Synopsis
Avengers, The (1963 series) #73 synopsis by
Rob Johnson
Rating:
While Black Panther has been away in Wakanda the Sons Of The Serpent hate group have resurfaced promising to drive the unfit, the foreign born and the inferior from the US. They burn down New York's Equal Employment Bureau and African-American talk show host Montague Hale condemns them on TV. That night some Serpents beat him up, but are under orders not to kill him. The controversial figure loses his TV program but goes on as a guest on a show with right-wing host Dan Dunn. They of course disagree until Dunn cuts Hale short and moves on to the next part of his show Afro-American singer Monica Lynne. When she joins them at the table she says she doesn't want to take sides. On the way out Hale tries to sway her to his cause but she doesn't want to play.
The 4 active Avengers (Goliath (Clint Barton), Vision, Wasp & Yellowjacket) have been looking into the SOTS. The 3 longer-standing members tell Vision about their previous encounter with such a group (#32-33) when Henry Pym was Goliath and Clint was still Hawkeye. The Sons attacked Hank's assistant scientist Bill Foster and then captured Captain America, telling the Avengers to endorse their views if they wanted to see Cap alive again. Our team pretended to agree until they located the Serpents' base and exposed the Supreme Serpent as foreign agitator General Chen.
Now the Supreme Serpent sends 3 men to attack Monica Lynne, and it happens to happen near Avengers Mansion. But Black Panther is returning from Wakanda and lands his aircraft on the roof just in time to notice the attack and leap to her defence. During the fight 1 Serpent gets accidentally killed by a blast from another 1. And the Supreme Serpent is remotely watching and sees that his men are losing so he triggers their Serpent suits to electrocute the other 2 to death. Monica is angry that the police only turn up when it's all over.
BP joins the other Avengers and next evening they watch a new Dan Dunn show with Hale and Lynne as return guests. This time Monica is fully on Hale's side, and the show is a ratings hit. Hank Pym fears that the show is helping the Serpents to achieve what they failed to do last time and polarise Americans into 2 camps. Goliath wants the Avengers to go after the SOTS but T'Challa asks them to give him 24 hours to resolve the problem alone.
Hale drives Lynne home but BP accosts her at her door to ask her not to go on TV again. He asks as a soul brother and says he previously hadn't revealed his ethnicity publicly because he didn't want it to influence what people thought of him. Then he leaves her to track down some Serpents. He finds some and KOs 1 to take his uniform as a disguise. The Serpents fly 1 of their craft to rendezvous with their snake-shaped submarine HQ. But Panther is found out when he doesn't know the password. However the Supreme Serpent is overjoyed at this turn of events.
Characters:
Plus: Goliath (
Clint Barton), Monica Lynne, Sons of the Serpent.