#also totally forgot Clint has Pym Arrows

[og-ant-man]

"Professor Pym, sir. I've heard a lot about you. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Hank smiled. He liked when people called him professor or doctor. "I hope it's been all good things. You're 'Hawkeye, right? Scott told me about the time you shot him across the sky with an arrow. Neat trick."

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #223: of Robin Hoods and Roustabouts

September, 1982

Apparently a “roustabout” is an unskilled or casual labor.

And lets admit the obvious that if Hawkeye is either of the two things, he’s a robin hood. And its not inaccurate but be nicer to Scott Lang.

Even if he manages to be even more hapless in this issue then in modern takes that leans into him being a fuck-up.

As for the cover? Pretty striking cover. I’ve been waiting for Hawkeye to shoot Ant-Man at someone. Its apparently an Iconic Avengers moment and to think it first happens in a filler.

Because I’m pretty sure this is a filler. Its written by David Michelinie alone instead of Jim Shooter getting a plotter or co-writer credit. It doesn’t really have anything from the dangling plot threads of Hank Pym or the Masters of Evil.

Between this and and the filler with the immortal child who badly wanted to die and all of the plotter or co-writer credits, you just really get a sense that Jim Shooter did not have time to devote to Avengers anymore.

So what kind of filler will this be? Weird? Impactless? Good Actually? Let’s see!

Well, apparently Hawkeye is going to the carnival so at this point, it could go either way.

I like that Hawkeye has a H belt buckle because that’s the kind of thing that he would do and that I can make fun of him for.

I know that it’s been a while since he’s mentioned kewpie dolls but Hawkeye came from the circus. He and his brother ran away to one when they were little and the Swordsman taught Hawkeye archery. The point being, “he’s come home.”

As in, this is specifically the carnival he used to work before he became very briefly a superhero, and then for slightly longer a supervillain, and then for much much longer a superhero for real.

Point is, he’s been away for a while. But he received a flyer in the mail and decided he just had to come.

Because someone wrote HELP! on the back.

Hawkeye figures that the previous owner’s daughter and current owner Marcy Carson sent it as a goof but heck if she’s going to go to that trouble, he’ll be happy to visit.

So he breezes past the workers outside the owner’s trailer and-

Actually they beat the shit out of him for trying to breeze past them. Goes to show.

When Hawkeye threatens to beat them up for this rude treatment, they get ruder and call him a rube. Can you believe! Him, a former employee himself being called a rube! Also they pull a fancy sci-fi gun on him.

So Hawkeye does buzz off. So he can change into his hawking eye duds and buzz right back on.

Roustabouts carrying laser pistols is very suspicious. And I guess Ant-Man isn’t the roustabout of the title. He’s moving up in the world.

MEANWHILE, Perfectly Ordinary electronics technician, ex-con, and Ant-Man Scott Lang is having a night out with his daughter Cassie. And they’re having a bit of a disagreement.

See, Cassie, future superhero, wants to ride the really cool roller coaster the Spin-’n-Heave. Scott Lang, dad with dumb views on gender apparently, insists that a roller coaster just isn’t ladylike enough and she should ride something more refined like the pony ride or ring toss.

Also, Scott is carrying the Ant-Man suit with him, loose in his pocket. And the helmet just drops out of his pocket and the damn fool would have lost it if Cassie hadn’t spotted it and mistaken it for a marble.

Geez, Scott! I stood up for you!

Scott’s attempts to dad by restricting what his daughter can and can’t do based on his own views on what is ladylike get dropped when he spots Hawkeye hauling ass across the carnival and decides that This Cannot Stand!

Scott Lang Ant-Man may not be an Avenger but dangit he can’t leave a fellow hero in the lurch! He must offer unsolicited aid!

So he caves on the Spin-’n-Heave issue because its a way to keep Cassie occupied for the length of exactly this issue.

Scott gives the operator a bunch of money and tells the operator to let Cassie ride until it runs out and then takes off.

Cassie is thrilled.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye has returned to the owner’s trailer but Marcy is gone and so are the two goons that were guarding the door. But he spots them marching Marcy through the crowd.

The goons are complimenting Marcy on being so cooperative but also say that if she’s not cooperative, her star acts are gonna get fed to the lions. And that might happen anyway once everything is said and done because their boss be like that.

