Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #48: THIS ANCIENT EVIL
September, 1989
Captain America and She-Hulk have found the Scarlet Witch... Maybe not the smartest thing they ever did...
Still love cover text.
So Wanda just wears ooze now.
Interesting fashion choice.
Wasp will probably have something to say about it, though, if the West Coast Avengers ever rejoin the A-plot in their own book.
I know the allure of having two linked books so characters can cross over as needed but this is still Avengers West Coast, the Avengers book occurring on the West Coast. Since I guess there aren't separate teams anymore.
Last times on Avengers West Coast: all the governments disassembled Vision for trying to take over the world that one time. Hank Pym put him back together but now Vision's brain isn't the same. No emotions. None of the other Avengers seem to care so Scarlet Witch takes Vision to Absolom College which offered to help. 'TWAS A RUSE and Dean Random dumps a bunch of evil ooze on Wanda!
This time: a lot of worldbuilding exposition.
Yup, that's right. The backstory is so extensive it goes back to the formation of Earth.
But the take-away is, like I said, Byrne is doing Sublime before Sublime.
The longer of it is that the Earth cooled, there was big rain, cellular life started to form, and the very first cell undergoes mitosis EXCEPT ONE OF THE COPIES IS EEEEEEEVIL AND EATS THE OTHER.
AND FROM THEN ON EVERY LIFEFORM ON EARTH HAS HAD THE MARK OF EEEEEEVIL IN IT.
Except mutants. Remember how that's the whole thing? The evil ancient gene or whatever wants to assimilate mutants and needed one that was easy prey? And since Wanda is having an emotional crisis currently...
Hey. You can see her toes. And she noted last issue that the ooze was dissolving her cape. Is she only wearing ooze now?
Byrne, why?
Also, what the fuck is a classic mutant type? What does that mean? And the later retcon that Wanda isn't even a mutant just makes this funny. These guys aren't good at their job.
Apparently, aside from just zonking her mind, the ooze and the tube are trying to understand the mutant gene and also reconstructing Wanda's memory and dumping the big exposition dump right into her brain. She needs to know this stuff, I guess.
Lady bad guy estimates that the process will be done in 72 hours.
Meanwhile, Captain America and She-Hulk and only Captain America and She-Hulk fly a Quinjet to Absolom, Texas to check on that Quinjet distress signal they got.
I wonder where this crossover fits with what's happening in Avengers. Cap went right from his announcement that he now ruled all Avengers to that whole Lava Man thing. And they're going to go right from that Lava Man thing into another story arc, to try to get help for Gilgamesh. And that's going to be a number of issues.
Avengers West Coast has to be way ahead of the Avengers East Coast timeline right now.
But I'm wondering because why is it just Cap and She-Hulk? Was everyone else on vacation?
She-Hulk calls to advise the traffic controller that they're going to be landing at Absolom College. In a nice touch, the traffic controller hears that the Avengers are emergency landing at a university and asks if the police or military need to be contacted too. Because Avengers deal with all kinds of shit!
But Cap tells the traffic controller that it's Avengers' business.
A bad guy informs Dean Random that another Quinjet is approaching, to Random's consternation. He thought that Wanda had severed ties with the Avengers before coming.
(Really, all she did was steal a Quinjet and hide her destination. That's not quite severing ties.)
While the assimilation process on Wanda continues, Mr. Random goes to meet with the Avengers and see what the hell they want on his college.
When Cap tells Mr. Random that they're investigating a possibly crashed Quinjet, Random spins a story that is partially true and also bullshit.
He tells Cap that Scarlet Witch and Vision visited, that Wanda left Vision with the college, and then took off. And he hopes that nothing happened to her after she left! He then offers Cap and She-Hulk a visit with Vision who will surely corroborate the story.
Meanwhile, SPAAAAAACE.
Starfox is searching an ancient planet for Nebula. Even though the Avengers told him that Nebula fell into a time warp and was lost in time. Because a mercenary told Starfox he'd seen Nebula.
Yeah, so I was wondering at what point the Nebula Kang thing got retconned to not be Nebula and apparently the time is now.
Guess Byrne decided he had a better idea for her than where Simonson left her. AND TO BE FAIR.
Nebula Kang wasn't interesting enough that I can muster up annoyance that the story is being retconned.
Anyway, Starfox does find Nebula and Gunthar of her space mercenary crew.
