Saturday Splash Page #229

"Another of Iron Man's Drunk Monologues," in What If? (vol. 1) #9, by Don Glut (writer), Alan Kupperberg (breakdowns), Bill Black (finishes/inker), Carl Gafford (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

These days, Marvel pumps out What Ifs every few years, usually built around the notion that one of their various Big Events would turn out differently. I didn't want to read those events the first time around, so an alternative version isn't much interest to me.

Before that, there was the '90s volume, that ran for 115 issues and was usually about some event or another going differently. Inferno, Atlantis Attacks, The Evolutionary War. Even back then, and even with the writers making sure to explain what was different, I usually didn't care. The big summer events tended to run through the Annuals, and I usually didn't buy those, so they didn't matter much to me. Most of them could best be described as "rocks fall, everybody dies." Marvel Earth, and sometimes the entire universe, always just one hairsbreath away from total annihilation, apparently. 

The second volume did introduce "Mayday" Parker, aka Spider-Girl, so that's one thing it's got going for it.

Before that, the first volume ran for 47 issues across 7 years. I own two of those; besides the issue above, there's #45, by David Anthony Kraft and Ron Wilson, where the gamma bomb explosion links Rick Jones and Banner's minds, and when Rick dies from the radiation, the Hulk goes berserk. Considering the issue costs us half the Fantastic Four and 40% of the original Avengers line-up, you could probably file it under "rocks fall, everybody dies," too. It's fun to break the toys sometimes.

And then there's this issue, where the notion for Agents of Atlas started, which Iron Man showing off some "dimensional transporter" he built that lets them spy on other timelines and worlds. Yes, 30 years before Civil War, Iron Man was invading your privacy under a flimsy pretext. Basically, Jimmy Woo puts together a team to protect (and rescue, when protecting fails) President Eisenhower from Yellow Claw.

The roster is different from what Parker and Kirk would use. 3-D Man's in there (though Parker would eventually add the current 3-D Man/former Triathlon in the very short-lived Atlas series), and while Namora leads them to M-11 (not given a name here, much chattier), she begs off to search for Namor. Who is, presumably, roaming the streets of New York as a bum, waiting for Johnny Storm to singe his beard off. Marvel Boy convinces Gorilla Man to come along by promising to search for a way to make him human again with Uranian science, because Ken's too afraid to even be on the same continent as his wife. The wife who ridiculed his visions of a gorilla?

Glut (or Roy Thomas, since this was his concept, shocking, I know, that Roy Thomas plumbed the depths of forgotten comics history) tries to draw parallels between the characters chosen and the ones Iron Man invited to his little picture show. Gorilla Man and Beast, M-11 and Vision, Venus and Thor, Marvel Boy and Iron Man, 3-D Man and Captain America. The '50s group even call themselves "Avengers", albeit with the absolutely terrible battlecry, "Go, Avengers, Go." Like, holy shit, I'd be embarrassed to shout that and charge into battle. I'd rather yell "SPOOOOOON!" than "Go, Avengers, Go."

Some of them feel like a stretch - 3-D Man's presented as a cocky asshole who likes to wind up Gorilla Man with comments about his smell, which just screams "Hawkeye" - and I can't decide whether Thomas and Glut picked the '50s cast to conform to a current Avengers roster, and that's why Namora didn't stick around, or those were just the Golden Age characters they wanted to use, and they picked Avengers to match.

Also of note, Woo brings them together, it's his arch-foe that's the mastermind behind the plot, he's the one that tracks the villains after they escape with the President, but he doesn't really get acknowledged as part of the team. There's no one pointed to as his parallel among the Avengers. I think Parker makes him the Captain America of the Agents, the driving force that unites them, with enough courage and skill this disparate bunch will follow his lead.

Sunday Splash Page #426

"Not First Law Compliant," in Menace #11, by John Romita (artist), Joe Letterese (letterer), writer and colorist unknown

Menace was, as you might guess, a horror title. This is actually from the last issue, although it's not the cover story (that was "Locked In!") The robot has no name in the original story; the name Parker gave it is a reference to being in the 11th issue. In the Agents of Atlas ongoing, he's revealed as the 11th robot in what's called the "Menacer" series, and Suwan has a much more recent model, albeit one that can't compete on its own with all the Uranian science components M-11's gotten from Bob.

The original story is only 5 pages, revolving around a scientist who refuses to release his robot until it's perfect, to the annoyance of his business manager who wants the 5 million bucks they can get for it. The robot obeys commands, but doesn't know when to stop obeying. You tell it to pick up a chair, it picks up one, then another, and keeps going until it's picked up every chair. A flaw the manager isn't aware of when he gets impatient and tells the robot to kill "the man in the room." Which is the end for the scientist, but also the end for the manager, as another man in the room.

In Agents of Atlas, the scientist, realizing the people who commissioned him planned evil things, sacrifices his life force to the machine so it will have emotions and free will. The fun is that, with the '50s sci-fi robot design, M-11 doesn't make facial expressions. So no one, including his teammates, can really tell what's going on in his head. There's no indication Bob can read his mind, or that Venus' emotional abilities have any effect whatsoever.

Sometimes Parker plays that for mystery. Everyone is standing silently in Bob's spaceship, and M-11 suddenly shouts "Archiving!" before going silent again. Sometimes it's for comedy, when Gorilla Man thinks the robot needs a push to get angry to win the fight with M-21 and gets a personality module based on "The Greatest" installed. M-11 spends a few pages talking like Muhammad Ali before Bob reveals the module didn't work at all and M-11's just humoring Ken.

And sometimes M-11 sparks conflict. He's the one that contacts Bob and Ken about Jimmy Woo, and it's only late in the mini-series everyone figures out why. In the ongoing series, Jimmy has just about talked their way out of a fight with the Avengers when M-11 recognizes Wolverine's voice. Because Logan blew him up during a mission in Cuba in the '50s, and M-11, like Michael Jordan, took that personally. But Logan doesn't put the pieces together - so much for House of M giving him his memories back - and M-11 won't explain his actions to anyone. It's just a thing they have to deal with.

Oh well, not like killer robots and X-Men get along all that well anyway.

Saturday Splash Page #228

"Gorilla Mad," in Men's Adventure #26, by Robert Q. Sale (penciler/inker), writer, colorist, letterer unknown

Gorilla Man's first appearance is a horror story, significantly altered and embellished by Parker and probably other writers. In Agents of Atlas, Ken Hale was a big time sportsman and adventurer type, not unlike Rex Mason before he became Metamorpho. Except Hale started to get paranoid about aging and looked for a cure. Leading him to a legend about a gorilla man that never ages, never gets sick or dies. Ken treks into the jungle, gets lost, runs out of food and water, and then comes face-to-face with the gorilla man. He kills it, hand-to-hand because his gun is empty, and becomes it. But he won't age, get sick or injured, or die! Of natural causes, anyway.

In this story, though, Ken Hale just seems to be some guy living the suburban lifestyle with his wife, who starts being tormented by nightmares of two gorilla creatures fighting to the death. Things get bad enough he can hear the howls of the beast even while awake, so he's got to find a solution or go mad. One pipe-smoking guy (who Parker reveals was Mr. Lao, the dragon that's the power behind the throne of the Atlas Organization) gives him a lead to Kenya. Hale can't find any guides who either have any idea where to look, or are willing to take him, so he goes alone. And finds the gorilla man. He drops his gun and fights it, and kills it, and well, you know the rest.

