#Dr. Hank Pym | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thebibliomancer · 2 months ago

Text

Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #66: TUNNEL VISION

January, 1991

Ultron 13 -- Avengers, 0.

Hah, that's pretty clever, comic text.

Also, Tigra is back to normal! Yessss! Can't wait to see that happen!

Previously in Avengers West Coast: Wonder Man's brother, the Grim Reaper, was brought back to life and now has to murder people to live.

Forever ago, Tigra went feral so Hank Pym shrank her and put her in a terrarium but then forgot about her and she got out and has been missing ever since.

Ultron is a jerk. Once, he tried to not be a jerk but another version of him came and killed him about it.

Over in Avengers West Coast Avenging West Coastishly... uh, the government asked them to relocate some protestors that are standing right in the path of a malathion pesticide aerial spraying.

US Agent is, characteristically, grumpy about it. He's probably muttering about the nanny state under his breath.

Iron Man uses his repulsors to blast the pesticide spray so it won't land on the crowd. Meanwhile, US Agent decides to yell at the crowd.

A man protests that the helicopters are spraying at night too and decides to take a swing at US Agent. Which the super-soldier easily dodges.

US Agent: "The authorities okayed this spraying. If malathion's good enough for them, it's sure good enough for -- Hey! What's that rash on your face? It looks like -- some kind of metal!" Guy: "That's what I've been trying to tell you, jerk... They've also been spraying in secret -- at night! I've heard 'em -- choppers, the works! I got this way eating fruit from my own garden -- in Pasadena! These other people got the same problem!"

So, I went down a small rabbit hole, trying to determine if having a story about malathion spraying was just one of those Very California Stories that Avengers West Coast sometimes does.

And apparently, in the 80s, California started spraying the pesticide to control an outbreak of Mediterranean fruit flies and continued the program for a while. But the program was discontinued when there was a bioterrorist attack that released massive numbers of the fruit flies in protest of the spraying. The culprits were never caught but it did result in the end of the malathion program (because it was ineffective) and also transporting Mediterranean fruit flies into California got bumped up from a misdemeanor to a felony.

Wild.

Anyway, in real life, malathion probably doesn't make people develop metal rashes, maybe.

Oh, brief tangent. Speaking of US Agent and how much he loves the government, you'd think that the Avengers losing their government charter would be a thing. Unless the government specifically stripped the charter from the East Coast team and kept on the West Coast team because they had their Agent on the inside.

The book has not said! And since they have different creative teams now, I do not expect them to try very hard to be on the same page! Granted, even when John Byrne was writing both books, they didn't really feel like two halves of the same whole.

Anyway.

Iron Man almost made the helicopter crash when he repulsored the pesticide. So after he saves the pilots, they decide to quit the pesticide business. They seem like they were on the fence already - sympathetic to the concerns about whether malathion is safe or not.

But US Agent has become a believer over one interaction and accuses the helicopter pilots of spraying at night.

Pilot: "You know that hothead, Iron Man?" Iron Man: "Who really knows anybody?"

Hah. What a way to dodge the question. He really doesn't want to associate with the guy.

The pilots deny having anything to do with nighttime spraying. All their flights were listed in the paper long before they did it.

US Agent is still being belligerent, though, so Iron Man picks him up and flies away with him. They weren't there to take sides on the malathion controversy.

US Agent: "Yeah? Well, we're Avengers, aren't we? If you'd got a close look at the skin on some of those people -- as metallic-looking in spots as your fancy-pants armor -- maybe you'd feel it was high time the Avengers West Coast finally started doing some real avenging!"

US Agent fills Iron Man in about the night sprays on the flight back to the Avengers West Coast Compound. And Iron Man agrees that it warrants the Avengers looking into.

Also, Tigra. She's back to normal. It happened off-panel! Agatha Harkness did it in Avengers Spotlight #38!

I'm slightly annoyed that the subplot dragged on so long in the book and it gets resolved in another book!

Tigra is also back to her old ways. She throws a flirt US Agent's way and he looks stricken by the attention. Slightly terrified, even.

Iron Man: "Yep. You're back to normal all right, Greer."

Everyone Avengers West Coast is in the meeting room, except for the Human Torch. Or as the ever-prickly US Agent calls him "the has-been Torch."

Do they have beef? US Agent and Human Torch both do so little that I don't remember them interacting very much.

Hank Pym called a meeting to tell everyone about the robot farmers he ran into.

And he reveals that in the most dramatic way possible.

Hawkeye isn't very impressed by some androids. The Avengers see a lot of androids.

But Hank Pym explains that these robots were being controlled remotely and disguised as perfectly normal wheat farmers. And that they blew up when he activated the Rover aircraft's engine.

Wasp speculates that if someone is replacing farmers with robots, it has something to do with tampering with the food supply.

US Agent connects some dots and wonders if this has anything to do with the metallic rash he saw on those protestors. He's not sure why these things would be connected but I think he could be onto something. Why are they in the same arc if not?

Hawkeye laughs this off.