Anyway, that’s when the two get hit by a KRAK THUBB arrow. Punch arrow? It looks nerf-y.

Hawkeye grabs Marcy and runs off with her into a tent so she can explain it all.

But first: he has to notice that she is beautiful. He has been gone a while so, y’know. People grow up or whatever.

Hawkeye: “There, that’s better! Now maybe I can get to the bottom of -- hey! You’re beautiful!”

Marcy: “I’ve waited a long time for you to notice that, ol’ buddy.”

Hawkeye: “Yeah, well, it’s hard noticin’ anything when you’re bein’ tripped into a pile of elephant dirt -- which, as I recall, used to be your favorite pastime!”

Marcy: “People change, Clint.”

Young Marcy sounds like a really interesting person. She certainly gave Hawkeye the business.

Anyway, she explains that it was pure luck that she was able to sneak that message out to him. And that the carnival has been taken over by some freak with powers.

Marcy: “Why, if he even suspected I was in touch with you he’d kill me deader than a Monday night in Des Moines!”

Off-screen Villain: “Nicely put, dumplin’! Should make you a dandy little epitaph!”

SCENE CHANGE TO PRESERVE SUSPENSE

Scott Lang has ducked behind some circus carts to change into Ant-Man.

Except he still has the whole shrunken costume piecemeal in his pockets so the process is one of slapstick. Scott goes digging in his pockets for the suit and accidentally drops it all in the straw.

Then he has to go digging around for the incredibly teeny pieces of gear while realizing that this was a stupid plan.

Maybe he should keep the suit in a tin. Like a mint tin or something.

But he finally gets all the pieces together and uses a safety pin to trigger the enlarging gas to full-size the outfit so he can put it on.

Huh! Enlarging gas! Early days in Avengers, they were all about the logistics of the shrinking and growing for Ant-Giant and the Wasp but it hasn’t been talked about in a long while. Wasp just changes size without the how being discussed.

But if it is Pym Particles, then I guess Scott isn’t at the point yet where his body naturally produces them so he has to use the gas canisters on the belt.

Scott does get dressed in his ant duds and uses the helmet to command some ants to find Hawkeye. And this is a carnival with a lot of dropped funnel cake and cotton candy so you know that there’s plenty of ants available.

SCENE CHANGE because we can only preserve suspense so far.

The mysterious off-screen villain hits the lights in the tent that Hawkeye and Marcy were talking in. Which reveals a bunch of gym and training equipment. It’d be nice if carnivals could provide such robust gym benefits to their workers but I feel that this is actually suspicious, finding this here.

Especially the combat flight simulator.

Hawkeye: “This place looks like a training ground for World War III!”

Off-screen villain, about to be onscreen: “And what better setting for the world’s greatest trainer? Namely... the TASKMASTER!”

Heyyy its the Taskmaster!

I forgot that he was a loose thread. He got away after the THREE-PARTER that introduced him. Then again, I guess since he’s the explanation for where villains get their armies of mooks, he didn’t really need to be tied up because that would defeat the purpose.

Anyway, Hawkeye wasn’t on the team for that three-parter but thankfully, the Avengers take thorough records.

Hawkeye: “Yeah, I remember readin’ about you in the Avengers’ files! You’re some sorta goon peddler!”

Taskmaster: “Watch yer mouth, bow-bender! What I am is a teacher!”

And then he recaps his goon, mook, henchman training business for the audience. He even clarifies that his series of secret academies are going great, thanks, but he’s trying to branch out with a mobile recruiting center.

Aka, this circus. And heck, according to Taskmaster, carnies already come off unscrupulous so having a bunch of goons hanging around won’t stand out.

THE PERFECT CRIME.

Actually. I don’t know if this is a crime? It’s not illegal to do combat training or learn how to fly a plane, probably. Then again, when 100% of your alumni wind up arrested for helping steal the Statue of Liberty, a legal goon school would get a lot of unwanted scrutiny. So best keep it secret.

And of course, extorting the owner and workers of a circus is definitely a crime. Pretty sure.

Anyway, the mobile recruiting center scheme is helped by Marcy telling anyone who asks that the new people hanging around are a new act that isn’t ready to open yet.