Parker's approach works a lot better, since it provides a real reason for Ken Hale to go hunt down the gorilla man beyond "he started having nightmares, for some unexplained reason." Giving Ken the pulp hero-style adventurer backstory lets him fill the "gruff, but lovable" archetype on the team. Can't go wrong having a Ben Grimm on your roster! He can have all kinds of esoteric knowledge and skills he picked up in his travels and adventures, but still have plenty of things he doesn't know that can be explained to him (and us.)

Gorilla Man might be the one that needs the team the most. Yeah, Namora being unfrozen is a definite upgrade for her, but once that was accomplished she could always return to Atlantis. Venus had found a place, Bob was living with the Uranians. Jimmy Woo obviously wasn't satisfied with how his career had gone, but he did still have a job and colleagues who either trusted him enough, or were desperate enough, to follow him down the Atlas rabbit hole (and get incinerated by Mr. Lao.)

Gorilla Man's apparently working for SHIELD - maybe in that monster version of the "Howling Commandos?" - but he didn't even know Woo recommended him for the spot. He doesn't seem to have any particular loyalty to SHIELD. He throws them over to help Jimmy without a second thought, so I doubt he formed any lasting friendships. But the guy who got him to stop hiding away in the jungle? That's the guy he'll go to the wall for, who helps him believe what he's doing matters.

That said, I think he's gotten easily the most use outside Agents of Atlas of any of the characters. He was performing some sort of role for the Avengers when they were based out of a frozen Celestial. May still be doing that, actually. He was on some "Agents of Wakanda" team a few years back. He's a talking gorilla, and like I said, he can be sort of the Ben Grimm on any roster, so naturally people are going to want to use him. 

Sunday Splash Page #425

"Cliffs of Peril," in Marvel Mystery Comics #82, by Ken Bald? (penciler), George Klein? (inker), writer and letterer unknown

Namora has the earliest appearance of the characters that would go on to be the Agents of Atlas, making her debut 15 months prior to Venus. A bunch of crooks - who own their own submarine, as crooks commonly did in the 1940s - attack the undersea kingdom - not called Atlantis, because it seems to be in the Pacific - Namor and Namora call home while Namor's off pursuing crooks in Asia. Everyone gets shot in what is essentially a jewel heist, but Namora's only grazed. So when Namor comes home, they team up, and catch up to the crooks when they try to rob a gambling boat.

Seems like you'd try that before throwing on scuba gear to attack an entire kingdom. Scale up, not down.

Namora gets saddled with the old chloroformed and taken hostage bit, but Namor sends her a message in a broadcast meant to make the crooks think there's a lot of jewels hidden in a particular place. The trap works, the crooks are caught, and Namor foists Namora off on his old friend Betty Dean. Which is what he did with Namorita about 30 years later. I guess when you're a grouchy dickhead like the Avenging Son, you only have so many people to ask for unreasonable favors.

As first appearances go, it's not a stunning debut. Namora gets a couple of hits in, but gets k.o.'ed twice and taken hostage. She does figure out the hidden meaning of Namora's message, and we're told she's strong enough to break the handcuffs if she gets some water splashed on her, but that happens off-panel, so it's not like she makes a dramatic escape and clocks some guy about to shoot Namor in the back. Her biggest contribution is that she heard one of the crooks referred to by name. Which we don't actually see in the comic, so when she said the name was 'Stoop', I thought she just didn't know English and one of the guys said "stop" for some reason.

Prior to Agents of Atlas, Namora spent 30+ years being dead, until M-11 decided that the poison probably didn't kill her, only put her in a coma or something. Quite how it figured that out, from thousands of miles away, I have no idea. Parker plays her up as a the team's (physical) powerhouse. When the team starts to fragment under surprise reveals, she brings down Bob's flying saucer with one hit. Gorilla Man clocks her in the face with a big metal pipe and it barely scratches her.

Leonard Kirk's preliminary sketches show he wanted her to have no pupils as a result of resurrection, but that seems to have been overruled. Probably because she was only mostly dead. Her ankle wings are more like the wings of a flying fish than a bird. She's got some of that same noble air as Namor, but it doesn't tip over into grating arrogance like it does with him. Maybe she's less insecure than Namor, doesn't need to make such a show of things, or maybe having lost so many decades, and having been largely forgotten, gave her some perspective. She understands the weight Jimmy Woo assumes, first as leader of this team, and later as the leader of the Atlas Organization, because she knows a little about ruling.

Outside of maybe Gorilla Man - people love talking primates! - Namora probably got the most use outside Agents of Atlas. She got drawn into the Incredible Hercules book, and she and Herc had some kind of a romantic thing going for a minute. Of course, then Parker started something up between her and Namor, and I'm going to have side with Gorilla Man who observed, 'guess they even got hillbillies under the sea.'

Unfortunately, Mark Millar killed off Namorita in Civil War right about the time Agents of Atlas came out - Parker says that was a total coincidence on the timing - and by the time Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning brought at least a version of Namorita back in Nova, Agents of Atlas had pretty much run out of chances to find a receptive marketplace. Neither character has gotten much use in the last 15 years, and I definitely don't recall any sort of mother-daughter reunion. 

Saturday Splash Page #227

"Heavenly Body," in Venus #1, by George Klein? (penciler), Lin Strater? (inker), writer and letterer unknown

I'm not proud of that title, but I make do with what my brain provides. Also, Jeff Parker says in the HC edition of Agents of Atlas Ken Bald was the artist, or the creator of the character, but the Grand Comics Database has it updated to their best guess being Klein as penciler.

Venus started as more of a romance mag. Venus is the actual goddess of love, and lives on the planet Venus, which, because this came out in 1948, has lush wooded hills and oceans, rather than barren rock, crushing atmospheric pressure and sulfuric acid rain that never reaches the surface. But Venus is bored with all this idyll, and wishes she could go to Earth and meet a guy.

By the magic of plot contrivance, she is somehow whisked to Earth, and deposited in the middle of a street in New York City, where a cop tells her she can't just walk around like she's sleepwalking, because it's 'demoralizing.' Would you rather she walked around staring at her phone all day? A Mister Hammond sees all the commotion, and decides this lady is just the publicity stunt he needs to make his beauty magazine, creatively named "Beauty Magazine", a big hit. Presumably none of the other beauty mags on the stands had thought of using pictures of pretty girls.

Venus feels like a MacGuffin in that stuff happens around her and because of her, but she's not really doing any of it. She lost her powers in the abrupt trip to Earth, so she's a regular lady, except with no actual skills besides looking nice. Mostly it's Hammond doing everything. Hammond decides to run a story that she was discovered on a remote Pacific Island, Hammond fires his magazine editor when the guy refuses to go along with this nonsense. Hammond then names Venus editor, despite her complete lack of experience, and to the annoyance of his secretary, who Venus immediately tags as her enemy. How about making friends instead?

Goddess of love, unless she gives me a side-eye. Then it's on.

