Avengerous Tales 2.31 - Avengers #130-#131

To read Avengerous Tales 2.30, go here!

1. What is going on with Vision’s anatomy here?

2. There’s a villain called the Slasher?  Sweet.  Nice to have another shipper on deck.

So if you didn’t read the previous Avengerous Tale, you should know that the Swordsman sacrificed himself to save Mantis. 

Two days later, the surviving Avengers have returned to Avengers Mansion just in time for even more upheaval to affect their ranks.  Hawkeye decides to rejoin the Avengers (yay), while Mantis—never officially an Avenger anyway—asks permission to take the Swordsman’s body for burial in Vietnam, where she will stay and try to suss out her past.  The Vision also wants to leave, since he’s frozen up in battle several times already and feels that he’s no longer an asset. 

The Avengers agree to Mantis’s request, but they insist the Vision stick around so they can figure out what’s going on with him together.  While the Scarlet Witch stays behind to continue her training with Agatha Harkness, everyone else jets off to Vietnam.  Let’s beat them there, shall we?

 

“Hand over your lemons, your wingfics and your coffee shop AUs right now!  Canon’s been sucking lately and I’m desperate!”

The Slasher makes off with a bagful of diamonds.  The Avengers, still ignorant of this crime, go to the garden outside the Temple of the Priests of Pama to pay their final respects and bury their fallen comrade.

 

*sniff* Farewell, Avenger.  May flights of swashbucklers sing thee to thy rest.

But the poor Swordsman can’t even get a decent funeral, as our old communist buddies the Radioactive Man, Titanium Man and Crimson Dynamo—calling themselves the Titanic Three—come storming out of the jungle in pursuit of a terrified Vietnamese man.  I’m not sure if he’s scared because of the armored villains on his tail or because he just realized he’s the same color as Donald Trump, but anyway.

This is the 1970s, and things are a bit more complicated than they were in the previous decade.  This comic’s cover date is December 1974, so it came out around March 1975, just one month before the official end of the war.  In April of that year, America officially withdrew all troops.  The creators of his comic would have known darn well we were going to lose, and within the context of this comic, that means the Avengers have no authority in Vietnam.

The Titanic Three, now allied with the Viet Cong, tell the Avengers to quit stinking up their country and leave.  Iron Man’s response is,er, less than optimal.

 

Iron Man and Thor come to blows, but Mjolnir quickly brings Iron Man to his senses.  They leave the temple, knowing that they probably won’t ever be allowed to come back, not even to visit the Swordsman’s grave.  Wow, he REALLY can’t catch a break, can he?  Even in death nothing goes right for him!

In Saigon, the Avengers get to work trying to figure out Mantis’s real origins.  She thinks she recognizes a house, but the owners tell her it wasn’t built until after she claims to have lived there.  At every other place they visit it’s the same story: Mantis’s memories don’t match up with reality.  She begins to truly believe Kang’s claims that she is the Celestial Madonna, but she doesn’t get the chance to think on it further before the Titanic Three (and the Slasher) show up once again.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Avengers have not left the country as they were supposed to.  The commies don’t like that and attack our heroes... who have a surprise ally.

 

This is the only panel we see this guy in for this issue, and the Avengers don’t see him at all, but he does manage to turn the tide in the Avengers’ favor.  The Vision knocks the Slasher off his feet, sending him scrambling after the diamonds he stole earlier.  The only problem is that Slasher told the Titanic Three that the Avengers had falsely accused him of the theft and gone to them for protection.

 

That’s right, go on and insult the people you want to save you from the Avengers.  That’s always a good plan.  Though the Titanic Three can’t be real bright if they thought he was innocent.  What did they think he was carrying around in that bag?  A pile of fanart?

So the Titanic Three leave the Slasher to his fate and the Vision ends the issue with some unsubtle antiwar commentary.  The next issue wastes no time in revealing the identity of the mysterious shadowy figure who saved the Avengers last time.