Gunthar found some stone tablets for her which have formula on them that will help her become more powerful than Thanos ever was!
Is it the Anti-Life Equation?
Don't call attention to Thanos' pretty direct inspiration!
Over in another subplot, there's a lady named Ann Raymond at a homeless shelter in Denver who is delirious and keeps telling staff that she needs to get to Los Angeles. She's carrying a newspaper clipping with the headline "Avengers Confirm Vision is Not Torch" which seems to be making her distraught.
Um. Whyy did the Avengers announce that to the news media? For one thing, that's personal biz and I'm sure Wanda did not approve having it blasted to the press since she still thinks Professor Horton is a lying sack of shit.
The way the Avengers are handling the Vision situation makes them feel more inhuman than the emotionless robot man.
Anyway.
Meanwhile, Captain America and She-Hulk meet with Vision. They ask him where Wanda is but he has no idea. He can only report that according to Mr. Random, Wanda took off.
The evil bad guys who are full of evil ancient bacteria or whatever decide they need to accelerate shoving exposition into Wanda's brain, in case the heroes cause problems. Sure, it might break Wanda's brain but surely they have no other choice.
So more past times exposition flashbacks. Life continued to develop on Earth. There were forests. Also lizards. And then dinosaurs. Should stopped there, dinosaurs were great. But while there were dinosaurs, there was also mammals.
This will be important later.
Cap and She-Hulk finish their tour with Mr. Random and Cap has some questions.
Sure, the Absolom College of Robotics looks pretty impressive but it's nothing compared to the tech that the Avengers have. So why did Absolom think they'd be better at fixing Vision's noodle than the Avengers were?
Mr. Random handwaves it that Absolom's robotics experts are providing a different perspective on the problem but Cap is skeptical.
Captain America: "Still, you would agree it is a great shame that Wanda should feel the need to turn to strangers after we did all we could do."
Diiiiiiid you though?
The Wonder Man elephant is still in the room. An additional thing that they could try but nobody seems interested in it except Wanda and everyone else has seemingly washed their hands of the situation and decided Vision is Good Enough.
Mr. Random gets called off to attend to something (probably something Wanda related) and tells Cap and She-Hulk they can finish the tour.
Both of the heroes are actually pretty skeptical of the situation, this facility, and all these people.
The Absolom robotics facilities looks more like a set designer's idea of what an impressive robot factory would look like and less like the real thing.
But rather than confront the peeps now, Cap decides they'll finish the tour like they're not massively suspicious and then sneak back later at night to poke around.
Meanwhile, back at Seattle, the Avengers West Coast (minus US Agent who has never done any Avengers business with the Avengers at all so far despite ostensibly being in charge and Tigra who nobody has noticed hasn't shown up, sigh) interview Professor Horton.
Horton reiterates that Vision could not possibly be the (robot) Human Torch.
CLEARLY ANY NON IDIOT AND ALSO ROBOTICS EXPERT WOULD NOTICE THAT, HANK PYM.
For you see, the Human Torch was an artificial human and definitely not mechanical at all in any way shape or form. Just a human ass human except 100% synthetic parts. Meanwhile, Vision has robot bits.
I don't know whether this is true of the Human Torch or not. I don't know whether this is closing a plot hole since Vision has been shown having mechanical parts. But I do remember that several times people have said that Vision is a synthezoid, meaning an artificial man with synthetic parts. But Horton seems to be redefining synthezoid to mean a mix of artificial organs and machine parts.
We're pretty far into this subplot by now. Why are we still rehashing this part of it?
Is it because I keep yelling at the comic how much I hate this subplot?
Anyway, Hank Pym tells Horton that he went on a Fantastic Voyage through Vision and sees his point. Probably should have seen it sooner.
I think that Fantastic Voyage is the story that did the art fail of showing Vision as more roboticy than he's supposed to be. He's supposed to be basically a man but artificial.
Anyway, Hank also reflects that they believed all of Vision's backstory Human Torch stuff because of Immortus.
Hank Pym: "Obviously, the 'master of time' lied. Why?"
Immortus, watching this conversation on the time-a-vision: "Oh, never without good reason, my dear Doctor Pym. Never without good reason."
Oh, boy, I sure hope that good reason is really good.
