Avengers Spotlight # 27 (Acts of Vengeance)

 By Mark Rodriguez

When the Wizard was captured and sent to the Vault, a mysterious stranger let him escape and he set loose a lot of captured super villains. Hawkeye and Iron Man arrived on the scene but spent as much time fighting each other as they did the bad guys. Hawkeye used an EMP arrow to lock down the prison but it also affected Iron Man, making his armor useless. What happens now?

"Hawkeye- Hurting Inside" opens with Boomerang breaking into Stark Industries. Another villain named The Ghost broke in there earlier and Boomerang wants the security video, as requested by his boss Justin Hammer. One of the cops try to pull an alarm but the villain tosses a boomerang through it. The cops tell him that this will send a signal out anyway and Iron Man is soon to come. Boomerang is eager to to take him down.

Boomerang is just itching to fight someone when a stranger in white appears, phasing through a wall. He says Iron Man has defeated Boomerang before even when his friends were helping him out, but if he wants to fight someone so badly, he has 'just the Avenger for him'.

Hawkeye is one having a bladder exam (um...?) as Mockingbird waits for him. Both are relieved that it was nothing serious and Mockingbird leaves. Iron Man is out to find out who blew up Avengers Island, when he is suddenly attack by explosive boomerangs. He gets ready to attack and sees Boomerang.

Hawkeye is surprised since he has never fought him before (I do believe he is usually one of Spider-Man's bad guys) and mentions that since the Vault break out, all the bad guys have been attacking heroes at random, but not necessarily their own rivals. Boomerangs tosses burning boomerangs he calls Flamerangs that the archer dodges. The boomerangs cause serious damage and innocent people are in trouble. Hawkeye uses glue arrows to jam up Boomerang's rocket boots. As the villain falls to the ground, Hawkeye heads out to tend to the civilians.

 

There are so many people in danger, the hero doesn't know where to start. Hawkeye sees a woman stuck in a burning building and heads up there to help. As he swings down with the woman in tow, Boomerang tosses a Razorang to slice the rope. Luckily they both fall on an inflatable rescue mat and Hawkeye tosses a net arrow to capture Boomerang before he gets away. The cops take him away but surprisingly the woman he just saves slaps him across the face.

She points to all the destruction caused and says that superheroes really are a menace. Hawkeye walks off feeling horrible.

"Acts of Vengeance- Some Assembly Required" opens with  the Stingray helping salvage what he could from the now-sunken Avengers island. Stingray checks out a room within the sunken island and is suddenly attacked. On the surface, Firebird gets his distress signal and dives into the water to help. She is soon knocked back out and tells them that the Mad Thinker's Awesome Android is on the loose, and he has Stingray in his grasp. 

 

The Black Widow is on the scene and shoots the android with her Widow Sting. The robot sets Stingray down but now develops a more powerful version of the Widow Sting and fires it back to the Black Widow herself. Widow signals for the other Avengers to come and help.

However at this time, all of the other heroes are facing other bad guys, Thor is fighting the Juggernaut, Iron Man is facing the Wrecker, Captain America is fighting the Sub Mariner, Quasar is fighting against The Absorbing Man and the Avenger West Coast are fighting against the U-Foes. Luckily Captain Marvel does hear the call and flies off to help.

 

The Awesome Android takes down Hellcat and Moondragon tries to telepathically put it to sleep. Hellcat reminds her that the android has no brain to put to sleep, and Firebird swoops in to save them before the robot can attack them. Firebird then tosses flames at the machine before Black Widow can stop her.

The android gets back up and now has Firebird's fire powers, but luckily she can create a forcefield to deflect her own flames. Suddenly Captain Marvel flies in dives into the sea. Underwater, she finds the Stasis Field Projector that keeps the robot in line. After speaking telepathically between Moondragon and the others, they are able to power up the Stasis device and take the robot down.

 

Everyone is happy but Captain Marvel warns the others that when she went underwater she noticed that the other killer robots like the Super Adaptoid and Kree Sentry have now escaped. Black Widow also points out that when she called the Avengers, only Captain Marvel answered the call.. so she wonders what has happened to the rest of the team?

My Thoughts-

It was cool seeing  of these other heroes, like Hellcat, Moondragon and the Monica Rambeau incarnation of Captain Marvel. Of course we all know who the Black Widow is, but Monica has been appearing more often nowadays under her new codename Photon. People might remember her from Wandavision and The Marvels.

One of the weirdest thing is the lack or resolution to last issue's cliffhanger. Iron Man was immobilized by an EMP, leaving Hawkeye to face the escaping Vault villains alone. I guess we just leave things with 'all the bad guys escaped'. I know Acts of Vengeance is a multi-series crossover, but when I check the Avengers issues, they're dealing with other enemies. In Iron Man's book he's facing the Wrecker. And in Hawkeye's book.. well... Avengers Spotlight is Hawkeye's book. I'm almost surprised they continued the format with Hawkeye having his own adventure, while the second story actually deal with the Acts of Vengeance story.

As for the stories, they were fun and entertaining. Boomerang is mostly a Spider-Man villain so it was cool to see him face off against Hawkeye. I mean a guy with gimmick boomerangs against a guy with gimmick arrows. Missed opportunity for Hawkeye to whip out a boomerang arrow. I felt bad for Clint at the end when the woman slapped him. "No respect, I tell ya, I get no respect".

As for the second story, wow... the Awesome Android is a weird character with a weird name. I know he's a robot but he looks like a muscular dude with a suitcase for a head. What was the Mad Thinker thinking?

This comic also came with a commercial for the classic TMNT cereal. I remember that, it actually did taste good, unlike most cereals that were based on a cartoon or movie and were out for a limited time. It's actually kinda coincidental in a way that they have a TMNT ad seeing that a name as Awesome Android sounds like something they would name one of the action figures.... I mean it ranks up there with Mondo Gecko and Merdude.

Man... I miss that cereal. It was one of the few character based cereal I really liked, aside from maybe the Batman 88 movie based cereal. Possibly the worst character-based cereal I ever tasted back as a kid was Urkel-O's, and sometimes I can even remember the smell.

The other cool ad was one for U-Force, a NES peripheral where the gimmick was there were no buttons of joysticks. You put your hands within an area set to track your movements. It seems cool for games where you fly planes... I just don't know how it worked or if it worked with say... Super Mario Bros and such.