Later, the book shifted to more of horror bent, with Venus running into mummies and living skeletons, stuff like that. I'm guessing she got her powers back for that stretch, but I don't know for sure. Parker went with the idea Venus was a siren given human form - made to look like the actual goddess Aphrodite, to said goddess' irritation - by a Sorcerer Supreme that Golden Claw paid to act as security. She spent so running from that past and all the lives she took she forgot it entirely, until the worst possible moment for the team. Jimmy Woo helps her realize she's since used her powers to help people by ending conflicts and getting them to talk or maybe fall in love, and that seems to help.

The Agents of Atlas version is generally bubbly and friendly. Greets everyone with big hugs, changes her hair color to red once Namora's awake because the team can't have two blondes, that kind of thing. Someone that, at a glance, might be dismissed as an airhead, but she's perceptive and empathetic. Some of that is her powers, but she chooses how to use the ability, so some of it has to be down to personality. She chose to travel to the conflict-torn region where Ken Hale became a gorilla to end all the strife there. She's also the one who embraces her power when it's the only way to stop the team tearing itself apart. Jimmy Woo could encourage her, but Venus had to open up and do it.

The ultimate end of Agents of Atlas was Jimmy Woo embracing a destiny he didn't know about, and deciding to turn something used for evil towards good. All the characters are dealing with that to varying degrees, making the best of bad situations. Ken Hale accepting he's a gorilla and just hiding away is no good, Bob accepting he can't go back to Uranus. Venus has to deal with her origin not being at all what she thought, and having some skeletons in her closet as a result, but making the best of it with her friends. If they can make the world better, and she can help by ending fights faster, why not?

Sunday Splash Page #424

"Blinded by the Bling," in Marvel Boy #1, by Russ Heath (artist), writer, colorist, letterer unknown

I'm just going through these alphabetically, but it's a little funny I picked the two titles that lasted the least amount of time, as, per Grand Comics Database, Marvel Boy's book only lasted two issues. Gotta love the cover, though, where the blurb declares him the 'newest, most amazing,' in line 1, then finishes with, 'finally in his own magazine!' on line 5. How can it be "finally" if he just got created?

Friction between grammar and hype aside, Bob Grayson's scientist father decided to live on the Moon with his infant son after his wife was killed by Nazis in the 1930s. Except their rocket got redirected and landed on the uranium crust of Uranus' surface. Ah, 1950s astronomy, gotta love it. Now 17, Bob's developed some level of telepathy - presumably from all that radiation in the planet's crust - and his dad's sending him back to Earth to try and prevent the outbreak of violence over a new continent rising from the sea. Bob gets a costume, a big red flying saucer, and wristbands that temporarily blind people with 'atomic radiance.' But no killing, Bob's got to handle things the old-fashioned way: punching.

Then he fights pirates who happened to get beached on the continent as it emerged from the sea and thought they'd declare themselves kings, tries and fails to convince the actual inhabitants that surface dwellers aren't all like those guys, and watches the island sink back beneath the waves.

By the time Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk were creating Agents of Atlas, there was a slight problem. Someone brought Marvel Boy back in the pages of Fantastic Four, as "The Crusader." He behaved erratically, attacking banks that wouldn't give him loans for medical supplies to take back to Uranus, and eventually was destroyed by his much more powerful wristbands (which later became Quasar's quantum bands.)

So Parker changed Bob's backstory. Not the part about him being from Earth originally, or his scientist dad wanting to escape the violence. But the people living on the surface of Uranus weren't true Uranians, who are an amoeba-like collective living deeper within the planet, but Eternals who tried to conquer Earth thousands of years earlier and were exiled. They were allowed to stay on Uranus by the true inhabitants on the condition they don't leave, their byproducts being useful to the collective. Bob's exploits as Marvel Boy were supposed to make him an ambassador of sorts, so Earth would invite them back, which is totally different from leaving, totally. As Bob puts it, 'the Uranians do not consider such fine points of detail.'

The Crusader was the child of the exiles, modified to resemble Bob, but brainwashed to be blindly loyal, who got hatched before he was ready when the Uranians figured out what the exiles were up to and destroyed them. Bob ends up stuck in a dying colony, until he's offered a place in the Uranian collective, where he lived for decades, leaving to help save Jimmy Woo. Which also means he left the collective forever. No going back.

So Parker and Kirk go away from the superhero aesthetic, leaning on the '50s sci-fi vibe. He's still got a flying saucer - silver-grey instead of red - and the sort of vaguely rubber spacesuit look you might see in The Day the Earth Stood Still or something similar. No more wristbands and fisticuffs; Bob leans on his technology and his telepathy, which has advanced from some low-level mind-reading to linking thoughts and creating illusions/altering perceptions.

Decades as part of a collective of a species very different from humans has changed him. In the early issues of the mini-series, he keeps speaking in an alien language and admits human minds are difficult to fool, because they're so strange to him now. His reactions and emotions seem muted; Venus observes that he used to blush around her, but now he barely reacts. Even as he settles in with his old friends, he maintains a detached air, with some occasional dry humor, mostly at M-11 and Gorilla Man's friendship.

I'm a little surprised having been part of a collective for so long, that Bob isn't more tactile with his teammates. Instead, he tends to stand apart, hands folded behind his back. But he also extends his esophagus to eat, and his helmet produces a Uranian atmosphere, so maybe it's a safety issue.

Saturday Splash Page #226

"People's Committee of Exposition," in Yellow Claw #1, by Al Feldstein (writer), Joe Maneely (artist), Stan Goldberg? (colorist), Irv Watanabe? (letterer)

When I started the splash page series in 2017, I tended to keep the entries short, before deciding I had a lot to say in some cases, and it was my blog, so I should go ahead and say it. But by then, I was already past Agents of Atlas. However, the hardcover of the original mini-series had the first appearances of each member of the team, and those are the only issues I have of those titles, so that's how we're spending the next 3.5 weekends.

I'm less enthused that the first entry gives us Yellow Peril and Red Peril nonsense, but that's '50s comics for ya, at least here in the States. Hopefully it was better elsewhere in the world.

Set sometime after Mao's Communist forces pushed Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist forces out of China, they're looking to invade Formosa and finish the job. But they can't possibly defeat the mighty American Navy directly, unless the legends of this ancient mystic the Yellow Claw, and his strange powers, are true. So a general goes looking, finds Claw, gets a demonstration of his mind control and crystal ball, and goes away thinking this is going to work out great. Except the Claw intends to use them to aid his own conquest of the entire world, starting by bringing down the U.S. from within.

Maybe the funniest part to me is the Claw enters the U.S. via a rubber raft from a submarine. Why not just enter the country in full splendor and mind control your way through any issues? Just to cinch the Claw's criminal bonafides, he tracks down the former commandant of Auschwitz and threatens to expose him if he doesn't help. Jimmy Woo only appears in the last few panels of the last page of the introductory story, far less than the Claw's grand-niece Suwan, who seems unsure of his plans, but unable to resist his powers.

This was just the first of two or three stories in the first issue, but unfortunately, it's all that's in the hardcover. Yellow Claw's the Fu Manchu, inscrutable Oriental stereotype with his insidious, underhanded schemes and whatnot. Woo doesn't have enough page time to establish much beyond being an FBI agent whose parents used to tell him stories about Yellow Claw. Presumably it was difficult for them to finish these stories, as every peasant we see runs screaming into the hills at the mere mention of the name. Suwan would, I guess, carry on a star-crossed lovers thing with Woo, trying to buck her grand-uncle's will.

