AVENGERS #343

"FIRST NIGHT"
A story of acquaintances, old and new, brought to you by...
Writer: Bob Harras | Penciler: Steven Epting | Inker: Tom Palmer
Colorist: Tom Palmer | Letterer: Bill Oakley
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: On the roof of Avengers Mansion, Vision, Jarvis, and the new Thor welcome Crystal, her daughter Luna, and Luna's nursemaid, Marilla, to their new home. While Jarvis escorts Marilla and Luna to Luna's room, the rest of the group encounters Hercules and the Black Knight battling a group of robots in a hallway. Thor and Crystal team up to defeat the robots, after which Captain America and Black Widow appear. The veteran Avengers inform Crystal and Thor that this was a surprise test of their abilities.

The next morning, while Captain America and Black Widow are away in California for a meeting with the West Coast Avengers, a priority alarm comes in from the Human Torch, in which he says the Fantastic Four are under attack. Vision scrambles Crystal, Thor, Hercules, and the Black Knight (with his winged steed, Valinor) to investigate. But when the heroes reach Four Freedoms Plaza, they find nothing amiss, and the Fantastic Four apparently not home. Then the Avengers are attacked by an energy bolt that sends them falling from the sky. The heroes land on a rooftop and find themselves confronted by the long-thought-dead Swordsman and an armored mystery woman.

Continuity Notes: As noted above, this Thor is not the original God of Thunder, but is rather the mortal, Eric Masterson, acting as Thor while the real McCoy is banished per events in his own series. Masterson is none too pleased by the Avengers' test, mentioning that it's the second time the group has pulled something like this, as Hercules apparently attacked him to test his mettle in THOR #437. It should be noted that this is "my" Thor -- i.e., when I was a kid, really beginning to explore the Marvel Universe, this was the Thor I knew from things like INFINITY GAUNTLET and WAR, random assorted issues of this AVENGERS run, and so forth.

Reference is made, in the context of Luna coming to live at the mansion, of Vision's conjured "children" with the Scarlet Witch, William and Eric. In that moment, Vision believes he sees his sons when he looks at Luna. Vision, who is ostensibly completely emotionless at this point after being torn apart and rebuilt by the United States government, plays it off as "an interesting playback of my memory circuits." Reference is later made to the specific event which led the government to dismantle Vision -- his linking up with the Titan supercomputer, ISAAC, and subsequent semi-villainous acts, during Roger Stern's AVENGERS run of a few years earlier.

The Black Knight debuts his new "laser sword" -- I believe later known as a "photon sword" -- in this issue. There's no real reason given for his giving up his Ebony Blade, other than that the photon sword has non-lethal settings, unlike the sword. Captain America is initially impressed by the weapon, but seconds later seems weirdly ambivalent about it.

Cap and Black Widow have a late night chat about the Avengers, during which Cap confides that something about the group feels different recently, with team members leaving almost as soon as they joined (Rage, Sandman), or disappearing for weeks on end (Sersi). In general, Cap seems to believe the Avengers aren't the close-knit group of friends they once were. (Though this seems to be a bit of revisionist history on the part of Bob Harras -- or rose-tinted glasses he is intentionally giving Cap -- as the Avengers, with certain exceptions, always read more like a group of co-workers than close friends.)

(Also, in this scene, Black Widow wears an Avengers-branded T-shirt, presaging the team's upcoming "bomber jacket" era.)

Early in the morning, Crystal has a video chat with her estranged husband, Quicksilver, now a member of X-Factor. They discuss Crytal and Luna coming to visit Quicksilver in Washington D.C. over the weekend, and while Quicksilver is initally reluctant to have Crystal visit, he eventually acquiesces. (Please note: he is very clear that he wants Luna to visit, but he states that he isn't sure he's ready to spend time with Crystal yet.) Crystal confides in Vision that she drove Quicksilver away, but doesn't say how it happened.

Crystal's and Quicksilver's conversation also includes a reference to the battle with the Brethren on the moon in issue 334.

We'll get more on the Swordsman next issue, but for now suffice it to say that he was a short-lived Avenger who died in the line of duty. Here, he rants at the Avengers about their leaving him "to rot in hades."

Assemble: No, but Vision does have the cool line, "If the Fantastic Four have been attacked... then we will avenge them." ("Avengers Assemble!" count: 3 in 10 issues to date. It's not looking so good for the ol' battlecry at just this moment!)

My Thoughts: So, you know the old story: the X-MEN editor starts writing AVENGERS, and turns AVENGERS into an X-MEN clone. At least, that's the way I've seen Bob Harras's tenure as AVENGERS writer described more than once. This run has its fans and its detractors, and both sides seem to build their arguments around that same thought: Bob Harras turned the Avengers into the X-Men. Specifically, in terms of making AVENGERS a big soap opera in the vein of Chris Claremont's stories (and, perhaps even more, the stories of Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza, which would soon be contemporaneous with Harras's AVENGERS).

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I haven't read a ton of Avengers material. The first twenty or so issues in ESSENTIAL AVENGERS volume 1 way, way back when I was in high school. The "Celestial Madonna" and "Korvac" sagas. Various random issues from the eighties and nineties. The "Heroes Reborn" and "Heroes Return" iterations, up to "Avengers Disassembled". Some of the NEW AVENGERS era circa the mid-00s. And of course, certain one-shots, limited series, etc. But my recollection is that there were elements of soap opera in all of those iterations! So I have to imagine that there's more to Harras's run to make it feel like the X-Men than just the idea of soapiness. My guess is that it will also be in the presentation of that soapiness.

And right off the bat, I do get a bit of that X-Men feel in this issue. With the six-part, editorially-mandated summer event out of the way, Harras begins his run proper here, and immediately we have an issue that just somehow feels X-ish. Like, something about the mood and tone of this story, which is mostly a downtime piece, has a sort of intangible melancholy about it that hung over much of (for example) Nicieza's run on X-MEN. The entire thing is set at night or in the early dawn hours, and the colors by Tom Palmer are fairly subdued. If every issue continued along these lines, then I can see why people might compare this material to the concurrent X-MEN run.

And I like it! I've said many times that the "Heroes Return" AVENGERS, specifically the first thirty-four issues by Kurt Busiek and (mostly) George Pérez, are what I consider to be prime, definitive Avengers. And that stuff is unabashed four-color, Bronze Age-inspired action and adventure (again, with some soap opera) all the way through. But I'm really excited to read an AVENGERS run more in the vein of the X-Men stuff I grew up on. I rabidly devoured X-MEN and UNCANNY for most of the nineties, under Lobdell and Nicieza. And again, I did sort of "grow up" with these Avengers, insomuch as I would peruse my best friend's copies at his house, even if I didn't fully read them. So if Harras's AVENGERS is anything like that stuff, I think I'm going to really, really like it.

At any rate, we're off to a great start. Sub-plots, soap opera, and a long-dead ally returned as an enemy -- that's about as "X" as you can get, and it's all got me excited for the next installment.