#anyway god that hades drawing fucking rules so hard i really popped off

[spearxwind]

Aw man I'm really glad people enjoyed the caption to my hades drawing too. That makes me really happy -w-

I have been thinking of him a lot especially like lore and backstory stuff the past month or so. I actually took a trip into his tag today and i was pleased when i saw some older posts that said 'idk anything about him yet' basically, and to think that now i do is really nice like hell fucking yeah thats solid progress! that i wasnt sure i was gonna manage but i did it!! and in terms of backstory and such im still ironing out the kinks but man. its good so far i think... i love him a lot. i wanna do him justice.

i have to settle on more stuff for cd before everything fits though. namely connon I really need to rework her super bad. or do away with her entirely idk but i dont wanna do that... she might jsut need like. a complete overhaul and a fresh coat of paint too or something tbh bc she also deserves justice!! unfortunately i just keep not knowing what to do with the poor girl like hello. i dont want her to just Be There but I keep having trouble. i love her sm but what is her deal fr!!

I will also try to include more lore in my captions from now on i think... the urge to be a little funnie in them is always there but that one post i saw the other day really stuck with me. you have to be earnest in order for others to perceive what you do as such and reducing everything to humor takes away from it if it is not originally meant to be humor. basically what im saying is i will take better care of my captions from now on!! or i will try to at least. because my ocs and headworlds mean very much to me -w-

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #163: The Demi-God Must Die!

September, 1977

Wherein Iron Man tries to save Marvel from the shameful footnote of the Champions.

Except nah.

Once again we get a really good DC-esque Superdickery kinda cover. Where Iron Man is beating Hercules to death with his bare gauntled hands just cause.

Also, I love the detail of the do not litter trashcan that is being knocked over in this donnybrook.

But how much of this truth is truth truth? Lets find out.

Well we start with Iron Man trying to ram the Champions out of the sky. Perhaps embittered that they called their flying car something like Champscraft instead of Quinjet.

So, hey. What is a Quin anyway and how does it modify jet?

Anyway, I should introduce the Champions. Once upon a time, Tony Isabella wanted to do a book about Angel and Iceman but the Rules at the time stated that a book was either a solo or a team book and a team book needed five people including a woman and a strong guy.

So it became a book about the mysterious team-up of Black Widow, Hercules, Ghost Rider, Iceman and Angel. They became a bit of a punchline, like most California based Marvel teams.

The Champions guest-starring today are Hercules (the titular must die demi-god), Black Widow (she was a Champions before ever being an Avenger and that fucks with me), and Iceman who just wanted some chill hangout book with Angel and has to deal with these loons now.

So Iron Man rams the Champscraft out of the sky but thankfully Black Widow’s excellent driving and Hercules amazing ability to be an airbag, apparently, prevents anyone from being horribly dead for several years.

And then Iron Man punches Hercules in the throat to stop the pseudo-shakespearean dialogue. That’s Thor’s shtick and Tony is a strong believer in copyright, you’d better believe.

Black Widow shoots at Iron Man ineffectually with her Widow’s Bite and Iceman less ineffectually but still pretty ineffectually tries to restrain Iron Man in an ice cocoon.

Iron Man just repulsors him.

An interesting thing here is that Iron Man far outclasses any of the Champions aside from Hercules. Once Hercules shakes off his grogginess from the crash and being punched in the throat, Iron Man is pretty shit out of luck. But Iceman and Black Widow can’t do much more than briefly distract him.

Things wouldn’t change if Angel were here but I have to wonder how Ghost Rider would fare.

Oh and Iron Man peppers Black Widow with some building shrapnel. This is interesting because of something later but basically that’s how he dealt with a character too acrobatic to draw a good bead on.

And then Hercules rises up. And the dynamic of the fight completely changes, just like that.

Iron Man turns and flees. But also he smashes into some light poles to ‘clear some room’ but really to scare away the “ever-present innocent bystanders.”

And in Columbus Circle, where most of the crowds have fled from, Iron Man decides to make his stand.

Iron Man: “It’s my technological might against the full fury of the strongest Olympian god! Terrific.”

Hercules catches up and notes that he doesn’t see any madness in Iron Man’s eyes. And Hercules, he knows from madness. Maybe he’s recovered his senses and they don’t have to fight.

So Iron Man punches him in the face.

Okay well Hercules has standses all he can stands and now he’s definitely-

Iron Man repulsors him into a car.

Maybe Hercules should talk less (and smile more?)

Not that it matters. Iron Man is hitting him as hard as he can and it just cues Hercules to speechify more. PRINCE OF POWER!

