Saturday, March 12, 2016

Avengerous Tales 2.20 - Avengers #110-#111



To read Avengerous Tales 2.19, go here!

A special note for Hawkeye fans: you may want to keep a copy of your Fraction and/or Duggan TPBs at hand while you read this review to remind yourself of why you like this character.

Today we begin with Thor summoning everyone to the meeting room, where Pietro and Crystal have called via Skype.

 
Watch it, Pietro, or your nose is going to grow and crack the viewscreen.

He explains all about how Crystal found and nursed him back to health (I went through all this in the previous Avengerous Tale, if you want a more detailed version), and in the few days that they’ve known each other, they’ve fallen so in love that they plan to marry.

Wanda’s really happy for him, but she then makes the mistake of telling Pietro about how she and the Vision are now a couple.  Pietro yells at her, saying that he won’t allow his sister to be involved with “a robot” and ends the call by declaring that he won’t call her again until she “comes to her senses.”  You’d think he’d know better than to judge others like this, considering how much it upsets him when people make judgments about mutants, but nobody said that being oppressed exempts you from being a hypocrite.

While Wanda cries, the viewscreen pops back on, and the Avengers get a super creepy video message that just consists of the cameraman showing them a thoroughly wrecked mansion with an injured but defiant Professor X inside.

 
The Avengers race out to investigate, and while they do, we check in with… Hawkeye?  Wait, seriously, Hawkeye?  Man, even when he quits the dang team I can’t get a vacation from this jerk!

Okay, well, what’s he up to?  He’s gone to San Francisco, where the Black Widow and Daredevil have been fighting crime together.  She’s not home though, so Hawkeye politely leaves with the intention of coming back later when she’s available.  At least, that’s what he’s doing in some alternate universe when he’s actually a decent person, but in this one, he hides in her yard to wait for her.

 
WE HAVE MOVED INTO ACTUAL SCARY STALKER EX TERRITORY.  SOMEBODY STOP HIM ALREADY.

Back with the real Avengers, they arrive at the X-Mansion (is that what it’s called?) to find all the X-Men in comas and the Professor’s mutant-finding computer, Cerebro, transformed into a giant spider thing that wants to stab everyone a lot.  They manage to escape both that and the random shower of boulders outside, and Wanda is (appropriately enough) the first to cotton onto what’s going on.

 
And then they’re attacked by dinosaurs. 

This isn’t as random as it seems once you remember that Magneto’s last plot involved turning the natives of the dinosaur-riddled Savage Land into mutants.  And indeed, one of Magneto’s former associates, a guy with a hypnotic flute, is the one controlling the dinosaurs.

Before they can take down the Piper, the boulders spring back to life in a protective cocoon that not even Thor can smash through.

 
“And he’s not pulling it off at all.”

Magneto disguised himself as Angel so the Avengers would rescue him from the mansion with the other X-Men, on whom he used his heretofore unheard-of mind control powers to put them in comas.  Okay????

(Actually they explain it like this: the blood contains iron, which is a metal, and since Magneto can control metal, he can therefore control humans.  Even though that’s BS, but screw it, it’s comics.)

So Magneto kidnaps Captain America, Iron Man, and Scarlet Witch, leaving Black Panther, Thor, and Vision to put together a rescue mission.  Now, this story arc actually continues in the pages of Daredevil #99 instead of The Avengers, and since Daredevil is not an Avengers comic, I’m not going to be giving a full review of it.  Even if I did feel like reviewing it, I don’t have access to that issue at the moment, so it sucks for all of us, really. 

From what I read on Wikipedia, it seems to revolve around Hawkeye and Daredevil fighting over Black Widow and only afterwards thinking, oh yeah, maybe we should just ASK NATASHA WHO SHE LIKES INSTEAD OF FIGHTING OVER HER LIKE SHE’S A GODDAMN FOOTBALL TROPHY.  Before they can ask her anything, however, the Avengers arrive to ask Daredevil for help in saving the X-Men and their own missing teammates.

And that brings us to Avengers #111.

 
1. Breaking news: Hawkeye is a petty whiny baby.

2. Why didn’t they just call them instead of wasting all that time flying all the way across the country?  Hawkeye knew Black Widow’s address, so their personal info isn’t exactly secret.  And I know you people have a viewscreen to Skype with, if not an actual dang telephone.

3. If ‘beauteous’ is the best word you can come up with to describe Black Widow, you need a new thesaurus and to be shot with her widow’s bite.

The Avengers and their new allies convene to discuss the matter.  Daredevil reads a newspaper article (with his magic glove-covered fingers, what the heck) about an atomic scientists’ convention being held close by, and it’s a pretty safe bet that Magneto will be interested in such a gathering, since mutants are caused by atomic energy.

Sure enough…

 
“I told you not to buy furniture from Ikea!”

The Avengers try to stop them while in engaging in terrible banter.

 

Thor pursues Magneto’s plane, but he has to retreat when Magneto mind-controls Iron Man into dangling Cap from the plane (by his feet no less) and threatens to make Iron Man drop him if Thor continues to follow.  So instead, the Avengers decide to figure out where those dinosaurs popped out from… all except the Vision, who has vanished.  Again.

Look, you guys know I like Vision, but his habit of “mysteriously” disappearing only to turn up at the last second to save the day is getting repetitive.  At least he’s had some interesting arcs on a personal level as he figures out how his feels work.

So while Magneto tries to get the secret of atomic energy from the scientists for purposes of world domination, the Avengers, again thanks to Daredevil’s super-senses, manage to find the cave where they’re all holed up.

 
Stop punning already!  Bad kitty!!

 
And that goes for you too!

Anyway, the Vision saves the day because of course he does—he possessed the body of Magneto’s piper earlier and waited until just the right moment to knock out the master of magnetism.

The Avengers revive Professor X, who in turn revives the X-Men and the possessed Avengers.  While the X-Men realize that the real Angel is still missing and that they must find him, the Avengers are looking to expand.  Cap offers Daredevil and Black Widow a place on the team, and while Matt refuses, Natasha accepts in the hopes that being away from Matt for a while will help her sort out her feelings for him.

She doesn’t say that, of course, and Matt gets a bit passive-aggressive about the idea of his lady love having a life and mind of her own, but she doesn’t care enough to change her mind.  And hey, I can personally guarantee you right now that Black Widow will be a better (and certainly a less cranky) Avenger than Hawkeye and Quicksilver combined.  Good riddance, fellas!  Please forget to write!

To read Avengerous Tales 2.21, go here!

Images from Avengers #110 and Avengers #111

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