seem to throw in extra fight scenes, splash pages, and pin-ups.  The Scarlet Centurion’s plan was kind of complicated, but I can’t find any actual faults with it, except the last bit.  If he figured the new Avengers would be clever enough to defeat the originals, why did he assume they wouldn’t be clever enough to defeat him—as indeed they were? 

Also, what’s up with the Watcher here?  His name is the WATCHER, not the DOER.  Isn’t his entire gimmick that he doesn’t interfere in mortal affairs?  Why did he decide to meddle here?

Hey, wait a minute.  I just noticed something about this story.  Heroes battling heroes for no reason… formerly heroic characters using nefarious means to capture each other… heroes throwing each other in jail because a complete stranger yelled at them for things they could not possibly be responsible for… certain supervillains realizing the heroes have lost the plot… everyone acting completely out of character…

This is Civil War!  A really short, better written, actually enjoyable Civil War!

There’s just one big difference between Roy Thomas’s story and Mark Millar’s.  Did you catch it?  It’s the fact that, in Thomas’s version, half the cast had to be hypnotized into acting the way they did.  And that, nerds and nerdlings, is my new headcanon.  Civil War happened because Kang regained his memories of his time as the Scarlet Centurion and got revenge by pulling the same schtick again, hypnotizing everyone into being a saphead.  I don’t care if that clashes with real canon!  It happened!  Roll credits!  And no mid-credit/post-credit scene to make us question anything!  That’s it!  The end!

To read Avengerous Tales 1.31, go here!

Images from Avengers Annual #2