My memory of this cover is a swipe is involved. And I wanna say it’s Greg Land traced this picture. But I don’t fully remember. Maybe the swipe will surface in future reading. Well, inside, Hydra guy is STILL ranting for 2 more pages after getting like ⅓ of last issue to rant, ending with him having the Green Avengers taken out of their tubes to go do bad guy things. Strangely, in spooky silhouette, one of them appears to be an evil Vision, but one will not appear in this story. Then it’s 5:37am at Avengers Tower, and a restless Aunt May gets up and heads to the kitchen only to find…
Y’all a food particle has fallen out of this comic. I think it’s a piece of a potato chip. This is not ideal. Especially since I was definitely not the last person to read this issue, it was loaned to… at least 2 other people, and read by at least 3.
Did Cap just become a particularly bad render of Robert Redford? And who’s Jarvis? And I still don’t know who Aunt May is. The last thing I’m thinking about reading these wretched comics by Deodato, LaRocca, and their celebrity-tracing ilk is, you know, the story I’m supposed to be reading. Iron Man is first on the scene (Possibly swiped from Adi Granov in one panel) as the dumb green Thor clone, calling himself “The Hammer,” is terrorizing people on the street. They get to scrappin’, Tony noting Dumb Evil Thor has been outfitted with tech to simulate all his powers, and is almost as strong. So, like… why? Hydra decides they need supervillains to counter the superheroes, sure, of course, no problem. Why dressed like Thor? Minus the wings on the helmet and with a big dumb Hydra logo on his chest? Why not just make Hydra-Man? It’s just so silly. Meanwhile, Luke & Jessica find themselves squaring off with… Karl. He’s in a Dumb Green Iron Man suit and says he’s supposed to go by “Tactical Force,” but he doesn’t like it. Our heroes are unimpressed.
Not too tuff. Elsewhere…
This page has such a visceral impact on anyone aware of Nick Spencer’s dreadful Captain America run some 10+ years later. JMS beat him to an evil Hydra Captain America. I forgot somehow. Well, lest we forget whose comic this is, that leaves Spider-Man to tackle… “The Bowman,” the dumb green evil Hawkeye. Which sounds like lightwork for Spider-Man to me, but then “the Bowman” launches a volley of arrows at a crowd of innocent people, diverting our man’s attention.
Bad page layout. That arrow coming from the opposite side of the page after dumb evil green Hawkeye fires it is needlessly confusing, and the explosion makes it hard to tell what’s going on, and then… random textless boat. Not great. I guess it’s meant to show us “the Bowman” has escaped. Spider-Man is helping people run from… whatever he blew up as we find Cap fighting dumb green evil Cap some more. I’m pretty sure some swiping is going on, possibly from Mike Zeck and Andy Kubert, but I can’t prove anything. Dumb green evil Cap smashes a skylight to make glass rain on innocents and make Cap save them (I swear that just happened!) then all the dumb green evil Avengers get a ping on their communicators and easily escape, and I think all of them are swipes. Cap from Andy Kubert, Iron Man from Adi Granov, the current mask, the one the dumb green evil Iron Man is not wearing. I think he appears in another swipe from Bob Layton on the next page, even. Shameless. The Bugle runs photos of all the Avengers but Spider-Man having been stunted on the next day, and that gets Peter’s attention.
You tell ‘em, Jason Priestly.
Good chance for Spider-Man to prove his worth to the team, I suppose. I just can’t take the dumb green evil versions of the Avengers seriously.