West Coast Avengers (Vol. 2) #42-46, Avengers West Coast #47-57, Annual #4 (March 1989 – April 1990)
Written by John Byrne (#42-57, Annual #4), Mark Gruenwald (Annual #4), Fabian Nicieza (Annual #4)
Pencilled by John Byrne (#42-57, Annual #4), Mike Manley (Annual #4), Gavin Curtis (Annual #4)
Inked by Mike Machlan (#42-48, 50-52), John Byrne (#49), Keith Williams (#53), Paul Ryan (#54-57), Terry Austin (Annual #4), Mike Manley (Annual #4), Chris Ivy (Annual #4)
Colour by Paul Becton (#42-45), Bob Sharen (#46-57, Annual #4), T. Fine (Annual #4), Chris Ivy (Annual #4)
Spoilers (from thirty-one to thirty-two years ago)
I’ve written before about how much I admired John Byrne growing up, and how much I loved his work. I’ve written about his Alpha Flight and Namor runs already, and will someday tackle more of his work, like perhaps his Fantastic Four.
I remember having mixed feelings about his time with the WCA though. There are a few things that always rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t like that he wrecked the Vision, and dehumanized him. I didn’t like that he changed the series’s title to Avengers West Coast (to be fair, I don’t know if that was him or an editorial decision, but it happened on his watch). At the time, I was bothered by his treatment of the Scarlet Witch, which became a foreshadowing of her continued degradation when Brian Michael Bendis got ahold of her in Avengers Disassembled and then House of M.
Still, there are some things that Byrne did right. Bringing back the original Human Torch was a big treat, given that I was always a fan of the Invaders. The Great Lakes Avengers seemed like such a fresh idea at the time (even though it seemed very reminiscent of the types of things that Keith Giffen and JM DeMatteis were doing with the Justice League. I also always liked the way he drew the USAgent, and I thought bringing him into the book was cool.
So, it’s time to see how this book stacks up.
Let’s track who turned up in the title:
West Coast Avengers
- Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff; #42-57, Annual #4)
- Hawkeye (Clint Barton; #42-46, 48-49, 55)
- Doctor Pym (Henry “Hank” Pym; #42-45, 47-57, Annual #4)
- Tigra (Greer Nelson; #42-47, 49-50, 52)
- Wasp (Janet Van Dyne, Avengers; #42-45, 47-57, Annual #4)
- Wonder Man (Simon Williams; #42-45, 47-57, Annual #4)
- Mockingbird (Bobbi Morse; #42-46, 48-49, 55)
- Vision (#43-45, 47-55, Annual #4)
- USAgent (John Walker; #44-47, 50-52, 54-57, Annual #4)
- The Human Torch (Jim Hammond; #50-54, 56-57, Annual #4)
- Iron Man (Tony Stark; #50-57, Annual #4)
Villains
- Cameron Brock (#43-44)
- Jeremiah Random (#47-50)
- That Which Endures (#48-50)
- Nebula (#48)
- Gunthar (#48)
- Immortus (#48, 50-51, 53, 55-56)
- Master Pandemonium (#50-52)
- Mephisto (#52)
- Llyra (#52)
- Lord Ghaur (#52, Annual #4)
- Magneto (#53-57)
- Loki (#53-55)
- Vapor (U-Foes; #53)
- Iron Clad (U-Foes; #53)
- X-Ray (U-Foes; #53)
- Vector (U-Foes; #53)
- Mole Man (#54)
- Giganto (#54)
- Tricephalous (#54)
- The Wizard (#55)
- The Kingpin (Wilson Fisk; #55)
- The Red Skull (#55)
- The Mandarin (#55)
- Set (Annual #4)
Guest Stars
- Mister Immortal (Great Lakes Avengers; #46, 48-49)
- Flatman (Great Lakes Avengers #46, 48-49)
- Big Bertha (Ashley Crawford; Great Lakes Avengers #46, 48-49)
- Doorman (Great Lakes Avengers; #46, 48-49)
- Dinah Soar (Great Lakes Avengers; #46, 48-49)
- Black Panther (T’Challa, Avengers; #47)
- Captain America (Steve Rogers, Avengers; #47-49, 54-56, Annual #4)
- She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters, Avengers; #47-49, Annual #4)
- Starfox (Eros, Avengers; #48)
- Namor the Sub-Mariner (Avengers; #50)
- Quasar (Wendell Vaughan, Avengers; #54)
- Thor (Avengers; #55, Annual #4)
- Falcon (Sam Wilson, Avengers; #55)
- Lockjaw (Inhumans; #56)
- Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff; #56-57)
- Sersi (Avengers; #56, Annual #4)
- Storm (Ororo Munroe, X-Men; Annual #4)
- Dagger (Tandy Bowen; Annual #4)
- Marvel Girl (Jean Grey, X-Factor; Annual #4)
- Andromeda (Annual #4)
- Invisible Woman (Sue Richards, Fantastic Four; Annual #4)
- Beast (Hank McCoy, X-Factor; Annual #4)
- The Thing (Ben Grimm, Fantastic Four; Annual #4)
- Firebird (Bonita Juarez; Annual #4)
Supporting Characters
- Billy (son of Vision and Scarlet Witch; #42-44, 47, 51-52)
- Tommy (son of Vision and Scarlet Witch; #42-44, 47, 51-52)
- Dr. Phineas Horton (#44, 48)
- Raymond Sikorski (#44)
- Mrs. Heyges (cook; #46)
- Carlos (butler; #47, 49)
- Ann Raymond (#48, 50-53, 56)
- Agatha Harkness (#50-52, 55-57)
Let’s take a look at what happened in these books, with some commentary as we go:
- The run opens with the Scarlet Witch waking up in her bungalow on the West Coast Avengers compound, with her husband, The Vision, not lying beside her. She checks in on her sons, who are still sleeping, and heads outside to see where Vision might be. She comes across Hawkeye, who is strapped into a training contraption that spins him around while he shoots at targets. He hears Wanda approach, and fires an arrow at her, which she luckily stops with her hex powers. She tells Clint she’s worried about Vision, and Clint tries to call him over the compound’s communication system. Instead, Doctor Pym answers. No mention is made of him being back on the team, nor is there any explanation of what happened with his first wife, Maria, who he was supposedly helping cure. Instead, he’s in the main building running a check on the main computer, having detected a glitch overnight. As he talks to Clint, something cuts off their conversation, and he worries that it’s a problem. He runs outside, and finds Clint and Wanda under attack from Ultron. Elsewhere, Tigra dreams that she’s a large cat creature and that she hunts and pounces on a blue deer. When she wakes up, she’s ripping her bedding apart with her teeth. She’s worried that she’s been having this dream, with increasingly more intensity, for a few weeks. She hears an explosion, and goes rushing outside. She finds The Wasp flying towards the fight as well, and notices that Jan, who is apparently visiting again, is coming from the direction of Hank’s bungalow. Wonder Man overtakes them both to arrive at the fight (he has time to take umbrage with the way Jan appeared to boss him around). Simon gets blasted by Ultron, who has never had magnetic blasts before. While Simon counter attacks the robot, the others discuss the fight, and Wanda starts remembering the connection between Ultron and Vision, but for some reason narrates in her head the story of the original Human Torch, Jim Hammond, and how that android died, was revived by the Mad Thinker, fought the Fantastic Four, turned on the Thinker, and died again. Later, Ultron stole his body. Wanda returns to the present, where the fight continues. Hank gets an idea when he notices that Simon is denting Ultron’s body – he shrinks Simon and tells him that he’s got twelve seconds. Simon flies into Ultron’s mouth and into his body. When he grows to his regular size, he rips Ultron apart. Hank explains that he knew this wasn’t the real Ultron, and also comes to the conclusion that he was there as a distraction. He tells the team to “disassemble” (inadvertently foreshadowing the Bendis story that will ruin Wanda forever). Wanda thinks about how Ultron kidnapped the creator of the original Torch to remake him into Vision, how Vision attacked the Avengers and then helped them. She stands at the cliff looking out on the ocean. Hank calls her on a remote communicator, and tells her that he needs to tell her something. The whole team (is Jan on the team? Is Hank?) is gathered in the assembly chamber, and Hank tells Wanda that Vision is gone. Hank checked the computers, and learned that a sophisticated virus has wiped all mention of Vision’s existence from the Avengers’ database, and the computers of anyone who connect to it, which includes law enforcement, the Pentagon, and the Fantastic Four. Hank believes that this could only have been done by someone on the team. Clint wants to know who the intruder could be, and it’s at that moment that Mockingbird shows up, asking Clint why he’s not happy to see her.