Immortus suggests that it's a really good reason, such a good reason that it's beyond the comprehension of people with dumb minds. Also, he has Plans involving Scarlet Witch.
Big ones.
So he's also watching her subplot on a different time-a-vision.
On a completely different floor.
Why did you organize like this?
I do like the room that is just sideways to the stairs. Immortus lives in an MC Esher painting.
Anyway, back at the Scarlet Witch ooze side of the plot, all the memories have been jammed into her brain and the bad guys breached the genetic barrier that kept them from possessing mutants.
Mr. Random: "The genetic barrier has been breached. Soon we shall be able to abandon the dead end street of humanity... And then homo sapiens will go the same way as did the dinosaurs before them!"
So we'd better dial E for Extinction.
This is just the Sublime stuff! Did Morrison just rip off Byrne? Why??
The evil bad guys put Ooze Wanda in a room so she can rest and contemplate.
Ooze Wanda: "Suddenly I feel very sure about everything. It's as if every doubt I've ever had in my life has been scrubbed away. I begin to understand now some of the things my father has said. Things he said in the days my brother, Pietro, and I were part of his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. In those days long before we even knew he was our father... When he was, to us, only Magneto, Master of Magnetism."
"Then he spoke often of the superiority of mutants such as us. Homo superior, he called us. He said we were the future. Said that some day soon all the humans would bow down to us... Acknowledge us as their rightful masters! Now i see that he was right! More right than even he dared guess. Humankind has reached the end of its era of domination. They must be left behind, like the dinosaurs, like the lesser mammals. Left to die out. And only That Which Endures shall remain!"
Aw, dammit. Getting ooze radicalized her into mutant supremacy.
Don't do ooze, kids, not even once.
Later that evening, Captain America and She-Hulk sneak back onto the Absolom College grounds to get to the bottom of things.
While She-Hulk points out that she's not built for a stealth mission "being six foot seven and bright green", Cap impresses by acrobating all over the place and pointing out where the security sensors are so She-Hulk can avoid them.
The two break into Mr. Random's office and Mr. Random's unsecured passwordless computer and find that Scarlet Witch is being held in a sub-basement. In fact, in the building right across from Mr. Random's office window.
So She-Hulk has an idea how to expedite the journey.
Instead of slowly making their way through the building, dodging security, and trying to find their way into the sub-basement, She-Hulk just uses herself as a kinetic bomb to plow a straight line from the roof to the basement.
And Captain America follows the path she left by riding his shield. Since its unique properties absorb the impact of falling twenty stories.
In the sub-basement, Cap and She-Hulk find a fortified structure, which Cap likens to a blockhouse. Looking like it was built to contain something.
But She-Hulk is Hulk strong and Cap asks her to knock. The door down.
Except. She plows through a lot easier than she should have if it was fortified as it looks. It's a trap!
Ooze Wanda is waiting for them and with a gesture, she buries Cap and She-Hulk in rocks.
Well, buries is a strong word. She lightly flings the rubble at them and then they fall over unconscious despite it seeming like it should take more than that to knock out a (she-)hulk.
Ooze Wanda: "I have not been turned. I have, rather, been shown the truth. The great and ancient truth which has dwelled within all living things since the dawn of time! The truth you will come to share... once you, too, are properly assimilated!"
... I thought humans were already assimilated?
How does this thing work, anyway?
And where did Wanda's pupils go? She had them a few pages ago. Did she catch Youngblood's Disease between then and now?
Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, Hawkeye is training the Great Lakes Avengers and yelling at them for not being up to his standards. Despite him only being in charge for one day.
Maybe its tough love but saying "I have never seen a more useless bunch of misfits!" is a bit harsh considering he just barged into their lives and unilaterally decided he was in charge.
Mockingbird interrupts his yelling at them to tell Hawkeye she caught a Quinjet emergency signal on the Avengers waveband.
Hawkeye: "All riigghht!! This is the moment I've been waiting for! AVENGERS ASSEMBLE! My former teammteas are in some kinda jam... an' we're gonna bail 'em out!"
Sooo. You go from yelling at them for not being up to Avengers standards to throwing them into the field for an unknown situation that may have endangered a professional Avengers team, all for a chance to show up his colleagues?
I'm starting to think Hawkeye is some kind of petty asshole sometimes.
Follow @essential-avengers for more deep insights like that. Like, reblog, and comment maybe.
7 notes
·
View notes