Agents of Atlas ditches the obnoxious coloring and de-ages Claw a bit. Which, if he supposedly learns from some lama how to prolong his life, why let himself look 2 trillion years old? "Yellow Claw" becomes an Americanized bastardization of his true title "Golden Claw", and that's separate from his name, which ends up being "Master Plan." Which year, is cheesy, but fits into the notion Parker's playing with, that everything that's going on has been part of an extremely long-range scheme the Claw's been up to and had to adjust on the fly to various complications, mostly related to Woo's career path.

Because Woo did end up getting some use in Marvel in the '70s and '80s, but basically as just another SHIELD agent. You know how it goes, a writer creates a new agent they think is really keen, but every other writer has their own preference, so it's nice for creating a bench of actual SHIELD agents with faces and personalities, but none of them ever really rise to prominence. At least, not for anything good (looking at Maria Hill and her Gyrich-level obnoxiousness and incompetence.)

And that gets folded in. Golden Claw was supposed to be a villain Woo would defeat that create a legend for himself, but government bureaucracy - and racism, and the myth of meritocracy - being what it is, he got shunted into some dead-end desk job and that was it. So Woo aged, and stagnated, and grew frustrated and probably resentful of how his life turned out and seized an opportunity to be the big hero, expose a conspiracy, and got his team incinerated. Bob restores him, but to his last mental impression of Jimmy, recorded by his headband in 1959.

So you get young Jimmy Woo, hotshot secret agent type, in his prime, who also gets to be the "man out of time," having lost decades of his life. It's an opportunity to do things right the second time, minus the desperation and regret. (It also puts him behind in regard to how much things have changed for other people he once knew, which comes back to bite him in the ass when he goes looking for Suwan, who had a very interesting 50 years of her own.) Jimmy's operating outside the law, his team pulled together by trust and respect rather than an order from Eisenhower. Which also means they can't be disbanded on a whim by the shifting political climate. The work can continue for as long as they want to work together.

Saturday Splash Page #184

"Gorilla-Robot-Uranian-Merwoman Alliance," in Secret Wars: Agents of Atlas #1, by Tom Taylor (writer), Steve Pugh (artist), Tamra Bonvillain (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer)

So, besides those 3 mini-series I bought during Hickman's Secret Wars, I also bought this one-shot. Probably because Marvel wasn't putting much else out I was interested in at the time. It starred the Agents of Atlas, who hadn't gotten much run in the previous 4 years, though this was written by Tom Taylor rather than Jeff Parker.

Like most of the tie-ins, this focused on a specific section of Doom's Battleworld, one Heinrich Zemo rules through constant, totalitarian oversight and control, with SHIELD as his police force. Atlas is a hidden cell fighting against Zemo, but their leader Jimmy Woo (rocking an eyepatch in this world) went missing after the last mission. So besides the exposition, it's a rescue mission story.

With only one issue, Taylor can't spare much focus for Namora or Marvel Boy. Gorilla-Man gets most of the page time, since he describes the mission where Woo went missing to SHIELD boss Phil Coulson (who's been secretly helping Atlas), and is the one who finds Woo. And since this is essentially a What If? story, Taylor can afford to do a few things Parker didn't. So we finally see the Gorilla-Man curse transferred (to Helmut Zemo, who Pugh draws as a psychotic-looking kid before he becomes a psychotic gorilla-kid.) And we see Venus return to her roots as a siren, leading Heinrich to his death.

Those Zemos, always falling off stuff.

Pugh's design for Zemo's realm, called Metropolitia, is a weird mix. SHIELD's HQ reminds me a bit of Jetsons' architecture, all curved lines and discs, while the vehicles hew to a sort of '50s aesthetic. Which maybe fits with the origins of some of the characters, especially the later idea of Jimmy Woo as sort of a super-spy. But the Metropolitia also has circles in the ground that seem to discharge huge bursts of fire or energy, so there's a bit of Apokolips there. The bits of the city and factories imply a closed-in place, though this place is nowhere near as dirty and drenched in shadows as Darkseid's turf. Zemo's home basically looks like a classic medieval castle, all mortared stone and wooden doors with barred windows.

It could be argued to fit the hodgepodge nature of Battleworld, plus Zemo's attempts to dress up 20th Century fascism with a veneer of the divine right of kings. He should rule, because he's Zemo and he's better. And he should get to have a goddess for a wife. But he rules through a repressive watchdog state that treats his subjects as guinea pigs (he has an army of Weapon Xs, which are just regular people that were experimented on and run around in the weird helmet and underwear from the Barry Windsor-Smith story), and he has to imprison and torture Venus' friend to have any hope of getting her to speak with him.

Saturday Splash Page #5

 

"Uninvited Guests," in X-Men vs. Agents of Atlas #2, by Jeff Parker (writer), Carlo Pagulayan and Carlos Rodriguez (pencilers), Gabriel Hardman and Chris Samnee (artists), Jason Paz and Terry Pallot (inkers), Wilfredo Quintana and Veronica Gandini (colorists), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

Take less time to discuss this 2-issue mini-series than it did to write all those names. Consider this as a companion piece to Avengers vs. Atlas (discussed in Sunday Splash Page #59). The other mini-series Marvel tried to use to get a little more fanbase engagement with Agents of Atlas before the second attempt at an ongoing. Atlas only lasted five issues, shorter even than the original mini-series, so we can safely say that didn't work.

This is set during the stretch when the X-Men had formed their own little island community. No, not Krakoa. No, not Genosha. The island off the coast of San Francisco made from leftover bits of Asteroid M. Man, that thing just rained down over the entire planet, didn't it? Way to mass pollute Magneto, you dick.

Atlas steals Cerebro, sorry Cerebra, because Bob the Uranian wants to use it to boost his telepathy to find their missing teammate Venus. Because they figure the X-Men won't agree to let them borrow it. Because Atlas was posing as a criminal empire with ties to Norman Osborn, or just because they're jerks? Either/or. Turns out Cerebra doesn't mesh well with Bob's headband that allows telepathic transmission, and the Atlas team and the (surviving) Original 5 X-Men get sucked into some sort of shared feedback loop thing, playing off the story Parker did in X-Men First Class where the kids meet Gorilla Man while looking for Xavier. 

Parker also takes the opportunity to continue the grudge match between Wolverine and M-11 he established in the first Agents of Atlas ongoing. The one dating back to Logan blowing the robot up during a mission involving mind-controlling insects in Cuba in the 1950s, then renewed during a fight against the New Avengers.

The fight gets halted by Namor, of all people, since he's allied with both groups. He literally shouts, 'Cease this battle at once! Namor Commands!' and it works. Everyone just stops and looks around awkwardly while Emma Frost notes Namor still has the loudest voice. Anyway, the groups set their differences aside, Bob locates Venus, who has actually been abducted by agents of Aphrodite, who is displeased about Venus borrowing her likeness without paying usage rights. That leads into the mini-event Assault on New Olympus, which was mostly an Incredible Hercules storyline, but I'm pretty sure the Agents of Atlas were involved.

The art's not quite as much a mess as the credits would suggest. Samnee draws the sections in the shared telepathic space. Hardman draws the part at the end involving Venus at the very end. Rodriguez takes over for Pagulayan after Samnee's part, which is a little distracting because his art is close to Pagulayan's, but just different enough you notice the shift.

