Random Back Issues #24 - Avengers #19

With all these panels of reporters, I thought for a second I wandered into an early issue of Spawn. Captain America and Iron Man being bad at handling the press played up a lot in this run in the early going. I'd think Stark would be better at it, but this was after he wiped the fact he was Iron Man from most people's minds. Without, you know, asking anyone if it was OK for him to fuck with their brains, demonstrating Tony Stark's usual level of consideration for anyone other than himself. Also, got to love the reporters complaining about not enough minority representation, but also, that there are too many stinkin' muties. The Marvel Universe press is just as stupid and useless as our own!

Anyway, we're looking at post-Heroes Return Avengers, by Kurt Busiek and George Perez, and this is the start of what I think is most people's favorite story from that run, Ultron Unlimited.

Ultron himself doesn't appear until the final page, as his forces are busy killing every person in the fictional country of Slorenia, but the wheels are turning. The Big Three Avengers are saved from the very awkward press conference seen above by the Wasp smashing through the window. She brings word that a bunch of robots with a familiar face busted into Hank Pym's lab and abducted him.

Jarvis brings more bad news to the party - although he does it as politely as possible, bless him. Something composed of adamantium is attacking the Wakanda Design Group research lab in Long Island. The Avengers haul butts over there, ready to throw down with Ultron, and find. . . Alkhema?

Sorry, Alkhema-2, the second version of Ultron's second attempt to create a wife, this one with a mind based off Mockingbird's brain patterns. She doesn't like him any better than any of his other attempts to create a family do, but she does like the idea of killing all humans. She just wants to do it one at a time and savor the experience. Which makes me a little uneasy about Mockingbird.

She and the Avengers throw down, which mostly doesn't go well for the heroes. Vision tries his old "increase density to maximum and fall on her" trick, but she just grabs his ankle and throws him into Thor. Firestar tries to heat her up enough to melt something inside, but has to be pushed out of the way of an energy blast by T'Challa at the last second. Scarlet Witch ends up saving the day by using her powers to mess with the "molecular rearranger" that keeps Alkhema and Ultron's adamantium insides from locking up. I thought they were only adamantium on the outside, but OK, sure.

In other developments, Justice and Firestar moved their stuff into the mansion, although Vance's leg is in a cast from him dumbly rushing into battle with a concussion a few issues earlier to help Carol Danvers fend off the Doomsday Man. Kind of sad that Vance wanted to be an Avenger for years, and his stint with the team never really went anywhere, while Firestar really stepped up during the same stretch.

Also, Wanda and Wonder Man visit a restaurant from the area she grew up, and Wanda finds out Vision has been coming there a lot in his civilian identity. I wasn't aware he even had one of those. Wanda thinks this is a little fishy, since Vision had told her he didn't retain any of his memories from when they were married, before he got dismantled and turned emotionless or whatever by John Byrne.

Man, between insisting Wanda and Vision couldn't really have kids, and that Namorita was really a clone of Namora, late-80s Byrne had a real thing about who could and couldn't procreate.

{2nd longbox, 27th comic. Avengers (vol. 3) #19, by Kurt Busiek (writer), George Perez (artist), Al Vey (finisher), Tom Smith (colorist), Wes Abbott (letterer)}