- Clint is furious to learn that Bobbi is behind the team’s betrayal, and it takes Simon to hold him back. Bobbi admits that she let in the people who planted the computer virus, and that she organized Vision’s kidnapping, and she immediately apologizes for it. She explains that after she left the team, she spent some time sitting around her apartment. A SHIELD operative came to see her, and took her to something called Project Vigilance, where she met the operation’s head, Cameron Brock. He talked to her about how the Vision took over the world’s computer networks a ways back, and now that he had become an active Avenger again, SHIELD was worried that he might lose it again. He appealed to Bobbi’s training and days as a SHIELD agent herself, and asked that she help them organize a contingency plan. She stayed at the project, and was surprised when later on she discovered the plot to use a fake Ultron to attack the team, and to put a post-hypnotic suggestion on Wanda so she wouldn’t be able to fight the robot. When Bobbi saw what they were planning in full, she confronted Brock, and ended up getting tossed into a security cell. She identified the cell design as being KGB. As the team talks, Tigra roars out of nowhere. Bobbi continues explaining that it took her a few weeks to escape, and when she did, she realized that the plan had already been put into motion. Wanda asked why she was so attitudey when she first arrived, and Bobbi explains it away as being nervous to see Clint again. With Bobbi agreeing to help, the team piles into their quinjet and starts heading for the project. As they approach an old factory complex, Jan starts giving orders, which gets Clint a bit annoyed, before he agrees with her plan. Jan flies down and starts reconnoitering the base. She notices a black man, and decides that they can’t be Russians. She finds a cell door, and is shocked at who she finds inside it (but we don’t get to see who). On the quinjet, which is just circling above, not at all being suspicious, Wanda heads back down memory lane, remembering when she met Vision, how they ended up getting married, and having children, along with some other stuff. Back at the WCA compound, Wanda’s sons’ nanny wakes the kids up, and gives them a bath. She opens a closet, and then turns back and starts yelling, “No!” but we don’t know why. The SHIELD facility opens fire on the quinjet. Simon attacks the cannons on the facility’s roof. Inside, Brock is upset that someone fired on the Avengers, but his underling explains that it was automatic. Simon has already made it to Brock. The quinjet lands, and as Bobbi leads the others, she comes across a gunman. His gun jams, thanks to Wanda. Clint gets them inside a locked garage door using a trick arrow. Once inside, Hank orders the team to split up, which annoys Hawkeye. Wanda stays with Bobbi, who grabs a tech and hurts him until he says that Vision is in Section 31. That means something to Bobbi, so she tells Wanda to hurry. They arrive at the section and Bobbi enters the door code the tech gave her. Inside, in a two page spread, they see that Vision has been disassembled, and his mechanical parts lay spread out on a massive table, his empty skin lying nearby.
- Wanda is devastated to see what’s been done to her husband. Bobbi explains that they’ve erased as well as dismantled Vision. Simon joins them, carrying Brock, the man in charge, who explains that despite what Bobbi thought, this isn’t a KGB operation but a multi-national effort (he’s Canadian). He feels very justified in what he’s done. Hank arrives and explains to Wanda that it’s not going to be easy to put Vision back together, and with his personality erased, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to restore him. He suspects that the backup memory stored on the Avengers’ computers will have been deleted. Jan joins them, bringing with her the man she discovered in a cell – Dr. Phineas Horton, the creator of the original Human Torch. Although everyone believed him dead, he’s alive and very old now. He insists that the Vision was not his work. Clint is still exploring the complex, and discovering that some of it is false walls, like on a film set, he explores further, and discovers Tigra cornering and threatening a pair of men. When he tries to talk to her, she attacks him. At a college campus in Texas, a group of people seated at a conference table review images of dozens of mutants on a screen before deciding that Wanda is what they’re looking for. In LA, Horton is loaded onto an ambulance, while the team gathers together (it’s not clear where Bobbi has gone, and Tigra’s gotten Clint to promise to keep her feral moment a secret). Wanda uses her powers to destroy the entire complex, and the team heads home with all of Vision’s pieces. Hank says he’s going to work on putting Vision back together. They notice a panel with an alarm blinking, coming from the guest house where Wanda and Vision have been staying. She rushes there, and finds her nanny still freaking out. She tells Wanda that they children have disappeared, but when Wanda enters the bathroom, they are still in the tub, playing (although after so long, the water must be pretty cold). As Jan enters the room, Wanda tells the woman she’s fired. A couple days later, Wanda is waiting outside the med-lab. Simon joins her, and we learn that Hank has been working on Vision. They hear sounds of conflict. Simon pries the lab doors open, and is attacked by Vision, only he doesn’t have his skin yet, and looks a bit like a Terminator. Vision hits Wanda, and is able to flip Simon off of him when he grabs him. Clint hears the alarm, and rushes to help. His constrictor arrow is of no help, and the fight with the silent Vision continues until Hank, who has just returned to consciousness, shuts Vision down with a remote. He explains that the mindless Vision was reacting out of defensive instinct. Clint puts in a call to Raymond Sikorski, the team’s government liaison. Sikorski makes it clear that it’s too late to help Vision, but now the team can reprogram him, which makes everyone angry (Wanda is being sedated, and no mention is made of who is watching her kids, or where Jan or Tigra are). Sikorski tells them that the government has assigned a new team member, who is on his way there. He slides in that this person is the team’s new leader, and that he’s there to keep an eye on Vision. Just then someone comes to the door, and at first, based on his silhouette, everyone thinks he’s Captain America, but it’s actually the USAgent (who I think, at this point, no one knows by that name).
