To read Avengerous Tales 2.43, go here!
Dangit,
Yellowjacket, watch where you’re divebombing before you crash into Nuklo.
But they’ve got
other problems to sort out as well, like figuring out what the Whizzer was
thinking when he attacked the team last issue.
This was the
less fun predecessor of the Facial Hair Bros: the Dodgy Heart Bros.
The Whizzer
tells them that he thought they were some old villains of his—Isbisa, Madame
Death and Future Man—from his superhero heyday back in World War II. The Avengers decide to let the guy rest while
they try to figure out if the Scarlet Witch was telling the truth about the
Serpent Crown or if her injuries were making her babble nonsense.
Fortunately,
Iron Man secretly took some scans of the crown when they first encountered it
and detected a distinctive radioactive signature, which he now plugs into some
fancy-schmancy equipment to trace the crown to California. He and Cap immediately commandeer a quinjet
and take off without informing the others.
TEAMWORK!
Meanwhile, Hank,
Jan and Bob Frank (a.k.a. the Whizzer, a.k.a. the worst-named hero ever) have
sat down to dinner. Since Hank and Jan
weren’t around the last time the Avengers met up with Bob, they ask for a
synopsis of the encounter, which results in this hilarious mix-up.
It would appear
that the Whizzer got confused as to which Hank Jan is married to, only to
remember on the next page when he calls her “Mrs. Pym.” Either that or Hank, Jan and Hank have some
kind of understanding that we are unaware of.
So Bob recaps his previous encounter with the Avengers and then reveals what happened
afterwards. After he saw his son Pietro
marry the Inhuman Crystal, he got really depressed and lonely, thinking that
half his family was dead and the other half didn’t need him anymore. He follows the Tony Stark Guide* to Dealing
with Life, growing a Beard of Sorrow and wandering around New York drunk and
homeless for a while. Eventually, he
hallucinates that a nurse is his dead wife, which gives him the strength to finally
apply a razor to his face.
Once sober, the
Whizzer tries to figure out what happened to his son Nuklo and is horrified to
discover that the army is keeping him prisoner in—and here’s a
shock—California.
But before we
get to see these plot threads converge, let’s check in with Jan’s other
husband, the Beast, who left earlier to go looking for Wonder Man.
Wonder Man isn’t
really happy to see him, as you may have guessed, but fortunately, Wonder Man
is no match for the Beast’s acrobatics. He
barely gets enough time to let slip that he’ll be heading out to California as
soon as the Beast is defeated, but of course he gets slammed head-first into a
wall before he can even book a flight. Beast
sticks around long enough to note some scorch marks on the ground, which would
indicate that the Living Laser really is involved, and then bounds back to HQ
with Wondy tossed over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.
From California,
we receive some exclusive footage of Captain America at a Black Friday sale.
But seriously,
Cap and Iron Man traced the Serpent Crown to a hidden army base, but when they
tried to land the quinjet, the army started firing at them. The Avengers, naturally, set about defending
themselves the only way they know how: with an awesome fight scene that
involves Iron Man crushing a tank.
Sweet.
The army, headed
by a dude named General Pollock, surrenders suspiciously quickly, primarily
because the becrowned Living Laser has snuck up behind the Avengers to blast
them both into unconsciousness.
The army drags
Iron Man and Captain America into the same room where they’ve trapped Nuklo,
with whose unwitting aid (plus the crown and Laser’s powers) they intend to
take over the country. Why?
Behold: the most
pathetic man alive.
The Living Laser
exposits for a while about how he learned of the Serpent Crown from a book in the
prison library (seems to me that prison should have known better than to stock
books about all-powerful objects capable of facilitating world domination, but
whatever). After he was released, he
performed experiments on himself to increase his powers and then went after the
crown.
All this
monologuing gives the other Avengers time to catch up to our baddies. While the Vision makes off with the Serpent
Crown, the army gets their butts handed to them by Beast, Yellowjacket and Wasp
(and their ants), and of all people Wonder Man, who at some point apparently
came back to the side of the angels. Cap
and Iron Man recover enough to join the fray as well, but not quick enough to
stop Pollock from siccing Nuklo on them.
This does not go
well. For anybody.
Who would have thought that the radioactive man with the brain of a child would dislike being locked up in a bubble and screamed at by scary military men????
