#(considering how hawkeye literally says out loud how tired he is)

[variousqueerthings]

watching MASH and having the niggling feeling it might be a tragedy masking ever less as a comedy as the story progresses lads

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #143: Right Between the Eons!

January, 1976

Another excellent title.

Good job with titles recently, the Avengers book. And by recently I mean before I was even born.

That’s weird to think about.

But in terms of lying covers that lie, this cover stands pretty far out. The most of the Avengers do not fight a large somewhat familiar reptile monster. The cowboy gang plus a few Avengers do encounter a monster but one that looks a bit different than this one.

In fact, Team Most of the Avengers only get two pages again. Poor neglected majority of the team.

Last time on Cowboys guest starring some Avengers: Thor and Moondragon hitched a ride with Immortus back in time to find Hawkeye but there was a Kang trap and he’s trying to conquer the 19th century so he doesn’t have to conquer the 20th and there’s a bunch of cowboys. And then the cowboys thwart a great train robbery while the Avengers mostly just spectate.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team join forces with the amazing blackmailing Patsy Walker to investigate the Brand Corporation, get their asses kicked by the Squadron Supreme, and thrown into an energy cage. As you can see, their side of the plot has been inching along relatively.

This time: cowboy interrogation.

Anyway, Kid Colt threatens Ace Banditman with his colts, shooting off his hat and pants and just overall threatening to enact even more vigilante justice than he already has.

Thor protests but Hawkeye stands up for cowboy interrogation. Because Hawkeye.

But once Ace spills the beans on how to get into Kang’s citadel, Hawkeye decides to flip the ratio. Now things will be mostly Avengers with light cowboy cameo.

Only Hawkeye, Moondragon, a mysterious bearded man, and Two-Gun Kid ride towards the citadel.

Because Tombstone is Two-Gun’s town and he’s seeing this through!

No matter what Moondragon says. Goshdarn future, letting women prance around with shaved heads and half-naked and ordering people around.

But as the mounted Avengers plus Two-Gun plus mysterious beardy approach the citadel, Kang is watching them. Obviously.

Villains always have ridiculous surveillance. But also they are approaching right from the front where you’d logically put your surveillance cameras.

Hawkeye proposes that he and Moondragon go first to deal with any protective devices on the front door but the door just swings open for them.

An obvious trap but walking into obvious traps is the Avengers way.

So they just stroll right in, taking only a single reasonable precaution.

And are confronted by loud shouty Kang face on a screen. And he lays out his motives.

Basically? He’s pissed about the Celestial Madonna Saga. Still. You’d think that a time traveler could really take ten to calm down, just go on a sojourn and let yourself really cool down.

But Kang never gets over it.

And the Avengers are really, really getting tired of all this shit by now. I mean, it doesn’t help that they saw the spoilers. They know that he chills out and becomes Immortus and they have to be thinking that can’t come soon enough.

Anyway. The Avengers are gonna fight now. But first, stripping.

So Kang drops them down a pit. Nobody wants to see shirtless Hawkeye.

Well. I mean. Some people do. But Kang is not one of those some people.

So the Avengers plus Two-Gun Kid plus that bearded guy plunge down a pit just deep enough for Kang to monologue about how cool he is and how much he’ll destroy them all.

Y’know. Just Kang things.

And because that pit is apparently so ludicrously deep, lets cut over to the Brand Investigation Team for their two pages of ‘remember that this story arc is still ongoing even though the main focus is elsewhere’ content.

Between issues, Captain America has thought of a pretty good escape plot.

The energy cage is too strong to bust through. And Vision can’t even intangible through it.

BUT WHAT IF

hear me out

WHAT IF

Cap jammed his mighty shield into the energy cage? And even if the cage did not yield, what if Vision intangibled through the shield to sort of loophole whatever thing is keeping him from intangibling?

Its just comic enough to work!

So Vision sticks his head out of the cage and uses his SOLAR BEAM to blow open the cage.

Somehow.

I thought the cage was generated by Dr Spectrum’s power prism so what did Vision blow up to deactivate the cage?

Well, whatever. It was a good plan. Lets not let logic get in the way of that.

Also, Cap is weirdly rude here. He calls Patsy Walker by her married name even though she knows she’s divorced. And when Beast cracks a pun that “four walls do not a prism make!” Cap skeptically asks if the Avengers are really considering him for membership.