- So John Walker, who was briefly Captain America, is now the USAgent, and has been assigned the role of leader of the West Coast Avengers by the US government, because they are concerned about the Vision being on the team. Clint doesn’t react well to this news, and gets even more upset when Bobbi tries to talk as if she’s still on the team. Jan comes to Bobbi’s defense (is Jan even on the team?). Walker baits Clint, and when Clint takes a swing at him, he ends up flipping him into a side table. Clint is even more angry that Bobbi is the first person at his side. Simon and Walker almost get into it, but Jan and Hank calm things down, or so they think. Clint announces that he’s quitting, and storms out. Bobbi decides to follow him. Jan heads out to go check on Wanda, while Hank goes to look in on Vision. He finds Simon standing over him, and they talk about how Hank has programmed as much information as he can into Vision, but can’t provide him with his old memories or personality. He also mentions that Vision’s skin, which is still not back on him, has been bleached. Hours later, Wanda interviews a new nanny for her children, Mrs. Hunter. She’s about to take her to meet the twins when Hank calls Wanda to the lab, suggesting that she come in uniform. Dressing hurriedly, Wanda tells Mrs. Hunter to go wake the boys up on her own; when the older lady gets to their room, they are not there. In her bungalow, we see that Tigra has turned into a cat-like creature. She is hungry, but also is fighting this transformation, until bird song draws her out the window. Wanda arrives in the lab, and Hank explains how his reprogramming of Vision has gone (he wanted Wanda in costume so he’d be sure to recognize her). Vision emerges from the lab, now completely white, naked (making it even more confusing as to how he fathered the twins, because something is missing), and speaking with a cold mechanical voice. Wanda is confused, until Hank explains what’s still missing. Wanda goes to see Simon, who is sitting on the beach. She wants to understand why he’s refused to provide his brain patterns for Vision, and we get yet another recap of Simon’s life story. It doesn’t really add up to enough of a reason for his inaction, I feel, and in anger, Wanda slaps him, and then uses her powers to bring the cliff face down on him. Simon digs himself out, and flies off into space screaming loudly (despite the fact that Englehart established that Simon’s rockets don’t work in space). In the main building, Walker is angry that Vision is naked. Jan brings his old clothes, and Vision turns them white, and alters them so they are basically a bikini bottom and a cape (a little more coverage than the classic Spectre look, without the booties). Vision feels this makes him look more spectral. Hank drops another bomb, revealing that there is no way that Phineas Horton could have constructed Vision when he did, thereby establishing that the Vision is not the original Human Torch. Later, Hank and Jan walk through the halls talking. They can hear Walker talking to someone in his room about his plans for the team, but we see that he’s really talking to photos of his dead parents.
- The Statement of Ownership for 1988 reveals that this book had an average press run of 307 000, with average newsstand returns of 128 000.
- An unfamiliar and garishly dressed hero is attempting to stop a robbery and hostage taking at a bank in Milwaukee. He jumps around, hitting the robbers, and gets shot in the chest, dying. Just then, some other heroes – a guy who looks like a flat Mister Fantastic, a very obese woman, a glowing silhouette, and a woman who looks a bit like a dinosaur sweep in and take down most of the robbers. The first guy is fine, except for his tattered costume, and he starts beating on one of the robbers. Flatman grabs him, while Big Bertha calls for Dinah, the dinosaur woman, to do something with hypersonics that calms the guy down. He then heads out to speak to the press and a massive crowd that has gathered, and identifies himself as part of the Great Lakes Avengers. Clint is staying in a motel in LA, and is upset when he learns of this on the news. He wants to call his team, and then remembers that he quit the Avengers. Bobbi turns up at his door, which makes him angry all over again. She wants to talk to him about their divorce, because even though she’s still upset that he didn’t do more to support her after the Phantom Rider incident, she still loves him. At the WCA compound, the team’s new cook, Mrs. Heyges, feeds USAgent a big breakfast. A mouse runs through the kitchen, followed by Tigra, who is intent on catching it. When Walker tries to talk to her, she won’t respond, so he grabs her and almost gets his face cut off. He slaps her and she runs off. The cook tells him that she’s done this before, and Walker is concerned. Clint and Bobbi take a flight to Milwaukee to investigate the GLA. Later, that team assembles to investigate strange lights that have been seen over the Germania Building. Dinah Soar flies up to get a look around, while Doorman (the guy we previously saw as a silhouette) lets Flatman teleport through him to get into the building. Dinah Soar, who doesn’t seem to talk, gets caught up in a bunch of wires, and uses a whistle to call the rest of the team. The leader jumps on Big Bertha’s back, and she Hulk-leaps to the roof. The leader jumps off, while Bertha falls back to the street, laughing. It turns out that it’s Hawkeye on the roof, trying to call them out. The team leader thinks he’s a fake, and starts to fight him. Mockingbird gets in on the fight as well, and the leader continues to insist that they are fakes. Next, he jumps off the roof, falling to his death, which triggers Bobbi. She jumps down to check on him, and finds him dead. Flatman is surprised to see her compassion and introduces himself as the team’s deputy leader. He also says that their leader, Mister Immortal, can’t die. They retire to Bertha’s place to talk. Bertha, it turns out, is a famous model who is thin most of the time. Since Mister Immortal is still dead, Flatman explains that they got together and gave themselves the Great Lakes Avengers name since there isn’t a northern coast. Bobbi tells them they don’t have the right to the Avengers name, but then Clint suggests that with his management, the team could be a good one. Back in LA, Wanda comes out of the team pool to find that Carlos, the team’s matador-like servant, has brought a letter for her. It’s from the college in Texas we saw a while back, offering to help with the Vision (apparently it’s the Absolon College of Robotics now).
- With issue 47, the title of this book (although not the indicia) changed to Avengers West Coast. Nothing is made of the switch in the comic – it’s not even mentioned on the letters page. I remember being annoyed by this as a kid, mostly because I didn’t know how to keep filing the comic (ahhh, the things we worry about). Black Panther is in the compound helping Hank install new Wakandan computers, and Wanda appeals to them to help the Vision. T’Challa doesn’t see any difference in Vision, aside from his colouration, because he hasn’t been an Avenger for a long time, and Hank seems kind of indifferent. Wanda storms off, and when she walks past Simon and he tries to talk to her, she just keeps walking. Jan is having a workout, fighting some robots, but Simon shuts off the sequence, asking if they can talk. He admits that he’s in love with Wanda, which Jan says she’s always assumed, given that he and Vision had the same brain patterns. Simon feels bad that he isn’t helping Wanda, and wishes he was dead again. Their talk is interrupted by a security alert, telling them a quinjet is being used without authorization. John Walker is on his way to Tigra’s bungalow to confront her about how she acted three days prior. When he knocks on her door, she springs into the woods, and he gives chase. When he finds her, she throws herself at him, making him blush. The perimeter alarm goes off, because of the quinjet launch, and he rushes to find out what’s going on. Jan tells him they don’t know who took the jet, but through process elimination, figure it has to be Wanda and Vision. When they contact her, Wanda tells them that since they won’t help Vision, she’s going somewhere else, and cuts off communication. She also turns on the stealth shield, and changes course. The team figures that she’s headed to Seattle, and go there, to the hospital where Phineas Horton is being treated (it’s not clear why he’d have been sent to Seattle). In reality, Wanda heads to Texas, and lands at Saunders College in Texas (which was called Absolon College the last two times it turned up). They are greeted by Jeremiah Random, the Dean of Robotics, and some others. He welcomes them and leads them inside. Once they are out of sight, the space where they landed opens up and crushes the quinjet; as the wreckage falls into a pit, we see a device make a noise. At Avengers Mansion, Captain America gets the alarm that a quinjet has been destroyed, and he and She-Hulk prepare to investigate. Inside the college, Random shows Wanda and Vision their plans to help Vision, and take him away to be examined. Random placates Wanda, and then takes her to the room they’ve set up so she can rest. When they get there, it looks like the inside of a high school gym shower room. Wanda is angry at being locked inside. When she tries to use her hex powers, a sonic attack happens. Random appears projected on the wall, and tells her that they actually lured her there to study her, so they can prepare for the day mutants take over the world. He turns on something called the assimilator, and black goop starts pouring out of the walls and covering Wanda. She gets completely covered in the stuff. Back at the compound, Nanny #3 plays with Billy and Tommy. After she reaches under some furniture to recover a toy, she turns and finds that they’ve vanished.
