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thebibliomancer · 2 years ago

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #276: REVENGE

February, 1987

Masters of Evil -- BEWARE! They’re not called the AVENGERS for nothing--!

Well. Kind of for nothing?

Wasp just thought the name sounded cool and the team has been trying to justify the choice ever since in adaptations.

And it does sound cool.

Don’t be ashamed of it, later comics.

Anyway, we’re deep in the Avengers Under Siege story arc wherein the Avengers are under siege. Except they’re not militarily under siege. The Masters take Avengers’ Mansion with no difficulty. And the Avengers themselves are going to infiltrate but not siege their own now heavily fortified by enemies mansion.

Also, I don’t think the later storyline titled Siege was a siege either. There was no real cutting off supplies and the whole thing was over in an afternoon.

It IS a prolonged period of misfortune for the Avengers so yeah, Avengers Under Siege.

This has been me being pedantic.

So Baron Zemo and his Masters of Evil had a super plan to take down the Avengers by exploiting interpersonal dynamics and attacking when nobody but Jarvis was home and then ambushing Black Knight and Captain Marvel when they were unbeknowst.

Even when the remaining Avengers are beknowst, the Masters are able to dogpile Hercules when he walked through the wall instead of being cautious and capturing Captain America when he had to rush in after Hercules.

Wasp escapes and Hercules’ broken body is tossed out of the Mansion so Zemo can get down to torturing Captain America by breaking his possessions and having Hyde break Jarvis.

Zemo gets annoyed at Cap constantly talking about how cool Wasp is and how she’ll totally stop him so Zemo sends Absorbing Man and Titania to kill her and hospitalized Hercules.

Wasp IS cool so she and Scott Lang Ant-Man take down the two villains.

Now its time for Wasp to...

TALK TO SOME COPS!

Dangit Wasp, there’s an exciting superhero battle you need to organize. Stop using the cops as an excuse to recap the previous issues!

Because, yeah, recap.

Actually, I think its good that comics back in the day would take page space out to recap the important context.

The funniest thing about this specific recap is when Wasp mentions that the Masters of Evil have taken over Avengers Mansion, the cop says “You’re kidding!”

Pay attention to current events, dude!

But with a report given to the random cop and with the doctor’s assurance that Hercules is stabilized, Wasp excuses herself to go deal with the Masters of Evil plot.

Ant-Man asks to tag along to help some more and Wasp isn’t going to look a gift team-up in the mouth. Especially considering the difficulty she’s had finding any backup whatsoever.

Over in the mansion, Mister Hyde is having the time of his life and laughing heartily while he brutally beats Jarvis.

Mister Hyde: “Don’t pass out on me yet, old man! Scream some more... I want these ‘heroes’ to know what awaits them!”

Even among the collective jerks of the Masters of Evil, Hyde is a monster.

Black Knight continues to try in vain to summon his extremely cursed sword but the Merlin magicked mystical bond between Dane and the Ebony Blade are no match for the science of an energy field.

Which is where the Fixer put the Ebony Blade until he had time to study it.

The army outside is still stymied by the darkforce rectangular prism covering the Mansion. They’ve tried bazookas and that didn’t do squat so now the higher ups have jumped up several levels acceptable force to start considering ordering an air strike.

On a target in the middle of Manhattan.

Luckily, the army is leaning more towards bringing tanks into the city but it’ll take hours.

More luckily, the Wasp has made her way to the army camp and manages to convince the colonel in charge to let the Avengers take point on this. Since they’re already used to dealing with supervillains and know the location.

Which Avengers though?

Wasp calls Thor’s civilian identity Sigurd Jarlson but only gets his answering machine.

Weird to think of Thor having an answering machine.

So without any other active Avengers, without any of the inactive Avengers, without any other superhero backup aside from Ant-Man, I’m not sure how well Wasp’s counteroffensive will go.

She wonders whatever happened to Captain Marvel since the Last Avenger and Guest could really use her help right now.

And Monica is still trapped in the swirling darkness of the darkforce dimension.

Its not a fun place to be trapped.

Even in energy form, the cold is overwhelming and making it hard for Monica Marvel to keep a clear head. Only recapping how she got here helps Monica keep her thoughts straight.

Then, another light shines in the darkforce dimension and this time Monica reaches it before it disappears.

MEANWHILE IN CALIFORNIA, the Shroud confronts a man named Montoya.

But when Shroud summons the darkness against Montoya, Monica pops out of the darkness and flops to the dock.

