#i guess its the least they could do after Kang invaded the cowboy time with his high concept shenanigans

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #142: Go West, Young Gods!

December, 1975

So this cover promises that the Avengers will get into a Wild West sort of shootout with a bunch of cowboys. The wildest western heroes of all, actually. Which is a really massive mismatch because Thor exists. And he’s bulletproof. And they have the powers of have gun will travel.

Also, Iron Man is here despite being last seen having his iron butt handed to him by the Squadron Supreme.

I feel that this cover may not be 100% entirely representative of the contents. So, same as ushe basically.

But we pick up right from where we left off Last Time: where did we leave off last time?

Thor and Moondragon recruited the aid of Immortus to go back in time and beat up Kang and find the missing Hawkeye. Meanwhile, Cap, Iron Man, Beast, Patsy Walker, Vision, and Scarlet Witch go to investigate the Brand Corporation, a Roxxon subsidiary, and get beaten up and captured by the Squadron Supreme, a team of Justice League expies from another universe working for an evil corporation in the Avengers’ universe for some reason.

We start in the wild, wild west with the mysterious threatening person from last time revealed as being one of Marvel’s cowboy heroes.

There’s Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt, the Ringo Kid and Night Rider. A youthy lot, the wild west heroes apparently were.

Moondragon wonders why these peeps don’t recognize them as gods instead of calling them demons but Thor remarks “What is a god -- to a cowboy?”

I actually thought cowboys tended to be fairly religious but possibly not too conscious of comparative religion.

Anyway, Thor doesn’t like having guns pointed at him so he shoots lightning at them. Which is much deadlier than guns.

But one of the cowboys says the secret word “Hawkeye” (AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH -flail flail-) so Thor stops the storm to demand the cowboys take them to Hawkeye.

And there’s a brief thing where Rawhide Kid protests “Ah ain’t ridin’ nowheres with a bald-headed female up behind!”

But I think he’s just jealous that she’s taller than him. By nearly a head.

The combined group of time travelers and cowboys arrives at the town of Tombstone, where they have go all stealthy for reasons too complicated to explain on this specific page.

The group ‘cat-foots’ to the office of western lawyer Matthew J. Hawk (who Two-Gun claims is a friend but is really his secret ID (are all vigilante lawyers bad at secret identities? Is that why She-Hulk seldom bothered? Maybe... maybe.))

And inside, they find Hawkeye! He’s alive and well and shirtless!

He tells the story of what happened to him after he stormed off to engage in casual time travel to recruit a guy who thought the Crusades’ were a morally unambiguous time to adventure around in.

And of course, since it’s Hawkeye, he activates Doctor Doom’s time machine by shooting an arrow at it. I presume arrows is also how he shaves in the morning.

But it turns out that one should not treat time travel like a casual trip to the corner store because Kang was waiting to ambush him.

Little did Kang suspect that Hawkeye had been working on anti-Kang arrows during the Celestial Madonna Saga (never forget that the man casually invented anti-gravity and then never did anything with it) and blasts Kang, sending them both falling through time until Hawkeye landed in the Old West.

Hawkeye wandered the desert until he stumbled across the town of Tombstone. BUT HEY THAT GIANT FUTUREY PALACE FORTRESS LOOKS OUT OF PLACE.

And some renegades from Tombstone mistake Hawkeye for an ally of Kang and start shooting at him.

So Hawkeye decided that the pants were okay but the tunic and mask had to go if he were to blend in. So the guy got half-naked and wandered into Tombstone until the word Hawk on a door drew his attention.

Apparently, history classes teaches of the Old West heroes so Hawkeye realized Matthew Hawk was secretly Two-Gun Kid.

Two-Gun Kid is slightly alarmed that everyone in the future knows his secret identity.

Thor doesn’t care though. He wants to find Kang. This time will be the last battle between him and the Avengers. Swearsies.

But what is Kang up to? According to the cowboys, he somehow took over Tombstone, made all the inhabitants his mind-slaves. And he has threatened that he can kill anybody in town just by pushing a button?

Immortus drops some sweet spoilers because the knowledge won’t change anything and that’s how he rolls: it is Kang’s newest master plan.

Since conquering the 20th century is too hard what with all those Avengers, he’s just going to cheat and conquer the 19th. And then the Avengers probably will never be a thing that opposed him. Timey wimey nonsense.

Meanwhile, we see what the other Avengers are up to on a cool splash page with interesting perspective.

The Squadron Supreme, sponsored by the Brand Corporation, has put the Avengers and also Patsy Walker into a cage formed by Dr. Spectrum’s power prism.

Because its made of gem manifestations, not only is it strong enough to resist Iron Man’s irony thews, it also prevents Vision from intangibling through it.

And Beast is lamenting getting Patsy Walker drawn into all of this but she pish toshes it as stuff and nonsense. She’s loving all this adventure and getting locked in a cage.

Also:

Patsy: “You’re a rat, Buzz Baxter! You’re nothing like the man I married -- or even the man I divorced! You’ve changed!”

Buzz: “But I’m out here, baby -- and you’re in there!”

Also, Iron Man warns that no trap has held the Avengers forever and Hyperion sneers that this one will because its time Iron Man learned that the Squadron Supreme is really the better team.

I mean, it possibly is. He’s never actually fought them.

