Wonder Man by Brian Hurtt

Mockingbird by Alex Garcia

1985 - House Ad for the West Coast Avengers and Vision and the Scarlet Witch Crossover

1987: The Whackos' Cross Time Craziness part IV: Mockin' Bird (will let ya fall off a) Hill

By Jef Willemsen (clarmindcontrol.blogspot.com)

When we last left the West Coast Avengers, they seemed destined to remain in ancient Egypt after missing no less than three opportunities to get back to their own time. To make matters worse, in the present Dominus destroyed the Fantastic Four's timeplatform, preventing Hank Pym, Espirita and Moon Knight to travel back. Oh, and Mockingbird was about to do something drastic...

"Vengeance cries the Mockingbird"

West Coast Avengers I#23 marked one of the most controversial decisions writer Steve Englehart made during his tenure on the book. Even though the team was called Avengers, their charter strictly prohibited the heroes from killing. Guess what line Mock was about to cross... But before we get to that, let's review where and when all the other players involved in this transtemporal tragedy are supposed to be. Once more with feeling: "Previously, on West Coast Avengers..." 

"Time has split in seven!"

Luckily, most of those seven time periods are not relevant to the main story. With the Egyptian god Khonshu observing all of time at once, the story continued. Hank Pym, La Espirita and Moon Knight had come to New York to visit the FF in their beat up headquarters. Dominus and his desert troops had disabled the team's time platform but the solution to that particular pickle seemed surprisingly straightforward: "Reed, you're pretty smart, right? Why not repair it?"

"Smushed it maybe, Ben... But it *is* a machine! It can get unsmushed!"

Now, I'm no English major, or even an ensign for that matter, but I'm not sure one can 'smush' machinery. You can smush food, like butter peas in gravy, not to mention the insane amount of smushing that takes place in this video which has Roseanne Barr and the late great Phyllis Diller preparing a spaghetti diner. Check around the one minute mark for a ton of smush. 

At any rate, while Pym and Reed got busy fixing up the time machine... Back in ancient Egypt the West Coast Avengers were surprised to find themselves attacked by the local population. Turns out the royal slaves weren't too pleased by the fact pharaoh Rama Tut's dictatorial reign had ended. Sure, with the pharaoh gone they were now free, but that also meant they had lost *their* slaves as well. Even though Iron Man and Wonder Man could have easily handled the horde, Hawkeye called for a strategic retreat to the temple of Khonshu, much to the vainglorious Wonder Man's chagrin.

Inside the temple, they met with the priests who informed the heroes that, all appearances to the contrary, they'd proven instrumental in overthrowing Rama-Tut. A point Englehart illustrated with a clever bit of continuity based writing...

"Oh, yes, Avenger... You fulfilled your bargain with Khonshu!"

Talk about a practical application of the butterfly effect... By fighting some of the robots who were carrying Doctor Strange to his cell/sarcophagus, the Avengers delayed the mechanical men long enough for Strange to escape in his astral form. Strange was then free to help the FF which he (from our point of view) already did back in 1982's Doctor Strange: Master of the Mystic Arts I#53. Still, that didn't get the heroes one step closer to their own time, no matter what Khonshu had promised Hawkeye. That's why the archer decided he'd better make himself useful while they waited around. He asked the priests for some ivory from which he could craft a few weapons...

"This super-hero business is certainly far removed from the world of Marc Spector, mercenary"

Ah, and this is where Steve Englehart's "wheels within wheels" approach to the Whacko's time travel antics tends to get a bit too cute. Englehart established that Hawkeye was the one who handcrafted the sacred weapons Marc Spector had been using as Moon Knight all this time. While a nice reveal on its own, it got to be a little much if you consider this storyline already featured Hawkeye's message stuck in Bonita's bible, not to mention that arrowhead he dropped in 1776 which happened to prove essential in helping Mockingbird remember who she was in 1876.

Still, the weapons got crafted, in the present the time platform got unsmushed and before too long (again, relatively speaking)....

"Avengers assemble!"

With the Avengers and their newfound allies catching up in the Egypt of old, there was only one member of the Whackos unaccounted for: Mockingbird. After Two-Gun and the Rawhide Kid helped her shake off the influence of the Comanche love potion Phantom Rider had subjected her to, she swore vengeance and went after "the spook" herself. In appropriately dramatic fashion, their final confrontation took place during a freak thunderstorm right near the edge of a cliff. What could possibly go wrong?