This is confusing to everyone but Shroud recovers fastest and clocks Montoya while he’s distracted.

So whatever that little drama was has been wrapped up. Thanks Captain Marvel!

That taken care of, Shroud helps Captain Marvel up and tells her she’s in San Francisco.

He’s really curious why she just popped out of nowhere so she tells him that she was trapped in the darkforce dimension but doesn’t have time to explain all the context.

She needs to get back to Avengers Mansion!

... Is she going to bring Shroud with her? I wouldn’t have guessed him to be the guest star to help the Avengers re-take the Mansion.

Looking ahead, no.

I guess that makes sense. She can travel at the speed of light but she can’t bring someone else along at that speed. I don’t think she can carry anyone at all.

Alas, there will be no team-up with Shroud today.

Back in New York, at New York’s Plaza Hotel, Doctor Druid is meeting with his... I guess agent? Personal assistant? About autograph sessions and television appearances. But Druid is only half paying attention.

He’s watching the news coverage on the black not-cube that has covered Avengers Mansion.

IT GIVES HIM AN OMINOUS FEELING a feeling that he’s sure, for some reason, THAT IS RELATED TO THE AVENGERS MAYBE.

To be fair, he had the ominous feeling, a feeling that the Avengers were connected to, before the new report.

I’m not going to miss a chance to make fun of Dr Druid though.

Druid concentrates on the feeling and sees a vision (but not the synthezoid Vision) of Black Knight held captive and desperate for his sword.

Doctor Druid: “My appointments will have to be rescheduled, Henshaw. Some things are more important than promoting a new book. I’ve an old debt to repay.”

I did want random heroes to help the Avengers beat the Masters of Evil.

And a monkey paw curled its finger and brought me Doctor Druid.

Are we at that point in Avengers history already?

And really, can the Avengers (which is just Wasp and guest) afford to turn down any help now?

Back at the army base outside of Avengers Mansion, she and Ant-Man run down all the people they’ve tried to recruit.

The West Coast Avengers aren’t responding at all. SUNSPOT ACTIVITY of all things is preventing communications with Wakanda and Black Panther. The Fantastic Four are still out of touch. The Vision and Scarlet Witch are on vacation. And Falcon has the flu!

Wasp is ready to resort to just... searching the city for one of those loose NY superheroes like Spider-Man or Daredevil and asking for their help.

Because otherwise the only option is for Ant-Man and Wasp to handle this themselves. (Because they don’t know about Doctor Druid or that Captain Marvel has escaped the darkforce dimension. Until about nnnnnow.)

Captain Marvel quickly catches Wasp up on what happened to her. She flew back to New York as soon as she was able to. Now she wants to get some avengeance on the Masters of Evil ASAP like now maybe.

Wasp: “C.M., I realize how furious you must be, but don’t let anger cloud your judgement... that’s what Hercules did. We must act carefully, as well as quickly!

Thor: “Well said, Wasp! One must always guard against the warrior madness!”

Yeah, Thor just showed up. With no fanfare. Just walked up to where Wasp and Captain Marvel were talking.

Also, hilariously, Thor’s appearance in this book takes place “between pages 5 and 7 of Thor #373.”

Weird to place it there, specifically. There’s no indication that he stopped the story to go do Avengers stuff. But there’s no indication that he didn’t.

Its just that he arrives back on Midgard* (*Earth) after a bunch of Asgard stuff, gets contemplative, and then stops a mugging. Then there’s a scene change to some Asgard stuff. And then its the next day. So what the caption box is saying is that Thor helping the Avengers happens during that time skip. In case anyone reading Thor was wondering how it all fit together.

Adding to the hilarity, Thor was summoned by Wasp leaving him a message on his answering machine.

Thor is also apparently meeting Ant-Man II for the first time so shakes his hand for being a worthy successor that Hank Pym speaks highly of.

Scott is a little starstruck that Thor has heard of him.

Meanwhile, in the mansion, the Wrecking Crew have continued wrecking the mansion as a crew. They’re not really finding anything worth stealing.

Thunderball: “The Avengers lived more simply than I’d imagined, Bulldozer. Of course, their furnishing were nice...”

Bulldozer: “But not anymore! Haw-haw!”

And also meanwhile, Hyde is still giving Jarvis the business to make Cap sad.

Mister Hyde: “Look at you... two of ‘Earth’s Mightiest Heroes!’ Hah! Baron Zemo was right... You fell easily before our superior numbers! You couldn’t even save this old fool! And now... you, too, shall die!”