- Random and the other people at the college are programming Wanda with memories of their kind. Going right back to the beginning of life on our planet, a lifeform has worked its way through higher beings, and it seems clear that it now exists in this group of people, and that they are planning on using Wanda as their gateway into mutantkind (which, given that we’re now not sure Wanda is a mutant in 2021, is interesting). Cap and She-Hulk approach the town, which alerts Random. He goes out to meet Cap and Jen, acting surprised by the news that Wanda’s quinjet crashed. He claims she left a while ago, after dropping off Vision. He invites them in. Elsewhere, deep in space, Starfox (who is not a WCA) approaches a planet full of ruins, looking for his grand-niece, Nebula. He finds her and the Rigellian Gunther, examining some stones with writing on them. Nebula says that these things will make her more powerful than her grandfather. In Denver (this issue jumps around a lot), at a homeless shelter, two workers worry about a woman staying there. Ann Raymond is determined to get to Los Angeles, and they think it has something to do with a newspaper clipping she owns, about how the Vision is not the Human Torch. Vision chats with Cap and She-Hulk, while the others at the college try to speed up the process they are putting Wanda through. We see her experience the entire dinosaur era. Random continues to tour Cap and Jen around their robot college facilities, but then gets called away. Neither Jen nor Steve believe that the college is what it appears to be, and decide to come back at night to get a better look around. Jan, Hank, and Simon are visiting Dr. Phineas Horton at the hospital in Seattle, and he explains to them that his Human Torch was an artificial man, with no mechanical parts (which…), while the Vision is a combination of artificial organs and mechanics, which is what makes him a synthezoid. Hank agrees that he should have figured that out, having been inside him. Immortus, somewhere, is watching this conversation on a video screen, and then also watches what’s happening with Wanda. Wanda’s process is over, and she goes to rest. Random says he hopes this will make it easier for them to induct other mutants, and help their kind move into mutants. As Wanda rests, she thinks about how Magneto, her father, was always right. Cap and Jen sneak onto the campus, avoiding detection, and make their way to Random’s office. There, they discover that Wanda is being held in a sub-basement in a nearby building. Jen jumps off a balcony, dropping right through that other building. Cap follows, landing on his shield. They head to the sub-basement, and find a huge fortified room. Jen busts the door down, and within, finds Wanda, dressed in a black bodysuit. She uses her powers to bury them with rubble. In Milwaukee, Clint is trying to train the Great Lakes Avengers. Bobbi tells him that she picked up a transmission from a downed quinjet, and Clint gets his new team together to go help the Avengers.
- The altered Wanda and Random stand over the fallen Captain America and She-Hulk, and it’s clear that they both represent That Which Endures. The two heroes are taken away, while Random talks about attaching their kind to mutants. Clint is upset that Big Bertha’s private jet is not as quick as a quinjet, as they fly towards the faint signal Bobbi picked up, but now can’t find. The rest of the GLA are present, and Clint reminds them how much better off they are under his leadership. Simon, Hank, and Jan return to the quinjet hangar of the AWC compound. Hank heads off to see if he can find Wanda and Vision using their computer, while Jan hangs back to talk to Simon. They talk about his feelings for Wanda again, and Jan seems strangely encouraging of Simon, as if she feels there’s a chance Wanda would leave Vision for him, since it was his brain patterns she fell for. Hank has no luck with the computer, so he goes to find Carlos, the butler who still dresses like a matador. Carlos tells him of the letter Wanda received, but they are distracted when a very feral-looking Tigra scampers past. Hank chases her into the woods, where she attacks him. Luckily his jumpsuit is strong enough to resist her claws, but Hank feels he has no choice but to shrink her down to control her. It turns out Cap was playing possum, so he wakes up and checks on Jen. They are in an empty room, and while Steve talks about how he’s glad Jen played along while he was pretending to be unconscious, she attacks him, because somehow, it would appear Random’s people assimilated her without him noticing (even though we’ve established he was never knocked out, and might have noticed her being put in a tube like Wanda was. Anyway, Steve is able to manage in a fight with her, until Random comes in and shoots him with a ray gun. Vision decides that it’s strange no one has spoken to him in over seven hours, so he starts looking for Wanda, believing her to have flown away, as he was told. As he rises into the night sky, he happens to be seen by Clint and the others, who circle their jet back towards him. He boards the plane and meets the GLA. Random and his people realize they can’t take over Captain America, presumably because of the super soldier serum. Jen, who has been assimilated, remember, asks what That Which Endures is, and Wanda gives the history lesson. We learn that TWE is part of all living things, but is not always conscious. Instead, it emerges every hundred thousand years to chart its path, hence the plan to enter into mutantkind. As Random takes over the explanation, Clint, Bobbi, Vision, and the GLA attack the college, which is mostly full of mind-controlled or assimilated, or TWE students. She-Hulk joins in the fight against her friends and would-be colleagues, and gets into it with Big Bertha. Mister Immortal has Doorman open a portal for him, so he can get into the lab where the assimilation machine is run. Random and the others in black rush there, just as Mister I opens the door to the assimilator’s inner chamber, which is apparently highly radioactive. They tell him this, but he rushes in anyway, and they assume he’s dead. Jen is about to defeat Big Bertha when she recovers her senses, and gets very confused, as do all of the students around them. Random tells Vision his name is really Charles Edison, and he’s just as lost. Clint discovers that Mister I wrecked the assimilator’s containment wall, killing him Wrath of Khan style. They figure out that when the door is open, the radiation is shut off, so long as no one trips any pressure sensors on the floor (seriously?), so Flatman is sent to drag back Immortal’s corpse (which they stand around as if it wouldn’t be radioactive too). With TWE gone dormant, Vision has figured out that Edison has to rebuild his life. Wanda wonders if TWE is responsible for the deaths of the dinosaurs, while Cap talks about the potential of humanity.
- Issue fifty opens with Ann Raymond having made it to the Avengers West Coast compound, where she addresses most of the team. Walker is surprisingly kind to her, as she explains that she was the wife of Toro, the deceased WWII sidekick to the Human Torch. She’s there because she’s hoping that Vision might have some information about her dead husband. Wanda reacts poorly to this, and maybe a little hysterically. She snaps at Simon when he tries to calm her down, and storms off. Vision follows her, while Hank chats with Ann. She talks about how Toro was led off by a newspaper article about the Torch’s funeral after his death with the Fantastic Four. She’s pieced together that Toro (Tom is his name) was approached by the Mad Thinker, who brainwashed him into fighting Namor. Tom sacrificed himself to stop the Thinker from escaping in a rocket. Ann explains that she went to the town where the Torch’s funeral was said to happen, but found the cemetery overgrown and closed. Namor found her and told her what happened, and they came to the conclusion that the Torch’s funeral was fake (abetted by the Puppet Master). Ann hopes that Tom might still be alive, since the Vision is not Jim Hammond (yeah, I don’t get it either). Jan takes Ann to rest, while Hank calls Namor to check out her story, which more or less checks out. An alarm sends Hank, Simon, and Walker to Hank’s lab. Apparently Tigra is still tiny and feral, and Hank is keeping her in a small glass cage. She knocked over her water bowl, which somehow set off the alarm. The three men briefly discuss Tigra (it’s odd that no one else is paying attention to her disappearance), and it leads to an argument between Simon and Walker. Jan shows up to break it up. The team talks to Wanda and Vision, and they decide to go check out Ann’s story about the Torch’s funeral, since Hank is now suspecting that Immortus made up the story of Vision being derived from that older android. Immortus is watching all this, and apparently this is all part of some plan to make him the master of time. In an interlude, we see that Master Pandemonium is running a film studio in his human guise, but he’s also plotting the destruction of the Avengers again. The team has arrived in the small town where Jim Hammond’s funeral happened (or didn’t). They go to the abandoned cemetery, and Vision confirms that Jim’s body, showing no sign of decomposition, is in the grave. Wanda uses her hex powers to open the grave, and the Torch bursts into flame and flies off. Simon goes after him. Back at the compound, the twins’ latest nanny can’t find them again (she kept their last disappearance from Wanda). As she looks, a visitor comes to the door saying she’s there to help (even though we only see her in silhouette, it’s kind of obviously Agatha Harkness). Simon catches up with the Torch and introduces himself. They return to the others, and Vision introduces himself. Later, back at the compound, Hank talks about the Torch’s history. The story includes the way the hero Frankie Raye, step-daughter of Phineas Horton, got her powers in an accident with his old chemicals. Hank thinks that Ultron used those same chemicals (which make things catch fire) and some of Horton’s machinery to work on Vision’s body. He claims that there were obviously WWII era parts in Vision (even though he said the opposite not too long ago). Jan brings Jim Hammond a new version of his old costume, and they welcome him on the team. Jim gets choked up, and everyone shares a moment. There’s a noise outside, and they see that Iron Man has returned.
