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thebibliomancer · 2 years

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Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #21: Lost in Space-Time, Part 5: TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE UNDER HEAVEN!

June, 1987

Add two more to the roster!

Doctor PYM

MOON KNIGHT

Are the West Coast Avengers going to be rescued this issue? How are they going to add two present day dudes to the team if they’re trapped in Ancient Egypt?

Hank looks silly being grimly determined in his normal ass clothes next to Moon Knight who’s swinging around in costume.

But why should trenchcoat dudes and shirt dudes get to be the only plainclothes superheroes?

Granted, a labcoat is basically a trenchcoat for a science hero versus a magic or detective guy.

So you do you, Hank. But god help you if you become as much of a disaster as Constantine ‘Oops I destroyed the future out of spite ha ha’ Johnington.

My last thought about two more to the roster cover is: really roster of seven and only two women? We can do better than that in the year of 1987.

Okay, I’m done.

Now for last times on West Coast Avengers: a lot. A lot is happening and keeps happening and will have happened and happens.

While looking to recruit Firebird (now La Espirita), the West Coast Avengers were tricked by an enemy named Dominus and sent to cowboy times with a time machine that only goes backwards in time.

After some cowboy adventures, the WCA decided that their best bet for getting back to the present was to visit Ancient Egypt and Hawkeye’s old acquaintance Nice Rama-Tut. But when they arrive in his time, Nice Rama-Tut is very sleepy and suggests that they go talk to him earlier in his timeline when he was Mean Rama-Tut. When the Avengers WC do go to Mean Rama-Tut’s time, he immediately shoots them.

While in cowboy times, Mockingbird caught the attention of Ghost/Phantom Rider who decided that he should drug her and make her love him. Its all kinds of gross but now Mockingbird thinks Ghost Rider is her true love and doesn’t remember Hawkeye. Other cowboys Two-Gun Kid and Rawhide Kid are trying to track down Ghost Rider and rescue Mockingbird.

While in 1776, the West Coast Avengers met Carlotta Valdez and Hawkeye gave her a message to pass down and eventually ask Firebird to contact the Fantastic Four. But Carlotta died in a shootout. And yet this plot thread is still going on.

Meanwhile, in the present times, La Espirita stopped Hank Pym from committing suicide and has been helping him get his groove back by having him explain his entire scientific career to her.

THERES SO MUCH PLOT HAPPENING

PLEASE STOP SPINNING OFF MORE PLOT THREADS, ENGLEHART

Anyway. Mean Rama-Tut (henceforth just Rama-Tut) shot the West Coast Avengers minus Mockingbird (because she’s not present) when they arrived in Ancienter Egypt 2940 BC.

Whats weird is when he rants over their collapsed forms.

It’s not the ranting that’s weird, obviously. We’re talking a kind of Kang here. Its the content of the rant.

He acts like they’re just stupid locals rebelling against his rule. Which. I mean. They don’t look like Ancient Egyptians. Even given that the exact ethnic makeup of Ancient Egypt is debated, I don’t think the populace tended to wear full suits of armor. Because of the heat.

Rama-Tut rant/recaps his backstory. About how he’s from the year 3000 AD (or CE I guess) which was a glorious boring age of enlightenment where there was nothing fun to do for a guy who wanted action and adventure.

He spent his time watching old, futuristic film reels on his big screen of superheroes doing superhero stuff.

In another world, Kang may have become a guy like Booster Gold. He admired the action adventure of past heroes a lot so I can see a situation where he arrived in the year Whatever the Sliding Timescale Says Now not to fight the Avengers but to fight alongside them.

There’s probably a What If in that but I don’t think anyone has done it.

Anyway, his desire for action-adventure content led him to the ruins of a castle (Doom’s) where Pre-Kang found plans for a time machine the likes of which even the Super Cool Year 3000 never built.

So Pre-Kang built a time machine in the shape of a Sphinx because he wanted to go back to Ancient Egypt and arriving in a Sphinx probably would play to their superstitions.

Why did he go to Ancient Egypt if he had a big thing for superhero action?

Shut up. How about that?

I mean. There’s a hint. He exposits that the six thousand year time difference between 3000 BC and 3000 AD gives him an edge against any foe.

So I guess early-pre-Kang didn’t want a challenge. He wanted easy fights.

Its amazing that Kang actually became less shitty as he grew up, in like this one narrow regard.