Sunday Splash Page #59

"It's An Internet Comment Section Come To Life," Avengers vs. Atlas #4, by Jeff Parker (writer), Gabriel Hardman (artist), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

In between the end of Agents of Atlas and Atlas, Marvel released two mini-series starring the team to try and drum up a little more interest in them. One two-issue mini with the X-Men (which we won't get to for years at this rate), and the other with the Avengers.

It starts with what were the current day Avengers at the moment, but through time-travel shenanigans, ends up with the earliest Avengers. Kang is involved, but is not the actual architect of the problem. Or not the sole architect at least.

It's not essential by any means, but it is a fun little story. Parker knows how to write fight scenes, to play up characters' personalities. Iron Man and M-11 have a beam struggle going, and when Stark (in his earliest red-and-gold armor) wonders why M-11's power isn't declining, Gorilla Man shouts out that it's because M-11's insides are full of more machinery instead of boozy millionaire.

There's also a bit where Marvel Boy transmitted something important he learned to Hank Pym telepathically, and Tony does this slump-shouldered, sad complaint that Bob could have sent it to him, because he was a scientist, he'd have understood it. Plenty of good dunking on Stark in this.

Hardman's art is expressive and clean, it makes me think a bit of Russ Heath (his work from the Our Army at War comics from my dad's collection). The motion and energy is there, fights flow smoothly. His style works for robots, gorillas, and characters in bright costumes, and what more do you need?

Sunday Splash Page #4

"Killer Robots Compensate, Too" in Agents of Atlas #10, by Jeff Parker (writer), Gabriel Hardman and Paul Rivoche (artists), Elizabeth Dismang (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer).

It took three years after the initial mini-series before the Agents got themselves an ongoing. Jeff Parker still writing, working with a few different artists, mostly Carlos Pagulayan and Gabriel Hardman.

Set after Secret Invasion, when Norman Osborn became Boss of All Superheroes, Parker had the characters run with the Atlas Organization's rep as a worldwide criminal enterprise to try and get close to the bad guys and disrupt them from within, while inevitably coming into conflict with other heroes. From there, Parker could branch out, have Atlas involved with all sorts of skullduggery, run them up against heroes who bought their reputation, and mine the varied histories of the characters and their adventures from the '50s.

Unfortunately, the book got axed after just 11 issues. They tried again in early 2010, with Atlas, adding 3-D Man (formerly Triathlon) to the roster, but that got canceled after just 5 issues. Outside a one-shot during Secret Wars, I haven't seen the team since, although Gorilla Man's gotten some use in various Deadpool comics.

Sunday Splash Page #3

"Irate Living Robot", in Agents of Atlas (vol. 1) #5, by Jeff Parker (writer), Leonard Kirk (penciler), Kris Justice and Terry Pallot (inkers), Michelle Madsen (colorist), Dave Lanphear (letterer)

The mini-series taking a group of heroes from Marvel's '50s comics, previously united in a single What If?, brought back and expanded on by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk. The mini-series turned into another couple of mini-series a couple years later, and then a couple of attempts at ongoings that died quickly.

Agents of Atlas is the first book I remember buying strictly on the basis of what people on the Internet were saying about it. No one at the store was talking about, but I'd had the blog for a few months, and by the time the hardcover collection came in, I'd seen several glowing reviews. So I bought it on a whim.

Parker and Kirk weave the character's histories together, and incorporate the scattered appearances they'd had in the last 30+ years. Parker knows how to build character moments, humor, and stuff that's just cool or fun. Kirk's artwork knows how to sell all those, giving characters otherworldly or terrifying looks when necessary, or showing them as people who've all been alone until they found this family again.

What I Bought 11/10/2015 - Part 1

Relatively new comics have arrived, as I did not end up waiting a month to buy some really expensive first issues. Yeah, well, I'm kind of in a hurry. Patience is not one of my virtues.

Secret Wars: Agents of Atlas #1, by Tom Taylor (writer), Steve Pugh (artist), Tamra Bonvillain (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Looking at the cover, it's interesting Zemo has multiple different WANTED posters for Jimmy Woo. It makes me think he (or someone who works for him) had lots of photos of Jimmy, and just wanted to plaster them all over the city.

So it is a one-shot set on Battleworld, in a section controlled by a Zemo - is there more than one of those? - where the Atlas Foundation is an underground resistance movement. SHIELD only works to serve Zemo's interests, but Phil Coulson is tired of that, and wants to help Atlas find their missing leader Jimmy Woo. The team agrees to let him come along, and Gorilla Man finds Jimmy, but doesn't realize the one doing it is Zemo's young son, who kills him. What the kid didn't realize is that whole curse aspect of Gorilla Man's existence, so now he's the talking gorilla. As it turns out, Zemo's whole goal was to lure Venus in, because a transmission of her singing during a raid, made him fall in love with her. And as Venus points out, given her history, that's a bad move for the old man. So now a talking gorilla runs that city. Still better than Mr. Sinister, the Maestro, or any version of Tony Stark.

early in the story, Coulson keeps mentioning his assistant has other talents when Ken complains the kid is too stupid to realize a talking Gorilla (with a visitor badge that says "Gorilla Man" on it) is a gorilla, not a monkey. "Other talents", is the exact phrasing. Does that mean Coulson promoted the guy because they're having sex? Like corporate guys having an attractive secretary who can't type or take dictation kind of thing? Or did he mean the guy is good at busting skulls, but kind of an idiot? I'm inclined towards the latter, if only because there was never any indication of what other skills the guy has.

What Venus does to Zemo is interesting in light of a story I remember Jeff Parker writing during Secret Invasion, where Venus wasn't willing to make some Skrulls march to their deaths in the ocean (Jimmy said he understood, then ordered M-11 to death ray them, because dudes from the '50s don't fuck around when little green men invade Earth). Here, she lures Zemo in and literally walks his stupid ass off a ledge. Steve Pugh helps because he purposefully gives her this neutral look all through the exchange. She doesn't seem angry, but she isn't smiling. She lets Heinrich project whatever he wants so he'll follow her, completely ignoring what she's saying. I guess we could be meant to read she's singing all this to him, so he's enthralled, but I don't think so. There's nothing in Jimmy or anyone else's reactions that suggests that. Zemo's just That Dude, sure he's found a way to her heart.

It was a pretty solid book. The plot was fairly engaging. Though had the team never had Venus sing before? Shouldn't they have known it was a risk before now? That keeps hanging me up. There were some good character bits, although they all rely on you caring about the characters beforehand. I don't think Taylor did enough to where I would have necessarily felt bad about Ken's death if I didn't already like the character coming in. Frankly, I though Gorilla-Man's voice was a little off, and most of the other characters didn't get enough dialogue to tell one way or the other. Except M-11, which I think they did get right. You could chalk the differences up to alternate universe easily enough, though that brings us back to the same point. The story is banking on past stories to provide the emotional connection for the reader, but these aren't those characters, not exactly. It's the New 52 problem all over again, but as one-off, this works pretty well.

There are times I though Pugh might be photo-referencing actual pictures of gorillas for Ken's facial expressions, but I can't be sure of that, and otherwise I was fine with his art. Everything was clear, at least some of the Weapon X subjects had bizarre enough anatomy to suggest Zemo's experiments, and Helmut's transformation looked suitably terrifying to him. Might have been worth dragging out a few more panels, really let the horror sink in..