"You'll be better dead, my love... Because you'll be a ghost like me!"

Mockingbird continued her fight against the clearly deranged Hamilton Slade. There was no reasoning with the man, who was so deluded he actually believed he was a living ghost. Yet, he proved all too human when Mockingbird aimed her battlestaves at his kneecaps, causing him to tumble over the edge of the cliff. Holding on for dear life, the Rider tried one last time to sweet talk his former victim...

"Woman, you will pull me up! The Phantom Rider commands it!"

Yeah, perhaps that's not the best way to approach someone already furious for turning her into your mindless love slave for heaven knows how long. Mockingbird did nothing when the weight of Hamilton's body caused the soaked cliffside to give way and... well...

"Drop dead!"

A lot has been said about Mockingbird's refusal to help the Phantom Rider. Did she cause his death? Probably. Was it self defense? Maybe. Didn't he have it coming? Possibly. Was it the right thing to do? What am I, a magic 8-ball? Reply hazy, try again... 

Avengers don't kill, that's for sure. But before she became an Avenger, Bobbi Barton-Morse was an agent of SHIELD. She was a scientist, true, but all SHIELD agents are trained in the proper use of lethal force. The fact she was by no means an objective participant in this particular case clouds the issue. There's no doubt she felt personally vindicated by watching her assailant get his comeuppance (by dropping down, ironically enough)... Yet she still attended the funeral the Comanche Indians held for their fallen champion. During the ceremony, she was reunited with some very welcome, familiar old faces.

"The Bird! Clint! Everybody!"

In another fine example of Englehart's realistic scripting, Hawkeye called his wife "the bird!". Sure, it's an endearing take on her codename and yes, only in Great Britain is "bird" slang for either "hot girl" or giving someone the finger... but it's hardly romantic. Semantics aside, the two lovers reunited, but instead of coming clean about her involvement in the Phantom Rider's death she kept quiet. 

"How are ya, honey? Did the Ghost Rider hurt ya? It took us a while to track ya! Two-Gun told me how he drugged ya! Where is that banana slug?"

Oh goodie, more natural dialogue.

It is a little difficult to confess a murder with your husband's tongue in your mouth...And having him call your rapist a, erm... "banana slug" of all things doesn't exactly help either. So, Mockingbird merely claimed he killed himself. Which isn't a lie per se, merely the kind of stretch that would give Mr. Fantastic muscle spams. While it's true that the Phantom Rider would probably still be alive if he hadn't kidnapped her, she still could have saved him. Only she didn't. 

With the Avengers once again fully assembled, the heroes headed back to the present to finally deal with Dominus. The villain had been busy in his hollowed out butte, filled to the brim with alien technology. Moments before the unexpected happened in West Coast Avengers I#24, he was explaining his master plan to Sunstroke, the one human operative in his employ.

"It is a complex process! It takes years! But when completed, the machine's ray deadens natives' wills, turning them to mindless slaves!"

Sheesh, who knew Dominus was behind Candy Crush? All kidding and poor attempts at topical humor aside, he was a member of conquering alien race called the Arcane who were ready to claim Earth using their so-called master machine. The device was nearing completion, and while Dominus gloated that not even a single superhero was aware of his plans an alarm sounded.

"Oh, my master!"

That's right, the Dominus we've been seeing during these reviews wasn't the real villain. He's merely a stooge mentally controlled by the sentient mechanical complex running the base. The power behind the throne is, well, the throne itself. But even though its host freaked out because the Avengers showed up at the front door, the Arcane computer mind simply ordered Sunstroke to take a few men to deal with the situation.

"Oh, you eight can have some payoff, Avengers... The fifty of us will be glad to close your account!"

We're in the home stretch, so let's ignore Sunstroke's corny comeback, even though it reads like something straight out of a 1966 Batman script. What Cactus, Butte and Gila lacked in skill, power or flair they made up for in sheer size of numbers. During the fight, the individual heroes took the time to reflect on what they'd been through in the past several days. Hawkeye remained blissfully oblivious to the fact Mockingbird was in severe emotional distress....