Hawkeye: "Malathion spraying? Get serious, Agent. You think the Earth's being inaded by robot medflies?" US Agent: "You brainless -- ! Uncle Sam put me here to keep an eye on clowns like you -- not to take any of your bull!

The rest of the Avengers have to hold the two back so they don't start punching each other.

Hank Pym tries to get everyone on task, telling the Avengers to check out other farms in the area and asking US Agent to follow-up on the metallic rash. But Wonder Man interrupts to say he definitely will not be doing this.

He's got other priorities lately.

Wonder Man: "It's the rest of you that're crazy -- not me! Wanda and I told you how my dead brother's come back -- as the real Grim Reaper this time -- how he's drinking up people's lives like so much Miller Lite! And you want us all to charge off looking for robots down on the farm?"

Dr Pym acknowledges that he's not exactly the team chairman so he can only suggest what the team does.

Hey, the team hasn't had a leader since Hawkeye rage-quit. Why haven't they gotten around to resolving that? Like, the team doesn't need a leader. Some Avenger's iterations don't have one. In Jason Aaron's run, after Black Panther quit the leadership role to go deal with a bad solo book, the Avengers didn't replace him so made decisions as a group. It's perfectly valid.

Except, this book keeps going 'huh, weird how we don't have a leader, right?' and then not doing anything with that.

This is the era of Avengers where plot points drag on forever for no reason.

Anyway.

Dr Pym says they don't have any leads on Grim Reaper so they may as well focus on this robot farm threat while the whole L.A.P.D. focuses on tracking down the Reaper.

Wonder Man dismisses this reasoning.

Wonder Man: "Threat? What thrat? A tinker-toy version of Ma and Pa Kettle -- some bozo with zits whining about how somebody sprayed insecticide on his face -- and you jokers start worrying someone's going to cause rust on the food chain!" Iron Man: "We all hope you're right, Wonder Man, and it's just a false alarm. On the other hand -- don't you think you may have lost your objectivity?" Wonder Man: "I don't want to be objective, tin man. I want to find my brother -- "

Wow. You know that Tony is going to have to pay for that, right?

Wanda Witch runs after Wonder Man and tries to convince him not to fly off half-cocked, to wait for when the Avengers can back him up. Wonder Man says nuts to that. He asks Wanda to come and help him look for Grim Reaper but her powers are still gone so she's not sure what help she can be. So he says nuts to her and flies off half-cocked.

Later, the Avengers West Coast investigate various places for robots or weird pesticide spraying without finding much of anything.

Iron Man checks Riverside, US Agent checks Hollywood, Wasp checks Pomona, and Dr Pym and Wanda coordinate from the Compound.

But Hawkeye has gone rogue, going to investigate a closed down section of the metro rail tunnel without checking in with base.

And Quicksilver and Tigra have also gone rogue so they could sneak up and give him shit about going rogue. Because he was so obviously going to sneak off and go rogue that they couldn't help but follow him.

Hawkeye confesses that he took the malathion nighttime spraying stuff US Agent brought to the Avengers very seriously for reasons he can't really explain.

So he looked at the reports of nighttime sprayings and found that they made a nice circle around a metro tunnel that had been closed after a fire. Which IS a very ripped from the headlines thing, as an editorial caption confirms that the fire was in all the papers.

Rather than tell anyone about this lead, Hawkeye did not tell anyone. So the Avengers are flying around everywhere, wasting their time, so that Hawkeye can be the big man who cracks the case wide open.

Not a very good team player for a guy who wants to lead the team again.

Anyway, he's stuck with Tigra and Quicksilver now.

Tigra bends the bars over the tunnel entrance so they can get in. And she spots a minute crack in the wall where a secret tunnel (SECRET TUNNEL) was covered up.

Hawkeye blasts a new entrance hole with one of his arrows and the three go through to find a hi-tech secret base.

A base with a helicopter, like the ones that have been spotted spraying at night! Also, robots! Like the ones Hank and Jan found!

Team Hawkeye assumes hostility and starts bashing the bots. And they take care of them fairly quickly. Pietro hits one bot with another and then cheekily suggests he's available to help the other two Avengers. But they're also already done.

Hawkeye: "Four up, four down. All our super hero free-for-alls should be that easy!"

But just as Tigra is vowing she won't leave this base until she finds out what's going on, Ultron backhands her from the shadows and tells the Avengers they're not even allowed to leave.

Hawkeye says don't make me shoot you with an exploding arrow after already firing one. But you know Ultron, always made of really strong metal.

He shrugs off Hawkeye's electro-net arrows and then ZAPTs him.

Quicksilver tries running around and around to buffet Ultron with hurricane force winds. Ultron is even less bothered by that.

Ultron: "In earlier incarnations I created the Vision, and survived his betrayal --- I faced Avengers and Fantastic Four together, in the Inhumans' Great Refuge -- ! I triumphed even in battle with Ultron-12, who tried to usurp my identity and my station --" casually clotheslines Pietro "-- and now they send a mere jogger against me? It is almost -- insulting."

Hey. Hey, Quicksilver? Maybe you should have used that superspeed to run and get help.

