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thebibliomancer · 7 months

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Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #52: FRAGMENTS of a GREATER DARKNESS

December, 1989

Master Pandemonium reveals the untold secrets of his origin and -- the shocking truth about the Scarlet Witch's children!

Buddy, neither of those secrets will make you look less ridiculous with the lopsided, partially filled in pentagram hole in your tum tum or your ridiculous baby hands.

And I think John Byrne realized that the baby hands didn't quite have the impact he was hoping for because he makes them more grotesque imps on the cover but still look like babies attached to this man's hands in the inside art.

Mistakes have been made but stubbornly we preserve even when we shouldn't.

Speaking of mistakes: a little note to myself. I really should have done this issue to finish up the baby hands saga, then done Atlantis Attacks, then Avengers 311, then Avengers West Coast 53, then Avengers 312.

Sorry. Byrne writing both books means they're vaguely more interconnected than ever and then you have back to back company-wide events. I got mixed up.

And yeah, Wanda goes right from all of this baby hands stuff to being kidnapped and engaged to a snake elder god and then right into Acts of Vengeance. She's having a really bad life.

So last times in Avengers West Coast: Vision disassembled by the government. Put back together but loses his emotions. Wanda tricked by Texas college and pumped full of evil ooze that makes her racist. Later, she brings the robot Human Torch back to life in a fit of pique. Demons attack the Avengers West Coast Compound and while she's fighting Master Pandemonium, her babies get kidnapped. Her teammates don't seem to care but eventually agree to go with her to rescue them. When the Avengers track down Master Pandemonium, they see that he's jammed Wanda's babies onto his arms to be his hands.

The last time summary basically reads as 'shit keeps happening to specifically Wanda.'

This is supposed to be horrific. The previous page describes it as "a heart-wrenching tale of ultimate tragedy" but I am incapable of taking this seriously.

This man -- who was already kind of ridiculous as a character -- jammed babies onto his elbows and declared it makes him unbeatable.

This is his master plan. He is so proud of his accomplishment.

... Is he just going to use tiny baby hands for all manual dexterity tasks from now on? Is he going to pick up a sandwich with their tiny hands and bring it up to his mouth to eat? Is he going to hold a toothbrush with a baby hand and then brush his teeth? Actually, all hygiene tasks are going to be awkward and horrible like this.

THIS IS WORSE IN EVERY WAY THAN JUST HAVING NORMAL HANDS.

Wonder Man cautions that they'll need to be careful fighting Master Pandemonium since he has Tommy and Billy as human shields but Master Pandemonium laughs that Tommy and Billy can't be harmed because they're part of him and he's unbeatable.

Then he makes Tommy hand shoot demonfire with his tinier hands.

Don't try to make me like this through sheer ridiculousness, John.

Iron Man tries blasting Master Pandemonium with a strong enough repulsor blast to destroy an office block but the guy no sells it.

Master P explains he just wanted to use the baby souls to replace what was missing from his (and he chose these specific babies because?) but coincidentally they happened to be two of his missing soul pieces!

Ain't that a lucky break for specifically Master P!

Anyway, he does the thing he does and shoots dozens of demons out of his arms. And guess what? The demons are buffed compared to before because they benefit from him getting 2/5s of his soul back!

Sure, okay.

US Agent orders the Avengers to leap into action and Wasp thinks he sounded almost as impressive as Captain America there.

All he said was "Well, don't just stand there gaping! Demons they may be... but we're Avengers! Lets show 'em what that means!"

You're too easily impressed, Wasp.

Anyway, she shoots at a demon with her Wasp's Sting but the demon explodes into a hundred smaller demons. So Dr Pym pulls out a needle gun and shoots hundreds of needles to shred the wings of the hundred demons.

Damn, Pym. Brutal.

Vision strolls through the horde of demons, confident that his intangibility makes him untouchable.

Then a demon breaks his neck.

Damn. That'd be brutal if it wasn't Vision and if Wonder Man didn't explicitly state in the next panel that Vision can recover from that.

Wonder Man manages to make his way through the demons with less neck breaking than Vision and tackles Master Pandemonium.