"I've never let myself down! No matter what anyone does to me..."

While Mockingbird was working through some of her anger and frustration by hacking apart Dominus poor, underachieving underlings... Moon Knight and La Espirita also made a mark for themselves, with Bonita taking on the heat generating Sunstroke and Marc Spector openly considering joining the Avengers. In the end, even 50+ mutated desert creatures couldn't stop eight p.o.'ed superheroes. They breached Dominus' base where they were subjected to one final, ever so nasty surprise... the Arcane's computer complex was ready for them. And then some.

"The sensors on my mechanized form show all eight of your minds... Are mine!"

What is this, a Chris Claremont comic? By simply flicking a switch, Dominus took over the minds of all the heroes, effectively ending their threat. All, except for Moon Knight who appeared to be impervious and struck Dominus when the villain briefly had his back turned. But hey, if at first you don't succeed... try, try again!

"Sorry! Your blasts don't mean squat to me, purple-puss!"

Failing to restrain a glorified acrobat whose only weapons are 2000+ years old and made of ivory was enough to make the advanced alien computer mind freak out. Faster than one could yell "abandon ship", Dominus launched its main computer core, including the nearly completed Master Machine into space. With the Avengers freed, Hawkeye ordered Wonder Man, Iron Man and La Espirita to chase the ship shaped like erm, like a... giant, purple erm. Well, we all know what it looks like, eh?

Unfortunately, Wonder Man's jet pack gave out as soon as they reach the outer edges of the atmosphere, proving you can't break the laws of thermodynamics no matter how big a wind bag you are. Not wanting to risk their theoretically indestructible teammate getting hurt, Iron Man and La Espirita broke off pursuit to catch him. As was to be expected, the smug and arrogant Simon was appropriately grateful...

"Here you go, Wonder Bread... Consider it my gift to the moviegoers of the world!"

In the closing pages of West Coast Avengers I#24 we learned that this latest perceived insult to his greatness was enough for Wonder Man to announce his retirement from the team altogether. We also discovered how Moon Knight was able to shake off Dominus' mental paralysis: Marc Spector was incapacitated along with the other heroes, but his split personalities were unaffected. Millionaire playboy Steven Grant took over, only to fall prey to Dominus' second blast. That left tough talking New York cabbie Jake Lockley to act. One more blast would have done it, but by then Dominus had already ran off. 

And so ended the West Coast Avengers' whackiest temporal adventure ever. Despite his sometimes dated scripting, even for 1987, Steve Englehart delivered a truly impressive piece of writing. The various elements came together naturally and functioned as a well oiled machine. Plot points crossed over neatly and threads from as far back as #6 were woven in to tell a rich tale that also set up future storylines. 

To readers in 1987, the end of Lost In Space Time must have felt like a completely new beginning for the Avengers West. Not only was Wonder Man as good as gone, Hank Pym had succesfully reinvented himself as the scientific adventurer and there were even two new Avengers: the mysterious Moon Knight and Bonita Juarez, who indirectly started the entire adventure back in #17. 

Unfortunately, nothing much came of it. Bonita never officially joined, prefering to continue her work as a Christian social worker in New Mexico. Wonder Man returned to the fold with his proverbial tail tucked between his legs in #25. He almost died fighting the Abomination at the Tonight Show studios following an appearance with Johnny Carson, but his Hollywood buddies merely thought it was a cheap publicity stunt. In a true After School Special-moment, Williams realized the Avengers were his real friends.

Moon Knight's tenure with the team was equally brief and uneventful. Apart from almost being kicked out when he went after Cornelius "Taurus" van Lunt on his own to make the crimeboss pay for breaking a promise he swore on the Moon, Marc Spector played no significant part. After a four part Zodiac storyline a few forgettable fill ins followed. Then the Wasp of all people joined while the Phantom Rider returned from the dead to tell Hawkeye that Mockingbird had let him die.

Instead of backing up his wife or even being remotely sympathetic to the fact she was the one who had been kidnapped, drugged and raped, the archer gave her hell. This conflic led to the end of Clint and Bobbi's marriage and caused a schism within the team, with all the Avengers taking sides on the issue. Tigra and Moon Knight supported Mockingbird and went with her when she left the group.

