Avengers #76 Review

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Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: Full House

Written by: Geoff Johns
Penciled by: Steve Sadowski
Inked by: Andrew Currie
Colored by: Chris Sotomayor
Lettered by: Randy Gentile
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: Marvel Comics

The final issue of the Geoff Johns Avengers run is now upon us. It seems like Geoff Johns would rather be one of the many “kept” writers for DC and write worthless shit like Teen Titans than continue to write Avengers, but then again just about all of Geoff’s good will got pissed away as a result of him writing the “Red Zone” in the same brain-numbing fashion that Brian Bendis writes Ultimate Spider-Man in. It’s a shame since he was doing pretty good up until that point. Oh well, at least we still have JSA…

    REVIEW


The issue starts with the recap page focusing on the two potential dead-men walking: Jack of Hearts and Ant Man II. The story begins on page two as we see Ant Man’s daughter stopping some boys from frying ants with a magnifying glass with tales of how ants can eat people’s innards out. As the boys go away, Cassie is called over to a fence by a fat guy with a ball cap, who asks her to go with him in finding a girl named “Jessica Cooley.” Cassie tries to get the stranger to come with her to get her teacher to help him, but he grabs her shoulder and tells her “NO TEACHERS.”

We cut to the Avengers mansion as we find Jack of Hearts alone in the Zero Room with a clock counting down in front of him. Foreshadowing? The book soon cuts to the Avengers main meeting room, as we get the Avengers in a heated discussion. Basically do to a contrived plot device, either Jack of Hearts or She-Hulk must leave the Avengers. Hawkeye and Iron Man vote to boot Jack on the grounds that #1 She-Hulk has seniority and #2 Black Panther and Tony can baby-sit Jack of Hearts and continue his zero room treatment in their respective facilities.

Panther wants She-Hulk to decide if she wants to kick Jack out before he votes. While Vision and Scarlet Witch collectively laugh in Iron Man’s face over the issue of seniority and vote that Jen get the boot. Finally, Ant Man makes his pitch for booting Jack by reciting Jack’s flaws: he’s just hanging around because he has nothing else going for him, he’s a dick, doesn’t play well with others, and the obvious problem of him being able to turn She-Hulk into a mindless engine of destruction. Sadly for Scott, Jack walks in on him during this speech, Jack gives the usual “so I’m not wanted here….” speech as Captain America plays his hand and reveals that he personally wants to ship Jack out of the mansion and let Tony and Panther deal with him.

Captain America also brings up the fact that Jack would still technically be an Avenger, but Jack throws that B.S. into Cap’s face, while She-Hulk reveals that she wants to put off any expelling-decisions and hope that things work out in the meantime. Captain America then watches as Jack announces he’s going out flying before returning to the Zero Room and orders Ant Man to kiss and make up with Jack. Jack and Scott argue some more, as Scott gets an emergency transmission from his ex-wife about his daughter’s kidnapping. Scott flies off as Jack follows him.

We see both Scott’s ex-wife, and her cold and soon to be abusive husband, in the streets as the ex-wife bitches out her new husband that he should be storming the building to save his step-daughter. Jack arrives and learns that a psychopath who just murdered his own daughter and is now after Scott’s is holding Cassie. We cut to inside the building as Cassie’s capturer rants and raves about having to make sure Cassie remains “innocent” without outright saying he’s going to kill her. Suddenly a swarm of ants enter the room as Ant Man attacks the psychopath. Sadly, as he reaches out to check on his daughter, the psychopath wings Scott in the shoulder. Scott’s response is to call a swarm of bees onto the killer as he screams in agony that he is allergic to bees. Scott picks up the gun and holds it to the killer’s head and is just about to pull the trigger when Jack blasts into the room.

Jack talks some sense into Scott and makes him realize that he was about to shoot another living being right in clear view of his own daughter when the killer grabs the gun and fires it at Cassie. Luckily Jack blasts the gun and the killer’s hand off. He then gives the standard super-hero reasons for joining the Avengers and then declares that “he’s going to be doing some avenging” to the killer. He grabs the killer and flies into outer space where upon fully turning purple explodes. As Cassie and Scott look out at the exploding Jack of Hearts, Cassie asks who that purple skinned hero was. Which causes Scott to reply, “He was an Avenger”.

The book comes to an end as we see Jack’s purple and naked body floating into the rings of Saturn as we get a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. As a nice final touch, these scenes are shown on a white background, which is shaped like a Jack of Hearts playing card.