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thebibliomancer · 1 year

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Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #30: NONE SO BLIND...

March, 1988

THE COMPOSITE AVENGER!

OH MY GOD THIS GUY IS SO GOOFY LOOKING!

So, the East Coast Avengers are dealing with the Super-Adaptoid over in their book (although disappointingly he doesn’t copy the powers of the current team) and the West Coast Avengers are going to deal with some guy that composites their attributes?

I’m down for that! I think every superhero team should have to deal with someone that’s just the whole team in one dude.

I sure hope this cover isn’t a lie!

This issue also seems like its a fill-in.

Instead of Steve Englehart who has been the writer since West Coast Avengers vol 2 started, we have Al Milgrom as the writer. Al Milgrom has been the artist on the book so its plausible that Steve Englehart needed more time to script the follow-up to the Phantom Rider subplot so Al Milgrom stepped up to write a done-in-one.

So I don’t know if it will be all that relevant but

Last times on West Coast Avengers: the West Coast Avengers just finished up an arc about a Zodiac organization made of astrology obsessed robots. The leader Scorpio stupidly teleported Zodiac and the Avengers to another universe where the constellations were different so the robots stopped working. Then Moon Knight harassed a man who likes to dress as a bull until he, the bull man, died in a plane crash. It was all part of the same arc, trust me.

This time: horrifying babies.

Al Milgrom, please learn to draw babies if you’re going to confront me with two horrifying cherubs on page 2 of a book.

Also: is it laundry day for Wanda and Vision? Why are they wearing their uniforms around the house? I know Vision has a TV sitcom dad sweater. I’ve seen him wear it!

Anyway, nightmare babies aside. Uncle Wonder Man reads Tommy and Billy the story of the Blind Man and the Elephant.

You probably know it. Or are vaguely aware of it.

Some blind wise men feel up an elephant and give their own, narrow interpretations of what kind of beast it is based on what they touch. One touches the tail, and thinks an elephant is ropelike, another touches the tusk and thinks its spear-esque.

And at the end they can’t agree on what an elephant is because they only bothered to touch one thing. The moral being “there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

The story is lost on Billy and Tommy who passed right the fuck out during this minute long story. And Vision says that the more complicated theme of the story was probably beyond their baby brains anyway.

(How old are they at this point? Comic book time makes that complicated.)

But Simon says that mostly he just wants the two kids to get used to him being around as their uncle.

Aww!

He’s pretty busy with his movie career and superhero work but he wants to be able to visit this part of the family as often as he can.

Simon Wonder Man Williams gets in his Quinjet to fly back from New Jersey to L.A. but finds weird green bug robots smashing into the cockpit despite whatever defensive grid the Quinjet apparently has.

The robots shred his stylish red jacket but he manages to smash them and radio the West Coast Avengers to report the situation.

Wonder Man: “Attention Whackos! This is Wonder Man. Am being attacked by robots of unknown origin. Activating signal beacon. They’re strong li’l suckers, but I should be able to handle ‘em. There’s only a few... uh-oh! ... hundred!”

The transmission cuts off there so back at the West Coast Avengers Compound, the team assembles, gets into another Quinjet and flies off to help their teammate!

Meanwhile, Wonder Man finds himself held captive above a spaceship hovering over the Midwest.

A shadowy figure on a monitor with a tentacle mouth introduces himself as one of the Sligs -- an up and coming new warrior race who want to prove their mettle.

And like many other comic book antagonists, instead of just getting down to what they want to do (cutting a swath of conquest through the galaxy or annihilating the Fantastic Four) the Sligs decided they’re going to beat the shit out of the Avengers first to prove that they’re cooler than the Kree and Skrulls.

Also, and to be fair, they want to conquer Earth so they’ll have to tangle with the Avengers one way or another. Might as well take advantage of a surprise strike to test, analyze, and defeat the team.

But, yeah, mostly they just want to rub the Kree and Skrulls’ faces in it that the Sligs, an alien race from a- oh actually they first appeared in a Fantastic Four issue. So they weren’t invented just for this. That makes them slightly less laughable.

According to Marvel wiki, they appear in this, in Fantastic Four 209, and in Maximum Security: Dangerous Planet. So they’re laughable again.

Anyway.

Things are already not going great for the Sligs as a technician warns the leader that Wonder Man is straining their engines by fighting so hard against the stasis beams.

The leader dismisses it as no concern and is more focused on the rest of the West Coast Avengers arriving to rescue Wonder Man.

Embarrassingly, the Slig ship just blasts the Quinjet into another dimension.

Their ability to do that kind of renders the rest of their plan to best the West Coast Avengers kinda pointless though, right? Like, the Sligs could get rid of the West Coast Avengers like that. Just leave them stranded.

But no.

And granted, that would make a boring issue.