Nuklo goes wild
(well, more wild than usual), fighting everything and everyone around him. The more he fights, the more energy he absorbs and
the bigger he gets, until he becomes so powerful that he’s in danger of blowing
up and taking Los Angeles with him. He was only defeated last time by a hex sphere from
the Scarlet Witch for reasons that will soon cease to make sense. Regardless, the Scarlet Witch isn’t here
right now, so what are the Avengers to do?
At the last
minute, the Whizzer comes, well, whizzing out of nowhere and uses his
superspeed to somehow trigger Nuklo to implode
rather than explode, an action which
only knocks them both unconscious while simultaneously saving millions of
people. Which is still kinda how he was
defeated last time, since, if you’ll recall (or if you clicked on the link I so handily provided earlier), the only thing that could stop
Nuklo was “flesh of his flesh—blood of his blood.”
And that’s it. The issue ends with Cap giving orders to get
both Whizzer and son to a hospital and telling everyone to go home. Not a single schmaltzy narration box to be
had! I feel cheated.
As for what
happened to the Serpent Crown, we have to go to the next issue to find out.
The Vision took
the crown to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and dropped it in, hoping to
finally be rid of it forever. As soon as
he does so, he is attacked by a mysterious submarine.
“We’ll teach him
to dump his trash in our ocean!”
Actually, the
Blue Man Group cover band doesn’t know what the crown is, and they don’t care
enough to find out. All they want to do
is knock Vision out and take him to their leader, which they succeed in doing.
Meanwhile, the
Avengers have schlepped 3000 miles from California to New York just to get
Whizzer the medical care he supposedly urgently needs. Weren’t there hospitals in California you
could have taken him to?
And in Avengers
Mansion, the Scarlet Witch is up and about again, thinking to herself that she
still owes her dad a visit even if he did run off without a word months
ago. She doesn’t get the chance to
follow through when a mysterious aircraft lands in the mansion’s courtyard…
because apparently they have no security system to handle this sort of thing,
beyond Jarvis with a gun that Wanda won’t let him fire in case their visitor is
friendly. Which he is.
“Can’t you
tell? These are my begging shorts.”
Triton tells her
that the Fantastic Four are threatening the safety of both the Inhumans and the
whole world, but he refuses to explain further until all the Avengers are
present. That may take a while, given
that the Vision is being held hostage in an Atlantean submarine with a special
power-negating collar around his neck.
And who is responsible for his present condition, you ask?
I’m sorry, I
can’t hear your pretentious speech over the sound of those pants. Tone down the ocean theme a little, dude.
Attuma wants to
break Vision’s spirit as an example to the surface dwellers that he plans to
soon conquer. More specifically, he will
compel Vision and the other Avengers to attack his enemy Namor and, while
everyone’s duking it out, Attuma will quietly destroy a floating island called
Hydro-Base, on which live the victims of a mad scientist who tried to turn them
into mer-people.
Anyway, enough
of that. The Scarlet Witch can’t seem to
contact any of her fellow Avengers, so Triton suggests that she get her speedy
brother Quicksilver to run out and fetch them.
Scarlet Witch is confused since, as an Inhuman, Triton should darn well
know that her brother married an Inhuman and moved to Attilan ages ago, but it
doesn’t take her long to realize that “Triton” is really an Atlantean spy,
Tyrak the Treacherous.
Tyrak and Wanda
fight, making enough noise to attract Jarvis.
Needless to
stay, Jarvis most emphatically does NOT stop that brigand, allowing Tyrak to
spray knockout gas in Scarlet Witch’s face.
Fortunately, some actually capable fighters come to her aide in the form
of her teammates (sans Vision and Wonder Man).
Not that they
fare much better.
I don’t know
whether to applaud or throw tomatoes.
Also, am I the only one who thought Hawkeye was climbing in through a
window to save the day before realizing that was just a portrait?
Only the Beast
escapes Tyrak’s wrath, retreating with all due speed as some of Tyrak’s men
show up to help take our insensible heroes to Attuma. It’s important to note here that Tyrak seems
to be under the impression that he and Attuma will be ruling the world side by
side. I get the feeling that Attuma is
going to disappoint him to the point where Tyrak will definitely be living up
to the “Treacherous” part of his name.
To read Avengerous Tales 2.45, go here!
Images from Avengers Annual #6 and Avengers #154
*Now that I
think about it, Tony won’t fall into alcoholism for a couple years yet, so I
guess I got this joke backwards: Bob Frank wrote the guide and Tony carries
around a worn dog-eared copy like that annoying lady trying to be Amy Santiago
on Powerless.
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