To read Avengerous Tales 2.10, go here!
Gotta love the
juxtaposition of cover prices here. On
the first it brags in giant script that it’s fifteen cents, and on the second
it’s twenty-five cents all of a sudden.
Nice timing, Marvel.
(To be fair,
Issue Ninety-Three is several pages longer than usual, but the next issue is
regular length and twenty cents, so.)
Today’s Avengerous Tale begins with something you would never, ever expect. No, not Goliath respecting women, let’s not get crazy here. It’s the Vision in a turtleneck.
Before Wanda can
leave for the park like she planned, Jarvis bursts in with the latest
newspaper. Apparently, the three government
techies that the Avengers saved last time have spilled the beans about the
whole we-were-nearly-invaded-by-aliens thing.
This has, of course, put everyone in a tailspin, and the government has
even created an Alien Activities Commission and appointed an H. Warren Craddock
at its head.
(Oh come on,
comic. We all know the government
doesn’t work that fast. It’d take at
least a month for the minority party to stop filibustering everything, at
least.)
Craddock is
really gung-ho about his job, too, declaring that he has a list of people he
suspects of being alien spies (gee, that sounds familiar),
and that he plans to figure out once and for all if our old buddy Captain
Marvel is himself an alien—which, as we all know, he most definitely is.
Not long after,
Carol Danvers drops by for a visit, but her helicopter develops engine trouble
and Captain Marvel and the Vision nearly kill themselves to keep it from
crashing too hard. Wanda gets upset at
the near-death experience, but Vizh just tells her that she’s getting all
worked up over nothing. Clearly they
haven’t sat themselves down to discuss the near-kiss last issue.
So what’s Carol
doing here, anyway? She wants to
convince Marvel to come with her to a friend’s farm upstate, at least until the
smoke clears. Presumably having heard
about all the dogs that disappeared up there, Marvel refuses at first, but the
Avengers convince him and they’re soon off.
Still, Nick Fury
doesn’t much care for our McCarthy expy and lets Danvers and Marvel escape.
Back at the
mansion, Rick complains about how superheroes were simpler back in his day,
even though he’s like eighteen max so this is
your day you pretentious little whiner.
Why do I get the
feeling Roy Thomas was feeling nostalgic?
Not long after,
the Avengers are summoned before the Alien Activities Commission, along with
the Fantastic Four. Things don’t exactly
go in the Avengers’ favor—Reed Richards expresses his trust in them, but the
Thing doesn’t (he’s that fanboy complaining about how the old Avengers are
better). In addition, Craddock won’t
even let the Vision testify, claiming he’s just a “robot” who can only “parrot”
back what he’s been taught. Dang racist.
Actually, he
dreamt that Captain Marvel was in trouble up at the farmhouse and, apparently
trusting this dream, he goes zipping out of the courthouse to go help him. Craddock is pissed and adjourns the meeting
for now.
The Avengers go
back home, only to find that protestors have wrecked and looted the place. (Jarvis turned off the security measures so
none of them would get fried, so what is even the point of having them?) AND, as the icing on the cake of this stellar
day, Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man show up just long to say that they
disapprove of all these shenanigans and so they’re disbanding the Avengers FOREVER. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
With Issue
Ninety-Three comes a brand new artist: Neal Adams, who is most famous for
teaming up with Dennis O’Neil on the acclaimed Green Lantern/Green Arrow series and, more recently, for
conveniently losing his mind right on panel for the whole world to witness.
Still, he’s
magnitudes less nuts and more talented than Frank Miller, so it’ll be a
pleasure to see him drawing Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
After getting
kicked out last issue, Vision returns to the Mansion in bad shape.
“What?”
“UM, NOTHING.”
And then Ant-Man
shows up. Yes, Ant-Man, not
Yellowjacket. Boy, it sure didn’t take
him long to renege on his “no more tights” declaration. Hank’s here because apparently Iron Man
wanted all of the original Avengers for a meeting. (Wasp never shows because she “caught a
virus,” which I assume Hank tried to cure by smacking her in the face before
realizing a Tylenol would work better.)
Anyway, it’s a good
thing Ant-Man showed up, since he knows more about Vision’s physiology than anyone
else and is happy to examine him. From
the inside. With his ant friends Crosby,
Stills, and Nash. This is the weirdest
episode of The Magic School Bus ever.
So Hank Pym and
Crosby, Stills and Nash climb down Vision’s throat, where they are promptly set
upon by Vision’s hentai-inspired immune system.
Why is that a sentence I had to type?
Hank sends his
two surviving ants back to safety while he ventures deeper into Vision’s body. He keeps encountering more defense
mechanisms, which strengthen his theory that the Vision is still alive. He just has to get to the Vision’s skull and
give his brain a jumpstart. He ends up
in his chest and accidentally turns his own hand intangible because he’s a dang
moron.
After escaping a
herd of flying mirrors that want to suffocate him, Hank finally makes it to the
Vision’s brain, where all he has to do is reconnect a loose wire and then run
like heck to make it out of there before Vision wakes up. Mission accomplished, he leaves once again,
even though that originals-only meeting Iron Man arranged has yet to take
place. Thanks a lot, guy.
Incidentally,
who was Hank Pym talking to all that time he was inside the Vision? None of his bubbles were thought balloons; it
was all speech bubbles, meaning he was narrating his own adventures out loud a
la Darkwing Duck.
Anyway, back to
the plot, where maybe the Avengers didn’t disband after all…
Great. Now we’ve got a Fake Captain America, a Fake Iron Man, and a Fake Thor running around someplace.
Vision explains
what he and the other “ex” Avengers did upon being given the pink slip. They rented a car and drove up to the
farmhouse where Carol and Mar-Vell are hiding. Then they were attacked by shape-shifting cows
who took on the forms of the Fantastic Four.
Vision escaped, and that’s when he went to the Mansion for help.
In the meantime,
we find out the answer to where Mar-Vell and Carol went, as well as what’s up
with the cows.
Goliath and Rick
Jones are the next to be captured, but luckily that’s when the other Avengers
show up, ready to fight.
Meanwhile,
Captain Marvel has not been idle, freeing himself and Carol. (The Skrulls didn’t leave anyone to guard
them because they’re too arrogant to believe a Kree man could ever best them. And also another reason which we’ll find out
in a second.) Marvel snags a nearby communication
device called an omni-wave projector, which he turns into a weapon using
super-secret means. But when Carol asks
to see it, he crushes it in his hands.
Goliath tries to
stop the spaceship from taking off, but he apparently got careless about
keeping up with the dosage of his growth serum.
It wears off just in time for the Super-Skrull to get away with his
captives.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright
The band is
playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light
And somewhere
men are laughing and somewhere children shout
But there is no
joy in Mudville—the Avengers have very delicate egos that are directly tied to
their ability to win every single battle and are crushed to smithereens when
they inevitably lose once in a while
Avengers #93 felt like two issues
crammed into one, so we’ll look at each half separately.
The first half:
This is amazing. I have no words. I am in awe of the pure, shining glory that Marvel
has seen fit to bestow upon us pitiable mortals. This is Thomas and Adams’ greatest
professional achievement to date and possibly ever. Every time I look at it, We Are the Champions starts playing in my head.
The second half:
Screw the second
half. I wanted this entire comic to be
nothing but Ant-Man wandering around exploring the Vision’s insides while
talking to himself and waxing poetic about insects. In fact, let’s make this a regular thing. I’m sure Vision won’t mind loaning his body
for a good cause, right?
To read Avengerous tales 2.12, go here!
Images from Avengers #92 and Avengers #93
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