AVENGERS ANNUAL #23

Exciting news! I had wanted to cover AVENGERS ANNUAL #23 as part of this project -- even though it's not by Harras/Epting/Palmer/Deodato/etc. and really has nothing to do with their run, it was published during the "Gatherers" saga and is written and drawn by the legendary AVENGERS creative team of Roy Thomas and John Buscema -- but at the time I wrote up all the posts we just finished, it was not yet reprinted anywhere. However, just this past August, Marvel relesed the AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: THE GATHERING volume, which includes the Annual, and published the issue to Marvel Unlimited as well. So, as we wrap things up, here's one final little gem from the era:

"STRANGERS ON AN ASTRAL PLANE"
Writer Roy Thomas | Artist: John Buscema
Letterer: Susan Crespi | Colorist: John Kalisz
Flake: Ralph Macchio | Assistant Flake: Matt Idelson | Snowflake: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: Somewhere in an empty dimension, the visages of Loki and Pluto meet and hatch a plot for revenge on Odin and Zeus by killing their respective sons, Thor and Hercules. Pluto agrees to kill the former while Loki deals with the latter. At Avengers Mansion, the Avengers -- Hercules, Giant-Man, Vision, and Crystal -- conduct an impromptu trianing session while Captain America takes a nap. Eventually, Hercules leaves to go on a date with a pair of beautiful women. Meanwhile, Loki heads to the realm of Tartarus, where, at Pluto's suggestion, he liberates the villain called Typhon, along with three of Typhon's fellow prisoners.

The villains ambush Hercules at the restaurant, but his communicard is inadverently activated as he falls unconscious. The Avengers arrive; however Typhon and his cohorts escape with Hercules. Vision suspects that Typhon's hatred of Zeus means he will try to execute Hercules in front of his father, and Thunderstrike uses his enchanted mace to attempt to warp the Avengers to Mount Olympus. But Typhon makes a stop in Hades, where he dunks Hercules in the River Lethe, which renders the Lion of Olympus an amnesiac. Typhon tricks Hercules into believing Zeus is his enemy, and then the group heads to Olympus, where Typhon makes a beeline for the Promethean Flame. He plunges into it and retrieves a magical axe, causing the flame -- and the lives of the Olympians -- to snuff out instantaneously.

The Avengers arrive on Olympus and battle Typhon's cohorts, but Captain America makes it past them and challenges Typhon himself. Hercules comes to Typhon's defense and fights Cap, forcing the super soldier to taunt Hercules into plunging both of them into Olympus's river -- which somehow restores Hercules's memory. He rescues Captain America from the roiling waters and then returns to battle Typhon. Cap grabs Typhon's axe and passes it to the Avengers, who arrive just in time to throw the axe back into the enchanted brazier which reignites the Promethean Flame. Reborn, Zeus banishes Typhon and his friends back to Pluto's realm, and Pluto soon plans to carry out his half of his bargain with Loki by making an attempt on Thor's life. Meanwhile, the Avengers return to Earth.

Continuity Notes: Per Loki, Pluto's personage is confined to Hades, as seen in THOR #467. Meanwhile, Loki is also without physical form, imprisoned in Mephisto's realm.

There are numerous references throughout the issue to Captain America feeling weak, tired, winded, etc., but no footnotes to the ongoing saga of the failing super soldier serum in his own title.

We're told that Hercules' heart belongs to Taylor Madison, but as she is unavailable, he is happy to take two other women out on the town.

It's noted that Typhon previously battled Hercules and the Avengers in AVENGERS #49 and 50 -- published more than twenty-five years earlier, and produced by the same writer and artist of this annual!

Typhon footnotes THOR #129 when he he tells Hercules that Zeus once banished the Prince of Power to Pluto's Netherworld.

Assemble: Surprisingly, given the story's Silver Age trappings, the answer is no! Roy Thomas finds no moment for the battlecry here.

