Avengerous Tales 2.6 - Avengers #82-#83

To read Avengerous Tales 2.5, go here!

Cover the first: Tony, that is the worst battle cry I’ve ever heard.

Cover the second: FOR THE LOVE OF AZAR NOT ONE OF THESE.

So you’ll remember from last issue that Black Panther ran off to stop all gang violence in New York by himself, except he ran into Daredevil in Daredevil #69 and they ended up teaming up to save one of Luke “Black Panther” Charles’s students from a gang called the Thunderbolts.

Meanwhile, as we’ve already covered, Scarlet Witch, Goliath, Vision, and their buddy Red Wolf ran off to stop Cornelius Van Lunt from being a land-grabbing douche, and everyone else ran off to stop the recently-reformed crime club known as Zodiac.  We’ve already dealt with the first two, so now it’s time see what the final group is up to.

 

First, though, we see a mysterious group quickly but effectively taking over Manhattan early one morning.

“They’re gonna kill us with secondhand smoke! *cough* *choke* *wheeze*” 

The invaders also cut off all transportation to and from the island, as well as surrounding the place with a forcefield of paralyzing nerve gas that takes out the paratroopers sent by the Pentagon.  The entirety of Manhattan is now under the control of one man—Aries, leader of Zodiac, who demands one billion dollars within twenty-four hours or else he murders everyone in Manhattan.

But don’t worry!  Half the Avengers are hot on Zodiac’s trail and are sure to—

 
YOU HAD ONE JOB, GUYS.  Also, those beds look super uncomfortable.

Over in Jersey, Scarlet Witch, Goliath and Vision watch Aries’s televised ultimatum and are suitably frustrated.  Other heroes also view the announcement: the Fantastic Four, who were out of town at the time, just sort of give up and leave New York to its fate—my heroes—and Spider-Man, who elects to stay at home and protect Aunt May because he’s afraid finding out about the invasion will be bad for her heart.  Even though going out and defeating Zodiac would, by extension, protect Aunt May even more because I don’t think BEING MURDERED will help her heart either, but whatever.  It’s the Avengers’ book, and they don’t need no kibbitzing from no guest stars—

 
Except Daredevil apparently.  Did Roy Thomas get his script mixed up with that of a romance comic or what?  Although, considering the way Daredevil #69 ended…

 

Believing themselves to be the only heroes left in New York (and they might as well be), Black Panther and Daredevil set out to stop Aries.  It turns out that broadcasting your headquarters on TV is a stupid idea, since Black Panther recognized the place where the Avengers are being held as an armory he knew from somewhere somehow.  He and Daredevil storm the place, but Aries sets everything on fire with a weapon called the Zodiac Key, which spits lightning-like energy.

Daredevil escapes, dragging along an unconscious Panther.  Meanwhile, Aries goes ahead with his plan to publicly execute the captured Avengers, thus discouraging any further upstarts.  Matt Murdock to the rescue!

 

He meant to do that.  No, really, he did: the minute he’s dragged close enough to the machine keeping the Avengers unconscious, he uses his cane to destroy it.  The Avengers are more than happy to join the fray.  Aries knows trouble when he sees it and gets the heck out of there, but Quicksilver ain’t having none of that.

 

This is the best panel ever—Quicksilver just dragging Thor off while Captain America laughs at him.  TEAMWORK!!!

Aries tries to fly away in a helicopter, but Thor can fly too AND he controls the weather, so Aries is going nowhere fast.

All that’s left now is the epilogue, which takes place after Aries’s gunmen have been interrogated.  It turns out that all three of the Avengers’ cases are linked—Cornelius Van Lunt funded Zodiac’s invading army and hid them on his hacienda out west, which is why he wanted the natives off their land.  (Doesn’t quite explain why he spent a literal decade trying to dam the river, but anyway.)  When the dam exploded, Aries fled and attacked New York earlier than he’d wanted, which maybe explains how they were able to defeat him.  And the Thunderbolts were also hooked up with Zodiac somehow for some reason.

Yeeeeeaaaah, kinda flimsy if you ask me, but if it gets the Avengers to shut up about how having different interests makes them incompatible as a team, I’ll accept it.

 

…

…So I guess I have to review Issue Eighty-Three now, huh?  Sigh…

I’ve already explained why “girl power” stories are terrible and never, ever, ever work out well, though in The Avengers’ defense, Goliath IS a massive misogynistic dirtbag.  Here’s his latest transgression, from a mere four issues ago.

 

Wanda’s comments genuinely disturb me.  Being in a bad mood is not an excuse to verbally abuse your teammates!!!  Scarlet Witch should be hexing his teeth in, not trying to appease this jerkass.

Anyway, back to Issue Eighty-Three.  The Wasp arrives at Avengers Mansion for a visit, only to find that Valkyrie, Scarlet Witch, Medusa (one of the Inhumans), and Black Widow (now in a much more familiar get-up) have taken over the joint.  The Avengers are no more, they say, and have been replaced by an all-female line-up of heroes calling themselves the Liberators.  Because feminism.  Or something.

