Issue(s): Avengers West Coast annual #7
Cover Date: 1992
Title: "Locate!" / "Mile high mayhem!" / "My name is Legion!"
Credits:
Roy Thomas / Roy Thomas & Dann Thomas - Writer
M.C. Wyman / John Dennis - Penciler
Tim Dzon & John Tartaglione / John Dennis / Keith Williams - Inker
Richard Ashford - Assistant Editor
Nel Yomtov - Editor

Review/plot:
Iron Man and Darkhawk have interrogated Arthur Vale and learned that Professor Power was behind the funding of the Savage Steel armor, and was probably responsible for the kidnapping of James Rhodes. Professor Power is supposed to be dead, but we learn that what really happened is that after USAgent killed him, his mind snapped back from his son's body to his own.

Iron Man tracks Rhodey to Kansas City. Spider-Woman and Scarlet Witch join him and Darkhawk, but Iron Man goes off on a solo mission while Darkhawk, Spider-Woman, and Scarlet Witch are sent in to destroy the Iron Monger armor.

They fight what look like Mandroids but are called Meks or Mek-Men...

...and destroy the Iron Monger suits. Iron Man's solo mission turns out to be downloading the data on the Iron Monger and then introducing his tapeworm virus to wipe it all out. The group also manages to rescue Rhodey and stop Professor Power (who is powerless and not in an exo-suit).

Iron Man has also learned that AIM is involved.

Meanwhile, USAgent has also been told that the Iron Monger armor has been stolen, and he's hired under the table by a member of the Superhero Commission to get it back.

And the group of West Coast Avengers that are guarding Stark Enterprise are attacked by a horde of armored foes that include the Seekers and the Raiders (the latter of which are the guys that used to hang out with the Mauler).

Not a lot really happens here. It feels like a Marvel Comics Presents level of content, but at 3 times the length. And i really feel like there's some disconnect. Rhodey was pretending to try to get the Mauler armor upgraded by an illegal organization when he was kidnapped. But did that organization have anything to do with the kidnapping? Why did Professor Power, whose agenda normally involves hating mutants, kidnap Rhodey? And AIM is involved, and we'll learn in the next chapter that Kearson Dewitt is involved as well. And there are tons of armored suits being named dropped - the Mauler, the Iron Monger, the Raiders, the Seekers - but it doesn't feel like there's a cohesive plot behind it all. It's all very hodgepodge.

The one bit that Thomas does pretty good with is play up the fact that Darkhawk is a teenager even though that's not definitely known by the others.

The first back-up has a Scarlet Witch story where she gets a glimpse into an alternate universe where her kids are alive and the Vision is still her husband. As Michael notes, the story mentions that Agatha Harkness restored Scarlet Witch's memories of her kids.

This is really just a belated fix to a continuity flub. The John Byrne story had Agatha Harkness wiping her memories of the babies, but Roy Thomas might not have realized that and had Scarlet Witch talking about her kids (see Avengers West Coast #70). So this panel says that Harkness "briefly erased" the memories but then gave them back.

Other back-ups include: A Spider-Woman story where she meets an old friend at an airport in Denver and then stops a plane from crashing. A top ten villains feature. And Living Lightning feature where he's visited by someone from his father's Legion of Living Lightning terrorist organization who tries to pressure him into joining them.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This is part two of Assault on Armor City. Part three is in Iron Man annual #13. Based on the reference below, this takes place after Avengers West Coast #86. I'm assuming the back-ups can take place before or after the main Assault on Armor City story (i.e. before Darkhawk annual #1 or after Iron Man annual #13).

References:

• This continues directly from Darkhawk annual #1, and actually repeats the last scene from that issue, with Iron Man talking to the West Coast Avengers.
  
• USAgent isn't happy about working with the commission after Mike Clemson told him to assassinate Spider-Woman in Avengers West Coast #71.
  
• The Deathweb incident in Avengers West Coast #84-86 exposed Clemson as a rogue agent.
  
• Professor Power took his son's body for himself in Marvel Team-Up #124.
  
• That body was killed by USAgent (then Captain America) in Captain America #338.

Crossover: Assault on Armor City

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Fnord, one thing you might want to note in the Scarlet Witch backup is that Wanda says that Agatha restored her memories of her children. This is important since later, during Disassembled, Bendis claims that Wanda never regained the memories of her children.

I've added that scan, but as you've pointed out elsewhere, Bendis didn't need to read this back-up to see that, since Scarlet Witch referenced her babies in the regular series during Roy Thomas' run.

Wasn't it later retconned in Young Avengers that Wanda went crazy because Dr. Doom manipulated her? So maybe Doom made her forget the kids again as part of that manipulation? (I can't remember whether Wanda's memory loss was actually addressed in the YA story.) Not that any of this makes Disassembled any less crappy...

It seems to me that the reason why Wanda was addressing Doom was just the re-emergence of the children.

I have always been disgusted at the way Bendis trashed Wanda in Disassembled with his BS retcons.

Glad I had dropped all the books by this time. I would have been pissed to have both the Avengers and AWC Annuals being part of bigger storylines but not even be part of the same storyline. You couldn't even group the Avengers books together, Marvel?