To read Avengerous Tales 1.35, go here!
We’ve got Sal
Buscema, longtime artist for Captain
America and The Incredible Hulk (and
John Buscema’s brother), on art today.
Dang, the Avengers are going through artists faster than Harry Potter
goes through Dark Arts professors.
Nothing’s
changed since last issue: SHIELD and the Avengers are both closing in on
Ultron, who already has his finger on the button that will blast New York as
high as its rent. Nothing can stop him
now! Ahahahahaha!
Does this
warrant a sad trombone? I think this
warrants a sad trombone.
Well maybe it
wouldn’t be so dangerous if you’d stop playing video games when you’re supposed
to be working, Hank.
Wasn’t
this Winterbolt’s plan in Rudolph and Frosty’s
Christmas in July? Ultron is getting
less intimidating by the second.
Dangit,
Clarence, you’ve already got your wings, stop screwing with people.
You’d
think the other Avengers would be curious about that, but Hank just tells her
to quit being silly and let Santini do his thing. Jan throws the doll away, which is a shame
because ten seconds later it does this.
The doll thing beats up a couple of guards, growing bigger all the while. He busts into the operating room, and by this point he’s big enough to grab Tony and try to leave with him. The Avengers, having heard the commotion from down the hall, charge to the rescue. They quickly realize that their enemy only grows bigger each time they hit him, and Thor recognizes him as one of Kang the Conqueror’s lackeys. He is, appropriately enough, called the Growing Man.
That’s
how I feel whenever I remember Batman:
The Brave and the Bold got cancelled.
Panther
was in Wakanda when Kang the Conqueror kidnapped him as well, and he now urges
his teammates to listen to Kang’s story.
Kang even kinda-sorta apologizes for being so rude earlier, so the
Avengers agree to listen.
To read Avengerous Tales 1.37, go here!
The Avengers
show up just long enough to get trampled, so it certainly wasn’t them who
tampered with Ultron’s machinery. We
have the Vision to thank for that—after his defeat last issue, he used the last
of his strength to make himself intangible and slip inside the machine, ripping
it to pieces. He passes out after Ultron
flees, so the Avengers take him back to the mansion for repairs/treatment.
Yellowjacket
then gets the bright idea to use a mind probe on Vision, just in case he knows
something that could help them defeat Ultron.
The fact that they even HAVE a mind probe is creepy, but since it’s an
emergency…
Sure enough, the
Vision’s clearest thought is of a molecular rearranger. The Avengers conclude that Vision must have
used such a device to create Ultron’s new adamantium body since, as we saw
before, not even Thor’s hammer could make a dent in the adamantium.
They call up Dr.
MacLain, who confirms that yes, the molecular rearranger was stolen at the same
time as the adamantium. With this new
information, Yellowjacket comes up with a plan.
Said plan requires a chunk of Wakandan vibranium, which Black Panther,
who’s back in his home country fighting off looters, readily agrees to give
them.
Now to bait the
trap: the Avengers somehow arrange for Dr. MacLain to speak to the U.N. about
the threat Ultron poses. Ultron realizes
it’s a trick, but he decides to go anyway.
MacLain
gives this big speech about how he’s the only one with any hope of stopping
Ultron (while wearing sunglasses inside the whole time for some reason) while
Goliath, Wasp, and Thor keep a look-out for Ultron himself. They don’t do a very good job, because
Ultron—now minus the go-cart and calling himself Ultimate Ultron—busts through
the floor. Heck, Ultron is so confident
that he lets Goliath get in the first blow.
Bruce Springsteen?!!
Ultron
wipes the floor with our heroes and grabs MacLain. He tries to use a literal brain drain device
on him to gain all of MacLain’s scientific secrets, but MacLain resists so hard
that he actually manages to break Ultron.
I
wonder what MacLain was thinking that could cause Ultron to have a literal
meltdown. My money’s on this.
After
Ultron bites it (supposedly), we find out what really happened: MacLain was a
disguised Hank Pym, who’d been hypnotized into a) believing he was really
MacLain, and b) thinking the phrase “thou shalt not kill” over and over, which
is what caused Ultron to self-destruct. Wow. If that’s his reaction to religion, I dread
to think what would happen if some unsuspecting Jehovah’s Witness knocked on
his door.
I’m not sure I’d recommend hypnotizing a guy who’s been hypnotized before with dire consequences and clearly has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality as it is, but apparently we’re just pretending that never
happened, so fine, whatever.
