Avengerous Tales 1.35 - Avengers #65-#67

To read Avengerous Tales 1.34, go here!

You get a triple feature today!  What fun!

Our adventure begins with the Swordsman accepting a job offer.  He is hilariously enthusiastic about it, running through the streets, screaming about how “someone has summoned” him and how he will let nothing delay his chance to make a ton of money by stabbing people.

 

 
If that’s the way he reacts to getting a job, I’d hate to be the person who tells him he’s fired.

His prospective employer turns out to be none other than Egghead, who spends the next few pages expositing Swordsman’s own past: how he used to headline a carnival and hired two brothers, Clint and Barney Barton, the first as an archer, the second as a roustabout.  All went well until Clint discovered the Swordsman (does he have a real name?) stole some money.

 

Um, no offense, but a couple of dudes running around with a sword and a bow would be kind of conspicuous—it’s not exactly a common skillset.  I think someone would figure out who you are eventually.

The Swordsman knocked Clint off a high wire and left him for dead, though he says he always suspected Clint survived and became Hawkeye—a suspicion Egghead now confirms.  How he figured it out, I don’t know, but I assume it just gets handwaved as ‘he’s super smart, he knows stuff.’  Egghead then hires the Swordsman to go murder a couple of Avengers, specifically Hawkeye and Giant-Man.

And yes, he does say Hawkeye and Giant-Man, so it looks like as smart as he is, he didn’t notice the identity swap.  My hijinks-sense is tingling!

At Avengers Mansion, Clint laments his brother’s death and how they spent so many years avoiding each other.  See, the night Swordsman attacked Clint, his brother got him medical help, but not before chewing him out for refusing the Swordsman’s offer of a profitable life of crime.

 

Meanwhile, the Swordsman, having acquired a device that turns off mansion security during his brief time as an Avenger, breaks in and swiftly learns that Hawkeye is now Goliath.  Goliath, wanting to fight the Swordsman one-on-one, outright attacks the other Avengers when they try to help him, distracting the good guys long enough for the Swordsman to knock out the rest of the team.  Nice going, genius.

It’s just Goliath and Swordsman now, which doesn’t do Goliath a lot of good…

 

Gee, it’s too bad you’re not a member of a team who could cover for you right now.

Swordsman takes Goliath back to Egghead—who, after all, only hired him to bring him Giant-Man/Goliath, not necessarily Hank Pym.  But Egghead is not stupid and goes to remove Goliath’s mask to ensure his identity, threatening to kill the Swordsman if their prisoner isn’t Pym.  The Swordsman doesn’t take that well and attacks his former benefactor, who knocks him out the window with a stun ray.  This gives Goliath enough time to recover and save the Swordsman from falling to his death.

 

 

His victory against the Swordsman doesn’t mean much, though, not compared to capturing his brother’s killer.  Hey look!  Character development!  Now let’s hope he goes home, apologizes to his teammates and buys them all pancakes to make up for his stupidity.

Issue Sixty-Six begins with Thor and Iron Man pounding at a chunk of a brand new metal called adamantium, which I’m sure at least some of you recognize as the stuff Wolverine’s claws are made of.  Neither hero is able to so much as put a dent in the stuff.  This bugs Thor, since Mjolnir is supposed to be tougher than anything, but SHIELD scientist and adamantium inventor Dr. MacLain—who accidentally created Captain America’s shield in 1941 in a previous attempt to invent adamantium, so nice continuity nod there—has more far-reaching concerns.

 

I see Yellowjacket has finally picked up on the art of gossiping about his teammates when they’re still within hearing range.  I’d say turnabout’s fair play, but the Vision is one of the few who never pulled that stunt on Yellowjacket, so screw you too, man.

(P.S. Our new artist is Barry Smith.  Say hi to Barry, everyone.)

While Goliath tries punching the adamantium into submission, which goes exactly as well as you’d expect, Vision develops a major headache, like something’s trying to take over his brain.  By the time the Avengers turn to look for him, he’s disappeared.