Oh and we finally get some indication of what this is all about!

Seven pages in is a nice good number for some context, as Iron Man laments and also rues that he was on duty when Typhon popped up.

Remember Typhon?

Jerk from Greek mythology. Hercules defeated him with a supplex? What’s he got to do with this story where Iron Man has been bullying the Champions for no reason other than their future role as laughingstock of Marvel continuity?

Once upon a time five hours earlier, Beast was hanging out with Iron Man. Just shooting the shit together. Talking about how Hank Pym’s memory restoration treatments are going.

Because, yes, we left Hank off last issue completely livid at the Avengers and the Wasp and thinking Utron was his bestie and it does just get fixed off-panel. Thank you for asking.

When suddenly Typhon appeared behind Iron Man and shot him in the throat with his axe, a task which axes are well known for.

Typhon, a man out of mythology, also takes the time to point out that Beast, specifically, is weird. Oh, fine, he also says Iron Man is weird. I guess neither of them fought Typhon the first time.

The fight doesn’t go very well this time either. Nobody thinks to supplex him. So he just grabs Beast in his big ol’ hand and threatens to squish him unless Iron Man does what he says.

This cannot be good for Beast’s inferiority complex.

What Typhon wants is Hercules. But Hercules left the team a long time ago. But Typhon knows that telephones exist and tells Iron Man to summon Hercules BUT not warn him that Typhon is here. Its going to be a surprise. A murder surprise.

Hercules gets into a Champscraft no questions asked because Iron Man is a cool dude and surely his cause will be just, surely.

Back at Avengers Mansion, a bound-up Beast makes small-talk. Like, what specifically is his beef with Hercules?

And this is the beef: because of Hercules, Typhon was condemned to Hades. The place. Because the person is called Pluto, for reasons of clarity and also because Marvel just mixes and matches the Greek and Roman names for things. As many things do. You never see many Herakleses.

Anyway, Typhon made a deal with Pluto to be freed so that he could duel Hercules to the death. Not sure why, aside from generic death god evilness, Pluto even wants Hercules dueled to the death. Hades/Pluto and Hercules always got on fairly well. Hercules even took his uncle’s dog out for walkies the one time.

Granted, he tried to help some guy steal Pluto’s wife but Pluto got the last laugh there. So why the animosity?

Anyway, Typhon is actually pretty unconfident in his ability to beat Hercules. The man knows about supplexes. So he comes up with an idea. A wonderful, awful idea.

He’ll have Iron Man go out and punch Hercules a bunch first to weaken him. TRULY MAYBE TYPHON SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE GOD OF WISDOM.

In fairness, he also has Iron Man set up a monitor (acclimating well to the modern world, Typhon is) so he can make sure Iron Man fights and doesn’t try to warn off Hercules.

Iron Man came up with a plan anyway but it kind of got borked by Hercules recovering so quickly from throat punch. His plan was to knock Black Widow for a loop and then slip a miniature radio into her ear while she was stunned. So he could covertly fill her in on the situation without Typhon being the wiser.

But he didn’t have any backup plans so now he’s just punching Hercules as much as he can. He literally has no other plan than just to slug it out with Hercules until he drops and hopes Typhon hasn’t already killed Beast.

Hercules has finally gotten tired of tanking all these blows though. So he throws his own punch.

And then buries Iron Man under some rubble. And is shouting the whole time. Because that’s how Hercules rolls and also he’s a bit peeved that Iron Man treated his friends so shamelessly.

Okay. But specifically Black Widow.

Hercules is pretty much dominating the fight. As I said. The dynamic shifted. Iron Man gets some good blows in but he’s half-hearted about it.

He even wonders whether he should just take a dive and let Typhon deal with Hercules but dammit if its not convincing enough, Typhon will kill Beast!

So he has to keep fighting!

But he only uses the weapons that Typhon is already aware of. He’s hoping that Hercules can weather his onslaught (not that one) and have enough left over to supplex Typhon.

So he gives ground. Letting Hercules force him back to the mansion. Where he has a super weapon that will take care of Hercules no problem, swearsies.

But his armor’s power has been diminishing with all this high energy roughhousing so Hercules finally catches up to him and WHAK!s him hard. Hard enough that Iron Man starts to black out.

Hercules goes to walk past him to search for other Avengers to maybe contextualize this for him but Iron Man knows that if Hercules goes into the library, Typhon will ambush him.

His only hope is to pull an energy cable out of the wall and zap Hercules with high voltage to keep him from getting ambushed by Typhon!