Anyway, Rama-Tut calls for his guards and tells them to take the dumb rebels (actually the West Coast Avengers) to one of the temples of the discredited gods and make those stupid out of work priests bury them.

(The guards also don’t seem to notice anything worth commenting about how the Avengers look or dress so... something’s up.)

So, yeah, Rama-Tut has banned all worship apparently aside from Rama-Tut worship? But he left the temples alone and priests unmurdered so he’s less worse than some.

Also: the gun that Rama-Tut shot the West Coast Avengers with didn’t kill them or even knock them out.

It’s an ultra-diode ray that saps strength but leaves people conscious.

So they can be buried alive??

Funny bit: while the West Coast Avengers have varying reactions to being immobilized but aware (except Hawkeye who just feverishly babbles “Bobbi” to himself) Wonder Man’s takes the cake.

Wonder Man: My power’s gone! Can’t move a muscle! It’s like -- when I was dead! But there’s no panic any more! I’ve made it, all the way back from the darkness! Even now I’m a star!

Leave it to specifically this era of Wonder Man to go ‘oh cool i’m not afraid of death anymore, because i’m in movies’

Anyway, the guards drag the ultra-diode’d Avengers to the temple/tomb of Khonshu and tell the priests to handle the bodies.

The priests... do not do this, instead reverently bowing and leaving the immobilized heroes in front of a statue of Khonshu, god of the MOOON.

And then Hawkeye dies.

Welp.

I assume so anyway.

Because the next scene (1876 on the Arizona/New Mexico border) features Ghost/Phantom Rider and Mockingbird just finished beating up some outlaws when suddenly Mockingbird has a chill run through her “as if everything I loved in the world has died -- !”

Quick question: It happened thousands of years ago. Why do you only now feel it? How does the ominous premonition know when to go off?

Nitpickery aside, Ghost Rider thinks thats a strange thing for Mockingbobbi to say when he’s right in front of her clearly alive but he offers to help warm her up, which she recoils from.

She tells him she needs some alone time and rides off.

Ghost Rider wonders what that’s all about but decides to let her have her alone time.

Unbeknowst to Mockingbird or Ghost Rider, Two-Gun Kid and Rawhide Kid have managed to track the two down despite the slip they were given in the earlier issue.

ALSO: Two-Gun Kid had the same chill go through him as Mockingbird.

Which, remember, she described “as if everything I loved in the world has died -- !”

Nobody else in this issue gets this feeling. Just Mockingbird and Two-Gun Kid.

His wife and his cowboy best pal.

Possibly his cowboy boyfriend? They spent a lot of time together in the past and in the present and they were awfully close in this arc.

But it took decades for Marvel to admit Rachael Summers was queer. They’re never going to give Hawkeye an explicit cowboy boyfriend.

Over in 1776, remember how the Carlotta Valdez plot thread seems to be continuing despite her being dead?

So at the funeral, out of sorrow of Carlotta dying pointlessly, her aunt cancels the trip to California and decides to move back to Mexico. The priest that was her chaperone in the carriage is also traveling back to Mexico so he decides to go with the aunt.

ALSO he decides he has dibs on Carlotta’s Bible.

He can just decide this.

The aunt decides that this is what Carlotta would have wanted (I doubt it, personally...) but I guess this plot thread is continuing because we need to know about how the Family Bible is going to wind up back in family hands so La Espirita can have it and not notice that message from Hawkeye that Carlotta was supposed to entrust to her descendants.

Anyway, in 1847 in Corazon, Mexico...

An Isabel Ramirez comes to the church to pray because times are baaad. There was a war with the US and there’s poverty and well things are just baaaad.

The priest tells her to go ahead and pray but no touching the Bible, which is clearly way too holy for peasants to touch.

Isabel: “But, padre -- my mother says our family helped found this mission! She says the Bible once belonged to my great-aunt -- and -- and more than that, I love all that is holy! I would be a priest myself -- if only I could!”

The priest: “Ha ha ha! The fantasies of women!”

Cool, I hate him.

I sure hope he gets robbed of something.

Lotta nerve to tell a girl she’s not cool enough to touch her own family’s heirloom.

It probably goes to show something something organized religion something.

But anyway, as soon as the priest walks off, Isabel decides that she’s totally going to touch the forbidden Bible.

The note Hawkeye wrote falls out of the Bible. I don’t know if she can read English but she grasps that its a note from a man in the past to the future.

