Issue(s): Avengers #217
Cover Date: Mar 82
Title: "Double-cross!"
Credits:
Jim Shooter & Bob Hall - Co-Plotters
Jim Shooter - Script
Bob Hall - Penciler
Dan Green - Inker
Jim Salicrup - Editor

Review/plot:
This issue is the first appearance of Fabian Stankowicz, a character who starts off as a joke villain and later becomes a member of the Avengers' technical crew. In this issue he challenges the Avengers to a fight and he's apparently seen as such a joke that only Iron Man bothers to fight him, with the other Avengers passing by.

It's meant to be played for laughs, but it falls kind of flat. It's not very funny, for one thing, and there's also the fact that the Avengers wouldn't really take chances and let a fight in the city streets go on for so long. As it is there's a fair amount of property damage.

The main plot is Henry Pym being a chump again. Egghead contacts him and claims that he's feeling bad about blowing up his niece Trish Starr and causing her to lose an arm, so he's built her a bionic one.

He implores Pym to bring it to her. When he does, it turns out to be a means to control Trish.

Plus Egghead says it's wired to blow up, and he uses her as a hostage to force Pym to invade an army base and steal some adamantium resin. Pym triggers an Avengers alarm at the base, but when the Avengers show up and stop the caper, they find no evidence of any kind of controlling mechanism and no booby traps in the arm...

...so they have to arrest Pym.

There's a big fight between the Avengers and Yellowjacket, with YJ doing surprisingly well, although he thinks they're pulling their punches.

And if you like out-of-context pictures of Henry hitting Janet, here's one for you.

She gets her chance to respond, though.

Also in this issue, the Wasp is made the new chairperson of the Avengers. This will actually turn out to be a very good move for her as a character.

I love this shot of the Avenger's alert device, with the giant honking labels. Reminds me of the Silver Age Cerebro.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Fabian Stankowicz

Chronological Placement Considerations: This issue has been pushed back in publication time to sync up with dependencies between Avengers #219, Fantastic Four #241, and Amazing Spider-Man #229.

References:

• Pym was kicked off of the Avengers in Avengers #213.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

It's interesting that Shooter went back to this lineup at the same time that Byrne was taking the FF back to the basics. Though it's a small lineup, it's really a great one. And credit to Shooter for really developing Jan's character - a character that really hadn't been developed in the previous 20 years.

This was one of the first comics I ever bought.

@Erik Beck: I think I made a similar point like this when they eventually bring back Hawkeye and bring in She-Hulk with this squad: its basically a classic Avengers squad, only with Shulkie replacing her cousin and one of the early recruits (Hawkeye) added in as well. The dynamics combined with Jan as the chairman really does make it both classic and different simultaneously.

Fabian is a genius. They treat him like he attacked them with a Halloween costume, they guy designed and built a suit of powered armor. They should have added him to the team.

It's a sad spectacle what the avengers series became after #200. Jim shooter gone bonkers, horrible, irregular, drawing; this issue is a great example of this.