And it works!

It works so well that it knocks Hercules unconscious!

You can’t even throw a fight right, Iron Man...

Or maybe not?

As Typhon comes out to gloat over Iron Man and Hercules’ unconscious forms, Iceman and Black Widow show up. The fight went on long enough for them to recover and follow the trail of destruction to the mansion and sort of deduce Iron Man’s general plan.

Although... Lets be honest. Black Widow and Iceman versus Typhon isn’t. A desirable matchup.

As scion of Typhoeus, lord of stormwinds and blizzards, Typhon laughs off Iceman’s powers. And he also has the type advantage since he got fire and lightning powers from his deal with Pluto.

But suddenly a caption box says suddenly to indicate that an event happens suddenly and that event is Beast pulling a dynamic entry on Typhon’s face.

Because when you need someone to show up suddenly nothing says sudden like a boot to the head.

Apparently, Beast got so ticked off at being sidelined, constantly captured, clobbered, or held hostage that he burst out of the steel cables binding him. That’s the power of being seriously nettled.

Beast being held hostage is the final puzzle piece that Black Widow needs to put together the whys of this whole series of events. And she also helps explain things to the audience with her musing, guessing that Beast’s healing factor was why he was discharged from the hospital before any of the other Avengers that were Ultron’d.

What’s more? She too knows the secret of supplex. I mean. She doesn’t actually supplex Typhon. But she chops his heel to weaken his stance and then flips him over her shoulder. 

Typhon certainly reacts similarly to the dreaded supplex though.

Typhon: “No! This cannot be! Only Hercules himself has ever toppled Typhon before! You must die for this, woman!”

Then Beast kicks him in the face again. And Iceman tries to freeze him.

Oh, hey. This is a bit of an X-Men reunion. Shame Angel couldn’t have been here, I guess.

But as before, Iceman’s ice is ineffectual and Typhon breaks free. And he is. Peeved.

He uses his Pluto fire/lightning powers to toss Beast, Black Widow, and Iceman aside so he can finally without any further distractions deal with H-

eyyyyyy buddy, Hercules! I see you’re up and about. Oh and Iron Man too. And you’re teamed up.

PEACE OUT.

More specifically, Pluto has lost faith that Typhon can deal with Iron Man, Hercules, Beast, Black Widow, and Iceman and extracts him from the situation back to his imprisonment in Hades.

But he’ll be baaaaaaaaaaaaack

I don’t remember if that happens and I don’t carrrrrrrrrre. Aside from his weakness to wrestling, Typhon is a blah character. I mean, he’s slightly more interesting now that they went into his specific mythological powers but meh.

But here’s something: Iron Man apologize for all this but Hercules is like ‘eh shit happens.’

Beast though. Beast can’t just ‘eh shit happens.’

Beast: “You’re a real funny man -- an Avenger, and not much else... yet for what you’ve been worth as a hero, lately, you might as well join a zoo!”

Because its not Avengers unless someone is brooding at the end.

Oh Beast! No! You’re... really good with masks? Probably smuggling recreational drugs into Avengers mansion? Uhh... ....

Is there a rule that someone has to be constantly insecure on the Avengers at all times? Is that why Hawkeye is on the team so often?

So this is overall a filler issue. The connections to what went before are tenuous aside from off-hand explanations that the rest of the team is still recovering from that Ultron thing. Thor is off-duty somewhere. But where is Wonder Man?

I guess this issue had to exist. While its not great that Hank Pym gets treated off-screen, at least there’s this issue to indicate that time is passing before the next huge thing. The Avengers were understaffed for a day because everyone was in the hospital.

But because of that, this feels more like a Champions story than an Avengers one. The villain is Hercules’ and the Champions outnumber the Avengers. More than either of those things, I guess it feels like an Iron Man story since its about him being forced to fight a fight he doesn’t want to win.

We also chug a little further on Beast’s insecurity character arc. I wonder where it will take us. In a way, its a shame that Beast’s stint on the Avengers being a foonote in an otherwise X-MEN ALWAYS history (he even derelicts his duty as an Avenger to run off to participate in the Dark Phoenix Saga) focuses so much on how insecure he feels about his role on the team. He takes time away from the X-Men to see what else he can be and what he discovers is that he’s shit at being Not An X-Men. But I’m still curious to see where it will take us.

Next time: The Lethal Legion. Its people we already know except they’ve banded together to fight the Avengers. No, not the Masters of Evil. They’re completely different, for some reason.

Hey, follow @essential-avengers. I don’t have any clever banter this time. I just think it would be neat.