Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1979-01-01 00:03:30 |
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Avengers #179-180
Issue(s): Avengers #179, Avengers #180
Cover Date: Jan-Feb 79
Title: "Slowly slays the Stinger!" / "Berserkers' holiday"
Credits:
Tom DeFalco - Writer
Jim Mooney - Penciler
Mike Esposito & Alan Gordon / Mike Esposito - Inker
Review/plot:
If you like comics that start with a thug saying "Quick! Somebody clobber'im before he blows our caper!", then you like Tom DeFalco. For the rest of us, we can take comfort in the fact that this is just a two issue fill-in.
After the Black Panther breaks up that criminal activity, someone from the company that was being robbed suggests that if he sticks around he might be given an award. The Panther thinks to himself:
What reward could possibly matter to one such as I? As King of Wakanda, I could buy his company with but a fraction of my wealth! So many in this country understand no motivation save personal profit!
Jackass! Not everyone's independently wealthy royalty, you know, and all they wanted to do was say thank you.
This arc juggles two separate plots. First, there's Stinger. He defeats the Black Panther ...
...and sneaks into Avengers Mansion, where he later nearly defeats the entire team (we'll see if the internet finds anything suggestive about this first panel).
Stinger doesn't even have any powers. He just bought some trinkets from the Tinkerer. And that was enough for him to (temporarily) defeat all the Avengers. That's pretty impressive, or a sad showing for Earth's Mightiest Heroes, depending on how you look at it.
Eventually, however, Thor comes home.
The Beast references his "mutant metabolism" in issue #180.
The Beast originally had a healing factor when he turned grey and beast-like, but he seemingly lost it in Amazing Adventures #14. However, it's been referred to at least twice since then: here, and Avengers #140. So maybe he still has it, but at a diminished level?
The other plot involves Bloodhawk. No relation to the X-Men 2099 character. This guy's a very silly bird-man.
He attacks a fund-raiser that the Avengers are attending, because he wants to get back a totem that was taken from his island. The totem keeps a monolith from rampaging.
Mooney's monolith is the coolest thing about these issues.
Bloodhawk eventually establishes an uneasy kinship with the Beast...
...but he sacrifices himself by taking a shot from the Stinger meant for, umm... Thor.
Yeah, that was necessary. Earlier, Bloodhawk saw Thor send the monolith to the "furthest reaches of the galaxy" by creating a vortex with his hammer, and he calls him a Thunder God right in that panel, so it's not like Bloodhawk shouldn't have known that Thor could handle a shot from some random goofball. I guess it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.
There's a somewhat interesting sub-theme in these issues where Iron Man is completely unconvinced that the mystical elements implied by Bloodhawk, the totem, and the monolith are real. It's an idea that might have had a lot of merit in 1960s comics, but by now it's a little unbelievable that Iron Man still doesn't believe in the otherworldy. Which is a shame, really, because it's a potentially cool idea that Iron Man, being a science hero, has no belief in the mystical.
I like this picture of Thor carrying a giant whale. I'm not even going to give you any context for it. It's just Thor carrying a whale; what more do you need to know?
Quality Rating: C-
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: See the Captain America reference below. The problem is that Captain America #229 has to take place after Hulk Smash Avengers #2, which takes place after Avengers #182. So that footnote has to be wrong. I really hate disregarding footnotes, but it does occasionally happen. Luckily the actual comment being footnoted (Vision: "Since Captain America left the city on urgent business...") is context free enough to be ignored. I'm instead surmising that he's at the Indian Point power plant in Amazing Spider-Man #187.
References:
- It's said that Captain America has left the city on urgent business, with a reference to Captain America #229, but that footnote is Smashed.
- Henry Gyrich revoked the Avengers Priority Clearance in Avengers #172, but the Avengers are allowed to use their Quinjet this issue because "the FAA has granted us special permission to fly our craft out of our midtown HQ provided we eventually land at a regular commercial airfield!". Seems... arbitrary, but ok.
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
"Oliff" could refer to colorist Steve Oliff, but I don't know if he was working at Marvel at the time.
Yeah I remember The Beast had near current Wolverine level healing. He took a few bullets to the chest and was fine two panels later.
That's the second time in a couple of years where all the Avengers were captured and then chained to a wall. Talk about your "talking villain syndrome".
Sure that monolith isn't some distant cousin of the Stone Men from Saturn?
And that Stinger/Iron Man panel...yeah, you probably said it best.
Are "Avengers" 178-180 meant to take place between "Avengers" 177 and 181? I know that's a weird question but, 181 seems to pick up in the aftermath of the Korvac Saga and I had always assumed these were fill-ins that took place out of sequence (or possibly non-canon) like "Avengers" 145-146. The team line-up is even the pre-Korvac line-up with no mention to my knowledge of the Guardians hanging around, so I assumed not in sequence.
They're definitely canon- the Manipulator appears again in issues of Captain America. There's no reason to assume that issue 181 opens IMMEDIATELY after the Korvac Saga ended- indeed, quite the opposite, since X-Men 113 takes places during the Korvac Saga and the FF are still disbanded, while Avengers 181 takes place at around the same time as Fantastic Four 204. And this issue references Gyrich's suspending the Avengers' clearance.
Such utter drek. I don't think I've ever re-read them since the original publication. "My shock…and my sting!" And this utter nobody defeats all of the Avengers. Who are only saved by the bird-brain Bloodhawk. Yeesh.
It's actually the third "Avengers chained to a wall" sequence, after #155 (by Dr. Doom) and #159 (by Graviton). Dr. Doom…Graviton…and the Stinger. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong…
Ah, but is it Doom or the Stinger who's the odd man out? Your mileage may vary! :-) I couldn't agree more about this crappy two-parter, which is only dragged down further by inept editing. In both issues, the name of the island is spelled variously as "Maura" and "Muara," while in #180, they confuse "its" and "it's" no fewer than FOUR TIMES. Admittedly, getting those things right wouldn't have made this a good story, but I often wonder what these so-called "editors" were getting paid for.