The
next issue, chronologically speaking, is Avengers
Annual #3. We’re not really going to
talk about this one, since there’s no new material in it; it’s just a reprint
of Avengers #4, which I’ve already
reviewed, and then some reprints of some old Tales of Suspense. It’s kind
of ironic, given that the very first Avengers Annual proudly proclaimed “NOT A SINGLE REPRINT!” right on the
cover, and now two issue later, we’ve devolved into NOT A SINGLE ORIGINAL
STORY!
So
really, there’s nothing left for me to say about this. My thoughts on Avengers #4 still stand—it’s not just historic, but a fun story
with good art—so we’ll skip ahead to Avengers
#69. Before we dive in, though, I
should explain a few things.
Specifically, the events of Iron
Man #17-#18.
Actually,
one of Tony’s Life Model Decoys has gone Short
Circuit on him and tricked everyone into thinking the LMD is the real Tony
Stark. He even destroys Tony’s spare
armor, leaving just one set for himself.
Eventually, Tony grabs hold of his older armor and uses it to battle the
LMD. He succeeds just as the Avengers
arrive, but the strain of using the bulkier vintage armor causes his heart to
give out. The Avengers take him to a
hospital, but there isn’t much hope.
That’s
where we pick up in Issue Sixty-Nine—with the Avengers visiting Tony while Thor
is out retrieving a surgeon named Dr. Santini, who’s the only person capable of
saving the Avengers’ benefactor.
Just
before Santini kicks them out of Stark’s hospital room, Jan notices a glowing
doll under a chair.
The doll thing beats up a couple of guards, growing bigger all the while. He busts into the operating room, and by this point he’s big enough to grab Tony and try to leave with him. The Avengers, having heard the commotion from down the hall, charge to the rescue. They quickly realize that their enemy only grows bigger each time they hit him, and Thor recognizes him as one of Kang the Conqueror’s lackeys. He is, appropriately enough, called the Growing Man.
Goliath
promptly grows to his maximum size—I don’t know what he’s planning on doing,
since it’s clear they can’t punch him into submission, but it all becomes
irrelevant when Goliath gets dizzy from growing too fast.
At
that moment, a beam of light shoots down from a mysterious glowing sphere. It shrinks Growing Man to human size and
sweeps him and a still-unconscious Tony up into itself. The Avengers step into the beam and follow
them up.
They
are transported to the future, where the Growing Man and Tony have disappeared
and Kang is keeping his old “girlfriend” Ravonna in a jar. I put girlfriend in quotation marks because,
if you remember Avengers #24,
their relationship was so terribly written it was outright offensive.
Anyway,
Kang explains that the ball that brought them here has been shrunk down to
crystal ball size, with Growing Man and Tony still inside. Beyond that, the Avengers don’t need to know
anything as far as Kang is concerned.
Thor doesn’t take that well and the Avengers attack, only to be stopped
by… Black Panther?
It
turns out that Ravonna didn’t actually die at the end of Issue
Twenty-Four. Kang just put her in
suspended animation, I assume because her injuries were too grievous to treat
(even though it’s the year 4000 and you’d think they’d have decent healthcare
by then).
An
intergalactic blue man called the Grandmaster overhears Kang’s request and
offers him that power, but only if Kang can beat him at a game of the Grandmaster’s
choosing. If Kang loses, he, Ravonna and
the entire planet Earth will be disappeared.
THAT SOUNDS FAIR.
Kang
of course accepts the offer, and Grandmaster gives him one year to defeat his
game, a funky-looking device called “the game of the galaxies.” The deadline is up in one hour—boy, he sure
took his sweet time asking for help, didn’t he?—so of course the Avengers agree
to help him out, if only to save the world.
Kang
helpfully returns Tony Stark to his own time so he can get his operation. We’ll find out the results of that operation next
time, but for now, the Grandmaster appears to split up our heroes. Goliath, Thor, and Captain America are zapped
to the game’s first round: a battle with the Squadron Supreme!
And
of course, cliffhanger.
Anyone
else want to know what happened to the Growing Man? Is he still in that sphere?
Also,
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but for crying out loud, KANG IS A
TIME-TRAVELLER. He literally used time
travel to get the Avengers to his house.
Why can’t he go back in time and prevent Ravonna from being shot in the
first place? Why did he need to accept
an offer from the first creepy mystical guy who happened along?
Ignoring
that, a lot of this issue was prepping for the next one. I get the feeling, just given the general
set-up of this plotline, that we’re going to get a lot of big slugfests in the
next issue or two. Sounds good to me!
To read Avengerous Tales 1.37, go here!
Images from Avengers #68, Avengers Annual #3, Iron Man #17 and Avengers #69
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