Or maybe he’s just angry that was his last bit of content this issue.

BECAUSE BACK TO COWBOY TIMES!

The cowboy era team has finally finished falling. Although Kang isn’t finished bragging.

Look at this cool monster he made out of a coyote.

Yup.

When they say ‘what has science wrought?!’, this is.

It doesn’t even really look like it stems from a coyote. Art team kind of dropped the ball here. George Perez, looking at you.

Moondragon is immediately Tail Whipped unconscious, leaving Two-Gun Kid and Hawkeye to fruitlessly pepper the giant purple coyote monster with their own respective ineffectual projectile weapons.

And then Hawkeye gets Tail Whipped unconscious.

Boy. This team sucks.

Except beard guy. Off-screen, he managed to sneak up behind Kang.

You rock, beard guy.

Oh. Right. Obviously beard guy was Thor all along, disguised as Donald Blake. He figured that while Kang would be on the lookout for Thor, he’d overlook yet another puny cowboy.

So while Kang was distracted watching Moondragon and Hawkeye get their shit kicked, Donald Blake turned into Thor, busted a hole in the wall, turned back to Donald Blake, and then stood behind Kang and dramatically pulled off his disguise beard.

Mighty Thor did a surprisingly good stealth play.

Anyway, Kang gloats that he still has his force field so Thor just BWAM!!s Kang’s force field - and consequently Kang - right out of the citadel.

Always anchor your force field, kids.

Because Thor is nettled and This Time Playing For Keeps.

But lets check in on Two-Gun Kid. Yeah. Yeah... He’s not doing well.

He’s feeling the literal squeeze.

Thankfully, Moondragon wakes up and uses a mindblast to knock out the coyote troll.

Just like she told Thor at the beginning of this, fighting Kang is a task for gods, no mortals.

Having been rescued after losing his shit at the monster, Two-Gun Kid snaps at Hawkeye when the bowman asks how he’s holding up.

Hopefully, Hawkeye understands about what jerks macho men can be when their self-worth has been damaged by co-existing in a superhero universe. Since that’s something he puts his team through. A lot.

Anyway, meanwhile, Thor continues knocking Kang around through his forcefield.

Although Kang’s forcefield strains under the thunder god’s thunder blows of thunder, it still holds. But just cowering under a forcefield ain’t Kang’s way.

So he switches to offense and starts blasting Thor with a dissolution beam.

Thor being made of sterner stuff just stands up under the onslaught.

Kang cranks the power level of the dissolution beam up higher and higher. While an unfamiliar fear skitters up Kang’s spine. A weakness he swore he’d never know.

He cranks the dial to eleven! Past eleven! All the power! KANG IS INVICIBLE! KANG CONQUERS!

Kang pushes himself so far that he tears himself to shreds.

Damn nasty way to go.

Also villain killing himself so that a hero’s hands go unbloodied. Although it is a pretty fitting end for Kang, if you think about it.

Thor: “He destroyed himself! But if I’ve learned naught else in my immortal life -- such is the way of the warrior!”

Oh and with Kang gone, apparently his citadel just fades away. Restoring history to whatever.

Immortus’ head appears in the sky and ruminates that this must be fate. Kang caused his atoms to split and spread through time never to be rejoined until Kang comes back despite all this. And reiterates that yeah this was basically a very Kang death for Kang.

And Immortus takes a moment to fill in the missing gap in the story of how Rama-Tut went on from the Celestial Madonna Saga to become Immortus. Basically, he went back to Egypt and devoted himself to further understanding of time in disappointment for his failure to undo his past evils during that saga. And eventually he became Immortus. The end.

Of course, now that Kang killed himself, that means second Rama-Tut never existed. So Immortus never existed.

Immortus promptly disappears in a puff of logic, free of the tortured existence that is being an entity on the Kang timeline.

And Moondragon cries. Because the death of a god gets her where she lives.

Now we’re finally done with the Kang storyline that started in the Celestial Madonna Saga. He long outstayed his welcome and there was that weirdly Avengers-lite cowboy episode last time which I’m blaming entirely on him but in the end he went out how he had to go out.

So bitterly beating himself against a brick wall of trying to conquer a stronger opponent that he timesploded himself.

Really makes you think...

BUT FORGET THAT: NEXT TIME HELLCAT!