Sunday, January 27, 2019

Sunday Splash Page #50

"A First Draft for Weird Al ", in Avengers Annual #16, by Tom DeFalco (story), Bob Hall (breakdowns), Tom Palmer (finishes), Max Scheele (colorist), Ken Lopez (letterer)

For the record, the Hall/Palmer art team is only for part of the book. As the story takes places in several locations, there are different art teams for each.

I only own two Avengers Annuals, and the other is the one where Rogue steals Carol Danvers' powers and we find out Carol was manipulated into going into that other dimension with Marcus, so. . . yeah, not using that one. (It's part of my copy of Essential Ms. Marvel).

This is the one where Hawkeye proves he's the guy you want around when Elders of the Universe come calling, just in case you thought his triumph against the Collector was a fluke. Grandmaster interrupts an intramural game of Avengers' baseball to tell them he's stolen Death's powers and he's going to destroy the universe, unless the Avengers can get past his Legion of the Unliving and disarm the bombs he's created.

The Avengers stop 4 of the 5 bombs, the only team failing being the Iron Man/Mockingbird/Black Knight/Dr. Druid quartet (drawn by Jackson Guice/Kevin Nowlan). To be fair, their opposition had Terrax and Dracula, so that was going to be a steep road to climb. I'm not sure if Death reverses that damage once it regains control. I'm also interested that Death can apparently reach into any afterlife realm, considering Skurge the Executioner was probably not in the same afterlife as Captain Mar-vell or Red Guardian.

The joke about this story is that practically everyone in the Legion of the Unliving has since turned out to still be alive, or else come back from the dead. Bucky's in there, Hyperion, Norman Osborn as the Green Goblin (unless that was actually Bart Hamilton, the second Green Goblin), Drax, Terrax, Nighthawk. . .

2 comments:

SallyP said...

I blame everything on Dr. Druid.

CalvinPitt said...

It's not his fault, he's being manipulated by Nebula! Or was it a lady version of Kang? I can't remember, one of those two.