By the time the Avengers waked up, Ultron has tubed them.

Villains love tubes.

Hawkeye: "Tigra -- Quicksilver -- you two all right?" Tigra: "Well, I had a bit of a cold, and Pietro's been complaining about an ingrown toenail..." Quicksilver: "This is hardly the occasion, Tigra -- !"

This is a superhero comic, Hawkeye. You're fighting a robot that's the unrestrained id of your fellow hero. Maybe a few yuks aren't genre inappropriate.

Hawkeye admits belatedly that maybe he shouldn't have run off without telling the others where he was going. But he guesses that Ultron is behind the farmer robots AND the night spraying?

Ultron confirms. He's been placing robots amongst the wheat farms of California so that they can add a crystalline substance to the crop. The spraying is another way of getting that same substance into circulation.

Hawkeye assumes that Ultron is trying to poison humanity but Ultron says he's trying to evolve them. Into robots. That's evolution... probably.

And in the half hour that the heroes were unconscious and being tubed, Ultron sprayed them too.

Ultron: "You see -- in the past, I made the fundamental error of wishing to conquer the human race. What use could I possibly have for men, either free or slaves? At last, I see what should always have been my true goal: to replace every man, woman, and child on the planet -- with living ROBOTS who are nothing more nor less than four billion extensions of myself!"

Ah, assimilation plot.

Very evil robot supervillain of you, Ultron. Although, I assume that if you ever manage to accomplish this, you won't be satisfied with the result. You wouldn't dick around with making robot wives so often if you wanted to sit around talking to yourself all day.

Still, I wonder how the Avengers West Coast is going to get out of this one. They don't have the heavy hitters they usually rely on to deal with Ultrons.

Wonder Man flipped the Avengers the double birds and went off into a back-up story to cover his subplot. Scarlet Witch lost her powers. Thor and Vision are with the East Coast Avengers. I guess Dr Pym is around but his track record against Ultron is... bad.

Anyway, speaking of Wonder Man subplot...

Not sure why this needed to be a back-up story. Roy Thomas worked on both the main story and this. Other issues of Avengers have had subplots going on at the same time as the main story.

Anyway, Grim Reaper ate a guy.

And just when he's relishing the meal and making it oddly sexual

Grim Reaper: "Tell me, friend... Was it good for you, too?"

Wonder Man shows up and punches him through a wall.

And credit where it's due, Wonder Man remembers that there's other plot threads going on and asks if Grim Reaper is involved with the night spraying that is turning people into robots.

Grim Reaper: "I don't even know what you're talking about! Why would I want to do something like that -- when I need human life to exist?"

He raises a good point.

Wonder Man says that means they're on the same side on this one and suggests Grim Reaper surrender and let the Avengers help him with his horror hunger.

Grim Reaper tzzakks Wonder Man. The Avengers are just humans and humans are just food. Except Wonder Man, who is useless as a food because he would eat Grim Reaper instead.

Since Grim Reaper can't really hurt Wonder Man, he plans to drop a building on him. To keep him out of the way!

BUT OUT OF NOWHERE, MANDRILL!

Not entirely out of nowhere. He's Nekra's sister and he tracked down Grim Reaper because he's furious that he killed her.

If only he were better at not getting killed.

Luckily for him, he'll be saved from death by poor editorial oversight.

He'll pop up thirteen years later with no explanation in a She-Hulk comic because somebody either forgot or didn't care that he was dead.

Wonder Man is horrified and clearly Grim Reaper killing a monkey man was a line too far in the way that him killing a random man was not.

Wonder Man: "You better kill me, too, Eric -- before I get my second wind. Because if you don't -- after what I've just seen -- I won't rest -- till one of us is back in that grave of yours!" Grim Reaper: "You almost wish I'd bury you beneath a mountain of rubble, don't you, Simon? Then you could stop feeling responsible for all the lives I've taken -- the ones I'll go on taking. I'd almost prefer to let you live -- so you can suffer every time you hear I've killed someone -- Which should be at least once a day. Yes, I think I will leave you in torment for a while. Then, when I feel you've agonized enough -- I'll finally come back and finish the job!"

Grim Reaper jumps down a manhole but Wonder Man is stopped from following him when the police arrive. What with all the dead bodies around, seeming to flee would be a bad move so Wonder Man stays put.

Police: "Saw somebody duck down that manhole as we drove up, Wonder Man. Any idea who the killer was?" Wonder Man: "Afraid not, officer. It was someone... I never knew...!"

So that's about where Wonder Man is falling on the drama scale right now.

Next Avengers time, the East Coast branch changes up their roster. But next Avengers West Coast time,

Follow @essential-avengers for more Avengers at this Avengers channel at the usual Avengers time. Like, reblog, comment, subscribe and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

#avengers #west coast avengers #essential avengers #ultron #grim reaper #dr pym #Mandrill #hank pym #iron man #US Agent #Tigra #the Wasp #Hawkeye #Wonder Man #Scarlet Witch #Quicksilver #robot farmers

15 notes · View notes