Hawkeye is sick of Taskmaster’s smarmy smarm and tries to shoot a grabber arrow? at Taskmaster.

Who just blocks it with his shield.

And takes the opportunity to brag about his photographic reflexes, where he only needs to see a sweet move once and he can do it perfectly.

He shows off by doing some Cap moves and then doing a Spider-Man move. Which he seems to do just to do.

And by Spider-Man move I mean hanging upside down from a line. Which, yes, Spider-Man does do that but it doesn’t really seem that necessary or helpful here and you’re totally doing it just to show off but really you look a little ridiculous.

Taskmaster even shows off some Tigra moves by kicking Hawkeye in the face. Its fun to me that he shows off Tigra specifically. Its for some acrobatics like flippy kick but there’s gotta be other acrobatic heroes. Like Spider-Man.

But Tigra was on the Avengers recently and briefly and dammit, he’s gonna show off what he learned!

Anyway, Taskmaster beats up Hawkeye until he gets bored of it and then just takes Marcy hostage to get Hawkeye to surrender.

He just really wanted to show off some of his sweet moves. And as soon as he ran through five different hero movesets (Cap, Spider-Man, Tigra, Daredevil, and Iron Fist) he’s just like ‘k I’m done’.

Meanwhile, back to Ant-Man ant-again.

He’s lurking around a corner trying to be inconspicuous while children are pointing and asking if he’s a clown. Perhaps realizing that he didn’t need to put on the full costume to use the helmet and that he’s just made himself look foolish.

But some of his ants report in that they’ve found Hawkeye so Ant-Man shrinks down to ride an ant into action.

Wait. Yeah. You could have just shrunken down and perched somewhere to wait for ant reports. You’ve made yourself look a fool and you fully had the power to avoid that in so many ways.

Meanwhile back to Hawkeye yet again, Taskmaster knows that killing an Avenger would attract notice so he’s going to make it look like an accident.

So he’s locked Hawkeye in an electrified cage with a lion, a normal situation that can accidentally happen to anyone. So now when Hawkeye gets mauled to death by the lion, nobody will suspect it was anything but an accident.

Taskmaster walks away because its villain tradition that you don’t watch the heroes you lock in the death traps. That’d just be gauche.

The lion sizes up Hawkeye and decides that he’s food and leaps for the kill!

And Ant-Man grows out from under the lion and throws it into the electrified bars, knocking him out.

Pretty good timing Scott! And that poor attempted man-eater lion! That poor five hundred pound lion! WOW SCOTT, do you work out?

I also feel that Republic Serial has aged poorly for more than just lion tossing.

Ant-Man and Hawkeye get each other on the same page. As it happens, Ant-Man actually has more experience with Taskmaster since he was actually in that three-parter. That’ll give them a tiny, tiny, tiny edge.

They’re still stuck in a locked cage and Hawkeye is like ‘gee whiz shrinking hero guy how can we possibly get out?’

Would you be surprised that Ant-Man just shrinks Hawkeye? Scott does muse that he could probably have picked the lock if he had the tools for it but shrinking just saves time.

Hawkeye does not care for it though.

I don’t know what he’s complaining about. Big sleepy cat even bigger now. You could live in the mane at that size.

You could be a tiny man living in a lion’s mane. Imagine.

Anyway.

Over in Taskmaster’s private tent, he’s telling Marcy she done fucked up calling for Hawkeye and she’s going to wish she was getting mauled to death by a lion in an electrified cage like Hawkeye was.

And Hawkeye does the equivalent of clearing his throat and saying ‘hey dingus, not dead’

Taskmaster reaches for a magnesium flare like he used against the Avengers but Ant-Man’s expert knowledge of meeting Taskmaster one time lets him warn Hawkeye who shoots it out of Taskmaster’s hand.

Taskmaster just questions why they didn’t go for a killshot when they had him surprised and then calls a goon squad on the heroes.

Of course, goon squads being called on heroes is just a setup to make heroes look really cool showing their stuff on some expendable targets.

“While the Taskmaster’s troops have been well-trained for normal combat, they fare woefully poor against these super-normal foes!”

And show their stuff they do. Like Hawkeye leaping around firing net and bola arrows!

And Ant-Man... shrinking down really small to punch a guy’s earlobe.

Look. He’s trying.