Astonishing Ant-Man #1, by Nick Spencer (writer), Ramon Rosanas (artist), Jordan Boyd (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer), Idette Winecoor (designer) - Here we see Scott after he just promised to provide non dairy creamer in the break room. Although, between the way he has his hand placed, and the position of Beetle's wing, I thought he was carrying a dagger or something. Like Scott was literally going to stab these super-crooks in the back. Also, is Porcupine standing slightly hunched because he knows Beetle's wings are going to obscure his face otherwise, or is he drunk? Or injured? Is Scott skimping on health insurance, too?

Scott's still trying to make his business work, and hasn't entirely pissed off his primary investor yet. He has pissed off his daughter, by continuing to publicly stay out of her life, while secretly watching over her. And Darren Cross is still trying to take revenge on him, though he wasn't prepared for the world of today. He's right, though, paying 1.2 billion dollars just to be on the board of the company. It can't possibly be worth that much just to avoid having to directly converse with super-powered hitmen you want to hire. At any rate, it kept Scott from getting his head lopped off by Whirlwind, but it cost him a security contract at a big art museum, and may have succeeded in pissing off the primary investor. No idea if any of that is why he's in prison.

So, Miami P.D. sent a cop to act as liaison for the possible security gig, and it's the guy currently married to Scott's ex, and what the hell look was he going for? He had the Caruso dark glasses, but with a white suit coat. Just laughable. And they've taken the Pym Particles out of Cassie's system entirely now, so no more Young Avengering for her. That seems more than a little stupid and pointless, but I guess if she could get herself into danger then Scott's excuse for staying out of her life would seem even more obviously stupid. Like a super-villain, assuming they know Lang is Ant-Man and Cassie is his daughter, is going to care than Scott doesn't seem to be spending time with her? No, they're still going to figure she's his daughter, and if they attack her, he will show up eventually. It's just such an obviously bad decision.

The Power Broker - I'm assuming he's new - is a nice design. Little understated with the suit, but the lavender skin and jaw-thing make him stand out a bit. I'm sure he reminds me of someone, but I can't place it. I'm curious how much of an ongoing threat he'd be in this book, or if he and Cross end up against each other, given their differing views on things. Cross is very much about creating or innovating in what he sees as concrete ways, while the Broker is working with what's already there, ostensibly to make it more efficiently utilized, but really just making sure he gets a cut of all the transactions. Beyond the Broker, though, I'm still cold on the art. The colors all seem very calm and subdued, which blunts the effect of important scenes, and the fight scene didn't do much for me, brief as it was.

There's something about it all that doesn't connect, which is true of the book in general. It was on the border with me before the relaunch, and this hasn't changed my opinion. I'm curious to see what Spencer has planned with all the other villains he's going to bring in, but I'm not sure I'll be sticking around long enough to find out.

31 Days of Scans - Most Cracktastic Moment

I’m not even sure what “cracktastic” means, exactly. Judging by the posts people went with on Scans-Daily, it leaned towards the Silver Age bizarre stuff. Just strange, silly things, I think. I probably had a few similar things I could have picked, but I went with the first thing that came to mind.

Agents of Atlas #11, from 2009. This was the final issue of Jeff Parker’s first attempt at an ongoing for his revived band of ‘50s era heroes, not to be confused with the original mini-series he’d done with Leonard Kirk a few years previously. At this point, Jimmy Woo and his bunch are under attack from the Jade Claw, the daughter of Woo’s old foe, Master Plan, and Jimmy’s old flame. Now she runs the other half of what was Atlas, the Great Wall, and she’s been kicking their asses for the last 3 issues. She has an advanced warbot of her own, one able to defeat M-11, despite the fact M-11 has been upgraded with Uranian tech (courtesy of the former Marvel Boy). Both sides are preparing for the final battle, but Gorilla Man thinks M-11 needs some help, so he turns to the creator of the Menacer series of robots, who has a possible solution.

Replicated personalities of history’s greatest warriors, and Ken knows just the one he wants. But who could be called “The Greatest”, if not warriors such as Shentzu and Alexander the Great?

M-11 has been infused with the fighting spirit (and smack talk skill) of Muhammed Ali! Which makes M-21 Joe Frazier. Or maybe George Foreman. It sort of looks like a grilling machine. But for a time, M-11 still can’t gain the advantage, until Bob destroys the satellite he’d detected earlier feeding power to M-21. And then Bob drops a little bombshell: The chip never worked on M-11, the robot is just jerking Ken around for kicks.

I think a robot pretending to be Ali to play a joke on a gorilla that used to be a man, while fighting another robot (which apparently has no sense of humor), is at least a little strange. I’m not showing you the finishing blow, because either you bought the series, so you already saw it. Or you didn’t buy the series, in which case it’s your fault it got canceled after 11 issues.

All panels from Agents of Atlas #11, written by Jeff Parker, colors by Elizabeth Dismang with Sotomayor, lettering by Tom Orzechowski. The first image was drawn by Gabriel Hardman, the other two by Dan Panosian.

Tracking The Gorilla-Man Across The Covers

I've been thinking about the covers for last summer's Gorilla-Man mini-series for awhile now. They're by three different artists, but I feel like they have an increasingly savage portrayal of the character.

The first issue, Dave Johnson draws the cover, and we have Gorilla-Man as the Bond-style secret agent. He's wearing a nice suit, albeit with rolled-up sleeves, to accommodate his large forearms I assume. He has a satisfied look on his face, a smile (or smirk) accompanied by a raised eyebrow as he regards the audience. His weapon of choice is a silenced handgun. Of course, there are the ladies surrounding him, most leaning casually against him, or draped over him, with whom he seems perfectly at ease. The other presence on the cover is an old enemy of his, Omega Borgia, who seems to have used science to empower himself, where Ken Hale used curse. Borgia is the sort of ridiculous-looking villain a super-spy might encounter, what with having a head within his head.

Issue #2's cover is courtesy of Leonard Kirk and Dave McCaig. It's an action shot, with Mr. Hale leaping out of a plane, two guns blasting in rapid-fire as he descends towards us. The weapons are louder, less precise, and Hale is certainly less friendly looking. He's glaring, and possibly yelling. At the least, he's baring his teeth at us. A slightly wild, certainly dangerous look. Still, he's using a parachute, and was at least riding in a plane (could have been flying it), so he hasn't abandoned skills he learned as a human. He's alone on this cover, though, no other people or creatures visible.

By Gorilla-Man #3 (by Gabriele Dell'Otto) there's hardly anything on the cover except Gorilla-Man. He's closer to the audience than ever, but also looks more savage than ever. The canines are more pronounced than they were in Kirk's rendition, and there's saliva dripping from his teeth, adding to his "wild" aspect.

Then there's the eyes. On the first two cover, the pupils were black, and in Dave Johnson's cover, Hale's eyes aren't different from those of the girls. In Kirk's the pupils seem smaller, but that could be the result of the eyes being more open, or because his Gorilla-Man is looking directly at us, while Johnson's is observing us from 3/4 perspective. With Dell'Otto's, Hale's pupils have a reddish-golden glow, from the light source behind his left shoulder. It brings to mind phrases about "eyes burning like coals in the night", or something similarly designed to suggest predatory threats. Because of the light, he doesn't have whites of eyes, so much as yellows, which adds to the otherness factor.