- Iron Man isn’t sure he should have returned, given the cold greeting by his former teammates. From his thoughts, we learn that he’s become dependent on his armor, and that’s why he’s decided to spend more time with the Avengers (I don’t really remember what was happening in his book at this time, but I have always liked this version of the traditional gold and red armor). Walker makes it clear that they aren’t sure who he is, as the public believes the first Iron Man is dead. After Walker leaves, Hank, Simon, and Jan try to figure out if it’s Tony Stark in the suit, but Tony says he can’t tell them that. Vision and Wanda go to their home, and talk about the fact that Wanda wasn’t interested in talking to Iron Man. She comments about how as a mutant she doesn’t want to associate with humans, but their conversation is cut short when they find Agatha Harkness in their home. She explains she is alive again, and that she’s there to help look after Wanda’s children. Wanda questions why they would need mystical attention, and Agatha points out that whenever Wanda isn’t thinking about them, they tend to disappear. Wanda denies this, but Agatha insists she’s already figured this out, and when Wanda gets a little hysterical, she advises Vision to support her. The Human Torch flies around a bit, talking to himself, and then comes across Ann Raymond on the grounds of the compound. They start to talk, as he figures out she was married to Toro, when they are attacked by a horde of demons. The others come out to join in the fight. When Hank identifies the demons as being Master Pandemonium’s, Iron Man references that they left him in Mephisto’s realm, making it obvious that he’s probably still Tony Stark. They fight, but Jan and Hank realize that the demons don’t seem to be doing much. At the same time, demons break into Wanda and Vision’s place, led by Master Pandemonium himself. Harkness can’t stop him, nor can Vision. As Wanda fights him, a demon approaches the twins. Wanda and Vision combine their abilities to blast Pandemonium, and he retreats. That’s when Wanda realizes that her children are gone. Pandemonium heads to a hell dimension, where he gives his life story to the two infants, focusing on his quest to replace the four parts of his soul still missing. Back at the compound, the team talks as Wanda gets increasingly frantic. She ends up smacking Jan out of the air, and calling everyone “stupid ineffectual humans.” She insists Harkness help them, and she opens a portal to lead them to the children. Immortus watches this and is unhappy, because he’s worried that Wanda going to another dimension will wreck his plans. The team heads into the portal, but Jim Hammond and Agatha remain behind. Once through, they find themselves in a pleasant storybook kind of meadow. They are attacked by the trees and plants, and fight their way to a temple of some sort. Pandemonium is waiting inside, and we see that Tommy and Billy are now replacing his arms in a creepy kind of way, and that two more fifths of his soul hole (ew) are filled.
- Wanda is, of course, very upset to see that her children have become appendages for Pandemonium, especially after he uses them to blast hellfire at her. Pandemonium explains that Tommy and Billy were each part of his missing soul. The team starts fighting all of Pandemonium’s demons, and one grabs Vision and twists his head around, basically putting him out of the fight while his systems repair the problem. Simon grabs Pandemonium, and one of the twins starts biting Simon’s face. Back in LA, the Torch spots a tiny (and miscoloured) Tigra running into the woods. He joins Ann, who is watching Agatha, who appears to be in a trance. Jim explains Pandemonium’s backstory to Ann (apparently he learned it from Hank). Agatha wakes up and tells them more. She explains that there is an imbalance in the matrix that created Tommy and Billy, so they disappear when Wanda doesn’t think of them. She is firm that they are not real children, and tells them that her cat is in Pandemonium’s dimension, keeping an eye on things. We see that the Avengers are not doing well, and are being caught by the demons. Pandemonium is about to snatch Wanda’s soul, but Hank tries to stall him. He asks how Tommy and Billy could have his soul parts when they were born before Pandemonium ever met Mephisto (this is not true – Wanda was still pregnant at the time the WCA first fought Pandemonium, and it was not clear that he was new on the scene). Mephisto is watching all of this, and we learn from his convenient soliloquy that when he met Martin Preston, the man he made into Master Pandemonium, Mephisto had had his essence ripped apart by Franklin Richards. He was missing five sixths of his power (which is infinite, so that’s tricky math), and he decided to empower Pandemonium to track it down for him. As Pandemonium continues to argue with Pym about who’s right, Wanda starts to agree with Hank. A portal opens, thanks to Agatha, and Jim walks through, claiming that he’s brought the last two parts of Pandemonium’s soul with him (his hands are glowing). Jim has him promise to not hurt the Avengers if he gets his last two fragments back. Once he agrees, Jim hands them over, and Pandemonium can’t understand why there is still a hole in the middle of his stomach. He kind of implodes into that hole, and disappears, taking Thomas and William with him. Mephisto appears and tells Wanda not to worry about her kids any more. Agatha’s cat grows to a huge sight, and starts fighting Mephisto in a battle that is so gruesome, Byrne only shows us everyone else’s reactions to it. Agatha hears Wanda’s voice, telling her to open her mind and soul to her. When Wanda does this, Ebony (the cat) is able to hurt Mephisto, and both he and Wanda scream in unison. Then, the Avengers find themselves back in Wanda’s bungalow, with both Wanda and Vision unconscious. Agatha explains that she erased William and Thomas from Wanda’s memory, which also caused them to be erased from Mephisto’s existence, which dispersed his essence again. Simon is upset, but Agatha went on to explain that the children (his nephews, remember) never actually existed, except that the lifeforms she was creating ended up hosting fragments of Mephisto. Agatha goes on to say that when Wanda wakes up, she won’t remember the kids at all (you’d think she’d wonder why she has a crib though). Walker is angry on Wanda’s behalf, but Agatha says it’s all good, because she views Wanda as her daughter. Agatha wants Wanda to rest for a while to recover from all this. At the same time, Lord Ghaur of Lemuria tells Llyra to seek out the seven brides of Set.