What followed was even worse. Shoddy, haphazard and thoroughly unpleasant issues marked the title's plodding march towards #42 when John Byrne would take over and changed everything. Before he left, Englehart had added Vision and the Scarlet Witch to the mix and... wouldntcha know it, even Mantis suddenly put in an appearance or two. Because, hey, why not?

Allegedly, Tom DeFalco wasn't too pleased with Englehart's insistence to include Mantis. As Marvel's newest editor in chief (he succeeded Jim Shooter in late 87), he made an executive decision to keep Mantis' involvement in the ongoing storylines to a bare minimum... Even actively altering already completed stories, like these scenes from West Coast Avengers Annual I#3. In the middle of 1988's Evolutionary War crossover, Mantis had plenty to say. Or did she?

"..."

Fun and games... Englehart dutifully served out his tenure on the book, in spite of the editorial edicts. In the end, Steve would simply move his planned Mantis/Cotati storyline over to Fantastic Four, where the FF offered Mantis the help she hoped the WCA would give her.

With Byrne at the helm, the West Coast Avengers became Avengers West Coast. This, according to Byrne's byzantine logic, was necessary to emphasize the fact the heroes are defined by being Avengers, not that they happened to be in California. Byrne's Avengers West Coast is often praised and lauded, though mostly for the art. It had very little to do with the heroes who once lived at the Palos Verdes compound.

The real West Coast Avengers, marked by their sly sense of whimsy and cavalier approach to superheroics, perished shortly after Lost In Space Time. The book lost its innocence after Mockingbird's rape and never recovered from the gloomy, dark clouds that started to gather when Bobbi didn't immediately tell her husband what had happened to her.

... If only we could go back in time to change it. 

1987: The Whackos' Cross Time Craziness part II: La Espirita Bonita

By Jef Willemsen (clarmindcontrol.blogspot.com)

Gearing up to his 2nd anniversary as writer of West Coast Avengers, Steve Englehart decided to pull out all the stops and have his team go on an adventure they wouldn't soon forget, temporal paradoxes be damned. Two issues in and time had already split in three. Let's dig in...

Telling a story that simultaneously takes places in three different time periods is an ambitious undertaking to say the least. Englehart carefully plotted his tale to make sure events from past, present and future would interconnnect. But, to make sure the readership could keep track he still added a recap page to every issue. Nowadays, every single Marvel comic starts with one irregardless of whether they need it. But most creators approach an issue like they're writing an episode of a TV show. So, without further ado... "Previously, on West Coast Avengers...".

Starting with the present, Bonita "Firebird" Juarez had arrived at the Avengers Compound in time to prevent Hank Pym from blowing his brains out. In her new guise as La Espirita, she was trying to save his soul by inspiring him to find a new purpose in life. Which is a bit daunting if you consider the man had already reinvented himself at least four times by then: from Ant-Man to Giant-Man to Goliath and, most recently, Yellowjacket. Still, the religious La Espirita believed in the beauty of divine redemption and had Hank walk her through his many different guises and powers.

                                   "Now... tell me everything you can about Pym particles!"

Asking a scientist to tell you everything about their single greatest discovery? Oh Bonita, you'll be needing a time machine to survive that lecture. After listening to Pym explain the ins and outs of the size-changing particles he discovered, he also demonstrated its effect on living beings by growing and shrinking an ant Bonita had brought for the occasion.

"Dios mio!"

Unfortunately, the insect didn't survive the rapid changes. So much for your holy mission trying to save innocent life, sister Espirita... Still, their search for Pym's purpose continued while in the past the Avengers just left 1870s Arizona without Mockingbird. Understandably upset after seeing his wife get kidnapped by the Phantom Rider, the Avengers' leader lost his cool a little. He wanted to go back, forgetting for a moment the time machine that got them stranded in 1876 in the first place was defective: it could only go backwards. 

"And anyway, Mockingbird's an Avenger! She can take care of herself!"

Well, sufferin' suffragette Tigra, I do hope you're right... How's Bobbi doing anyway? After getting knocked out by the Phantom Rider, she was dragged to his hidden cave. There, in typical Englehart fashion, Lincoln Slade waxed poetically for a page and a half about his sad origins. He felt trapped as the Phantom Rider, a role forced on him by the Comanche.