And seeing a message sent through centuries just totally blows her mind with the vastness of the universe, a grand epiphany that brings clarity to Isabel.

She’s going to steal back the ol’ family Bible!

And sure, she’s the likeliest suspect but she’ll hide it where NONE WILL EVER SUSPECT!

THE PERFECT CRIME!

THANKS GOD AND OR THE UNIVERSE!

This is a fun story, at times.

Anyway, speaking of god and or the universe, Hawkeye meets Khonshu.

Man, Khonshu has so many moons.

But I do prefer his bird skull aspect to Moon Knight But Fancier.

Khonshu explains that the reason why Rama-Tut mistook the Avengers for just random Egyptians was because Khonshu used hypnotic moon powers to hide the Avengers’ identities from the pharaoh.

Not out of the goodness of his heart or lack of heart or whatever his organ sitch is. He wants to make a deal.

Rama-Tut is a future superbeing and so are the Avengers. And Hawkeye is the leader of this group of future superbeings.

So Khonshu will heal (or resurrect? It’s unclear) Hawkeye if Hawkeye will lead the Avengers against Rama-Tut.

And Hawkeye was going to do that anyway sooooo...... might as well see what else he can get for it.

So Hawkeye will get the West Coast Avengers to fight Rama-Tut IF Khonshu sends the Avengers back to their own time afterward.

Khonshu points out that he’s the god of the Moon, not of time. Although, I’d personally argue that a moon god would fit nicely as a time god. Because of the mostly reliable phases of the Moon. Like clockwork.

But what I would argue doesn’t matter. It’s not something Khonshu can Khonshdo.

Khonshu: “I lack the power to do as you ask! I am the god of the Moon -- I work in subtlety and shadow!”

Hawkeye: “Well... then send a subtle message to friends of ours in the future -- to come and get us with some other friends’ time machine!”

Khonshu: “Done!”

That easy, apparently.

Although, he’s got nearly five thousand years to work in.

Anyway.

Speaking of nearly five thousand years, nearly five thousand years later in 1876, Mockingbird.

Remember how she was had felt a chilling premonition that everything she loved in the world died?

Well, as she’s contemplating that inkjet arrowhead she decided to wear as a good luck charm, she suddenly has the opposite premonition and the opposite temperature.

A surge of warmth that means something good happened.

How vague.

And yet how, once again, oddly linked to time progressing for all the characters like they’re in the same year.

Anyway.

Palette Swap Hawkeye attacks Mockingbird.

Okay, its not Bootleg Hawkeye, it’s Two-Gun Kid.

He did his best, given the limits of the time and place, and blue is his best.

Either way, he’s going to try to spark Mockingbobbi’s memory of who she really is. Mostly by attacking her with archery and calling her Bobbi Barton.

Two-Gun isn’t super great at archery, which maybe helps. Because Mockingbird recognizes on some level that he sucks at it, which means she has opinions about good archery.

Also, she’s not fighting her best. Her reflexes are slow and all.

Two-Gun speculates that even if she doesn’t recognize that he’s supposed to be dressed as Player 2 Hawkeye consciously, she recognizes its subconsciously.

And he recognizes the inkjet arrowhead as one of Hawkeye’s specialty arrows.

So when he manages to pin her to a tree with arrows through her enormous sleeves (due to the aforementioned not fighting her best), he grabs the arrowhead and yells for her to tell him whose thingy it is.

Mockingbird: “... Hawkeye... Cint! I remember now! We were leaving, and the spook-man hit me, and he gave me some drug -- and made me love him! I’ll KILL him!”

So mission success in terms of getting her to remember but the now murderous rage isn’t ideal, since Two-Gun and Rawhide Kids want to bring him in for JUSTICE.

And she doesn’t say she’s not going to kill him.

She does ask where the Avengers are and Two-Gun says they’re probably still in Ancient Egypt.

Or however time works.

So Mockingbird declares that until Clint/the Avengers make their way back to the more recent past, she’ll occupy herself with making Ghost/Phantom Rider “a real spook!”

Meanwhile? Or. Whatever.

Back in 2940 BC, the ultra-diode finally wears off and the West Coast Avengers can move about again.

And bonus! Hawkeye regains consciousness! Also his burns are healed! Without any sign!

The power of a good rest is amazing!

While the Avengers marvel over his recovery, Hawkeye just mosies up to the statue of Khonshu and thanks him.