- The 1989 Annual came out a few months before (possibly before Jim Hammond returned), but fits here in continuity. It’s part of the Atlantis Attacks event (part twelve, which means this event was way too long), and in the main story, features Terry Austin inking John Byrne, which just looks so good. Lord Ghaur, of the Lemurian Deviants, has kidnapped seven women to be brides to his god, Set. They are Storm, She-Hulk, Dagger, Scarlet Witch, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Andromeda, and Invisible Woman. Ghaur is not happy to learn that Dagger is blind. Jim flies around, thinking about how they fought the Atlanteans. In what might be Avengers Mansion, a group of Avengers have gathered. It includes Vision, Thor, Captain America, Sersi, Wasp, Iron Man, Wonder Man, Beast, and maybe Quasar, although he never says anything. Vision talks about how Wanda was abducted. Beast confirms that Ghaur is behind this, which is why Sersi is there to consult. Jim joins them, and Cap makes it clear that all the other Avengers are chasing after the Serpent Cult that is also involved in all this. The Thing joins the group, letting them know that Sue Richards was also taken. Thor talks about Set, and how they need to move beyond mortal men to deal with this problem. Somewhere in the Atlantic, Andromeda and She-Hulk carry out a mission for Ghaur. They are under his control, but also largely independent still. They enter an ancient well leading deeper under the ocean, where they find a piece of Set’s lifeforce. As Jen pulls at it, a massive sea creature emerges from the ground beneath it and attacks. In Chicago, Jean Grey bluffs her way into a vault in a museum containing other Lemurian artifacts. Sue is there too, and she invisibly knocks out the curator so they can steal a lens of power. As Jen’s fight with the sea creature ends up on the surface, endangering a ship, Cap and most of the others arrive in a quinjet. Iron Man tries to fight off the creature, with little luck. When he tries to help Jen, she punches him. Simon joins the fight with the creature, but it is Vision, phasing into its giant heart, that hurts it. While Tony fishes Jen out of the water, Andromeda makes her way to Ghaur’s undersea base to give him the fragment. Ghaur is not happy to lose She-Hulk, and appears to question his own plan some. Jen continues to fight against her friends, so Sersi suggests they let her go, so they can follow her. Ghaur smacks Dagger around, since she’s not able to provide the thin beam of light he wants. Jean and Sue bring the lens, which pleases him. The Avengers, given water breathing abilities by Sersi, approach and break into Ghaur’s base. They begin to fight the Lemurians. At the same time, Ghaur has Dagger fire her energy through the lens at the lifeforce fragment thing. When he learns the Avengers are there, he sends Storm to stop them (this is at the time the world thought the X-Men were dead, which makes Jean and Hank McCoy’s presence a bit confounding). Jan takes out Storm, Hank steals a gauntlet from a Lemurian, and Simon smashes the lens. Ghaur orders Wanda to use her powers, while the other women stop Simon. Wanda’s hex makes the lifeforce thing grow. Hank tries to smash it with his new iron gauntlet, but it does nothing. The god Set, who is a seven-headed serpent, rises, and Ghaur is happy. This story moves on to a Thor Annual.
- Two back-ups, one featuring Jan and Jen ranking the men of the Avengers (as drawn by a very new Amanda Connor), and a chapter of the Saga of the Serpent Crown, are too terrible or not worth discussing here.
- In a backup by Mark Gruenwald and Mike Manley, the USAgent air drops onto a remote jungle island to fight a being who has been there for a while. The being, either a robot or a man in a high tech suit, fights Walker while he reminisces about old TV shows and growing up in Georgia. Eventually, he breaks the suit, and manages to capture the man inside it. Hank Pym picks him up in a quinjet, and recognizes the guy as one of the High Evolutionary’s soldiers.
- In another backup by Fabian Nicieza and Gavin Curtis, Firebird (I guess she’s no longer calling herself Espirita) comes across a half dozen Atlanteans who are lost in the desert. She taunts them and goads them into attacking her, at which point she uses her powers against them. She questions the goals of their war with the surface world, and eventually leads them to an Atlantean vessel, letting them leave. This does not feel, on any level, like the Bonita from Steve Englehart’s WCA.
- It’s Acts of Vengeance time, and Magneto is talking to the man in a suit behind the whole plot – that villains are going to trade partners and attack people they don’t normally fight. Magneto is pretty obnoxious, and after he leaves, the man, who I remember being revealed later as Loki, heads to a throne room and uses magic to look in on the Avengers West Coast compound. The team (except for USAgent and Tigra, who are basically out of the book it seems) sit around discussing Wanda, who has been catatonic since the end of the Atlantis Attacks storyline. Simon shows understanding as to why she’s sitting there not responding to any of them, and then tells Vision that he’s ready to give him his brain patterns so he can restore himself. Jan reveals to everyone that Simon is in love with Wanda, and that doing this will ruin his chances with her, but he feels like it’s the right thing to do. Vision, surprisingly, turns down Simon’s offer, and tells them that he wants to move to the East Coast headquarters to join that team. Things shift to 16th century England, where Queen Elizabeth talks to Mary, Queen of Scots, who is attended to by Immortus. It seems that Elizabeth is about to be executed, and Mary about to ascend to the throne. We learn that Immortus has been around, advising the royals since Elizabeth was a child, but now he tells Mary that this universe doesn’t interest him anymore, and as it fades away, he returns to his home, where he looks in on Wanda again, while talking about his schemes. At the compound, Vision explains that there is not enough power in the East Coast team, so he feels he’d be more use there. Vapor, of the U-Foes, appears in the room, and starts to surround Wanda with cyanide. Simon pulls her away, while Iron Man vacuums Vapor into his suit’s holding tanks. She shifts gaseous forms, and he has no choice but to expel her. Just then, Ironclad, another U-Foe, reaches up through the floor and pulls Tony down. We see Ironclad come flying back out of the hole and through the roof. Jim is sitting outside, talking to Ann about Toro, again, when he sees Ironclad and gives chase. He’s attacked by X-Fray though, and they start to fight in the sky. Ann is about to run into the main building when Simon drags Wanda, Hank, and Jan through a wall. The place explodes. Across town, Ironclad lands and realizing he’s too far from the battle, decides to start rampaging. Jim keeps fighting X-Ray, who says something about him having killed Vector, their leader. The Avengers regroup, and we learn that Vapor is feeding the flames, keeping them from being extinguished. Hank thinks they need Wanda’s help, and is able to get through to her by telling her that Vision is in danger. Wanda wakes up, sees Vision as he used to be, and then manages to coalesce Vapor back into her human form. Just then, Vector flies in, surprising her. They work their way out of the compound, and we learn that the U-Foes have recently escaped from the Vault, and that they split up. When three of them met up at one of their bases, they found the place trashed. A security monitor showed them video of Iron Man killing Vector, which is why they came to attack the Avengers. Vector saw the same thing when he arrived, and came after them. X-Ray brings the unconscious Human Torch, who he thought was Johnny Storm. The U-Foes, who are now some distance from the compound, I guess, realize that someone has manipulated them, so they head out, leaving the Torch on the ground. Tony wants to pursue them, but Hank stops him. He says that he can’t get ahold of the East Coast team, and wants to split forces. He proposes that he, Jan, and Wanda head east, while the others search for the U-Foes and the Torch. Wanda insists on staying with Vision, so Vision decides to go with them. As they leave in a quinjet, Hank and Jan talk about Hank’s feeling that something big is going on.
- Mole Man orders Gigantor, a huge monster, to attack LA. He emerges from underground and starts rampaging. Simon notices while searching for the U-Foes, and as he approaches, gets overtaken by Tony. Tony gets under the massive beast and flies it straight up into the air. As he flies it away from the populated areas of the city, he sees USAgent approach him on a sky-cycle. He mentions that Walker hasn’t been around much, and then dumps the beast in the shallow part of the ocean, cutting a breakwater into the sand so there’s no flooding. Simon investigates the hole Gigantor came from, and is joined by Jim. Together, they head into the wide tunnel, discovering more subterranean monsters that attack them. The Mole Man reveals himself, and he appears to be angry with the Avengers. The rest of the team, Hank, Jan, and the once again unconscious Wanda, are flying a quinjet over the Rocky Mountains. The two awake Avengers talk about Wanda’s condition. A flying beast with three heads, Tricephalous, attacks the quinjet, smashing it. As the ship falls, Hank wants Jan to fly Wanda away, sacrificing himself, but they are both surprised when the plane floats down, landing softly. When Tricephalous comes at them, Hank shrinks it to the size of a bird. They plan for Jan to go to a ranger’s station and get help. We see that Magneto is hiding in the woods, having rescued his daughter and her friends. It seems that he’s got plans, and is behind the problems the Avengers are facing. In truth, the unassuming guy in a suit we saw before is watching, and is amused at how he’s deceived Magneto into doing his bidding. Mole Man explains to Simon and Jim that he’d been living peacefully when Simon, Tony, and Vision attacked his kingdom. This is why he sent the two beasts to get revenge for him. Mole Man is confused that the Torch is not Johnny Storm. Gigantor starts heading back towards the beach, so Walker uses the skycycle’s engines to try to corral him, but he gets knocked off the cycle instead. Tony saves him. Simon wants to prove to Mole Man that the Avengers never attacked him, so he lets him zap him a bunch of times. Finally, the Mole Man concedes that none of Simon’s actions make sense, so he calls off Gigantor with a dog whistle that can apparently reach across the city, and the big guy heads out to sea. Tony decides to follow him, pursuing him into a big underwater tunnel. Later, the team is all back together (no sign of Wanda or Tigra though), and listening to a news report about the super powers registration act. Captain America, Vision, and Quasar are on a video screen, talking to Hank about how the villains seem to be working in concert, but also at random. We learn that the East Coast team has had their headquarters destroyed; Hank believes that someone is behind all of this. From here, things continue in a number of Avengers and Avengers-adjacent books before returning here.
