Saturday, March 26, 2016

Avengerous Tales 2.22 - Avengers #114-#115



To read Avengerous Tales 2.21, go here!

Apparently the Swordsman and Mantis have gotten into Hank Pym’s store of growth serum.  So has that bug, for that matter.

So Wanda’s still pretty PO’d about the events of last issue, as you can imagine, and her mood is not improved when she sees Cap and Iron Man testing the Vision to make sure he’s combat-ready.

 
Hee.

It’s not the testing itself that annoys her—who could possibly object to that panel?—but rather what Cap says next: that if Vision had been human rather than an android, he’d be all over the sidewalk right now.  A true enough statement, but Wanda is sick of the constant reminders that she and Vision are different and decides to go for a walk to clear her head.

It doesn’t help: the second she steps outside the gate, a bunch of jerks try to flirt with her and insult her taste in men at that same time, which seems super-counterproductive, but again, they are jerks.  She hexes the heck out of them, but one gets near enough to slap her.

Enter Mantis!

 
Mantis is awesome I love her please let her stick around forever and ever you go girl

Mantis even walks Wanda home to make sure she’s okay.  At the Mansion, Wanda tries to invite Mantis inside, but Captain America refuses, stating that “unauthorized personnel” are not allowed in Avengers HQ.  Given what happened the last time they ignored that rule, he’s perfectly right to be nervous about this.

His fears are further heightened by the fact that Mantis didn’t arrive in the city alone.  Her boyfriend and former Avengers foe the Swordsman is here too, and he wants to be let back into the Avengers because Mantis has made a new man out of him, etc., etc.

Cap still isn’t buying it, but the others are willing to give Swordsman a chance.  In the name of democracy, Cap stands aside.  As for Mantis, she doesn’t want to join the team, but she does want to stick close to her sweetie pie, so she’s staying at the mansion now too.  Wanda’s super happy about that, since she’s tired of being the token girl.


Was Steve Englehart also writing a romance comic at the time?  Because I think he got the scripts mixed up.

ANYWAY.  Thor is super impressed by the Swordsman and recommends that they make him a full-fledged Avenger.  Cap, however, still harbors doubts, especially after they all view a news story about how Hawkeye is back in New York (he and the Hulk kicked Zzzax’s electric fanny in Hulk #166).  The Swordsman reacts by saying what a showboat Hawkeye is and how they totally don’t need him in the Avengers so don’t even THINK about asking him back.

Cap considers following Swordsman as he leaves the room, but nah… he’s just being needlessly suspicious now, right?


Cap is going to be paranoid forever now.

The Lion God storms Avengers Mansion with Swordsman and Mantis leading the charge.

 
Yes, Mantis just took down Thor with her bare hands.  And then she does the same to Cap.  Looks like my Women Marvel Should Make Movies About But Never Will list just got a little longer.

But not all is as it seems.  Just as the Lion God is about to burn Black Panther at the stake, the Swordsman and Mantis hypnotize him (???) long enough for Iron Man to recover and trap him in an adamantium cylinder, which Thor then shoots to another dimension.  Huh?

Well, Mantis is sort of an empath, and when she sensed the Lion God’s return was imminent, she and the Swordsman planned this whole charade to lure him out and defeat him for good.  The Avengers (except Cap) accept this explanation and move on as if it never happened.

Now it’s time for our next adventure, which takes place in England.  Or it will, if the British government lets them in.

 
Not sure why Mantis is being punished for the Swordsman’s crimes.  She hasn’t done anything to deserve being banned, as far as we know.

But the Avengers, being the Avengers, convince Mr. Stick-in-the-Mud that they will be responsible for the Swordsman’s actions, and so he’s temporarily allowed to visit “merrie olde England” with his teammates.

So just what are the Avengers doing in England?  They’re here to yet again rescue the missing Black Knight.  Poor guy: he was really happy to be named an official Avenger, but the only time he shows up in this comic is when he gets kidnapped or put in a magic-induced coma.

To add to the mystery, the Black Knight’s home, Garrett Castle, is surrounded by an Avenger-proof force field.  They are displeased.

 
A cutting ray?  His SWORD has a cutting ray?  Isn’t that like putting a fan on an air conditioner?  It already does that!

Mantis uses her empathy nature powers to tap into the field and learns that Doctor Strange is the one who put it up, though she can’t tell why.

And then a bunch of literal troglodytes pop out of the ground and attack everybody.  Apparently they have trouble telling us surface dwellers apart and blame the Avengers for whatever happened to the Black Knight, from whose castle they would often pilfer food.  The troglodytes’ king, Skol, also exposits for no reason about how he and the others are descendants of English peasants who fled underground after being accused of poaching.

Anyway, the Avengers obviously don’t know what happened to the Black Knight or why Doctor Strange erected the force field.  Skol really, really doesn’t like that answer.

 
I’ve always wondered what the heck a ‘troth’ is and why Asgardians would swear by it, so I looked it up.  The explanation is pretty dull, actually—troth is just a 12th-century word for faith or loyalty.  It looks like it derives from the word ‘truth,’ which is kind of obvious when you know it.

Now that we’ve got that boring English lesson over with, let’s get back to the action.  Mantis kicks the skele-bug’s behind, which angers the troglodytes enough that they douse all the torches, leaving the Avengers in total darkness.  Fortunately, Black Panther’s cat-like eyesight spots the tunnel through which the troglodytes are about to attack them.

With Panther’s help, the Avengers line up in front of the tunnel entrance, ready to defend themselves.

 
Panther goes into the tunnel to defeat as many troglodytes as he can before they get to his team.  He does quite well, beating them until they surrender.  After the fight, the Avengers bring the troglodytes to the surface to receive medical care from the government who will probably end up experimenting on them but whatever.  Now the Avengers are free to find out who, besides Doctor Strange, was involved in the kidnapping of the Black Knight.

There’s also a brief coda where a blinded Loki teams up with a demon named Dormammu, who is currently banned from Earth, in a plan to expand Dormammu’s own hellish dimension until it engulfs the Earth.  That would create a loophole through which Dormammu could invade Earth like he wants, since it’d technically be part of his territory.

But I’ll explain more about that next time.

To read Avengerous Tales 2.23, go here!

Images from Avengers #114 and Avengers #115

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