Instead, the Sligs reunite Wonder Man and the West Coast Avengers in this different dimension so they can throw a big, beefy green robot called the Examiner at them.

And by at them I mean at Wonder Man.

The rest of the team is frozen in stasis so the Examiner can test what Wonder Man can do.

And with each fight, the Examiner will adapt and improve.

As Wonder Man realizes, this kind of screws over the rest of the team, if the Examiner adapts to fighting Wonder Man and then goes against his less powerful teammates.

Wonder Man decides the thing to do is to totally wreck the Examiner in their fight so it can’t use Wonder Man tier strength against the rest of the team.

And he does. He totally wrecks the Examiner in one panel.

Unfortunately, the Slig leader tells the technician to reassemble the Examiner and compensate for the damage he received.

So Wonder Man is placed in stasis and Tigra is freed, leaving her to face an upgraded Examiner.

The Examiner warns Tigra that his shielding is now nigh impenetrable. Nice of him to give her the heads up.

But what Tigra realizes is that she’s still faster.

She climbs up the Examiner and then jumps off when he tries to smash her. So instead, he smashes in his own chest plates.

And now that the chassis is breached, Tigra jumps back up and goes ham on his wiring and such.

Tigra: “He may have been ready for Wondy’s strength, but that didn’t prepare him for my savagery! And so scratch -- literally -- one Examiner!”

The Sligs use this new angry cat battle data to make an even better Examiner and then swap out Tigra for Mockingbird to test the new guy.

Mockingbird quickly joins her battle staves to make a battle ten-foot-pole so she can pole vault from the Examiner.

The Examiner says Mockingbird is agile (and wonders if that's just a Earth lady thing, because the Examiner is down to stereotype) but that he’s a lot faster after battling Tigra.

So since Mockingbird can’t outpunch this giant lad and can’t outrace him, she takes a page from Captain America that “a clever, skillful pro can beat any opponent!”

Basically, she lures the Examiner to the edge of the floating land chunk they’re fighting on and trips him so he falls off.

Dropping men off cliffs is becoming her signature move.

Also, I think the Examiner obliterated one of those floating planetoids with his face.

The Slig leader is starting to see that the Avengers live up to the stories told about them. But hell if he’s going to stop now. He has the technician re-assemble the Examiner with strength to challenge Wonder Man, speed to rival Tigra, and ... uh... I guess being smart enough not to get tripped off a cliff.

Hawkeye is sent to face the Examiner next.

And he’s been spending some of his stasis time thinking about how these one-on-one fights have been robbing the Avengers’ of the advantage of teamwork.

With that on his mind, he tosses down a high voltage arrow and loudly declares that he doesn’t need it.

The Examiner: “Beware, Avenger, my power is approaching levels it has never before attained! No amount of strength, speed, skill or savagery can best me now!”

Hawkeye decides to test this with some high impact explosive arrows.

They make the Examiner stumble back a step but he compensates before he can, I dunno, stumble off the floating land chunk like an idiot again.

Hawkeye tries a net arrow next, which the Examiner tears apart like no thing. Then he has to use some putty arrows to slow the guy down so he can put some distance between them.

And at a safe distance, Hawkeye uses some concentrated nitric acid arrows, which he just so happened to have with him (Hawkeye’s quiver is as good as Batman’s utility belt and you can take that to the bat-bank).

It seems like the chassis is still quite durable but the acid seeps into the Examiner’s joints and he falls quite to pieces.

Boss Slig immediately commands that the Examiner be buffed and re-assembled. The technician tries to warn the boss that this exercise is starting to draw so much power that its becoming dangerous.

The boss just yells RE-ASSEMBLE! so the technician does.

Iron Man is up next.

Hm. Despite being the second strongest dude on the team, Iron Man now has to deal with an enemy that’s been buffed by fighting over half the team. If Iron Man had gone first, he’d probably have wrecked the Examiner as quickly as Wonder Man did. Now, he has a challenge.

Also, the Examiner can fly. Adapted that from the Wonder Man fight and has had it all along. Could have come in use when he was tripped off the edge of the land but hey, hindsight is something something.

Repulsors and the uni-beam both fail to do much to the Examiner. And the Examiner’s counter-attack spikes Iron Man out of the air.

But Iron Man lands near the arrow that Hawkeye dropped and he suddenly realizes Hawkeye’s strategy.

The Examiner boasts that it has grown too powerful for the arrows to threaten. But Iron Man uses the high voltage arrow to recharge his armor and then uses the power to magnetize the Examiner’s chassis.

Sure, Iron Man couldn’t destroy the Examiner, the guy can’t continue the fight with his limbs magnetized to his torso.

Slig boss: “Astounding! Each of these warriors seems to be holding some ability or weapon back so we are faced with a new challenge each time. Compensate!”

Slig technician: “Am attempting compliance! Tapping into stardrive engines now!”