Both Kirk and Dell'Otto's Gorilla-Man wear a featureless shirt with buttons, (though Kirk's opts for more of a polo shirt, Dell'Otto's a full button down) in Dell'Otto's version the shirt seems to be straining to hold. Part of that is we can see the top buttons are undone, which isn't something we can determine with Kirk's cover. But part of it is simply how Dell'Otto draws it, suggesting the shirt is strained at the seams to contain all the raw power of the wearer. Certainly the suit Johnson drew him wearing fits comfortably, no sign of stress on the material. Though he's carrying a gun, Dell'Otto's Hale has opted to wield a very large knife instead. On the one hand, it's a potentially more silent weapon than the dual firearms of #2, but it could also be used to inflict pain slowly, and in great quantities, if the user so desired.

OK, having blathered on about all these details, whether they're real, or merely perceived by me, what's my point? The big revelation at the end of the mini-series is that Ken Hale doesn't want the curse undone. Prior to this, it was acknowledged in other Atlas stories that Ken had eventually come to grips with being a gorilla, but this is the first time I can recall reading that being human holds no appeal to him. It's not resignation, or even simple acceptance, it's an embracing of who he's become. He used the holographic emitter in the mini-series, simply because he might attract less attention on a mission as a human, than as a talking gorilla. He's perfectly comfortable being a gorilla around Banda. He speaks gorilla as fluently as he does English. So the cover could represent Ken Hale moving away from a gorilla who used to be human, still trying to be human, to simply being a gorilla who used to be human. There are things he learned as a human that can be useful, but he's not human, in the sense of being Homo sapiens anymore. However, he can combine what he knows as a human, with what he knows and can do as a gorilla.

As for why he's increasingly aggressive looking over the course of the covers, he told Banda is #3 that gorillas aren't violent, unless they feel threatened. He didn't seem to regard Borgia as much more than a nuisance, but Bastoc and his forces were more of an issue, so he'd have to respond with fewer witty one-liners, and more direct aggression.

Atlas Came In Peace, And Actually Meant It

I mentioned it in passing yesterday, but I was pleased to see Jimmy Woo and the Atlas crew solve the problem with the Echo World without resorting to potentially lethal violence. Not that I'm necessarily opposed to the heroes killing their foes, depending on the circumstances and the hero. But Marvel (and maybe DC, I'm not sure) seems to have this attitude where killing by heroes is generally frowned upon - as long as the foe looks reasonably human (X-Force would be the obvious exception, but we're aren't supposed to see them as heroes are we?). Ms. Marvel will kill Super-Skrulls like she's in a video game. but not Norman Osborn*.

Jimmy's not immune from that himself. During Secret Invasion, he had Venus singing to Skrull soldiers to lure them into the ocean where they would drown amidst a lovestruck stupor. Venus couldn't bring herself to do it**, and while Jimmy said her understood, he then told M-11 to death ray the Skrulls instead, which M-11 did. Granted, Jimmy's looking at things from a 1950s perspective, and from the monster comics I've seen from back then, invading creatures were shown no mercy.

Then there's the inhabitants of Echo World. On the one hand, you could consider them worse than the invading Skrulls. The Skrulls were supposedly offering to share the world with Earthlings, it was just the Skrulls would be in charge. But it's not as though they were Annihilus, out to exterminate all indigenous life. The Echo Worlders don't actually want to live on Atlas' Earth, but they do try and manipulate people so that they'd kill large quantities of themselves and render portions of Earth uninhabitable, which is a bit more malicious.

At the same time, the people of Echo World have their lives constantly disrupted by these impressions or echoes of the people on the other Earths. It's not a situation they caused or asked for, and it makes their lives more difficult and terrifying, since they don't know when some ghostly looking tank is going to suddenly appear in the middle of their homes during dinner. They don't wish to conquer Earth, only to have it stop wrecking their lives on their world. You could argue the Skrulls still had it worse since they had no homeworld, but I'd think there have to be planets out there somewhere the Skrulls could settle and thrive on that aren't already inhabited. It's a big universe***, though knowing the Skrulls' luck, they'd just get settled and Galactus would show up.

It is nice to see Jimmy take that approach, and it fits, since he isn't like the past rulers of Atlas. He wasn't raised as a ruler, or a conqueror, he was raised as a regular kid who made himself into a law enforcement agent, then a secret agent. Someone whose purpose is to protect others from those who would do do them harm, rather than the person inflicting the harm (until the people agree to follow him). With the Skrulls, he handled things the way most of the previous leaders of Atlas would have. He fought the Skrulls, and killed them. So this is perhaps the point where Woo really comes into his own as leader, starts keeping his promise to Master Plan to do things his own way, rather than mimic how his predecessors handled things. And Jimmy's way is to try and help, so there's no need for conflict, rather than destroy the potential threat.

* Though I think it was her reason for not killing him that bothered me most. Namely, that she 'was better than he was'. Not that I disagree with her self-assessment, but it didn't seem like a line of reasoning she'd follow. If she had abstained from killing Osborn because she needed to get back and help her teammates, and couldn't spare the time to kill him, I'd have bought that. Or if she worried that killing Norman - a duly appointed official of the government - would make things worse for a superhero community already mistrusted by the public and the government, sure. Carol Danvers strikes me as a pragmatic sort.

** And thumbs down to Jimmy for trying to get her to do that. It's the exact sort of thing she used to do back when she was just a siren. Sure she's come to grips with her past, but that doesn't mean he should encourage her to reenact it.

*** And it would suit the Skrulls sometimes preference for sneaky. It's a sometimes preference because they prefer big splashy battles when the story dictates they stop being sneaky so the heroes can punch them a lot. Anyway, quiet, out of the way world they could rebuild on, where no one would be looking for them. As opposed to Earth, which I think every sentient species in the universe keeps one eye on, since you can never tell what those crazy Earthlings are gonna get up to.

There's More To Jimmy Woo's Past Than Atlas

The Gorilla Man back-up story in Avengers vs. Atlas #4 caught me off guard initially, mostly because of the tone. Ken Hale (aka Gorilla Man) always seems to be having so much fun with Atlas' operations that I forget his origin could have been a horror story, or at least a Twilight Zone episode*. Gain eternal life (though someone could kill you), but spend it as a gorilla. There are worse things to be, but Ken does have to contend with all the people that are like the man he used to be: obsessed with living forever. Plus, he probably gets attacked by people pursuing what they'd deem "oddities". From outside the Marvel universe, a talking gorilla might not seem so strange, but people in the Marvel Universe don't seem to really get how much strange stuff is out there, so a Gorilla Man might be a shock to them. Throw in a few wannabe big game hunters and that's a full dance card of people who don't have Ken's best interests at heart to contend with.

Still, the first time I read it, I thought about how I would have more readily pictured Gorilla Man in a story like the one featuring Jimmy Woo in Avengers vs. Atlas #2 (where Jimmy goes to an evil restaurant to retrieve an important package which turns out to be really great dumplings). It seemed like the sort of thing Gorilla Man might enjoy, with the opportunity to beat up evil chefs and mutated octopi.