This bit is actually weirdly done: we see Vision get hit by some sort of energy right before he disappears, which implies that he was pulled away against his will.  But then on the next page we see him wandering around a graveyard, apparently of his own free will, moping about Wonder Man, the guy whose brainwaves his own personality was based on.

 

Vision is then hit by an epiphany about who entered his mind and by the sudden urge to return to the helicarrier and steal the adamantium.  He even straight-up murders a guard to do so.

Meanwhile, Hank and Jan wonder about the Vision’s mysterious nature and Iron Man is nearly killed by a training simulation.  The other Avengers don’t realize something is wrong with the computer until it’s almost too late, and Hank’s suspicions about the Vision continue to grow.  Things get even worse when they find Jan half-conscious on the floor.

 

The Vision never left after attacking Jan and he now springs out to attack the team.

 

“If you wanted to play tag, you could have just asked!”

The issue ends with the big reveal.  Who was in Vision’s head?  Who compelled him to turn against his friends?  Ah, you already know the answer to that—Ultron, now calling himself Ultron-6 and sporting a shiny new indestructible adamantium body.

I can’t say I’m crazy about the art in this last issue—there’s something about the faces that looks like Jack Kirby got stuck with a bad inker.  But the rest of the issue was pretty good.  I look forward to delving more into the Vision’s psyche and past, and since my review of Issue Sixty-Six is kind of short, I’ll throw in Issue Sixty-Seven as a bonus for you nice folks. :)

We start off with the Avengers fighting Ultron and his go-cart.

 

Sorry, Ultron, but I can’t take you seriously when you’re riding in something that’s a candy cane and a tacky paint job away from being in Wreck-It Ralph.

The epic battle continues (and I do mean epic—it takes up half the issue).

 

This line is AMAZING.  Amazingly hammy, amazingly hilarious, amazingly amazing.  It’s like Ultron’s version of “I’m here to kick ass and eat candy canes and I’M ALL OUT OF CANDY CANES.” (Thank you MST3K.)

Meanwhile, the Vision is too busy having an existential crisis to be of much use as the Avengers get pounded.  He does have the presence of mind to figure out where Ultron will go if he manages to escape, and so the Vision flies off to that unspecified location, just to be safe.  And wouldn’t you know it, Ultron busts out a window and flies away, declaring that he has more important things to do than kill his enemies.  Which begs the question of why he even bothered to leave his evil lair if he didn’t have much time to spare on punching Avengers anyway.  Some super-logical death machine you are.

So after taking a moment to put Iron Man to bed and to question Vision’s loyalties…

 

…the Avengers commandeer a quinjet to go visit Ultron’s old hideout.  Vision, of course, is already there, and he eavesdrops on Ultron’s monologuing about how he has a whole bunch of nuclear devices that he intends to blow up soon.

 

Um, it only takes one nuclear bomb to decimate a city.  Ultron made it sound like he’s got a bunch of them, but he’s only going to use them to take out New York… and no place else?  I don’t want to tell you how to be a super-villain or anything, Ultron, but I think you can maybe push yourself a little harder.

The Vision, obviously, doesn’t like any of this and attacks Ultron.  The Avengers aren’t of any help, since the energy shocks preceding the big explosion have knocked them all for a loop.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, SHIELD isn’t happy about their adamantium being stolen, so they track it down and, not realizing what has become of their precious experiment, send fighter jets to retrieve it.  The minute they see the Vision, they take him down, allowing Ultron to escape to another part of his evil lair.

 

According to Yellowjacket, who is now a nuclear scientist I guess, that second blast means Ultron is literally a lever-pull away from blowing up the entire city.

And that’s it for now, folks.  I feel like I haven’t had as much to say these past few issues because there isn’t as much to nitpick or make fun of, at least not compared with the disaster of Avengers #60.  They’re just good solid stories, I enjoyed reading them, and I hope you enjoyed reading these reviews.

To read Avengerous Tales 1.36, go here!

Images from Avengers #65, Avengers #66 and Avengers #67