When he encountered Mockingbird, he was immediately smitten and decided he just had to have her. To make sure she'd find him equally irresistible he slipped her the proverbial mickey: a mystical Comanche love potion that should make Bobbi love him and, ever so conveniently, have her forget all about her previous life as well.

                                                    "The potions worked! I'm SAVED!!"

Now, I could go off on a tangent about just how morally reprehensible Hamilton Slade's actions were. Sure, he might be mentally unbalanced and yes, back in the 1870s women had about as many rights as a horse no matter what Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman wants you to believe. But there's no doubt we can all agree that kidnapping someone and taking advantage of them while they're drugged and unable to defend themselves is wrong. No matter how goofy you dance to this this tune. 

Dazed and madly in love, Mockingbird prepared to accompany the Phantom Rider back to his hometown of Lordsburg where he works as the local sheriff. She also spotted a rusted, metal object in the cave that looked an awful lot like one of Hawkeye's arrowheads. Fascinated, though unsure why, she decided to hang on to it even as they fought off Two-Gun Kid and Kid Colt who had come looking for them. Phantom Rider and Mockingbird escaped and headed for Lordsburg where Slade began preparations for a quicky wedding and Bobbi kept playing with that arrowhead. 

"That arrowhead... It looks like something Hawkeye would have used!"

Speaking of Hawkeye and the others... By now they had figured out their time jump had landed them back to 1776, mainly because they landed near a contingent of Spanish soldiers who immediately took them for British spies and got ready to shoot them. Yes, hard to believe as it is, when the American founding fathers signed the famous declaration of independence, both Spain and Great Britain were still actively trying to take control of what they considered their colonies.

Unfortunately for the Spanish, determination and a handful of muskets won't exactly give you the upperhand against a nimble werecat, a man in high tech combat armor, and an ionic being eager to prove himself. Yes, Wonder Man's ego was acting up again. Eager to upstage Iron Man, he showed off by quickly disarming the soldiers and destroying their weapons.

"All *I* have to do is grab all their rifles and powder horns and crush them..." 

...Simon Williams, ladies and gentlemen. Former owner of a munitions factory, yet totally unaware anything loaded with gunpowder is essentially an explosive waiting to happen. No wonder Stark Industries outperformed you at every turn. Wonder Man wasn't hurt by the explosion, the same couldn't be said for the not quite as indestructible Hawkeye. Suffering rather severe burns, Clint was taken to a nearby cave to recuperate.

There, they encountered a young missionary called Carlotta Valdez who had witnessed their fight with the Spanish and offered her medicinal salves to help soothe Hawkeye's burns. Though in considerable pain, seeing the woman reminded Clint of a conversation he had with Firebird not too long ago (relatively speaking, of course).

"Carlotta, do you ever dream about being someone else...?"

Because with mad sand drawing skills like that, you could make a living as an artist instead of putting home made salve on masked gringo burn victims.

Figuring there was a link between Carlotta and Bonita "Firebird" Juarez, the archer took perhaps the longest shot of his career. Asking Carlotta for more of the petticoat she'd used to bandage his wounds, he took one of his inkjet arrows, snapped off the head and wrote a little message.

"Take this message and keep it safe until someone else claims it...
Even if you have to pass it on to future generations!"

Ever accommodating, though she believed the poor man was hallucinating, Carlotta took the message and promised to keep it in her family bible. When she left, Hawkeye caught an earful from Tigra who was furious with him for what he'd done. Clint hadn't told Carlotta the whole story, or even half of it. In Firebird's vision, the woman was eventually shot in the back during a raid. Greer figured he could have at least warned her, just sending her off to die wasn't fair.

      "Nobody ever said life was fair, Tigra! If it were, we wouldn't be here and my wife wouldn't be in                 1876.  So let's fly this thing to present-day Egypt so we can get to ancient Egypt."

Well said, Hawkeye... We all have our crosses to bear in life and sending someone to die in order to give others a fighting chance to live is exactly the kind of tough call a leader has to make... and live with. But still, tossing that spent ink arrowhead to the side of the cave is just bad behavior. Who knows who might pick it up later?

