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The Avengers #105

Nov 1972
Steve Englehart, John Buscema

The Avengers #105 cover

Story Name:

In the beginning was the world within


Synopsis

The Avengers #105 synopsis by Rob Johnson
Rating: 4 stars
It's 10 days since Quicksilver vanished in the Sentinels' Australian base last issue. Scarlet Witch is distraught and apparently hasn't slept since then, continually trying to find some clue to the whereabouts of her brother, or evidence of other people disappearing. Hawkeye and Iron Man try to talk her down to no avail.

The duo see house-guests Balder, Fandral, Hildegarde (a Valkyrie), Hogun, Silas Grant (a sailor from Blackworld) and Tana Nile (a Rigellian) on the way out for a night on the town. They decline to join them, and greet Black Panther who is just entering for a visit, after coming to America to see his friend Daredevil.

But the reunion is interrupted by Wanda who has picked up something that may relate to the missing Pietro. Some strange men popped up in Chile and kidnapped 3 scientists. She thinks maybe this is what happened to Pietro. Panther agrees to accompany the Avengers to investigate. Thor is here too, and Sif insists on joining the expedition in return for the team's hospitality. Captain America isn't around. But Vision arrives in time, fresh from a battle with Puppet Master and a Skrull robot left over from the Kree/Skrull War in Marvel Team-Up #5.

The assembled group fly a quinjet to Tierra Del Fuego, where some unkidnapped scientists say their compatriots were taken into a cave, which was sealed after them. Hawkeye and Iron Man blast their way in. (Iron Man comments that he's improved the reliability of his armour since his fight with the Cyborg Sinister [actually the Super-Adaptoid] in IM#51.)

The Avengers find a tunnel which leads to the Savage Land in Antarctica. (Iron Man asks Black Panther about calling himself Black Leopard. He says he did that briefly to distance himself from the Black Panther movement. But he's changed his mind.)

Suddenly they are attacked by Swamp Men under the mental control of the mutant Lupo, backed by the 4-armed Barbarus. The Avengers treat their attackers gently, until Thor scatters them with a bolt of lightning, to stop Barbarus abducting Sif.

Panther's friendship with Daredevil appears not to be casual, as does DD's connection to Ka-Zar. DD has spent enough time with each of them that he's passed on to Panther details of Ka-Zar's fight with Magneto and the Beast-Brood alongside the X-Men in (Uncanny) X-Men #62-63. Enough so that he can recognise Barbarus and Lupo, and lead his team-mates to the ruined site of Magneto's HQ.

Panther can't explain how the 2 Beast-Brood members have their powers, as they had all reverted to being ordinary Swamp Men at the end of UXM#63. DD's info-dump can't have been complete because T'Challa is surprised to find an abandoned costume of Angel's at the site. Which reminds Wanda that the Sentinels told her they couldn't find the X-Men while she was their captive in the last story arc.

Just then the Beast-Brood attack. Barbarus and Lupo are joined by Amphibius, Brainchild, Equilibrius and Gaza. Equilibrius affects Iron Man with vertigo, but Shellhead uses his armour to stay upright and knock the villain down. Brainchild leads Hawkeye to a spot carefully calculated to trap him in fallen rubble, but Clint goads him into a childish tantrum causing him to faint. Thor and Sif combine to take Barbarus out. Blind Gaza mentally tracks Scarlet Witch and traps her, but Wanda's hex makes him see with his eyes which confuses him until Black Panther decks him. (Panther says he's already dealt with his chosen foe, which by process of elimination must be Lupo.) Amphibius bounces all over Vision until the android goes intangible and the frog-man leaps through him to slam against a wall.

Equilibrius muses that he doesn't know how the Beast-Brood regained their powers, but they lost them when their creator Magneto died in UXM#63. Maybe their returned powers indicate that Magneto lives again.

Be that as it may, he decides to reuse the ploy that Magneto tried in UXM#63 and ushers in Lorelei to bewitch the male Avengers with her singing. He indicates that he will deal with the females himself. But before he can be shown up by Sif and Wanda, Vision proves himself immune to Lorelei's spell and renders her and Equilibrius unconscious with his 'hand materialising inside the body' trick.

The android Vision takes his immunity as more evidence that he isn't human and is incapable of love. So he turns away from Wanda.

Off-screen the Avengers rescue the scientists, whom the Beast-Brood had wanted to create more mutants. But of course they don't find Quicksilver.

When they return home Jarvis the butler shows Scarlet Witch a news item he has recorded of a man disappearing on a New York street. She asks the other Avengers to help her again, but Thor and Sif have already left. And Vision just sits brooding over an amulet. So Wanda stalks out with Black Panther, Hawkeye and Iron Man.


