To read Avengerous Tales 1.33, go here!
I don’t know why
Hank would continue being Yellowjacket when that’s the identity he took in a
weird fit of schizophrenic self-hatred, but those covers are awesome. Much better than the Random Floating Head
covers we’ve been getting lately.
***This review
contains a tiny discussion of emotional abuse, so if that bothers you, skip the
paragraph after I start swearing up a storm.
First things first, we’ve got a new artist behind the pen: Gene Colan, who’s best known for co-creating Blade and the Falcon, neither of whom are in this comic.
So the Avengers
are flying home after their previous adventure when the Black Panther’s ship
goes haywire and nearly sends them crashing into the roof of Avengers
Mansion. Fortunately, between the
Panther and the Vision, they manage to get back under control. Hawkeye tried to help, but his bowstring
snapped.
I’ll admit that
everything I know about archery basically comes from Brave, but shouldn’t Hawkeye be performing regular checks on his
equipment to make sure stuff like this doesn’t happen? I guess it’s possible that his bow was
tampered with, since someone clearly messed around with Panther’s autopilot…
Anyway, enough
of that, look who’s here to greet the Avengers when they arrive.
I suppose it’d
be silly to hope that they spent their honeymoon with a couples’ counselor.
Actually, Hank
apparently spent the honeymoon giving the Yellowjacket suit new features, like
stronger stingers and fake wings that let him glide around. He’s giving up the identity of Goliath for
good now, as he blames the constant strain of growing (but not shrinking, which
he can still do) for his schizophrenia.
Jan, meanwhile,
spent her honeymoon sewing a new Goliath costume for Hank, which of course he
will now never get to use.
FUCKFUCKFUCKINGFUCKSLIGHTLYSNEAKYAREYOUFUCKINGKIDDINGMEFUCK
Okay, you know
what, no. I had my big rant on this over here, so if you don’t already know why TRICKING SOMEONE INTO MARRYING
YOU is a terrible thing to do, then feel free to go read it, and now you can
add the fact that Hank KNOWS he was manipulated into that pile of horrifying
stupidity. And I don’t care if he seems
cool with it—he has a chronic and apparently untreated mental illness, and no
matter how okay he seems at the moment, HE IS NOT OKAY AND HE NEEDS HELP, NOT A
HONEYMOON HE WAS TRICKED INTO.
We’re moving on
now. Screw this.
Hank goes to
dispose of the newer, super-powerful version of his growth serum that he was
working on but now doesn’t want to see get into the wrong hands. Before he can do so, Nick Fury calls with
some bad news: the Black Widow has gone missing during a mission in the
Caribbean. Hawkeye takes that about as
well as I took that last panel I posted, but the other Avengers insist he sit
this one out so he doesn’t end up doing anything stupid.
Enraged but
realizing they’re right, Hawkeye stays behind.
Good thing, too, since five minutes after everyone else jets off, Black
Widow calls the Mansion, claiming that she’s being held hostage in New York
City someplace. Hawkeye recognizes the
background noises as Coney Island (he used to work there before getting into
the supervillain biz) and he decides to investigate… but not as Hawkeye.
Three things.
One, Jan made
that outfit for Hank, but we never learned what for. Just looking at that thing, I think we all
now know what is was for, and it sure wasn’t crime-fighting.
Two, why would
you take Hank’s growth serum? Did you
miss the part where he blamed it for his schizophrenia? I guess the excuse here is because it’s a new
improved serum, but I’d still want to run a few tests on that stuff before
tossing it back like tequila at happy hour.
Three, this is
more than just a new identity for Clint Barton, it’s character development. We’ve seen before that Hawkeye has a
few self-confidence issues in that he feels like the weakest member of the
team—which in fairness, he kind of is.
His bowstring breaking was probably the last straw that made him want to
gain superpowers of his own so that he’d be on (what he perceived to be) equal
footing with his peers.