And with that, the team's long schlepp to Egypt began. It took the Jews over 40 years to get out of the country, the Avengers got in within 24 hours. And that's including a brief pitstop in Philadelphia to get Hawkeye some proper medical care before they started their Atlantic crossing. While in the city of brotherly love, they almost ran into Doctor Strange and Clea who were time travelling as well. Strange could have sent them all home, literally with the flick of his wrist... But alas, they had to do it the hard way. Still, all those hours of flying gave Tigra ample opportunity to set the snotty Wonder Man straight.

"We don't need this "team's strongest man" contest you started with Tony, okay?"
- "Then maybe I've outgrown the team...!"

Literally leaving that ominious bit of foreboding hanging... the Avengers began their travel across the Atlantic Ocean. The trip was especially hard on Hawkeye, whose injuries began to take their toll. It doesn't help that the team was forced to fight a horde of angry Egyptian muslims the second they landed and tried to set up the time machine near the Sphinx. Too weak to even carry his bow any more, Clint still managed to be useful...

"A gas arrow doesn't need to be fired to be effective!
... If I hold my breath!"

The Avengers escaped all the way to the year 2900 B.C. where they're once again attacked by angry Egyptians. Though this time Rama Tut's high priest stopped the fighting before anyone was seriously injured. As it turned out, they had arrived on the eve of the Pharaoh's great sleep. Y'see, Rama Tut was about to enter a state of suspended animation so he could wake up in about 2000 years to help Hawkeye and the Avengers fight Kang the Conqueror. A villain who was actually a younger version of Rama Tut, not to be confused with an even younger version of Rama Tut who was still evil. Confused? You're not the only one, as the Avengers discovered when they were granted an audience with the great pharaoh...

"Time? Time is an illusion. I live in the future... I live in the past. I must stop myself from my sins as Kang to come. Must keep myself from Mantis... The Celestial Madonna! Must sleep!"

Well, guess it wouldn't be a Steve Englehart Avengers saga without at least paying lipservice to Steve's favorite character Mantis. Rama Tut's rambling refered to Englehart's earlier work on Avengers, specifically the Celestial Madonna arc. In this ambitious mid-1970s storyline, cosmic forces deemed former Vietnamese prostitute Mantis the perfect human (ow, Steve!). She was then married by Immortus, another future version of Kang, to the leader of the Cotati... A walking, talking alien plant that had assumed the form of Mantis' dead lover the Swordsman. Yeah, that actually happened... The 1970s were a confusing time for all of us.

In his present state of mind, or lack thereof, Rama Tut couldn't help the Avengers. That's why he suggested they went back a bit further in time, to his first reign. Back then he was still coherent enough to know how to fix a time machine.

Taking his advice, and picking up Hawkeye who by then had all but collapsed, the Avengers made one final temporal jump only to be instantly blasted from behind by Rama the Younger. Tut might have been smarter in the past, but he was also a homidical, evil nutjob.

"Nothing can halt the destiny of pharaoh Rama-Tut! No matter how many I have to kill!"

Talk about being in a trans-temporal pickle. All hope seemed lost, for both the Avengers in ancient Egypt as well as Mockingbird who was about to become a madman's blushing bride... And no one in the present knew what was going on or seemed even remotely worried. 

                                              "Forget about the past... that's what I say!"

And with that, we'll wrap up this instalment. When we meet next, time has split in five and the Avengers are about to expand. More on that in part III of The Whackos' Cross Time Craziness: Khonshu Forget About Me?*

*(with sincerest apologies to the Simple Minds)    

1987: The Whackos' Cross Time Craziness part I: Down Time's River By Way Of Albuquerque

By Jef Willemsen (clarmindcontrol.blogspot.com)

Hard to imagine, but once upon a time Marvel only put out one Avengers comic a month. The 1980s changed all that when Hawkeye moved to LA with some fan favorite Avengers and banded together as the West Coast Avengers. About a year and a half in, the team literally had an adventure for the ages as we'll cover in this multipart retrospective.

                                  "Beginning the West Coast Avengers' Greatest Adventure!" 

Readers probably didn't realize at the time just how right that promo blurb on the cover of February 1987's West Coast Avengers I#17 would turn out to be. With no online sollicitations spoiling storylines three months in advance, people were just going to have to stick around to see what long time Avengers scribe Steve Englehart was up to.

