Random back Issues #31 - Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #4

What time is it? Time to reset the "Days Without a Hank Pym Breakdown" counter to 0!

A comic written in the mid-2000s about comics written in the 1960s. OK, that doesn't narrow it down much, but we're looking at the second Avengers mini-series Joe Casey wrote, set at the point when the Vision joined the team. I used a page from this issue for Sunday Splash Page #52.

The first half of the issue is the the Avengers attacking an island under AIM control. While the Black Panther, Wasp, Hawkeye, and Vision try to reach Central Command, Giant Man faces a wave of Adaptoids alone. He stops them, but he went somewhere ugly in his head to do it.

Unfortunately, the Super-Adaptoid escaped, which means Nick Fury isn't happy, and neither is Agent Mirch, who is some sort of proto-Gyrich government liaison dipshit. The type who blames the Avengers for not doing a better job, blames them for the existence of threats like AIM, says the President is used to disappointment, crap like that.

In other developments, Hawkeye and Vision stop a high-tech bank robbery, but get some flack from a mouthy cop. Hawkeye quite reasonably points out that if the police are so sure they can handle guys with disruptor weapons, they're free to do so. Note that I'm not saying Hawkeye says it in a reasonable tone, only that he makes a good point. This is the exact reason I wouldn't last as a superhero. Someone would complain about how I saved them and I'd tell them to fuck off and handle their own problems next time.

On top of that the public hasn't exactly warmed up to the Vision, and neither has SHIELD, which harbors suspicions he's actually the Super-Adaptoid in disguise. Hawkeye notices their surveillance van and knocks on the side, asking if they can have a copy of the footage. Hawkeye's kind of honked off at SHIELD anyway, since he thinks they're stealing Natasha away from him. No Clint, that would be Daredevil doing that. Eventually.

This is also during the stretch where T'Challa is teaching high school under the name Luke Charles. He's worried about one of his students, a quiet kid named Delroy, who misses school a lot and gets bullied by some hotshot everyone calls Mack. Or "The Mack", whichever. Guy is twice Delroy's size and has six guys backing him up, pardon me if I'm not impressed. Anyway, Mack implies that Delroy should just kill himself, or else Mack will do it for him. Lovely.

And then Pym has the nightmare above. It's the Adaptoid in his mouth that really sells the creepiness. He heads to his lab where he thinks about Captain America and Iron Man telling him about the heavy burden of being leader, then begins smashing up his equipment in frustration. By next issue, he'll be running around as Yellowjacket, claiming he killed Hank Pym.

This is the halfway point of this mini-series, and before we're done, we have the Yellowjacket fiasco, the Super-Adaptoid shows up, a certain section of Wakandan society sends a top assassin after T'Challa for apparently abandoning his duties, and the Wasp tries marrying Yellowjacket to shock Hank out of this. . . whatever you'd call it.

[2nd longbox, 70th comic. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #4, by Joe Casey (writer), Will Rosado (penciler), Tom Palmer (inker), Wil Quintana (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)]