- A house, looking very much like one of the bungalows from the Avengers’ compound, floats at the upper extreme of the atmosphere. Inside it? The mostly comatose Wanda, with her father, Magneto, standing beside her, surprised that taking her into space didn’t do anything to get her attention. In the levels beneath the East Coast Avengers base, Thor tells the assembled heroes – Iron Man, Captain America, Doctor Pym, the Wasp, Vision, Falcon, Hawkeye, and Mockingbird (where did they come from?) that Loki is behind all the Acts of Vengeance that have been taking place. We learn they are holding the Wizard prisoner, but he has a teleporter thing hidden under a fingernail, and manages to open a portal to the room that he and other villains have been going to lately. In it, he finds Kingpin, the Red Skull, and the Mandarin examining proof that they’ve never been working with Doctor Doom, but one of his robots. When the Wizard reveals where he just came from, the guy in a suit that’s been helping them loses his cool, and reveals himself as Loki. Seeing that things are falling apart, the Kingpin makes his exit. In the past, Abraham Lincoln is able to stop his would-be assassin at Ford’s Theatre. Seeing how this evening has turned out, Immortus, who was one of Lincoln’s generals, erases the timeline and returns home. There, he finds that his trans-temporal scanner isn’t watching Wanda, and gets worried. He sees Simon look at the foundations of her bungalow, which is missing. Agatha Harkness tells him she was lured outside, and the building flew off. Simon is about to lose his cool, but Walker approaches and tells him they’ll search together. They get a space-rated quinjet, and locate the house. Simon puts on a breathing apparatus (which he doesn’t actually need) and flies towards the house. As he gets closer, it appears to explode. Loki holds the Skull, Mandarin, and Wizard in stasis while he rants. Thor opens a portal to his lair, and the Avengers come through. As they attack him, he knocks down the building they’re in, to show that they are on The Isle of Silence, a place Loki was once exiled to. He summons some creatures and some vines to fight the team, while he tries to hide behind a wall of ice. With Loki distracted, the other villains recover the ability to move, and make their escape through the portals. Thor knocks down the ice wall and confronts Loki. He opens a fissure beneath him with his hammer, and then pulls the ground closed over him. He tells the others that Loki is not dead, but imprisoned. He also explains that he thinks that Loki was trying to destroy the Avengers, feeling bad about having caused them to form in the first place. Later, as Jan and Hank fly back to the compound, Iron Man leaves to head home. Hank and Jan talk. Hank heads off to look in on Tigra (remember her?) while Jan goes to check on Wanda, after she changes clothes. She approaches Wanda’s bungalow (it’s back?), and inside, finds a badly weakened USAgent. He warns her to run. Jan is surprised to see Wanda, with a haircut and new outfit, looking evil and telling her that her full powers are unleashed.
- Dark Wanda (Scarlet-er Witch?) holds Agatha, Walker, Jan, and Simon immobile in her living room, as she scolds them for not being more enthusiastic about her new levels of power. She explains that it was her powers that restored both the bungalow and Simon after the explosion in space. She starts flirting with Simon, tearing off his shirt and raking his invincible chest with her fingernails, while he emphatically shouts his dissent. Backing up a bit, we see that Hank had run across Jim and Ann Raymond in the headquarters, and Jim mentioned that he saw the tiny Tigra running around. Hank ran to check, finding her cage empty. He explained Tigra’s backstory, and we see that Immortus was watching; he caused Tigra’s escape so it would fit with his plans. Hank sends Jim and Ann to start looking for her, and is about to head out himself, when he is interrupted by a flash of light, and we see the unmistakable silhouettes of Lockjaw and Quicksilver appear in front of him. As Jim starts looking from above, he notices a group of cars approaching the Avengers’ compound. A man asks if he represents the team, and then serves him the team’s eviction. Iron Man is still on his way home, thinking of taking a week’s vacation from being Iron Man, but just as he’s about to take off his armor, a team alert has him leaving again. Hank scouts Wanda’s bungalow (there is not mention of what happened with him and Pietro), and as he does, he remembers testing Wanda’s powers recently, and finding that they were somehow creating retroactive changes in items like a lead pipe. Wanda continues to taunt her teammates when Magneto joins her, admonishing her cruelty. Hank watches through the window, and then shrinks the wall so he can enter. Magneto tells him to back off, and Wanda claims that she now understands Magneto’s position on humans and mutants, and wants to join him. Hank pulls out a gun, but Quicksilver comes rushing in, disarming him, and pledging himself to his father and sister’s cause.
- Issue fifty-six has a backup story that features a missing scene from the AWC Annual. Captain America and Sersi are talking about the fight with Atlantis when Jim Hammond enters the room. Cap is happy to see his old friend for the first time in years, and they talk about their history together, and what happened to Toro and Bucky. Jim suggests that it’s time for an Invaders reunion, but Iron Man comes in and tells them that Namor is dead. There’s a narrative box that mentions Namor’s upcoming series (so I guess this is Byrne’s exit plan). There is also a one-page strip where a cartoon Byrne apologizes for the inclusion of Tigra in the Avengers’ Annual, which doesn’t fit with what was happening with her in this title at the same time.
- Magneto tells Pietro to not kill Hank, who he’s rendered unconscious, but Dark Wanda is unhappy with her father’s turn to kindness. We get to see what each of Wanda’s captives are thinking. Outside the compound, while talking to the guy who wants to evict the Avengers, Jim’s emergency signal flashes, and he figures out the problem is coming from Wanda’s place. He bursts through the wall, but because he doesn’t know who Magneto or Quicksilver are, doesn’t know what to do. Wanda is about to deactivate him, but Pietro stops her by telling her that he thought Simon moved, which Simon knows didn’t happen (I guess we know why Pietro went to Hank first now). Jim tries to cage the three villains in a fire construct, but Magneto disperses it and ripping a chunk of floor and earth away, flies them into space. The Avengers recover the ability to move, and Hank stops Simon from going after them without a plan. Jim notices that Iron Man has arrived, and is pursuing them. Tony speaks with Magneto, who believes that it’s someone other than Tony in the suit. The Iron Man is no longer magnetic, so Magneto’s powers are ineffective against him, but Wanda is able to shut the armor off, leaving him falling, even though Pietro would rather capture him. They head on. The Avengers plan to go after them, and Hank almost says something to Jan about Pietro, but thinks better of it, fearing that Magneto might be monitoring their conversation. The team, in their quinjet, fly after the trio. Meanwhile, Magneto and his children arrive at his new Asteroid M, which Magneto felt the need to build even though he’s spending most of his time at the Hellfire Club these days. He and Wanda want to make plans, and it’s clear that Pietro is simply going along with them. Some guy is trying to seduce a woman in his house when Iron Man comes crashing through the skylight, having deployed an emergency parachute to help him land. The Avengers quinjet floats in stealth mode, and Hank decides that Jan, shrunk down, should reconnoiter Magneto’s asteroid, while communicating with Hank through the Ant-Man helmet he’s wearing. She finds a way into the base, but communication goes dead. The rest of the team prepares to go after her (Hank has a suit that the Torch can wear and still use his powers). They break their way into the base, where Magneto confronts them. He has Jan in a jar, and wraps Walker in steel. Wanda shuts down Jim. Magneto returns Jan to Hank, and then calls the quinjet into the asteroid. He uses his powers to make it into a metal shield around the Avengers, while Wanda encourages him to kill them. Instead, Magneto sends them back to Earth, viewing it as a lesson that they can’t beat him.