Then the priests show back up (calling Hawkeye “beloved of Khonshu” while really confuses everyone else) and offer to take the Avengers to a secret tunnel they’ve been digging which leads right to the Sphinx of Rama-Tut.

As the Avengers head after the priests, Hawkeye suggests that he and Wonder Man should have a long talk about being dead.

So, yeah, I think Hawkeye died. Khonshu resurrected him. And now Hawkeye is going to try to get coping advice from Wonder Man.

Anyway.

THE PRESENT, as of when the comic was published, YEAR OF 1987, NEW YORK CITY

Moon Knight sees some art thieves and thwarts them.

My goodness.

The random bullshit meme panels in their original context.

This is a treat.

After knocking everyone out with random bullshit, Moon Knight has a PSA for these unconscious art thieves.

Moon Knight: “Art and music are man’s highest expressions, alive throughout eternity! Such masterpieces aren’t meant for petty theft!"

But then Moon Knight has a vision of Khonshu and his many moons and contacts his pilot Frenchy to get a ride to California.

Ha. So that’s how Khonshu is passing Hawkeye’s message to the future. Uh. Very indirectly. Instead of just sending Moon Knight to the Fantastic Four (who in fairness probably have little reason to listen to him, fair point Khonshu), he’s sending him to talk to Hank and La Espirita.

Speaking of the two, Hank has finished inventing a new thing.

He invented a talking flying car shaped like an ant head!

And - learning the lesson from Ultron being too smart - this flying ant head is only about as smart as a dog and is about as enthusiastically loyal as one.

Hence why he’s named it Rover.

It’s pretty cool.

AND THATS NOT ALL

Because of La Espirita forcing him to recap his entire professional career, Hank has come to a realization. He can’t be Ant-Man or Giant-Man again because his body can’t stand the strain of size changing.

(Because he’s not cool like Wasp.)

But his body naturally produces Pym Particles, hence why he didn’t need the pills or gas anymore to size-change back when he could size-change. And why he could change the size of his costume and equipment.

So what if only change size of equipment?

So he built a bunch of cool stuff and then shrank them so he can carry around a Batman’s worth of random gear and just grow it as needed.

He’s invented a reasonable alternative to hammerspace!

This is also pretty cool.

Hank even designed some of the random bullshit to be useful both full sized or shrunken. Like a flying camera drone, that can be a flying minicam for trailing people.

La Espirita: “It sounds perfect, Hank! You’ve taken the parts of your past that worked, jettisoned the parts that didn’t, and built yourself a future! Have you picked out a new name to go with it?”

Doctor Pym, Action Scientist: “I don’t want a new name -- not after having four already! No, you taught me to be what I am, Bonita -- so from this day forward, as an adventurer or an everyday guy, I am -- Doctor Pym!”

Hank also mentions he’s not going to wear a costume -- and throws in a barb at Wonder Man, pointing out that his new costume is horrible.

He speaks the truth and I’m glad someone finally had the strength to do so.

Anyway, despite no codename and no costume, Hank is ready to get back into the game and plans to ask to be an Avenger again once the others get back.

Bonita is thrilled for Hank, saying that she’s glad to have helped him because “that’s what Christian fellowship is all about!”

And then Hank gets all awkward.

Because. Well. She’s been paying a lot of attention to him and listening to him talk about himself for several days now.

He just sorta assumed she had romantic interest in him.

IN THE WAY THAT PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASSUME.

Of course, once he broaches the topic, she’s also happy to start making out with him.

So. Uh. This happened.

I can’t tell if she’s actually been romantically interested in him or whether she just thought ‘eh, worth a try’ when he brings it up.

This relationship isn’t going to last long so yeah I do think she’s just rolling with the assumption he’s making.

'I’m not morally opposed to making out, so lets do that.’ sort of thing.

Anyway, Dominus shows up again in this story.

Remember Dominus?

Lucifer’s colleague who created a rock woman named Butte? Sent the Avengers back in time? Technically the arc villain but hasn’t done much more than be an inciting incident?

Well, the issue ends with him moodily sitting on his comfortable villain chair pondering whether there’s anything he forgot in terms of stranding the Avengers in the past forever

And the answer is probably yes, considering the message that Hawkeye wrote asking for La Espirita to get the Fantastic Four to come pick them up in their functioning time machine.

I mean, that’s probably it, right?

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