Also, Marcy is braining people with a juggling pin like some manner of alien clown because she is exceptionally irate at Taskmaster and his goons.

While the three beat up this crowd of goons, Taskmaster runs off to set up his “escape insurance.”

Ant-Man and Hawkeye chase him into the big top where there’s already a crowd watching the show. And waiting for the human cannonball act.

BUT! Taskmaster is apparently a cartoon villain because he’s replaced the human cannonball with a dummy full of explosives and he’s going to shoot it and blow up the grandstand, killing a couple hundred innocent lives.

Taskmaster tells them they can capture him or they can stop his ridiculous scheme.

Taskmaster: “Have fun decidin’, chumps!”

And then presumably he runs off giggling.

Hawkeye wants to go after Taskmaster and have Ant-Man take care of the nothuman cannonball bomb.

Ant-Man: “No, Hawkeye! There are too many lives at stake! And it may take both of us to stop that cannon!”

Hawkeye: “But we can’t just let that psycho walk! We can’t -- .”

Ant-Man: “Hawkeye! Think about it! Think! Please... !”

Hawkeye: “Yeah, I guess you’re right... blast it.”

Scott Lang has his heart in the right place to be a hero even if he is a bit of a goofus about it. I like you, Scott Lang.

Hawkeye runs back into the tent and shoots the goon manning the cannon with a bola arrow. he gets the goon but the goon falls on the button.

Fortunately, its the elevation control, not the fire button.

Unfortunately, there is no firing button, so the firing cycle is automatic.

Fortunately, hitting the elevation control accidentally made the cannon point up instead of at the grandstand. So the bomb is still going to fall and blow everything up but they have time and Ant-Man has an idea.

He has Hawkeye nock his fastest arrow and jumps on it.

Hawkeye shoots the arrow and hits the explosive filled mannequin in the neck right as it reached the top of its trajectory and hung very briefly in the air.

As the bomb starts to plummet, Ant-Man crawls up the arrow onto the bomb-man and to the detonator.

All too soon the bomb hits the ring

but doesn’t detonate.

Ant-Man managed to defuse the bomb!

And he also managed to survive the fall because of course! He’s not destined to die for a long while and only then in a really dumb way.

Thanks to Scott’s experience of watching Raiders of the Lost Ark twenty-seven times he’s a real expert on jumping from one speeding object to another.

Aka, from the falling bomb to a flying ant. Sure.

The heroes see that Taskmaster has escaped while all this was going on but Hawkeye decides he’ll get him next time.

Also? The audience has thought that this was part of the show the whole time so they’ve loved every second of this.

Soon the other Avengers arrive, too late to take part in the plot but in time to help clean up the goon operation.

Also, She-Hulk is in her tattered white dress outfit again. I really think there was some miscommunication here. Like with having her dressed like that on the previous cover and having her dressed like that here in this filler issue.

She doesn’t wear that anymore but its the Iconic outfit for her so if an artist needs a ref to draw her, they’re probably looking at a picture from her Savage She-Hulk series.

And Scott Lang gets the last page because whoops, he left his daughter on a roller coaster the whole time and forgot her in the heat of the adventure. DAD OF THE YEAR!

Scott runs to find her sitting outside the Spin-’n-Heave looking down, head in hands. Scott is worried that something is wrong with her but

Cassie Lang: “I’m a little tired right now, daddy *yawn* but can we come back an’ ride the ‘Spin-’n-Heave’ again t’morrow?”

Scott Lang: “Tomorrow? Again? *sigh* Kids.”

Hah, she tuckered herself out riding the roller coast over and over again but is game to keep doing it again tomorrow. That’s the Cassie Lang that will grow up to join the Young Avengers!

So, Avengers filler but it wasn’t weird or inconsequential. It doesn’t do anything with the ongoing plots but it feels like it does since Scott Lang has come back into the books recently because of the Hank Pym plot. And it follows up on Taskmaster who has gone unaddressed since his introductory stories.

Its just a nice story and by focusing on a guest star and one of the Avengers doing an impromptu team-up it has some fun energy.

Good times.

Hey. Follow @essential-avengers​ maybe? Its better than the Spin-’n-Heave! ... I can’t actually prove that. But also like and reblog this post because I’m a cool person. ... I can’t actually prove that either...