Things started off slowly, with the Avengers deciding to invite Firebird (Bonita Juarez) to join up. She'd been hanging around the Avengers' LA compound for most of their early missions and was actively trying to join, but Hawkeye still believed the team was bound by the government's old rule that prohibited the Avengers from having more than six active members. Disappointed, Bonita eventually went home to Albuquerque. All the more reason for the team to surprise her in person with the good news.

At first glance, the Avengers' trip to New Mexico wasn't the most important part of the issue. No, that dubious honor went to Hank Pym. At one time a celebrated founding member, but he'd left the team in disgrace following a lenghty storyline in the early 80s. Now, he was hanging around the Avengers West Coast operation, acting as the team's major domo of sorts. But after getting dumped by Tigra and a particularly scathing run in with his former foe Whirlwind, his self confidence was shot.

                                                               "It's time I killed myself..."

Who knew overreacting was a super power? But before we get back to Hank, who got busy putting his affairs in order, let's check in with the Avengers who were having trouble of their own in Albuquerque.. Y'know, apart from keeping the spelling of the town name straight. As it turned out, Firebird had gone missing! No one had seen her in over a month, leading the Avengers to search the town which led to their run in with the hidden supervillains shown on the cover.

They're quite the colorful bunch...

                                  "You face the fury of Sunstroke! And Gila! And Butte!"

... And don't forget Cactus, though I couldn't if I tried. This team of desert based supervillains exemplified a problem that plagued the book: the West Coast Avengers had a laughable rogues gallery. Sure, they came together fighting Graviton and even held their own against Ultron, but for every adamantium killer robot they faced, there was a Blank, Master Pandemonium and whatever the heck Headlok was supposed to be. So in a sense these jokers fit right in and actually proved somewhat formidable.

                                                      "Who does Simon think he is anyway?
                                             His ionic energy may make him stronger than I am,
                                                     but we've never found that out for sure!" 

During the fight, Englehart managed to deliver some interesting exposition. This particular grouping of Avengers was troubled, specifically because of Wonder Man's renewed sense of arrogant entitlement. After having overcome his fear of death, self doubt and shame over his past misdeeds, Simon Williams was now a a celebrated Hollywood star with an ionic ego to match. He felt he was more powerful, smarter and competent than anyone on the team, which rubbed the equally immodest Iron Man the wrong way. Nothing wrong with a little friendly competition, but as we'll see next time, Wonder Man's arrogance would lead to reckless and potentially lethal behavior.

For now, the Avengers managed to beat back their opponents who, rather mysteriously, were all pulled away by an unknown force. Snubbing Wonder Man who also wanted to chase them, Iron Man claimed he was the fastest Avenger and took off. He traced the villains to a hollowed out butte in the desert and when the Avengers went in to confront the bad guys, they encountered the villain of the piece: Dominus.

                              "Hawkeye! We were standing on... Doc Doom's time machine...!"

Well, that's one way of getting rid of your enemies: just lure them to your lair and have them stand on a faulty time machine, preprogrammed to whisk them away to the distant past. And so, the Avengers find themselves transported from 1987 to, as they soon found out, sometime during the 1870s. The West was still being won and Mockingbird had a little trouble taking it all in.

                       "S.H.I.E.L.D. trained me in hard science, Clint... Not time travel!"

Bobbi's confusion adds a welcome layer of realism to the situation. To long time Avengers like Hawkeye, Iron Man and even Wonder Man the idea of finding yourself stuck in a different era is pretty much old hat. The last time Clint travelled through time with Englehart at the helm, he was guided by a talking stick called the Synchro-Staff (secretly a disguised Space Phantom working for Immortus, but that's neither here nor there).

After helping his wife calm down, Hawkeye learned that Doctor Doom's time platform was damaged. Apparently, the device was so damaged it actually travelled with them through time, control system and all. Iron Man offered to look it over, but here's where Wonder Man's ego asserted itself once again.

                     "They all ignored me when I was a coward, but now that I've gotten
                                         self-confidence, and Hollywood stardom...
                           Wonder Man's getting tired of playing a supporting role!"