 

Valkyrie used to be an unnamed scientist whose boss was a sexist stinkyface.  One night, while overworking herself to prove her worth, she passed out and something something chemicals something superpowers.  Valkyrie continues to harbor hatred for all men, and she has convinced the other female heroes to join her by reminding them of all the times their male teammates or the world at large discriminated against them.

Which, again, let’s be fair here, is a perfectly legitimate complaint.  If you’ve read enough of my other Avengerous Tales, odds are you can name a few examples for yourself.  Wasp is constantly given menial chores to do while the male heroes (and freaking teenagers) do the big jobs.  Black Widow’s membership was opposed by Hank Pym, even though he had no problem with former criminals Hawkeye, Swordsman and Vision joining up.  And I’m pretty sure the ratio of times Clint has called Wanda some demeaning nickname to the times he’s called her by her real name is like five to one.

I can’t wait to see how the creators turn this around, belittle the women’s justified complaints, and have the men come and rescue them so they learn their lesson about wanting to be treated as equals!!!

So where did the real Avengers get to, anyway?  The answer: a Halloween parade in Rutland, Vermont.

 

Yes, this did just become self-insert fan-fic.  I should probably explain.

The Rutland Halloween Parade is an actual thing, and Tom Fagan—the man that the comic depicts as being in charge of the parade—was an actual person.  Fagan was a giant nerd who was friends with a lot of the folks at both DC and Marvel; he even convinced some of them to participate in the parade throughout the early ‘70s, including then-current Avengers writer Roy Thomas.  And that eventually morphed into the writers and artists from both companies incorporating the Rutland Halloween Parade into several comics, including this one.

Dang, we’ve been taking a lot of side trips in this review.  On with the story!

The Avengers have agreed to participate in the parade (Scarlet Witch apparently faked a prior engagement so she could secretly hang out with the Liberators instead).  However, there are some uninvited guests here in Rutland: the Masters of Evil—Klaw, Melter, Radioactive Man, and Whirlwind—are also in town, and they feel the need to hide from the Avengers, even though there are plenty of people who made the rather worrying decision to dress as real-life supervillains for Halloween, so they should blend right in.

They plan to take an eminent mathematician, Dr. Erwin, as hostage because he’s invented some doohickey they want for themselves.  The Avengers spot them before they can get away with it, and the fight is on.

 

You may remember from Issue Forty-Six that Quicksilver has been waiting for quite some time to get his vengeance against Whirlwind.  Unfortunately, Quicksilver (or, more likely, the writer) does not remember, as their prior animosity is not mentioned at all.

Just as it looks like the Avengers are about to be defeated, the Liberators arrive.  Valkyrie is annoyed that the fight started without her, but she and the other women waste no time in ending it.

The Liberators defeat the Masters of Evil… and then turn their attention to defeating the Avengers as well.  They even debut a new rallying cry:

 
Catchy.

The Liberators take their captives and Dr. Erwin to the local university, where we finally learn what his invention is: a parallel-time projector.  We’ll find out what it does in a minute, but first, we finally learn the truth about Valkyrie, who sheds her disguise and reveals herself as classic Avengers baddie Amora the Enchantress.

Why the ruse, you ask?  Her powers were halved by Odin and, after her former accomplice Executioner ditched her for some other chick, she vowed vengeance against both men and Asgard.  She somehow found her way to Earth but, with her weakened powers, couldn’t do much of anything.  So she sought out some superheroines and used what was left of her magic to hypnotize them into helping her get to the parallel-time projector, which (potentially) grants the user access to other universes.

Scarlet Witch, meanwhile, suspected something was up with ‘Valkyrie’ when she started calling them ‘wenches,’ and that broke Enchantress’s control over her.  She reflects Enchantress’s own magic against her, seemingly blasting her to atoms.  Well.  That was easy.  Happy Halloween!!

 
Well… at least the women still believe they have legitimate grievances.  Which they do.

But still, Marvel is pulling the same stunt they did with the Sons of the Serpent: they bring up these very real issues about oppression and various isms, but only as a tool to be wielded by a “true” threat, and then those real issues that absolutely need to be discussed are left by the wayside.  Maybe this is Marvel trying to dip their toes in the water of more serious storylines before they jump all the way in, but it’s getting very irritating.

Also, it’s really odd how Clint and Natasha don’t interact.  They don’t even share a look.  Last time they were together, Widow was about to take off on a SHIELD mission and declared that she and Goliath could never see each other again.  Well, here they are, seeing each other, but there’s no reaction from either of them.  Maybe Clint just couldn’t recognize her with her new outfit and hairdo?

To read Avengerous Tales 2.7, go here!

Images from Avengers #82, Daredevil #69, Avengers #79 and Avengers #83