 

Don’t recognize him?  Try picturing him in a red-white-and-blue costume with a matching shield.  Yup, it’s Steve Rogers back in action.  If you’re wondering about the costume, the explanation is simple.  Remember from a few tales ago how I explained how Captain America had become disillusioned with this corrupt country of ours and hung up his cowl?  Not long after, with a little nudge from Hawkeye, he decided to take up crimefighting under a new name: Nomad, the Man without a Country.

Obviously that didn’t last long, so enjoy Steve’s mile-long cleavage while you can.

Nomad was in the Pacific (close enough, right?) because—as told in Captain America #181 (and the fact that they didn’t even bother to change the title of the comic should have given you a clue about how Steve’s jaunt as Nomad would end)—the Serpent Squad was doing something naughty with an oilrig there.  Viper and Cobra escaped Nomad’s clutches, and he decides to go hang with his buddies while waiting for them to turn up again.

Anyway, cut to the space between spaces, where Kang the Conqueror and Rama-Tut are locked in eternal struggle.  Except it’s not all that eternal after all, because they are pulled out of the timestream by our old pal Immortus.

Immortus helpfully locks Rama-Tut in a trusty giant glass tube, and Kang vows to forever eschew the softer emotions to prevent his becoming like Rama-Tut.  Immortus, meanwhile, thinks how he might be able use Kang for his own plans.

Before we find out what Immortus’s plans are, we return briefly to Saigon, where Mantis apologizes to the Vision for hitting on him and Nomad promises to rejoin the Avengers as soon as he defeats the Serpent Squad.  (Spoiler alert: he’s lying.)

But enough of that.  Immortus wants to attack the Avengers with Kang’s assistance.  Rama-Tut tries to talk them out of it, but Kang obviously tells him to shut it and runs off to plot evil plots with his new biffle.  Said plot involves using Immortus’s magic time machine to summon anyone from any era to fight and defeat the Avengers on his behalf.

You may recognize this as the same scheme Immortus used last time he fought Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but Kang insists that his version is better.

 

Apparently Merlin the magician and Hercules the Greco-Roman demigod don’t count as superpowered now.

Kang summons the Frankenstein Monster, Wonder Man, the original Human Torch, a kung-fu master named Midnight, a former Silver Surfer baddie called the Ghost, and Baron Zemo.  Although his earlier justification about “non-super-powered champions” is still garbage, it is actually quite clever of Kang to select Wonder Man, the Human Torch and Baron Zemo because a) they are well-known to the Avengers and their presence will surely freak them out, and b) the Vision was constructed from a combo of Wonder Man’s brainwaves and the Human Torch’s android body.  Existential crisis ahoy!

Back in Vietnam again, Vision asks Iron Man for some relationship advice.  He loves Wanda, but he’s also very worried about Mantis—does that mean he loves her too?

 

“Dangit Ultron you created him so why aren’t you answering these awkward questions???”

Speaking of love and Mantis, she’s just down the road being visited by what appears to be the ghost of the Swordsman.  He disappears when she gets too close without ever having said a word.

Meanwhile, back in limbo, Immortus decides that they should bring the Avengers to the intricate maze of tunnels in his basement, where they will wander hopelessly forever (theoretically).  Kang likes Immortus’s plan but he does not like Immortus.

 

And into another plastic tube goes Immortus.  Gee, it’s almost like teaming up with a megalomaniac bent on conquering the universe was a BAD idea or something.

Back with the Avengers, Jarvis calls up to say the Serpent Squad was spotted in California, so Nomad dumps the Avengers faster than PayPal dumped North Carolina.  (It was topical when I wrote this okay)  The second he goes, Kang uses Immortus’s instruments to zap them all to different places within the Labyrinth of Limbo.

 

“We added dump tackling to Monopoly.  Really keeps the newbies on their toes!”

The issue ends with Kang leading his cadre of creeps into the maze to fight the Avengers.  Does Kang have a map of the labyrinth?  Otherwise, won’t he be just as lost as his enemies?

So apparently the next two issues are the last ones in the current storyline.  Will Mantis finally discover her true destiny?  Ehhh... kinda.

To read Avengerous Tales 2.32, go here!

Images from Avengers #130 and Avengers #131