MRL - Avengers

[sonotadream]

Captain America: Man out of Time (2011) #3-4 - Mark Waid/Jorge Molina/Karl Kesel/Scott Hannah

The Avengers are back to normal, Iron Man and Giant-Man are running some tests on Captain America and he's still ready to return home. Good thing Reed Richards has a working time machine!

Iron Man wants him to stay, though. Maybe because he's worried about the timeline, maybe because he wants Captain America as part of the Avengers.

Steve is okay with rescuing Bucky and then go underground and disappear, but he accepts an invitation to meet with Tony Stark.

Tony takes Steve on his party plane, which he surprisingly enjoys, and then gives him a private tour on the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, showcasing of all the highlights of late 20 Th century History - man on the Moon, Martin Luther King's speech, fall of the Berlin Wall.

 

He caps the tour with the Captain America exhibit, just to prove how important his legacy was and how he can keep doing good work now.

Steve, however, takes all this as a sign he isn't needed in the future at all. Society advanced without him - not only in technology, but in gender and race equality - and he has been replaced before (retcon alert!), so he'll just walk up the street and hand the President his resignation.

He doesn't accept. There's the worries about the timeline, he thinks Captain America is needed now and Tony really wants him on the Avengers.

So, Steve sticks around and tries to find anyone from his old life. There's no records of Bucky (he doesn't even have a tomb in this one) or Peggy Carter, no one knows where Nick Fury is, and Namor is not available (neither modern series wants to show him on page 😠).

The only person Steve finds is his old General. He's on hospice care and he gives Steve a tour on the other of 20Th century History: Watergate, the MLK assassination, the ways society got worse…

Steve is feeling a bit disillusioned with the future by the time Kang shows up and identifies him as also a man out of his time…

Random stuff

Steve has a nice moment with the General's nurse - yes she would rather stay here even if it means scrubbing toilets: “It's America.”

He's also pleased that ALL astronauts from the Challenger are honoured.

When Steve throws himself a pity party after failing to find Bucky's tomb, Thor is the one who tells him to stop moping. Bucky die as a warrior and now he’s partying in Valhalla.

The modern writers like to stick to old timey Thor speak - unlike in the original stories.

The president is Obama, although you never actually see his face.

I guess we're skipping Zemo in this one…

 

Avengers (1963) #8 - Stan Lee/Jack Kirby

A space ship lands in rural Virginia. Its sonic weapons destroy the tanks surrounding it and the Avengers are called to deal with the human-shaped being that emerges from the ship - it's Kang.

Also know as the Pharaoh Rama-tut, he was trying to return to his home in the utopic year 3000, but overshoot and landed in post-apocalyptic year 4000. He quickly became the leader of a gang of barbarian (his words) warriors, but got tired of the fighting and decided to return to the past, where he could become an absolute ruler again, but with all the comforts.

His suit has a quantity of gadgets and advanced tech that make beating the Avengers an easy task. They're all trapped inside the ship by a paralytic ray, while Kang waits to be proclaimed King of the World.

Only Wasp and Rick Jones escape. She goes back to Hank's lab in search of a weapon, and he calls the Teen Brigade. They pretend to defect to Kang's side, so they can infiltrate the ship and rescue the Avengers.

The Wasp returns with a special gun with solvent strong enough to destroy Kang's suit. Thor hammers away at his protective shield and Giant-Man fires, leaving Kang almost defenceless.

His last Hail Mary is to become radioactive, since future people are immune, but Thor's hammer is also capable of redirecting the radiation and Kang escapes with his tail between his legs.

Honestly, he felt underwhelming in this story. His brief victory over the Fantastic Four felt more complete than keeping the Avengers in containment cells.

Also, let's talk timeline. Kang appears in the Fantastic Four Annual #2 before appearing in the Avengers, but that issue is still some time away in the list. The X-Men are coming up next, but they already exist in-universe, the list just skips those issues. I'm sure choices were made for ease of readability, but it could be interesting to go strictly on publishing order.

Random stuff

The Avengers have rotating leadership.

I just skimmed issue #7, but Rick finds an old Bucky uniform and shows it to Steve. He gets quite angry; he doesn't want to be responsible for the death of another partner. Also, Zemo teams up with Thor’s rogues Enchantress and the Executioner.

 

Captain America: Man out of Time (2011) #5 - Mark Waid/Jorge Molina

Steve is back on the past and suffering from a bit of reverse culture shock. Hot dogs are five cents and baseball is good again, but segregation is still a thing, Bucky's still dead and Peggy's still missing. And he can't get in touch with General Simon.

And, on top of that, he's worried about the friends he made in the future, who are probably still in danger from Kang.

However, Captain America would find a way, so Steve does.

He hides his special Avengers’ ID card with a letter in the thing he knows will be on his room in the future: the photo of Captain America gifted to him by the General. The card sends an alert the same day Kang attacks and the letter is a message to Rick Jones. It works.

By the time Steve is done hiding the letter, Reed Richards is waiting for him in his time machine.

Kang is defeated and Steve gets to see the Grand Canyon.

This was a very good look at Steve adjusting to the modern world. Would probably be better read on his own, unlike EMH, that is very much filling the gaps in the original series.

 

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #4

The confrontation with Zemo brings back Steve's memories and now there's only one thing in his mind: kill Zemo. Thor, as a fellow warrior, is oddly supportive.

In the way to the confrontation with Kang, Captain America gives a statement to the Army newspaper about why he chooses to keep fighting. He doesn't see this as a choice. The colours he wears stand for something bigger than himself, that transcends politics: freedom.

These words help turn the media tide while the Avengers are trapped inside Kang’s ship. Once Kang is defeated, they get a big parade and their security clearance, even after refusing to work under the Pentagon - although, on condition that Captain America keeps working with the team.

 

Avengers (1963) #9 - Stan Lee/Don Heck

Zemo, Enchantress and the Executioner are back from their space warp trip - they were somewhere between the Fifth and Sixth dimensions, and Zemo has a new plan to destroy Captain America and the Avengers.

Simon Williams is a disgraced industrailist - he stole some money to keep his businness afloat, after Tony Stark’s patents made his own obsolete. The Masters of Evil 2.0 kidnap him to Zemo’s Amazonian hideout, where Zemo bombards him with ionic rays, that give Williams super strength and invulnerability. And a deadly condition that’ll kill him in a week, unless Zemo provides him with the antidote.

Williams has no choice but to infiltrate the Avengers under the name Wonder Man and tells them a story that is very much the truth - except the part where he’s a spy. Captain America is distrustful as soon as he hears that Zemo is involved, but Enchantress casts a spell that makes everyone believe Wonder Man. Learning about his disease, they all start working on possible cures, but Wonder Man sticks to the plan and kidnaps the Wasp back to the Amazon.

In the end, Wonder Man sacrifices himself for the Avengers and the bad guys escape.