Lotta tethercat going on.

Speaking of, Zemo is supervising Yellowjacket II and the Fixer removing memory-disk canisters from the Avengers’ computer system, when the power goes out.

Yellowjacket II blames Fixer (because she doesn’t like him) but he protests that nothing he did could have knocked out the power. Still, Zemo sends him to go correct the power outage.

After he leaves, New Yellowjacket makes the startling discovery that the Ebony Blade somehow disappeared once the containment field was shut down in the power outage.

In the meeting/torture room, Hyde yells at whatever idiot turned off the lights.

Then in the dark, Captain America and Black Knight pummel the shit out of him.

My assumption is that Dane got free of his rope bonds after summoning the Ebony Blade. And then he untied Cap(tain America).

Since Hyde is such a hate sink, here’s his comeuppance in full.

Cap and Knight pummeling him in the dark is annoying but can’t stop a dude of Hyde’s strength.

So Black Knight trips him so he slams face first into a wall. Then Captain Marvel burns through the floor (probably hurting his eyes if he’s started to adjust to the darkness). Then Wasp shoots him between the eyes which definitely hurts and temporarily binds him.

And while he’s stumbling around yelling and punching at nothing, he runs head first into Thor’s rock hard abs, knocking himself out.

Eat shit, Hyde.

(Thor flinching from pain when Hyde bonks into him is probably because of Hela’s curse after he freed some wrongly imprisoned souls from Hel. The curse was explained in Thor #373 so exactly around this time. It makes Thor unable to die but cursed with brittle bones and wounds that will not heal. I believe he’s reduced to a flesh puddle before the curse is lifted so its going to get a lot worse before it gets better.)

(I don’t know why the editorial caption wasn’t used on this exchange instead of pointing out the exact page he got involved.)

The heroes look over Jarvis who is alive but very badly hurt. Thor swears that both Zemo and Hyde will pay for what they did to Jarvis.

New Yellowjacket is secretly tiny (I guess she got over her existential dread of shrinking) and eavesdropping in the room. Zemo sent her to check on the prisoners once she told him the Ebony Blade was missing.

She returns and informs Zemo that a whole bunch of heroes are in the mansion, including Thor and Captain Marvel.

This is very alarming news, especially the return of Captain Marvel. Her escaping from wherever Blackout dumped her (the darkforce dimension) means that Zemo can’t rely on that as a trump against her.

Better part of valor etc Zemo decides time to leave. He tells Yellowjacket II its time to go and that Fixer will have to fend for himself.

She’s not sad to ditch him because he’s a creep but she’s realizing that Zemo would ditch her as easily if it were convenient since Fixer had served Zemo faithfully.

Everyone is expendable to Zemo and that’s not a fun realization once you’ve gotten on the tiger’s back.

Outside, Doctor Druid is still in the story.

Yup.

Walking unseen among the army camp, he goes up to the darkforce barrier hiding the mansion. Touching it, he makes contact with Blackout and convinces him to drop the barrier.

Meanwhile, inside the mansion’s sub-basement, the Fixer gets to the bottom of the power outage.

Turns out that someone just turned off the generator!

Turns out that someone was Ant-Man!

I love that you can see tiny Ant-Man before he grows to sock Fixer in the jaw.

Ant-Man returns to the other heroes with the KO’d Fixer in tow and confirms that Cap(tain America) was right that Zemo would send someone to check the generator.

I mean. Easy guess there.

So back to the issue of Jarvis having been beaten up.

He needs medical attention but he’s so badly injured that they can’t just carry him out the underground tunnel Captain Marvel made. The only safe way to evacuate Jarvis is through the front door, which involves going through the rest of the fighty Masters of Evil.

Wasp decides that they need to deal with the Masters anyway and tells Black Knight and Ant-Man to rig up a stretcher for Jarvis.

But secretly, she thinks Black Knight needs medical attention too and doesn’t want to throw him into too many fights. So she tells Thor and Captain America to lead the counterattack on the Masters as soon as Captain Marvel returns from her premium probably-neutrino scouting mission.

Monica arrives shortly and reveals that the Wrecking Crew is planning an ambush on the first floor because Zemo told them to expect intruders from below.

Captain America runs in first to spring the ambush because he’s an acrobatic boy and can dodge the ‘surprise’ attack.

Then while the Wrecking Crew’s attention is drawn by Cap(tain America), Thor sneaks up on the Wrecking Crew and just. Depowers the Wrecking Crew by drawing their powers back into the Wrecker.