My Thoughts: Look -- there's something really cool about two of the most prolific talents from the Silver Age of comics united to produce a sequel to a story they did together a quarter of a century earlier. For that alone, this is a really nifty issue. But that sort of thing, remarkable though it may be, will only carry you so far -- and the actual story leaves a bit to be desired.

Don't get me wrong; the basic idea is fine. Two villains trading enemies is always a fun idea. Then, throwing in the twist of going a step further and using those enemies' own sons as the instruments of their revenge makes it a bit more novel than what you'd normally get out of this sort of story. And I will note that there's something sort of nostalgic, I guess, about seeing a good old-fashioned Silver Age style adventure right here, in the midst of the Avengers nineties excess. But at the same time, I think that's at least partially why I don't exactly love it. For better or worse, this story really does feel like an artifact of an earlier time, not only in terms of Thomas's (as usual) overwritten script and Buscema's more "vintage" style of artwork, but also in terms of the plot itself. It's hard to explain why, but the structure of the plot just feels like a Silver Age annual in every possible way.

And on the subject of the artwork -- I love John Buscema. John Buscema in his prime is an amazing artist; one of the very best. Even if I don't consider him one of my personal favorite comic book artists, I recognize his skill and I do really, really like his work. But at the time he drew this story, Buscema would have been nearly seventy years old. His skill is still evident and some of the figure work is really good, in line with the best of his Silver and Bronze Age artwork. But a lot of the faces look kind of... weird. Like sort of unbalanced or misshapen in certain places. But then there are other spots where they look exactly like a John Buscema face always looks! So I'm not really sure what to make of it, other than to say that it's uneven. When it's good, it's very good. But when it's not, it really makes you stop and stare and think, "What's wrong with this?"

All that said, the story does contain one moment I really liked. It's well-established, as noted above, throughout this epic that Captain America is not up to full power. And the Avengers know something's amiss with him. Yet even so, when the group arrives on Olympus, Giant-Man thinks to himself that while most of the Avengers have gotten stuck fighting Typhon's partners, the good news is that the one Avengers who made it through to challenge the villain is Cap. Which then leads into an absolutely pitch-perfect Cap moment, as the star-spangled swashbuckler, equipped with only his shield and his waning peak human abilities, confronts an immortal brandishing a magical axe and confidently says, "I haven't gone one-on-one with an immortal in a while, but I'm ready if you are!" It is, for me at least, one of those moments that gives you a little chill and reminds you of why Captain America is such a great character.

And of course, even while he's no match for Typhon or the amnesiac Hercules, it is Cap who ultimately saves the day by breaking Herc of Typhon's control and snatching the axe, which the rest of the Avengers use to restore Zeus and friends. So, while this is a Hercules story at heart, it is Cap who steals the show and demonstrates why he stands above all others as the greatest of the Avengers.

This issue also features a backup story written and drawn by Al Milgrom, lettered by Ken Lopez, and colored by Mike Marts. Titled "Master of His Own Density" and dedicated to Marvel editor Danny Fingeroth ("He knows why!"), it's a forgettable affair in which Vision plugs into the internet and is infected by a sentient virus named Glitch which attempts to seize control of Vision's body by making him dumber and dumber each time he uses his density-alteration powers. But When Glitch does ultimately gain control of Vision, he uses the power himself and becomes dumb as well (an argument can be made that he was already quite dumb since he didn't think of this eventuality), and Vision becomes himself again.

It's... bad.

And that does it! Thanks to Marvel's eleventh hour reprinting of this annual, we've now finished the full original run of issues I had hoped to look at when I started this retrospective. Yes, there's a second half of this story in the year's THOR annual, but I'm not going to take a look at it. I think we can safely assume the Thunder God will get out of whatever predicament Pluto forces him into.

But! There is one last thing to look at, a one-shot which was published a couple years later and which I mentioned a while back, at last explaining the mystery connection between the Black Knight and Exodus hinted at during "Bloodties". So be here next week as we really and truly wrap things up with the aptly titled BLACK KNIGHT: EXODUS.