Secret Avengers #37
Marvel Comics
Color, $3.99, 20 pages
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Matteo Scalera
(Note: If this looks familiar, I had previously posted this as a rant on another thread, and when I realized it was basically a review, I moved it here.)
I'm switching over to trade-waiting on all books, so I've been allowing my weekly pamphlet purchases to slowly taper off. This week I had only one book on my pull list, the final issue of the first incarnation of Secret Avengers, #37. And if you only read one comic book this week ... well, don't pick this one.
It had an OK story, I suppose, but it had plot holes Giant-Man could walk through and left a lot unexplained at the end. And while it gave a little welcome characterization to the original Human Torch -- who after 70 years is still sort of a cipher -- but even there, I found the dramatic moment so dragged out that I had time to think about it, realize it was implausible -- and actually guess how it was going to end. I'll explain with SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS.
In the first place, I have to say I've been itchy for this storyline to end, mainly because its premise makes the amateurish mistake of having the villain(s) so powerful that it's genuinely implausible that they'll lose. And then they resort to a complicated scheme (which can be thwarted), when they don't need to: Simple brute force will get the job done.Really, these guys could just take over the planet tomorrow, and nobody could stop them -- that is, if they don't resort to a silly plot which reveals their ONE WEAKNESS to the good guys.
The plot is that some guy named "Father" -- I think he has some connection to the original Human Torch, but about halfway through I was basically skimming a story I wasn't enjoying -- had created an entire new race of thousands of "descendants" that were artificial intelligences. But here's why they were too powerful: They all had LMD or Deathlok or Human Torch robot bodies based on various superheroes and supervillains (or even combinations). I saw dozens of pseudo-Visions, pseudo-Ultrons and pseudo-Dr. Dooms that alone could have conquered the earth! And here's the kicker: Father could transform existing heroes into his partial-robot "descendants," which he did with the deceased Ant-Man (turning him into Black-Ant) and the not-so-deceased Hank Pym, who became a cyborg. (He even mind-controlled Black Widow and Hawkeye for a while.) So, really, there was nothing whatsoever to stop Father from simply conquering the earth in about 20 minutes -- and turning Thor and co. into slaves as he encountered them. Easy-peasy.
But Father didn't do that, instead deciding on a scheme to turn everyone into a robotic AI at once (all under his control, of course) and the peace of totalitarianism and lack of free will would break out. (Yes, it's the Anti-Life Equation.) My first thought, is "yay, a scheme, which means it can be handily stopped." Didn't Father read ANY Silver Age comics, where a guy who could turn anything into gold would not stay home and get rich but instead rob banks for money they didn't need so Flash could catch them? Worse, didn't he see Batman Returns, in which too many schemes made the viewer realize the film didn't make any sense?
In Batman Returns, The Penguin is going to run for mayor. No, he's going to kidnap all the children. No, he's going to hijack the Batmobile and run a campaign to ruin Batman's reputation. No, he's going to strap bombs on Penguin-missiles and blow Gotham to pieces. Pick a lane, Penguin, we're at war!
Anyway, Father's scheme is to send the gas that turns people into AIs on a passenger airplane from his hidden base to the populated world but -- yay -- there are four Avengers on board. But -- boo -- two of them are mind-controlled by Father. So a fight. Good guys win.
BUT! Like the Penguin, Father has another plan! And he sends the AI gas in another way.
MEANWHILE, the Avengers somehow -- I really don't remember how -- discover the power source for the descendants is an orb of some kind in a dimension where everybody is a movie monster. Thor's a mummy, Wolverine's a vampire, Cap's a werewolf, Spider-Man and Black Widow are actual big spiders and Iron Man's a ... I forget what Iron Man was. Frankenstein, maybe. (Now that I think about it, this orb thing might be this dimension's Orb of Agamotto, only because it's in Monsterverse, it's a bad thing.) Captain Britain and Hawkeye go on a mission to get the orb. (Despite the fact that all life on earth is on the line, apparently all the other Avengers are busy watching Downton Abbey or something. So they send Hawkeye. Yes, HAWKEYE. Send in the guy with the trick arrows when you're really in a bind!)