The Examiner is demagnetized and made immune to that tactic. And Dr Pym is unfrozen to face a the Examiner that is now immune to the strengths of Wonder Man, Tigra, Mockingbird, Hawkeye, and Iron Man. That’s... uh... a hurdle.

Dr Pym does his Dr Pym Particles thing and unshrinks some tools.

But a buzzsaw breaks against the Examiner and just gets Dr Pym WHAP’d in response. A flamethrower also proves useless.

The Examiner draws near and Dr Pym says “I get the picture! I know when I’m beaten. But I warn you, don’t touch me!”

This just makes the Examiner want to touch him more though.

Which Hank was counting on, that sneaky Hank.

With the Examiner presumably savoring an Avenger showing fear at last, Hank is able to tap the robot on its chest.

Dr Pym: “You saw my ability to enlarge shrunken inanimate objects -- well, you just have to ask yourself... ‘how did those objects get shrunken in the first place?’”

And then he smashes the teeny Examiner with a hammer.

Good job, Hank!

I like how fed up the technician is getting. The boss is sunk costing hard at this point.

So the Examiner is buffed and reassembled and put up against Moon Knight.

And Moon Knight is thinking, oh shit, I’m screwed. He’s a badass normal dude with some extra selves he doesn’t want to talk to and such powerful tools as... an axe and also a boomerang.

Against a dude that is now buffed up enough to sweep the West Coast Avengers as a team.

Speaking of selves he doesn’t want to talk to, Steven Grant and Jake Lockley both yell that Marc is screwed if he fights that thing.

But another voice pipes up in his head, Khonshu, GOD OF THE MOON.

Moon Knight: “Khonshu?! You speak to me again. But it may be for the last time, unless you can somehow help me beat this creature!”

Khonshu: “You do not need my help, o Knight of the Moon, you need but look around you!”

Moon Knight: “This dimension... I hadn’t realize... it’s full of moons!”

Khonshu: “Indeed! Untold thousands of them. And we draw our power from the Moon! Now be the Moon Knight -- be the Fist of Khonshu as you never have before!”

AND THEN MOON KNIGHT GOES HAM AND TEARS APART THE EXAMINER WITH HIS BARE HANDS

HOLY SHIT

The Slig boss is stunned and shaken and other words. But the technician is now 1001% done.

Slig technician: “Oh, shut up! The power drain has frozen out our safety back-up circuits! Stardrive overheating -- this thing is gonna blow!”

The West Coast Avengers and their Quinjets are snapped back to Earth because the Slig ship can’t maintain the dimension shift.

Wonder Man: “I warned you guys you couldn’t beat my buddies!”

Slig boss: “Be not so smug, Wonder Man! Even now we are transmitting all our test results back to our home base -- with all that data about your race, we will surely find a way to conquer y--”

And then the Slig ship explodes.

Countless light years away, presumably on the Slig homeworld, they receive the data and the report that the expedition to Earth has been destroyed.

Another Slig technician: “Our computers have correlated and interpreted the data -- This, then, is a projection of what the warrior-race called the Avengers look like!”

YOU HAVE PULLED A FAST ONE ON ME AGAIN, A COVER TO A COMIC BOOK!

Ahem.

So. The Slig computers, assuming that the Avengers are one uniform race and not a bunch of different peeps with different abilities, conflates them all into one COMPOSITE AVENGER.

And the Supreme Slig is so freaked out by the mighty Avenger warrior-race that he orders that all Slig fleets must avoid going anywhere near Earth.

It’s nice when things work out.

I’m not sure how Wonder Man in the last panel knows that this is the picture that the Sligs would get. Yeah, it ties into the story he read at the start of the issue but how does he know that this episode of his life would bookend so satisfyingly?

He is so pleased with himself though.

So!

This was definitely a fill-in. Meant to spin the wheels a bit. And its a fun story! Not substantive by any means. Most of the issue is a bunch of fights. There’s not really much in the way of character beats. But its fun to see the Avengers all out-fight or out-wit a dude that’s growing to counter them!

The Examiner is kind of a boring opponent. Doesn’t really have the spectacle of the Super-Adaptoid looking like a mishmash of his opponents and using their powers against them. But he works for this issue as someone for the Avengers to style on.

I’m annoyed that the West Coast Avengers don’t fight a guy that’s a mashup of their powers and aesthetics. That could have been fun.

But I’m not disappointed with the issue we got. And the way the Composite Avenger was actually used was a cute enough take on an old tale.

Plus, the issue had Moon Knight empowered by THOUSANDS OF MOOOOOONS and going ham. I can’t hate that.

Good job, Al Milgrom.

You wrote a hell of a fun story.

Follow @essential-avengers for this post again months or years later, whenever I catch up. Like and reblog if you liked this issue and think other people will like it. Or reblog it to add comments or reactions. I love to hear what people think about these comics.

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