Avengers #203-206

Avengers #203-206

Originally released in 1980

Written by David Michelinie (#203-205), Bill Mantlo (#206)

Art by Carmine Infantino (#203), Don Newton (#204), Alan Kupperberg (#205), Gene Colan (#206)



A Disney Plus mini-series starring Wonder Man comes out in a month, but my main familiarity with him comes from his one issue appearance in the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby era of the Avengers, rather than his time as an actor.  Wanting to get some perspective, I picked an Avengers issue that had him and Beast on the cover, as I know that those two are famously good friends, and continued on from there.



The first issue is an odd one, focusing exclusively on the pair as they try to find a kid who was kidnapped by sewer-dwelling creatures.  The situation isn't quite what it seems, as the kid followed them voluntarily in order to escape an abusive home (his mother beats both him and his sister, even when two Avengers are present).  Events take a dark turn when the creatures are attacked by locals fearing the worst, and the kid chooses to be dragged away by the water and drown rather than return home.



The Avengers track down a policeman, only to discover that this was all a dream? A hallucination?  ...Time travel?  It's unclear what happened, or what caused it, and the issue ends with neither Beast or Wonder Man having any idea what to make of this.  It felt like the creative team wanted to tell a story about abusive homes, but the editors wouldn't allow the death of a child to be depicted on-screen, hence the "all just a dream" ending.



Issues 204 and 205 focus on the Yellow Claw, who seems like a stereotype that was best left in the early days of comics.  Even moreso than the Mandarin, he feels like an unfortunately designed Asian caricature with his bright yellow skin and his Fu Manchu mustache, though the other Asian characters in this story don't have the same skin colour, so it seems like it's just a choice of the character design for him specifically.



This issue is certainly more action-heavy than the previous one, as the Avengers invade Yellow Claw's island after getting a message from a scientist who's being held prisoner by him.  As it turns out, the Yellow Claw is also big into the concept of eugenics, wanting to have a bunch of sons in order to make them fight to the death to determine who his heir will be. (seemingly unprepared for what happens if he dies in the time it takes for them to grow old enough to fight each other; by his own admission, he is very old)



The Yellow Claw's operations feel like something out of a James Bond movie, complete with a missile base hidden inside of a cave and a private spacecraft in orbit around the Earth for him to wait out the destruction that he plans.  The Vision is the focus of this particular issue, realizing that the Yellow Claw put a tracer on him and going after the Yellow Claw solo so that the other Avengers aren't caught as well.



The issues do a good job with telling a concise story, and even the two-parter with the Yellow Claw has a natural break in it and a reasonable bit of exposition at the start so that the other characters and the audience are both filled in on the previous issue's events.  The Beast is definitely the most entertaining character, and I feel like I should read more of his time as an Avenger; it feels like a natural part of Xavier's dream, with mutantkind (in this case, Beast and Scarlet Witch) being respected members of a prominent superhero team.



Issue 206 deals with a fire of supernatural origins that risks engulfing New Jersey.  I'm not sure when the dangers of asbestos became widely known, but it definitely wasn't by 1980, as the Avengers without superhuman durability don asbestos suits to withstand the flames. (though it doesn't go to the extent that the 60s comics do, where everything that the Human Torch owned was layered in asbestos, and Asbestos Man was one of his solo enemies - I'm serious)



I do like that I can pick up a random issue and follow along without any problems; it makes for a nice change from Hickman's Avengers, where I had to use a reading guide in order to make sure I went through it all in order due to two Avengers series and several events overlapping with each other.  I didn't get a ton of insight into Wonder Man in these four issues, but at least I got a brief look into his time as a full-fledged Avenger.

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