But the obvious question here is: "Huh?" Why do these AIs need an extra-dimensional power source, when our planet's LMDs, Doombots, Visions, Deathloks, Human Torches, et al, run just fine on whatever tech they have already? And how did Father know about this other dimensional power source? And how does a geneticist have the mechanical aptitude and training to tap into another dimension? And how does a huge amount of energy come from another dimension to ours without a Reed Richards or Hank Pym or Tony Stark -- who HAVE gone to other dimensions -- noticing? And why am I even asking these questions? Obviously, I put more thought into this than writer Rick Remender did.
Never mind. After this unnecessary digression from the main story (one must assume Father was playing computer Solitaire or watching Downtown Abbey while they were gone, instead of, you know, conquering the world), our two Avengers succeed in stealing the orb, but don't destroy it, because ... well, they just don't. Perhaps Downton Abbey was still on, and they were distracted.
THEN Father "Deathlokizes" Hank Pym! Yes, our Scientist Supreme is half-robot and now answering to the bad guy! And the descendants (FINALLY) invade, in search of the globe, and as I predicted, nobody can stand up to them. (Which once again raises the questions "why didn't they do this in the first place?") Nobody, that is, except Spider-Man, because, let's face it, Hawkeye and Captain Britain don't sell too many books. So Spider-Man teams up and Hawkeye (FINALLY) realizes he must destroy the orb. But he can't, because it will kill all the AIs.
"Avengers don't kill!" he thinks, despite the fact that in this one storyline alone he's put arrows through countless descendants, and even killed the Count Wolverine in Monsterverse. (He was just a vampire, you say? Fine. Then the descendants are just robots. If it's OK to kill one, it's OK to kill the other.)
Hawkeye agonizes over this while on the run from THOUSANDS OF SUPER-POWERFUL, VISION-LEVEL BAD GUYS, and somehow -- despite being encumbered by the globe thingie -- he is the only Avenger on earth who somehow keeps eluding the bad guys, even though he is carrying the precise thing they are all after. Yes, Hawkeye manages to stay on the run. For, like, three pages! (I am, at this point, literally checking my watch.*) But before he can make his decision -- despite three pages' worth of internal debate -- the Human Torch appears out of literally nowhere and smashes the globe for him. And feels bad about it. The end.
Wait, wait, what? What about Monsterverse? Won't they be pissed about the globe theft? What about Hank Pym? TWO OF HIS LIMBS WERE LITERALLY ROBOT PARTS. How does he get back to normal? Is Ant-Man dead or alive or a robot or what? What about Father's massive, and now unoccupied, city under the Arctic/Antarctic/Pacific/Whatever? What about the Human Torch and his now unhappy conscience? And what about the ending to this week's Downton Abbey, which is looking pretty good right now?
Obviously, given this interminable storyline -- it's been going on since issue #22, about a year and a half -- Secret Avengers has sucked for quite a while. But I'm guessing having other books in a pile to read afterward made me dislike it less, or not notice how much I disliked it. But when it's the only one I'm reading that week, its obvious flaws are magnified.
I honestly thought Remender was better than this. I may have to re-evaluate!
* This was the moment I alluded to earlier, when this ridiculous chase went on so long that I had time to realize how ridiculous it was, and how it must end, with the globe destroyed, but I had time to realize it wouldn't be Hawkeye doing it, because they were making such a big deal about how it would be murder, and I knew they won't saddle a major character with that, so I knew it had to be another character who'd shatter the globe, and who was available in this story who would have the most dramatic impact? Oh, yeah, the Human Torch, whom we hadn't seen in a while, but is still out there somewhere. So I realized this chase, which should have ended two pages ago with Hawkeye a smear on the pavement, would go to the point where Hawkeye's at his most dramatically indecisive, and the Human Torch would appear and do it for him. A page and a half later, that's exactly what happened. My only question was "how will Remender explain the Human Torch being there to do the deed?" And the answer was: He didn't bother to explain it. The Torch is simply somehow there, somehow knows the score, somehow knows what to do, somehow knows the consequences, does it and then walks off dramatically. The end.
Replies
I haven't read this in years, but I have two observations:
1) If you can't justify killing to save the entire world, why do we have armed forces?
2) This sounds like a modern Mopie story.
I think your question contains your answer ...
I suppose that's one way to follow up Warren Ellis' six perceptive, punchy, poptastic done-in-ones.
It was Warren Ellis' excellent work that prompted me to put Secret Avengers on my pull list. Talk about bait and switch!