Then I thought about how Jimmy could work in a story similar to Ken's. He couldn't have people coming after him trying to gain immortality through his death (not literal immortality, anyway), but this is Jimmy Woo from the 1950s, from the last impression Marvel Boy had of him before the team originally split up. In between then and when he was nearly destroyed trying to enter Master Plan's lair decades later, he was a member of FBI and SHIELD. There have to be any number of people he stymied over that time who haven't forgotten, or forgiven. That their old nemesis has regained his youth, and taken control of a vast criminal organization would likely only gall them further. Throw in the fact his reaction to their appearance would probably be along the lines of "Who are you?", and they'd be boiling.

I don't know who Jimmy Woo might have dealt with in his career, besides Master Plan and Godzilla (I think), so a writer could take it as carte blanche. Revive old HYDRA or AIM villains (maybe it could play off this new SHIELD book, or Secret Warriors), or bring in hyper-intelligent cousins of the big green lizard, or make someone up entirely. Then point them at Jimmy Woo and Atlas, and see what happens.

* Somehow when I was a kid, I came into possession of a little paperback that collected several stories from a horror title called Creepy. The twist for one of the stories was a man kills a werewolf terrorizing the area, only to become the werewolf as the result. Same deal as with Ken and the gorilla curse.

I Need To Work Through This In Writing

Or typing. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Reading through Avengers vs Atlas #4, I keep coming back to the point when Giant Man connects with the chronovirus. Not because I'm still confused by the temporal stuff, but because of something Tony Stark says.

Since it's a mindscape, Hank can assume the identity he feels best in, and so he regresses back to his Ant-Man form, complete with the cybernetic helmet, and he flies off through wherever he is on top of an ant. As he does so, Stark - who, along with the rest of the Avengers and Atlas, are linked into Hank's mind so they see what he does - comments that he thinks Hank's 'always felt more at home as Ant-Man'.

I suppose it caught my attention because I subscribe to the, let's call it Englehartian view that Hank's never really been suited for those sorts of costumed heroics. In that theory, Pym's never really been true to who he is when he throws on a costume and runs around punching people, zapping them with bio-blasts, or changing his size. So the fanboy part of me felt he should have traipsed about as Hank Pym.

Obviously, the fanboy part of me ignored these Avengers are from a time period 20+ years (our time) before Hank went the "scientist adventurer" route, complete with flight suit with dozens of pockets to carry gadgets in. The idea he could go on an adventure like this simply as himself, no codename or costumed identity, would probably never enter '60s Pym's mind. In the '80s, he had to come within seconds of blowing his brains out, and be walked through his history by Firebird to figure it out, so an earlier Hank wouldn't have the experiences to lead him to such a thought.

Setting that aside, visualizing himself as Ant-Man still makes a lot of sense. I still think Hank isn't well-suited for being a hero who punches things, which would seem to be the primary reason to become Giant-Man, rather than remaining Ant-Man. I think it's telling he found Pym Particles, shrank himself, was nearly killed by ants, and his solution was a helmet so he could communicate with insects. He didn't develop a suit of powered armor to blast the insects with, he instead came up with a way to talk with them, to convince them not to attack, and even to help him. It says something about Hank Pym as a character, such as that his solutions to problems won't involve application of brute force, but something more diplomatic, shall we say. Ant-Man is the identity that follows that works with that more readily*.

It would make me wonder if Pym wasn't having regrets about changing identities. One of my high school teachers said that when it came to multiple choice questions where we weren't sure, our first instinct was usually our best one. I guess the reasoning went, that instinct is informed by whatever little bit of useful knowledge we recall, and if we take the time to second guess, we get that info twisted around until we've confused ourselves.

I never took the opportunity to check my tests and see how often changing my answer worked out, but maybe this would be Parker's way of saying Pym should have stuck with his first choice. Giant-Man was a decision made out of insecurity, where he didn't think he could be useful on a team with Hulk (just for a minute), Thor and Iron Man. Pym decided to go the opposite direction from how he started, but did the team really need another strongman? That's something Parker did in this mini-series I enjoyed, play up Hank's brains. He doesn't have a lot of success at the physical stuff, but he's the one best able to comprehend all the weird time happenings. The other Pym was also the one who tried using Kang's machinery to keep his team of Avengers from being wiped out of existence. It's a nice reminder of where Pym's strengths lie.

* Not that he can't come up with clever solutions to problems as Giant-Man, but imagine when he's gone to the trouble of growing to 12 feet tall, it's easier to convince himself he ought to simply hit the problem. Otherwise, what was the point of growing to that size?

Who Can Tell With His Issues?

In Avengers vs Atlas #2, Venus halts 4/5ths of the Avengers in their tracks with a little song, as she is wont to do. We see that Thor and Dr. Blake have different ideas of who they'd like to spend the night with, that Tony Stark can't be happy with just one lady (big surprise there), and that Steve Rogers perhaps had a sweetheart while he was in France.

The one member of the team affected whose desires we don't get a glance at is Hank Pym. Safe money would be on the Wasp. Then again, there's his first wife, Marie Trovaya, from before he even discovered Pym Particles. Since her death spurred him to fight against evil, he might think of her.

I was thinking, though, about how Hank Pym always seems to struggle with self-doubt. It wasn't presented as much of an issue at the time this Hank Pym comes from, certainly not compared to in later years, but it's probably still there. So perhaps Hank wouldn't see anyone in particular. He'd worry no one loved him, and see nobody. Or his mind would create someone, probably an amalgamation of every person he'd loved, because that would just be perfect. Maybe he'd simply picture Venus, since she's singing so nicely to him. Those aren't very likely, at least not for this Pym*, but they were possibilities I thought of, since we've seen Venus' song had unexpected effects on people before.

* The Hank Pym booted from the Avengers for misconduct, or the one who came within a second of blowing his brains out would be more likely candidates.

Another Round Of "Guess The Antagonist!"

Questions for those of you reading Avengers vs Atlas: Who is it that will be revealed as the one behind everything, and who is the she they're searching for?

We have a rift with faces, which destabilizes time, who is looking for a mysterious "she", and has some past history with the Avengers.

For me, the "she" made me think Mantis, aka the Celestial Madonna, who was pursued by Kang for this reason, only to be thwarted by the Avengers and Rama-Tut (Kang's younger self). Then I thought it could be that Korvac guy. He trashed the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy, but committed suicide (or faked it) when he sensed that the woman he fell in love with doubted him*.

Problem being neither of those stories involved the original Avengers**. Course, Kang tangled with that group of Avengers, and the Growing Man was one of his tools. For me, it stinks a bit of the Grandmaster. He would absolutely imperil the universe by messing with time to throw together a group of heroes thought to be criminals with a time-displaced squad of Avengers, just for kicks. It's no skin off his nose if the universe is destroyed, he can't die, being an Elder of the Universe and all. He also used Mantis as a hostage once, although that was against the Silver Surfer. But the Avengers do have experience with him and his fellow Elders.

Or the antagonist could be someone completely new. I'm reasonably confident the "she" will be someone we've seen before.

* Based on Wikipedia, I think he may have misjudged her. It says Carina was angered by his apparent suicide, and went after the heroes herself.

** Or would they be Avengers Version 1.1, since it's Cap instead of the Hulk. Or would you call it Version 2.0. I'd tend to apply that label to the Kooky Quartet myself, because it's such a major roster overhaul, but it's all arbitrary definitions.