He tries to pin Master P's arms at his side so he can't use Billy and Tommy to cast spells but one of the baby hands twists out of his grasp and bites his entire head.

Back on Earth, the Robot Human Torch flies above the Avengers West Coast Compound.

This is. A weird trend, actually. The issue after he was revived, I think he was introduced flying above the Compound and then landing. When he appears in Atlantis Attacks, he's flying above the Compound and then landing.

Is this stock footage?

But in this instance, he was making sure there were no more demons left. He also sees a weird tiny cat dashing into the bushes when he lands but he dismisses it as something to ask about later.

... Did Tigra get out? Dammit, Hank!

Jim Hammond, Robot Human Torch, heads back inside and sees that Agatha Harkness is just staring off at nothing.

So he decides to recap Master Pandemonium's whole deal to Ann Raymond, since she's around and doesn't already know.

You know the deal. Martin Preston (who has the same initials as Master Pandemonium? Wow) was a devil worshiping movie executive (retcon from being an actor) who drunk drove his way into a bad accident that cost his arm. He called for demons or whatever to save him so Mephisto appeared and replaced all of his limbs with demons. For laughs. He also took Martin's soul, ripped it into five and scattered them around the universe. Also for laughs.

Jim Hammond's recap calls the star-shaped hole in Master P's tum tum a "star-shaped scar" and bullshit. That is a whole. It has a suggestion of depth. It was a fight choreography detail that Wonder Man punched through the hole when he was trying to deck Master P.

It's not a scar, John. It's a star-shaped hole in his tum tum. GOD.

Anyway. Ann Raymond says cool story but what the fuck does this have to do with anything? Why is he kidnapping babies?

Agatha Harkness rouses from her weird trance to deliver some retcon exposition.

Remember when Vision dry-humped babies into Wanda because she was channeling a ludicrous amount of magic through her and through magic all things are possible, including spontaneous pregnancy?

Fuck you. Only god can create life.

(It is so fucking weird for Agatha Harkness of all people to say that only god can create life. She's been burned at the stake. Multiple times.)

Anyway, Agatha says that all along, Wanda's babies were "manifestations of Wanda's will. One small step beyond illusion."

How come Dr Strange never noticed if he oversaw the birth?

Stop asking Agatha Harkness questions. She has stuff to do.

To get Jim to shut up with his concerns about the Avengers, she reassures him that she has her cat familiar keeping an eye on them so she'll definitely know if they need help.

Cue the montage of the Avengers needing all the help.

Let's see. Hank has been grabbed by the ghoulies. Wasp is being eaten by a Murloc. US Agent is... blobbed? Iron Man is being bear hugged by an electric vantablack thingie. Scarlet Witch is holding hands with a horrible troll (because she needs to gesture to do stuff). And Wonder Man is being eaten by the baby hand.

Which still looks ridiculous.

Hm. But that might solve the question of how Master Pandemonium is going to eat with toddlers for hands. Maybe he can just eat through them.

Master Pandemonium decides that since absorbing some babies worked out so well, he's going to power up his baby hands by feeding them Wanda's soul.

He's just doing whatever pops into his head.

Dr Pym interrupts and tells Master Pandemonium that there's a huge inconsistency with his story. He says that Tommy and Billy are two of his missing soul pieces but then how come they were born before Master P met Mephisto?

Which... I guess is a date that Hank knows?

Because someone always has to be spying on the Avengers and Immortus already said he can't for this story, Mephisto is spying on things play out. From his throne of agony.

Mephisto smirks to himself that Master Pandemonium has no idea what's really going on.

SO HERE'S THE REAL STORY.

Narrated by Mephisto to No One In Particular.

So, Franklin blew up Mephisto once, back in Fantastic Four #277. I have no idea why the Fantastic Four were fighting A Devil. But Mephisto was eventually able to mostly recombobulate himself.

But missing five pieces of his essence.

(Do you see where this is going?)

Him jamming demons on Martin Preston's limbs and making a star-shaped hole in his tum tum wasn't just for laughs. It was to trick specifically this dude and only this dude no other dudes into searching for the missing Mephisto pieces while thinking it was his own missing soul.