We now cut to
the Black Widow, who has not one, not two, but three captors—Egghead (sorry,
not Vincent Price), the Thinker, and the Puppet Master. Between the three of them, they were able to
imitate Nick Fury perfectly, sending the Avengers on a wild goose chase to the
Caribbean. Unfortunately for them, they
didn’t count on Goliath’s arrival (they mistake him for Hank Pym, of course),
but they’ve got an android to take care of him.
“I’d probably
take the threat a lot more seriously if you didn’t describe it as ‘for
keepsies.’”
The nameless
android meets his defeat when Goliath suddenly shrinks, and the android topples
off the top of one of the rides and creates a giant crater in the ground. The Black Widow, of course, recognizes
Goliath as the former Hawkeye and tells him all she knows about the baddies’
plans—plans we find out about next issue, which opens with Egghead’s
radar-proof space station, complete with death ray, blowing a small town to
bits.
Who’s talking here? The lightning?
While the
Avengers, newly returned from the Caribbean (presumably after taking the
opportunity to sunbathe for a bit—that’s what I’d do), debate what to do about
said death ray, Goliath and Black Widow return, much to everyone’s
surprise. They’re even more surprised
when Goliath cheerfully snaps his bow in half, finalizing his transition from
archer to really big guy.
Their chat is
interrupted when Jarvis brings them a visitor.
Anyway, Barton
escapes and hides out for a while, but then he decides that if he helps the
Avengers stop Egghead, he’ll be a big hero.
Obviously Goliath is suspicious of his motives—as are they all—but since,
you know, there’s a death ray orbiting
the Earth, they agree to do whatever Barton wants in exchange for the
coordinates.
Aww, they’re so
cute. But if you’re juggling cobras,
you’ve already chucked caution out the window.
The Avengers
take off with Barton in tow (apparently that was one of his demands), and
Vision uses his density-changing powers to get from the Avengers’ rocket to the
space station and open an airlock for them… and set off an alarm. Thanks, Vision.
Lookit those
teeth! You will never love your job much
as these robots love theirs.
Just when it
looks like the Avengers will triumph, Egghead shoots a paralysis ray at some
Avengers voodoo dolls, which makes their real-life counterparts go stiff. Why he didn’t just shoot at the actual Avengers I don’t know, but
anyway, the only person still able to move is Barney Barton. He takes advantage of that fact by heroically
leaping at, uh, the controls, I guess?
Anyway, he destroys it at the cost of his own life, Egghead flees, and
we end with Goliath cradling the penitent Barton in his arms as he dies.
This ending
feels really abrupt for some reason—it’s like “HERE HAVE A MAJOR REVELATION THE
END!” Fortunately, this isn’t quite the
end of the story, as next issue basically picks up right after this one, but
we’ll get to that next time.
Incidentally, if
you’re wondering what happened to Egghead’s associates, you have to go to a
couple of other books. In Captain Marvel #14, Puppet Master uses
his Iron Man action figure to control Shellhead, making him attack Mar-Vell
with the ultimate goal of destroying Cape Canaveral. (That way, no one could get into space to
mess around with Egghead’s space station.)
Unfortunately, Iron Man has a heart attack in the middle of the fight
and Captain Marvel sends him off in an ambulance. (He gets better.) Puppet Master throws a tantrum and
accidentally blows himself up. Can’t say
I’m surprised.
Meanwhile, in Sub-Mariner #14, the Thinker tries
basically the exact same plot with a mind control collar and the Human
Torch—the original android version, not Johnny Storm—and instead of wrecking
the Cape, Thinker orders the Human Torch to set off a volcano, providing him
with enough energy to cut off power to the entire U.S. But Human Torch’s collar is damaged in his
fight with Namor, and then it turns out the Torch is not really the Torch but
Torch’s former sidekick Toro, who sacrifices himself to stop the Thinker,
ultimately blowing them both up.
So yeah, they’re
both basically the same story, one’s just more needlessly complicated than the
other. Avengers #64 is the most unique of the trio, but it still shares a
lot of the same elements—mind control and heroic sacrifice—though since
Egghead, the Thinker, and the Puppet Master were all supposed to be working
together, I guess it makes sense they’d pool their resources.
Images from Avengers #63 and Avengers #64
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