Which led Wondy to take charge of trying to repair the transistor powered time machine when spare parts from Iron Man's armor turned out to be incompatible. Before they could determine their next course of action, the team was alerted by the sound of nearby gunfire. They decided to check it out and discovered Hawkeye's old friend the Two-Gun Kid was in the thick of things. Of course, the superheroes quickly turned the tide and sent the bad guys packing.

       "I never thought I'd see you again, Hawkeye. Not after I went with you to your time
                                     and then decided I liked it better back in mine!"

Man, Steve Englehart sure knew how to condense a character's recent backstory into a solid, although not altogether realistic sounding monologue. Thanks to the Two-Gun Kid, the Avengers got a sense of when and where they were. Wonder Man flew the device to the nearest town where he started work with local blacksmith Boomer to try and recreate the damaged components. At the same time, Hawkeye and the others kept busy by helping Two-Gun and his allies Rawhide Kid and the Phantom Rider deal with a rather curious group of bad guys led by even weirder folks...

"Well, I'd say the gang leaders are our 'super-villains' "

Combing through issues of Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt and Two-Gun Kid, Steve Englehart came up with a rather colorful bunch of semi-superpowered baddies. Iron Mask looks like a bargain basement Doctor Doom, Red Raven is so shamelessly a rip-off of the Golden Age character they didn't even bother to change his name and the less said about "master of magnetism" Doctor Danger the better. But, they kept the heroes occupied for a couple of pages even if it didn't exactly do wonders for their reputation...

                    "He's got a horseshoe magnet... Magneto would laugh himself silly!"

And if you thought ordinary magnets, an iron mask and the Kingpin's predecessor with some boomerangs wasn't enough to further cement the Whackos' reputation for fighting lame villains, check out what the gang's secret weapon was...

                                                "Who-dares-disturb-the-Living-Totem?"

Could be just me, but when were totem poles ever consider a threat? When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby dreamed up Tomazooma in Fantastic Four, the effect was the opposite of intimidating and the same goes for this fella. He was quickly taken care of, along with the remaining 1870s bad guys. With the immediate danger passed, the Avengers returned to Wonder Man who was forced to admit he couldn't fix the time platform. The crafting techniques of the era simply weren't advanced enough to produce the necessary parts. But never fear, Wondy had an idea...

                "If we go all the way back to ancient Egypt, we could get the reformed Rama-Tut
                                                    to fix our machine and send us home!"

Despite the Phantom Rider's protests, the Avengers decided that aiming for Rama-Tut's Egypt was their best bet. So, they programmed Doom's time platform to continue their journey into what was, conveniently ignoring the fact it's a time machine, not a time and space machine... In other words, to reach Rama-Tut's ancient Egypt, they'd have to travel to Egypt first. Instead, the team figured the best course of action was to make their next jump right then and there. Only for the Phantom Rider to do something rather unexpected at the last possible moment.

                       "Mockingbird must not be lost! The goddess must remain with the ghost!"

Can we really expect sane and rational decisions from a man who dresses in white fluorescent paint, pretending to be an actual ghost? Moments before the time platform sent the Avengers on their way, Phantom Rider kidnapped Mockingbird and rode off with her. This meant what started out as a straightforward superhero tale turned into a story told in three timeperiods. The 1870s, the Avengers' next destination and... the present. Remember how we left Henry Pym just when he was ready to blow his brains out?

                                                                "He can smell the bullet..."

Wha, another super power, Henry? All kidding aside, Al Milgrom is often disparaged for his art and while Secret Wars II certainly isn't his best work... Consider this sequence. You almost don't need that one line about Pym being able to smell the bullet to get what is going on. Hank's emotional journey to actually getting ready to pull the trigger is remarkable. He goes from feeling lost and terrible to committing to his action, even fighting off a brief moment of doubt. Great work from the art team of Milgrom and inker Joe Sinnott.

But, before the tragedy can take place... All of a sudden, there's God so quickly.

"Stop, Henry Pym! I am La Espirita...
Known to you once as Firebird...
And I bring you hope from God!"

And with that, we come full circle... For part one at least. Next time the Avengers' temporal trip will continue as the heroes discover the rushing river that is time has more than a few unexpected twists and turns. More on that in part II of The Whackos' Cross Time Craziness: La Espirita Bonita*

*(with sincerest apologies to Madonna)