He’s only fought the Squadron Sinister.

Anyway, the bad guys walk off leaving the Avengers free to make their daring escape.

But first: lets check back in with the Old West.

Its the Old West so of course you have to do Old West stuff, even if the guy you’re trying to track down is a time traveler from the future.

So. They’re going to do a shoot-out at a train robbery. Because obviously.

But also because its the train that makes runs for a uranium mine and I don’t know why they’d be mining uranium at all in this time but uranium is definitely a thing that Kang can use.

Uranium is great fuel for various temporal and universal transportation devices such as appearifiers and sendificators.

But Thor and Moondragon are going to have to go incognito. I mean, I can barely tell the cowboys apart but a big blonde Norse man with a hammer or a bald half-dressed woman are going to stand out.

So while the cowboys and Hawkeye stake out a butte, Thor and Moondragon ride the train dressed as typical travelers. And seven bandits await the train on a bluff.

Hawkeye (or the Hawkeye Kid as he decides to deem himself) spots the bandits making their move and fires a flare arrow to alert the others.

Two-Gun Kid spots the signal and prepares to ride into action but hesitates to muse that people like the Avengers would choose to follow in the footsteps he foot stepped when he chose to maintain a secret identity.

As if he were the first person to maintain a secret identity. The Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro probably have something to say to you.

But I can forgive Two-Gun Kid because he’s really struggling with having met ‘gods’.

The lead bandit Ace sees the flare but isn’t overly worried. He jumps aboard the engine car and tries to hold up the engineers but the Rawhide Kid is waiting for him in the coal pile, gun drawn. Also sporting two guns. What makes Two-Gun Kid the Two-Gun Kid and not the Rawhide Kid? We may never know.

Meanwhile, Kid Colt outraces another bandit and tackles him off his horse. And then Kid Colt beats the shit out of a second bandit while yelling he’s not even worth the price of a bullet for signing up with Kang.

Also meanwhile, Hawkeye is having a real lark with this Old West biz. He jumps off a horse onto a moving train and has a shootout on the roof, bonking a guy’s nogging with what I guess was a punch arrow.

One bandit actually is smart and realizes that any job that pulls Kid Colt, Rawhide Kid and the Ringo Kid down on him isn’t worth the trouble so he absconds. Unluckily, the Night Rider is waiting for him in the cave he flees into just to give him a frighten. The bandit attempts to re-flee but WUMP!s himself with a tree branch.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye is still having a fight on top of a moving train. But Sideburns Bandit has him dead to rights with a gun pointed at his liver. Which probably shouldn’t matter since Hawkeye restrung a bow and shot out another bowman’s bowstring before the dude could shoot him.

Basically, Hawkeye bows with ludicrous speed.

But whether he needed it or not, Rawhide Kid comes to Hawkeye’s aid by pistol whipping the bandit. Prompted in part by Rawhide’s mom being Native American and the bandit having used a pejorative term for that at Hawkeye.

By the way, Moondragon has been spectating this like its the best thing that ever happened to her. She even says “At last, my association with the Avengers has borne fruit!”

I guess what she really wanted when she decided to reconnect with her Earth heritage was a great train robbery thwarting.

Also, Two-Gun has not really been too involved with the goings-on and suches but he chases the last bandit Chavo Juarez into a canyon and decides to tackle the man from the top of a cliff.

Because he felt small next to the Avengers and wanted to do a cool thing, he guesses.

Although its kind of notable that Thor and Moondragon sat this one out and let the cowboys and Hawkeye handle everything. The issue would have been shorter if Thor did more than ride a train, I suppose.

Anyway, with all the bandits rounded up, Hawkeye fires another signal flare prompting Thor and Moondragon to jump off the train and fly off, apparently starting another Western legend (that of the giant flying Norseman?).

Meanwhile at the rounded up bandits, Hawkeye says that one of them is going to spill the beans on what their arrangement for delivering the goods to Kang was. AND THEN HIM AND THE BOYS ARE GONNA BEGIN THE ASSAULT ON CASTLE KANG!

You’re really into this Wild West trip, Hawkeye. Are you going to try to stay when all is said and done?

Anyway, disproportionate focus on Team Old West. We only check in with the Avengers a little bit to see that they’re still alive and what their current predicament is before going back to the Old West to thwart a train robbery.

And since Moondragon and Thor sit that one out, its more like both groups of Avengers take a backseat so that this month is all about the cool Marvel Western heroes, with cameos by some Avengers.

I mean, I’m all about mashing up genres. Seeing some Avengers have to thwart an Old West train robbery would be sweet. But that’s not what this is. It was a bunch of cowboys (and Hawkeye) thwarting a robbery. So its not really mashing the genres up. Its playing an Old West story straight in the middle of a superhero book without really letting any of the modern superhero elements play along. Technically the bandits were working for Kang. Technically Thor and Moondragon were playing backup on the train. But in terms of execution, it doesn’t matter. It played out like neither of those things were true.

Maybe if Kang had given his bandits advanced technology, that would be different.

But yeah. Having read through this issue it just strikes me how far removed the usual Avengers elements are from the main plot happenings. Maybe Steve Englehart just really wanted to tell a western this month.

Next month in publishing time and much less time in me time, the superhero elements return and the Avengers get to actually do stuff. So that’s a thing to look forward to.