Saturday, May 23, 2015

Avengerous Tales 1.33 - Avengers #61-#62


To read Avengerous Tales 1.32, go here!

A quick pit stop at Dr. Strange #178 before we begin today’s tale:

With his dying breath, the villain Asmodeus utters a spell that will cause the fire giant Surtur and the frost/ice giant Ymir (whom you may recognize from both Norse mythology and Thor comics) to come wreak havoc on Earth in one hour.  The only people who know how to break that spell are the Sons of Satannish, who are being held prisoner in the sixth dimension by a jerk named Tiboro.  Strange doesn’t really want to go there alone, so he tracks down our old pal the Black Knight—whose sword contains mystical properties—and enlists him as a road trip buddy.

And everything seems to go great.  Dr. Strange and the Black Knight defeat Tiboro, who agrees to release the Sons of Satannish.  Problem solved, right?  Well…
 
Issue Sixty-One starts with not one but two splash pages, each featuring some Avengers fighting off Surtur and Ymir.  But we’ll get to that later.  For now, let’s head over to Avengers Mansion, where Black Panther and Hawkeye serve up some delicious homemade sunshine for the Vision.

 
“Sorry, Vizh, but there’s a two-drink limit here.  Why don’t I call you a cab?”

They’re interrupted by the “ethereal form” of Doctor Strange—who didn’t even bother knocking, by the way—who tells them that he needs their help for unspecified reasons.  The Avengers, trusting souls that they are, agree to go with him—except the Vision, who had too much to drink and needs to sleep it off.  No, really, that’s what happened.

Strange leads Hawkeye and Panther to a mausoleum, where the Black Knight is lying on the floor in a magical coma.  See, in case you couldn’t tell from the fact that they’re called the Sons of SATANNISH, they weren’t exactly jumping for joy at the prospect of helping a couple of superheroes.

 
“Tis only a flesh wound.”

(I have been waiting an embarrassingly long time to make that joke.)

Strange gets the Crystal and manages to get Marduk to tell him enough that he realizes the Crystal is the only thing that could potentially stop Surtur and Ymir.  But first, we got a Knight to save.  Dr. Strange, being a doctor ‘n’ all, manages to save the Black Knight.  Why he didn’t do that before running off to get the Avengers, I don’t know, but Dane is grateful anyway.

But there’s no time for back-patting—Surtur has already arrived, causing volcanoes to erupt in Antarctica.  Right on his flaming heels is Ymir, who has covered Wakanda in ice and snow.  Sounds like a job for the Avengers!  Hawkeye and the Black Knight head to Antarctica, while the Black Panther and the Vision go to Wakanda.  Strange stays behind for reasons we’ll find out later.

In Wakanda, Panther and Vision accidentally crash the quinjet—this is the first time they’ve used a quinjet, and it was apparently designed by T’Challa instead of the ubiquitous Tony Stark—into Ymir’s face, which does absolutely nothing.

 
“He’s going to start singing Let it Go again!  This is the thirty-seventh time!”

In Antarctica, Hawkeye and the Black Knight aren’t faring any better since Surtur is made out of actual fire and is therefore basically unshootable.

While the Avengers hold off the giants as best they can, Doctor Strange has figured out how to work the Crystal of Conquest and uses it to teleport Ymir and Surtur to the same location.

 
You’d think at this point one or the other of them would stop fighting and go “Hey, where’d you come from?”  But no, they just smack each other so hard that they cancel out each other’s powers and send themselves back to wherever they came from.  Victory!

Well, that was a nice breezy little issue.  It’s basically fluff, but nothing wrong with that.

Issue Sixty-Two brings us a new title font!  It does not, however, bring us Doctor Strange, who apparently went back to his own book without bothering to make sure the Avengers got home okay.  Which they did not.  They are stuck freezing their tails off in still-snowy Wakanda.  (They build a fire out of Hawkeye’s arrows.  It’s hilarious.) 

Fortunately, T’Challa has a private spaceship, which he summons electronically and uses to fly them all to a slightly more inhabited region of his kingdom.

 
I have a burning need to see Jack Kirby draw this.

The Avengers (plus the Black Knight) are greeted by gunfire.  No, T’Challa’s subjects aren’t doing a fancy gun salute for their guests—they are actively shooting at them.  Panther isn’t pleased by this reception, especially when he finds out that the order to attack was given by M’Baku, whom Panther left to rule Wakanda while he was away.

As you probably guessed, M’Baku is very interested in removing the ‘temporary’ from his position as ‘temporary ruler.’  To allay Panther’s suspicions, M’Baku says he ordered the shooting because he’d heard rumors that Panther’s old enemy the Klaw had escaped.  Panther sorta buys it.

 
Clearly Panther has not watched enough American movies, or else he’d know to never accept drinks from creepy men.  Even Vision drinks the wine because of plot reasons, and they all fall unconscious.

By the time Panther wakes up, M’Baku has adopted a rather unfortunate change in name and clothing.

 
Look, if this was real life, I’d probably let this slide since Wakanda is not America and therefore has a different history and culture.  But Wakanda is fictional, this comic was created by Americans, and they should have realized that putting a black dude in a gorilla costume and calling him an ape was a bad idea.  You have literally an entire jungle’s worth of animals to choose from and you pick a flipping primate?  Are you kidding me with this?  He could have been a Man-Elephant!  A Man-Okapi!  A Mantelope!

Okay, those all suck, but not as hard as Man-Ape.

Panther and M’Baku (screw you, I ain’t calling him ape anything) kick each other around for a while, eventually ending up in the city control center.  Which looks suspiciously dark and abandoned for a place that’s supposed to keep all that gadgetry we saw running, but there’s actually kind of an explanation for that, so whatever.

 
Wait, is he saying he ATE a white gorilla to get his powers?  WWF isn’t going to like that.

Anyway, M’Baku led Panther into the control center as a trap, which would explain the lack of people.  They end up suspended over an atomic furnace, which is actually kind of cool.  Unfortunately, Black Panther loses this fight when M’Baku grabs some wires and shocks him unconscious.

When Panther wakes up (again), he is tied to a stone slab beneath a giant stone effigy of a panther, which M’Baku plans to crush him with for maximum irony.  I don’t know why he didn’t just skip straight to this plan before instead of wasting time chasing Panther around with uprooted trees, but hey, that’s just me.  And I’m sure zero percent of you are surprised to find the panther idol “isn’t falling—it’s crumbling…”

 
The other Avengers free themselves and show up too late to do anything but stand there, and Panther spouts some questionable lines about how M’Baku wasn’t ready for real progress and “civilization,” which, blugh, I’m all ranted out from the last review, insert rant about how westernized hi-tech cultures do not equal civilization here.  Why did we even need that speech?  Being a greedy jerkface wasn’t enough of a motivation?

Like with the last issue, this one is a simple yet enjoyable story, except with bonus racism.  Obviously it would have been a lot better without that, and I prefer the Doctor Strange crossover for just that reason, but both issues had their high points and were fun and easy reads.

To read Avengerous Tales 1.34, go here! 

Images from Avengers #61 and Avengers #62

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