In fact, Martin never lost his soul at all.

Master Pandemonium reacts badly to the news (from Hank, he can't hear Mephisto). He accuses Hank and Wanda of lying.

Anyway, then a portal opens and Jim Hammond the Robot Human Torch strolls out with the last two missing pieces of Master Pandemonium's soul but actually of Mephisto. And he promises to just give them to the dude if he promises the Avengers will be released unharmed.

Master Pandemonium agrees but as soon as Jim hands over the glowy things, he reneges.

Master Pandemonium: "With my soul fully restored, I need not be bound by the promises I give mere mortals! By turning the fragments over to me, you have signed your own death warrant!"

But when he places the last "soul pieces" there's still a piece missing. The center of the star.

And Master Pandemonium gets sucked into that hole.

Somehow.

In fact everything gets sucked into the pentagon shaped hole in his tum tum. The lair, the demons, everything but the Avengers. Leaving them in a blank void.

With Mephisto.

He tells everyone that all the soul pieces - including Billy and Tommy - have been restored to their proper place, ie Mephisto.

Then Agatha's cat digivolves into a bigger, scarier cat and everybody stands around narrating action that's just off-panel.

It is literally that scene from Gravity Falls.

John Byrne is a good comic artist.

Agatha Harkness contacts Wanda MAGICALLY. Wanda frets that Mephisto is going to destroy Ebony but Agatha dismisses her worries because Eboy is made of stronger stuff.

But this is all just a diversion, to buy time for Wanda to resolve this plot.

Agatha commands Wanda to open her mind and soul to her and then I guess something happens.

Something sure happens.

And everybody is back at the Avengers West Coast compound. With Mephisto defeated? Gone? Gotten bored and wandered off? Like, he only showed up two pages ago and he wasn't even starting shit. Ebony started shit.

This isn't a great victory against the devil. This was Agatha slamming the 'end story' button.

It's time for Agatha to Explain It All.

You see, by absorbing Billy and Tommy, Mephisto left a weak point in his defenses because the kids were still tied to Wanda by the spell she used to create them.

AND THEN AGATHA GAVE WANDA MAGICAL AMNESIA ERASING HER MEMORY OF BILLY AND TOMMY

And this, for magic reasons, caused the devil to poof. For a little bit.

Agatha says that Billy and Tommy were never real. Just a hysterical pregnancy that was magically amplified and snagged two of the missing Mephisto pieces as a basis to make imaginary babies out of.

Wasp points out how fucked up it is that Wanda is going to wake up and learn that her babies are forever gone because they were the devil but, see, the amnesia takes care of that.

No pesky questions about missing children or crying over missing children or going on fruitless quests for missing children.

US Agent points out how fucked up it is to make a mother forget her children and Agatha says she's basically a mother figure to Wanda so she knows best.

I don't like this story in all kinds of ways.

Even if I only hated the plot and character direction, the art on this issue is bad. And lazy. Hiding an entire devil vs cat fight scene off-panel and having talking heads just tell us how it's going? For shame.

The action was lackluster. Having the entire team just get rocked by Master Pandemonium instead of being able to put up a fight like previous times.

And it was less interested in telling a good story than undoing previous stories.

The issue ends with a tease of Atlantis Attacks, so Wanda is going to have a terrible time immediately after having a terrible time immediately after having a terrible time immediately after having a terrible time.

Either John Byrne doesn't like Wanda or he's the kind of guy who breaks the things he likes.

I already covered Atlantis Attacks, whoops, so next week more Avengers West Coast as Wanda has a terrible time in Acts of Vengeance.

Follow @essential-avengers to psychically send Wanda Maximoff well wishes and maybe a beverage of choice. Like and reblog to make me happy.

#avengers #essential avengers #west coast avengers #Master Pandemonium #Mephisto #Agatha Harkness #scarlet witch #wonder man #iron man #US Agent #the Wasp #hank pym #dr pym #the vision #robot Human Torch #tigra #teeny little tigra #gratuitous Atlantis Attacks mention #this was bad but at least it's behind me now

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