Avengers Spotlight #29Issue(s): Avengers Spotlight #29 Hawkeye Iron Man Evan Skolnick - Assistant Editor Review/plot: The story is that Dr. Karl Malus has some minions - with tools for hands and names like Handsaw and Vice - kidnap Madcap. Madcap also apparently wanted Daredevil. Your enjoyment of this story will depend greatly on how much you can tolerate Madcap. For me, that's "not at all". The more important story in this issue is Dwayne McDuffie's final "Tales from the Vault" contribution to Acts of Vengeance that has been running in this book. This takes place after AoV is over. Iron Man has provided new Guardsman armor to the Vault guards, replacing the inferior Stane suits. But the new suits draw power from strips that run throughout the Vault, so they can't be used for more than 15 minutes outside the area. This solves Iron Man's concern about not wanting to provide anyone with Iron Man-like armor while still helping the Vault remain secure (a criticism voiced by Hawkeye in Avengers Spotlight #26). Then a good portion of the villains captured during Acts of Vengeance are returned to the Vault. Iron Man sticks around after the other heroes leave. As Cap is leaving he implies that he, like Hawkeye in issue #26, doesn't believe that Iron Man isn't Tony Stark. Later, it's announced that the Wizard has been "caught" but in fact it turns out that Loki arranged for him to be teleported here. Then Klaw shows up to rescue the Wizard. Iron Man takes care of Klaw by disrupting his frequency, but the point of this story is to demonstrate the new Guardsman armor. So a guard in the armor shows up to fight the Wizard. The issue ends with text repeated from the opening of issue #26, providing more thematic closure for this little sub-thread than we got for the larger Acts of Vengeance event. Well, "no escape" until the next breakout, coming soon. Quality Rating: C Chronological Placement Considerations: The Iron Man portion of this story takes place after the final Acts of Vengeance battle in Avengers West Coast #55. The MCP actually have it take place during that issue, before the scene that takes place "three hours" after the fight with Loki. That's actually kind of difficult unless we assume that the scenes in Avengers West Coast #55 with Wonder Man and USAgent takes place later than it was shown in the comic (see the Considerations for Avengers West Coast #55 for more). I'm therefore placing this after AWC #56-57. References:
Crossover: Acts of Vengeance Continuity Insert? N My Reprint: N/A Inbound References (9): show CommentsWe'll see in the avengers annual back-up that Hank Pym caught the wizard. and the Vision destroyed the red skull robot. whats the point of making guardsman's armour stronger. they'll just have to weaken it again when villains need to break out. and im pretty sure we'll see guardsmen outside of the vault in the future. Posted by: kveto | April 9, 2015 1:50 PM To expand on what kveto said, there's a major problem with placing this issue. While the Avengers are fighting Loki, Simon and USAgent are trying to rescue Wanda from Magneto. They fail and at the start of AWC 56 we see Simon being held prisoner. The storyline in AWC 56 lasts until AWC 62. The problem is that this issue makes it seem like Wizard teleported directly from AWC 55 into this issue. The backup in Avengers Annual 19 establishes that Wizard was captured in Avengers West Coast 55. I think Gruenwald's idea was that Wizard was captured by the Avengers, teleported away after the end of AWC 62, and Loki messed with THAT teleportation, which is how Wizard ended up here. Posted by: Michael | April 9, 2015 8:27 PM Another weird thing- Absorbing Man and Titania are being shown marched to prison together but Creel thought Titania was dead last time we saw him. It gets especially weird since DeFalco later makes a big deal out of Creel finding out Titania was alive. Posted by: Michael | April 14, 2015 7:52 PM Maybe they drugged everyone for security reasons? That would explain that Creel would not notice Titania Posted by: Jay Gallardo | April 18, 2015 4:16 PM Unfortunately, Creel's next major appearance picks up as if he's still disintegrated as he was at the end of his Quasar appearance; maybe it's a different big bald supervillain dude, like, uhm..... Posted by: Omar Karindu | July 1, 2017 6:41 PM Comments are now closed. |
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