Avengers #157
March 1977
Cover art by: Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott, and Dan Crespi
Story: A Ghost of Stone!
Writer: Gerry Conway
Pencils: Don Heck
Inks: Pablo Marcos
The Beast, Yellowjacket, and Iron Man are working in a lab in Avengers Mansion when they are attacked by surprise. Their attacker dispatches all of three of them with relative ease. We quickly learn that it it the statue of the Black Knight come to life, who everyone thought was dead. We get a quick flashback as we see some sort of hand appear in the air bringing the statue to life.
Then the Black Knight crashes into the kitchen and again makes short work of Captain America and the Wasp. Allowing Jarvis to flee and attempt to get help. We get another flash back with the Avengers and Defenders having a meeting in Dr. Strange's Greenwich Village Santcum Sanctorum (I swear half the time this place is mentioned they throw in the fact that it is located in Greenwich Village) were thee statue resides. After the meeting they all leave, and the Black Knight is bitter that they all left him, and he swears revenge on both teams.
Next up on the list to fall to the Black Knight is Wonder Man and the Scarlet Witch. Wanda doesn't give him any resistance. Wonder Man does for a few panels, but even he gets totally trashed.
Well, the Black Knight walks back into the mansion, and this is when the Vision confronts him. BK just swings wildly at the Vision while he is immaterial. The Vision telling him to search his memories for the truth of his return to life. The statue does finally remember that the spirit of Dane Whitman actually went back into the past, and now inhabits his own ancestor's body. (Wait, really? Wow that is pretty wacky.) The Vision then turns his body diamond hard and the enraged statues breaks himself apart on him as he screams “Lies!”
I do have a major problem with this story. In that a simple concrete statue could take out Iron Man or Wonder Man. Not only that but withstand their attacks. Not buying it. No way in a million years. An editor should have kiboshed that whole idea, unfortunately Conway is his own editor here. Even with the other Avengers it was a bitter pill to swallow that he could defeat them.
The Vision does try to get the Black Knight to try and remember who animated him, as all we see is a hand (looked robotic to me). Black Knight is just too enraged.
I'm usually not a big fan of Don Heck's art, but here it is fine for the most part. Especially the action scenes. The problem is when people are standing around. That is when the figures look really stiff.
Replies
The Black Knight inhabited his ancestor's body in The Defenders #11(D'73), the last chapter of the Avengers/Defenders War and didn't return to the present until The Avengers #225-226 (N-D'82), though IIRC, he appeared in the UK's Captain Britain series before that.
As for who animated his statue, it was never officially stated but it was implied that it was Thanos (not one of his better schemes).
I just figured at the time that the force animating the statue abandoned it when the Vision forced it to reveal the truth and that caused the loss of strength.
Gerry Conway may have planned to explain it all at some point, but this was the last issue of his brief Avengers run, and among his last Marvel work at that point for almost a decade. He always seemed to have a heavy monthly workload, and boy does it show it here.
I think this issue is a great example of why Jim Shooter, as EIC, got rid of the writer/editor thing a few years later. It's questionable how much editing Conway was doing here.
A couple of the posters have information on the point in the comments here. I like the cover.
I think first it was said to might have been Thanos, then later as Ultron. I've read the "evidence" for it being Ultron but I don't buy it. Ultron is science-based and animating the Stone Knight seems more mystical to me. If not Thanos, then other suspects could be Loki, Dormammu or the Enchantress since they have the power to do so and they know about the Stone Knight.
Then again it could have been Kang the Conqueror who might still be ticked off by the Black Knight for Avengers #70-72 and wanted the statue destroyed to strand the Knight in the past.
My initial thought was that it was Kang.
Did anyone ever ask Gerry Conway?
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