And then, after sixteen issues and an annual, John Byrne abruptly left the book, and left it in a big mess.
I question if Byrne ever wanted to work on this comic. He seemed pretty determined to break things, and not put anything back together. Under his tenure, Hawkeye quit (and even more strangely, got back together with Mockingbird), USAgent was placed on the team, ostensibly as the team leader, but then never took that role, Vision was dismantled and remade as less interesting, the original Human Torch was brought back, and then mostly just stood around, Tigra was transformed and mostly forgotten, and the piece de resistance, Wanda had her children retconned out of existence, and then became evil. Oh, and the team’s name changed, and they maybe got evicted. You could forgive a reader for thinking that maybe Byrne hated this assignment (his writing run on the main Avengers book, during some of this same period, by contrast, was pretty conventional).
One thing that really surprises me is the way that he ignored so much continuity from Steve Englehart’s run. I get that he had good reasons to separate the Vision’s history from that of the original Human Torch, because it never made much sense. I also understand why he’d choose to erase Wanda’s children, even if it came off as cruel, but I don’t understand why he’d ignore more recent choices that Englehart and others made. When last we saw Hank, he was on his way out to help his first wife recover from years of Soviet imprisonment and genetic experimentation. Now, he’s basically running this team, and appears to have shacked back up with his ex, Janet, who keeps calling him “lover.”
One thing that was very dependable about the Avengers in the 70s and 80s, regardless of who was writing the book, was a fixation on team rosters and the chairman position. Who is in charge of the team here? It seems like Hank is running things, even before Hawkeye left, and that seems weird given how Englehart had him insisting that his hero days were over. The West Coast branch seems pretty welcoming of just whoever wants to show up and be on the team. Jan visits, but now she’s permanent? Iron Man wants to come back, but claims he’s not the same Iron Man the team knows? No problem. The government wants to put someone everyone hates on the roster? Okay. It all feels very transitional.
Actually, it might be worth it to look at each character:
Hawkeye – There is no WCA without Hawkeye, but he quickly throws a temper tantrum and he’s gone. We check in with him from time to time, but go many months without him being in the book. I don’t remember if the Great Lakes Avengers and Mockingbird were regulars in his Solo Avengers/Avengers Spotlight stories. It’s strange that he would give up so easily.
Mockingbird – I do really like the way that Byrne draws Bobbi’s facemask. Her role in betraying the team felt realistic, but her subsequent reconciliation with Clint felt a little too easy. Still, I missed seeing her after Byrne wrote her out.
Wonder Man – Simon doesn’t have a whole lot to do in this run, except for moon after Wanda. He’s always been a hard character for me to like, but I don’t believe Byrne did him any favours by having him refuse to help Wanda restore Vision, thinking that might lead to him getting with her. I don’t think the world works like that.
Tigra – I’m not sure what Byrne had against Tigra, but the way she was written out also disrespected the work that Englehart had done with her in his run. Having her turn cat-like again is kind of boring, and I feel like Byrne knew that, so he just got rid of her. What’s weird is how little anyone seems to care.
Iron Man – I’m not sure if there was much purpose in having Tony come back to the team. He didn’t really do much or interact with anyone.
Doctor Pym – Hank must have loved having Byrne write and draw him, because he made him the central hero on the team. Gone were all the doubts and self-recriminations, and instead, Hank became this seasoned and wise hero, and a natural leader. No one else has ever written him like this.
Wasp – I’ve always liked Jan, and she’s cool here, but her natural leadership skills and stature are non-existent. It feels like she’s largely here to replace Tigra or Mockingbird as the other woman on the team, and that’s it. I also don’t buy that she’s so comfortable around Hank without a single mention of their rocky past and divorce.
Vision – I loved the Vision as a kid, and hated to see him stripped of his personality (I didn’t mind the all-white appearance, because it’s kind of cool – especially that he went around barefoot). I can see why it was appealing from a story standpoint, but it really disrespected the character I felt.
The Human Torch – As a longtime Invaders fan, I was very excited to see Jim Hammond back in action, but he didn’t really ever do much here. There were just a few too many characters in this book to ever give him some space.
USAgent – I’m going to admit that I really like John Walker, the redneck Captain America. His suit looks cool, especially with Byrne drawing it, and I appreciate the idea of an Avenger who doesn’t fit in with the rest of the team, who is also hard to be around. I just think that it’s a shame that Byrne never used him for much, or gave him any space to grow. There was the suggestion that he might be nuts, because he sat around talking to photos of his parents once, but that was never picked up on again.
Quicksilver – Though Pietro was not a member of the team, and barely showed up in this run, it is interesting that he seems to be a good guy again, after having tried to kill the Avengers during Englehart’s run. I would have liked to know more about that.
Scarlet Witch – And finally, there’s Wanda. I didn’t like that she had to put up with the loss of her husband, and the revelation that her children were never real does seem pretty cruel, but it’s the turn to Dark Wanda that bugs me. Byrne had already drawn the Dark Phoenix saga by this point, and had turned Invisible Woman into Malice, so him changing up a character’s appearance and making her evil just seemed too par for the course for him by now. And the lack of explanation or reason for it irks me.
And so, Byrne dips, and leaves a big handful of plots to resolve for his replacement:
- Evil Wanda
- Immortus’s plans for Evil Wanda
- Magneto’s plans for Evil Wanda
- Tigra’s shrunken feralness
- The team’s looming eviction
It feels like Byrne had plans for at least another year of stories, and I’m not sure why he left. Sure, his Namor started soon after, and maybe that was just too tempting a project to turn down (and really, it ended up being a lot better than this series). It’s odd that there was no text-piece or announcement of his departure in the book, which makes it feel very sudden.
I remain a big fan of Byrne’s. His art is always instantly recognizable to me (although I don’t love it with either Mike Machlan or Paul Ryan’s inks), and I’ll always appreciate his eye for costume design (Wanda and Janet look cool here in their new outfits, and Byrne makes both Simon and Hank’s terrible Milgrom designs much more workable).
Still, this felt like a lot of missed opportunities and an attitude of giving up. I’d expected better for a book like this, but I guess, as the sun set on the 80s, I shouldn’t have expected much more. I do remember that the next run, by Roy and Dann Thomas, got dull, and that I dropped it. We’ll see if I was right to do that or not in the next column.
If you’d like to see the archives of all of my retro review columns, click here.
If you’d like to read these stories, it appears you have a lot of options for trades:
Avengers West Coast Epic Collection: Vision Quest (Avengers West Coast Avengers)
Avengers West Coast Visionaries – John Byrne, Vol. 2: Darker than Scarlet (Prelude to House of M)
