The Avengers #137-144

The Avengers #137-144

Originally released in 1975

Written by Steve Englehart

Art by George Tuska (#137-140), George Perez (#141-144)

I'm aware that Beast has a history with the Avengers, though I haven't read much with him as a part of the team.  It seems like a fitting culmination of Xavier's dream to have mutants and humans working side by side in a group like the Avengers, so I thought I'd read the issues where he joined Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Starting off, the Avengers are understaffed to say the least.  Scarlet Witch and Vision are on their honeymoon, and Mantis has left, which brings the team down to three members - Hawkeye, Thor, and Iron Man, with the last two being part-timers.  It's not the worst state that the team has been in (there was a point where it was just Hawkeye, the Wasp, and Hank Pym as Goliath, and Hank's size-changing abilities were limited), but it's clear that new members are needed.

Trying to recruit former members doesn't work out well, with Quicksilver taking this opportunity to demonstrate his bigotry against robots. Only Hank and Janet Pym answer the call and agree to come back to the team - Janet's the more agreeable of the two, and while Hank has reservations, he's willing to go along with his wife's choices.

The team is willing to accept Moondragon, a bald psychic woman who was raised on Saturn's moon Titan, on a trial basis, though with Hawkeye storming off to the 12th century to find the Black Knight, the Avengers still feel like they could use more members.  They hold try-outs, but only one person shows up:

Of course, this isn't actually Edward G. Robinson, a late film star and the inspiration for Chief Wiggum from the Simpsons, but rather Hank McCoy, showing off his acting skills. Hank's athleticism and tendency to talk a mile a minute are quickly demonstrated as well, as the try-outs are attacked by the mysterious X-Men villain known only as the Stranger.

While attempting to escape the Stranger's death trap, Thor, Iron Man, and the Wasp are hit by flying mines, forcing Beast and Moondragon to save the day.  However, while Thor and Iron Man recover, the Wasp is in critical condition, with Hank going into a berserk rage to track down the Stranger.

Tony, Hank, and Hank manage to find the Stranger's energy signature, with Thor and Moondragon traveling to his location.  He seems weaker, though, and much easier to defeat, raising the team's suspicion.

As it turns out, this isn't the Stranger at all, but rather, Magneto's flunky Toad, who is using advanced alien technology to make it seem like he's the far more powerful Stranger.  Toad is tired of being a minion, and he has an unrequited crush on Wanda that he wants to act on, but the heroes ignore him about halfway through his rant, if they ever paid attention at all.

While Hank and Janet are happily married, some of the personality traits that will come to haunt Hank in later years will rear their ugly heads here, like anger blinding him or a refusal to admit that anything's wrong.  Due to a recent incident, he can't change sizes without causing himself immense pain, something that he tries to keep from the team with varying levels of success.

However, fighting Whirlwind (Janet's stalker who tries to attack her while she's in her hospital bed) forces him to repeatedly change size, aggravating his condition to the point where he's unconscious and growing slowly but uncontrollably.

The Vision, who arrived back from his honeymoon earlier than expected with the Scarlet Witch alongside him, has to go on a brief fantastic voyage in order to get a serum that Beast made into Pym's bloodstream. The Vision seems confused at the shock from the other Avengers that his and Wanda's honeymoon is over so soon, chalking it up to his inexperience with human life.

Hank and Janet both recover, though they're bedridden as a result of what they've been through.  At this point, the roster of the Avengers seems pretty fluid, with characters dropping in and out of the team depending on the storyline.

Even when the Beast is an Avenger, the series still touches on the prejudice and bigotry that mutants face - an adoring crowd that came to see the Avengers starts to turn ugly when they start to realize that there's a mutant with them, and even a doctor seems to refuse to let Beast help in large part because Beast could be a member of the X-Men.

At this point, the team is split into two groups - Iron Man, Beast, the Vision, and the Scarlet Witch will investigate a group of mercenaries that attacked Beast, and Captain America will join them for the time being.  Meanwhile, Thor and Moondragon will travel back in time to find out why Hawkeye hasn't returned, with Immortus (Kang's future self who mellowed out) helping to track the archer down.

As it turned out, while traveling through the timestream, Hawkeye was attacked by Kang the Conqueror, with the two of them being sent off-course and landing in the 19th century. With Kang setting out to conquer this era, the trio of Avengers team up with Marvel's various western heroes to stop him. (Immortus stays out of the conflict)

Meanwhile, in the present, Beast has been pursued by a mysterious red-haired woman who turns out to be Patsy Walker.  The character started out as Marvel's equivalent to Archie, by my understanding, though the tone of her life has shifted wildly over the decades. (I'm pretty sure that, at this point, the Devil is her ex-father-in-law) Upon discovering Beast's secret identity, she vowed to keep it a secret as long as Beast would make her a superhero.

He hasn't followed through with that promise yet, but when the team decides to investigate the Roxxon corporation, Patsy chooses to tag along.  Making things awkward is that Roxxon's new head of security is her boyfriend (now ex-husband) from her earliest comics, Buzz Baxter.  Their relationship fell apart after Buzz returned home from the war and became distant and verbally abusive.

However, Roxxon's security is far above what the Avengers expected, because it turns out that they hired the Squadron Supreme to protect the corporation's interests.  How they hired a team of superheroes from another universe, and why the Squadron Supreme would lower themselves to being security guards for a corporation, are mysteries that go unsolved in these issues.

This line-up consists of Hyperion (Superman), Doctor Spectrum (Green Lantern), The Whizzer (the Flash - I think I've said it before, but that name and the yellow costume make for an unfortunate combination, even if the name "Whizzer" likely didn't have that connotation in the 70s), Golden Archer (Green Arrow - this character previously went by Hawkeye, though obviously that name is taken), and Lady Lark (Black Canary).  They make short work of the Avengers and imprison them, with the team only being able to escape through a hastily thought-out plan.

While exploring Roxxon, Iron Man, Captain America, and Patsy find a costume that had been previously used by Tigra before she gained her catlike appearance.  Jumping at the opportunity, Patsy almost immediately tries it on, taking on the mantle of Hellcat.

However, she doesn't get an opportunity to test herself before the Squadron Supreme arrive, and the head of Roxxon decides to cut his losses by sending the Squadron Supreme back to their own universe with the Avengers (and Patsy) being taken along for the ride. (The title of the next issue is a little amusing - it's common for DC to have issue with two worlds meeting called "Crisis on Earth-_", but about ten years later, the artist of this issue, George Perez, would go on to draw Crisis on Infinite Earths)

These issues were almost addicting - I could have kept going, and the cliffhangers kept me wanting to see what would happen next (aside from half of the team being sent to another universe, Hawkeye says that he'll be quitting the Avengers once they get back to the present, and it seems like the Two Gun Kid, a cowboy, will be taking his place), but I knew that I had to stop somewhere.  This era of the Avengers seems fairly chaotic (I'm not sure if Steve Englehart was just starting on the book and wanted to change things up), and while Moondragon hasn't made much of an impact on me, Beast and Hellcat make for fun additions to the team.