Its a whole thing.

Thor: “You have been but pawns in [Zemo’s] hands... mortal pawns who possessed the powers of gods, wrongfully acquired from the Queen of the Norns! But, by my hammer, you shall possess it no more!”

The Wrecker was empowered by Norn power that Loki gave him. And Wrecker figured out a way to delegate that power to his friends.

So it makes sense, kinda, that Thor can just revoke that gift.

It involves shooting a ray from Mjolnir and Mjolnir can do anything.

Thor plans on yoinking the Norn power out of the Wrecker as well but then Goliath shows up to do what he’s done best in this story.

Bounce a god off bits of the scenery.

Outside the mansion, Doctor Druid levitates up to the roof of the Mansion so he can investigate further the funky vibes he’s getting from Blackout.

Right when he gets to the roof (still cloaked in an invisibility spell by the by), Captain Marvel nyooms to the roof as well to confront Moonstone for throwing her into the darkforce dimension.

Moonstone wants no part of that and throws Blackout at Captain Marvel - literally throws him at her - and just books it out of there!

Monica Marvel knocks out Blackout so he won’t cause any trouble while she’s gone and then NYOOM she’s gone.

Doctor Druid: So that is Captain Marvel! She’s every bit as extraordinary as I’d heard! Moonstone’s attempted diversion delayed her little more than a few seconds.

This praise hits weird knowing the cursed future knowledge I know about Doctor Druid and Captain Marvel.

So cursed is this future knowledge.

But as Doctor Druid intimated, Captain Marvel catches up to Moonstone in almost no time.

Whatever Moonstone��s top speed, its not light speed.

Although her real plan was not to outrace Monica but to “lose myself in Jersey!”

Moonstone assumes that since Captain Marvel can’t fly and turn physical at the same time, that’s maybe an advantage. But Captain Marvel proves her wrong by turning into infrared energy annnnnnd

thennnnnn

Moonstone flies into a cliff and breaks her neck.

It’s like Quicksilver never left.

Monica is very concerned for Moonstone - because she flew headfirst into a mountain at 100 mph and broke her neck and its a wonder that she’s even alive - which surprises Moonstone.

Moonstone: “You’re... worried? I thought... you were going... to kill me! Heh-heh... *ow* ... that’s perfect. Just perfect! Not only do I lose control of Blackout, I lose control of myself in the bargain! Maybe I’m the one who lost control! I didn’t mean for this -- !”

Wow Moonstone, you do not know superheroes.

Captain Marvel asks some follow up questions like wait what do you mean lost control of Blackout. Because Monica was pretty sure that Moonstone was the one who told Blackout to send her to another dimension.

Moonstone reveals that Zemo supplanted her control of Blackout which makes Monica release whoops she left Blackout unattended. That’s probably bad, right?

Yes, that’s bad.

Because back at the Mansion, Zemo reaches the roof and discovers that the barrier is down and the situation is FUBAR. And also sees a weird stranger (Doctor Druid) standing over Blackout.

So he shoots Druid with a Needler (no, not the Halo one) which he had as a contingency against Moonstone.

Then Zemo rouses Blackout from his nap.

Zemo: “Yes, Blackout, you can save the day for us! You can defeat our enemies! You can send them away, mansion and all... into the Darkforce Dimension!”

Blackout: “Yes?!”

He doesn’t seem too sure. And also seems existentially terrified.

SO: there’s still some arc to go but I guess a lot of the breadcrumbs I thought were breadcrumbs about the Masters of Evil’s instability as a group were not in fact breadcrumbs.

Unless something drastically changes about how things are at the end of this issue, the tension between Zemo and Moonstone isn’t really going to come to a head. Or the tension between Yellowjacket II and the Fixer. And nothing will come of the question of how much longer Zemo could keep Hyde under control.

I guess I expected something like that Justice League episodes Injustice For All where the Injustice Gang starts imploding before the heroes even start punching them.

It’d be poetic justice of a sort, since Zemo’s tactic was to divide and conquer the Avengers, for the Masters of Evil to fall into disunity and fail against the Avengers’ unity.

Wasp regrouping, gathering reinforcements, coming up with a plan to break into the Mansion and free the hostages, and then taking out the supervillains is a good story too. I am enjoying it! I just set up my expectations for something else.

My bad!

Follow @essential-avengers because next week is more of this story arc. Like and reblog because Blackout’s face on the last page scares me.

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