 

Review / Commentaries


The Avengers #105 Review by (August 15, 2013)
Angel's mainly-red costume is the one he wore pre-X-Men as Avenging Angel, and put on in UXM#61 instead of his mainly-yellow one, only to damage it in #62. Magneto then gave him a mainly-blue one, for nefarious reasons that will be revealed in #111. I don't know why the X-Men were impossible for the Sentinels to locate. Despite losing their comic, most of them were still currently at Prof X's school and popping up occasionally, most recently in MTU#4. A footnote says Thor and Sif have gone to see Don Blake's landlord. In Thor #204 they found that the building containing Blake's office had a new owner, Karl Sarron, who claimed to have no evidence of Blake's lease. Blake arranged an appointment to return with his own copy, which is presumably where he's gone now. Of course this will all turn out to be a supervillain's plot, and in Thor #208 Sarron will turn out to be Mercurio the 4-D Man. The amulet Vision is brooding over is the communication device Grim Reaper gave him in #102. He is seriously considering taking up Reaper's offer to make him human, in order to deserve Wanda's love. Next issue the Avengers will follow the missing man and meet the Reaper.

Thor says Captain America has gone on "an urgent personal matter". The Official Index has it that Cap has gone on vacation with Sharon Carter in CA#153. This issue is after Iron Man's fight with the Cyborg Sinister in IM#51. The Official Index says this run of 4 issues occurs within IM#52. The Marvel Chronology Project is more explicit and places them after the 1st 3 pages of IM#52, wherein IM tests the post-Cyborg armour he's wearing here. Panther called himself Black Leopard only in FF#119. Of course it was actually Marvel that wanted to separate their hero from the Black Panther movement. The Beast-Brood are Savage Land Swamp Men mutated by Magneto in (Uncanny) X-Men #62-63. In those issues he just called them his neo-mutants, although Panther here uses the term Beast-Brood as though it was always their name. Eventually they will just be called the Savage Land Mutates. All the Beast-Brood appeared in in UXM#62-63, plus a guy called Piper who will reappear in #110. At the end of UXM#63 the neo-mutants reverted to being Swamp Men. There is no real explanation for how they got their powers back. Equilibrius surmises here that they lost their powers because Magneto supposedly died, and the return of the powers must signify he's alive again. But un UXM#63 they lost their powers because Magneto's machine was wrecked. But Magneto did resurface in FF#102. However since then the X-Men: The Hidden Years series has confused the issue. There Magneto was indeed in an intangible state, until he was brought back to solid flesh and #12 retold the FF story. This could fit with Equilibrius's theory, but Amphibius was also in those Hidden Years issues with frog-power intact.

Steve Englehart takes over as writer from Roy Thomas with this issue, but continues the recent influx of X-Men influence, while their comic is on hiatus. The Sentinels in the last 3 issues, and now the Beast-Brood. Magneto and the X-Men themselves will show up in #110. John Buscema returns as penciler for 1 issue, spelling Rich Buckler who'll only last 1 more issue anyway. This issue must class as among those with the most built-in cross-references. Many have explicit footnotes, such as Marvel Team-Up #5. But some reference specific issues without actually naming them, like Fantastic Four #119. This issue also starts a mini-trend in Avengers. Captain America sits this one out. Thor will be absent for the next story. And then Cap will pop out again. So Iron Man will be the only constant of the Big 3, after their joint ubiquity since #93. We didn't know that Quicksilver vanished last issue, but we are led to assume here that the Avengers searched for him and couldn't find him. We won't find out until FF#131 that he was rescued by the teleporting Crystal and Lockjaw of the Inhumans. Balder and the rest of Thor's companions have been staying at Avengers Mansion since Odin banished them to Earth in Thor #204. Although Black Panther says he's only dropping in, he'll hang around until #126. He'd come back to America to see Daredevil in DD#92, impersonating him to protect Matt Murdock's secret identity. They've been friends since T'Challa told Daredevil he knew he was Matt Murdock in DD#69. (He'd known since their 1st meeting in DD#52.)


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Main/1st Story Full Credits

John Buscema
Jim Mooney
?
John Buscema (Cover Penciler)
John Buscema (Cover Inker)
Additional Credits
Letterer: John Costanza.
Editor: Roy Thomas.

Characters

All stories. Listed in alphabetical order.

Balder
Balder

(Balder the Brave)
Black Panther
Black Panther

(T'Challa)
Hawkeye
Hawkeye

(Clinton Barton)
Hildegarde
Hildegarde

(Hildegarde)
Hogun
Hogun

(Hogun the Grim)
Iron Man
Iron Man

(Anthony Stark)
Jarvis
Jarvis

(Edwin Jarvis)
Scarlet Witch
Scarlet Witch

(Wanda Maximoff)
Thor
Thor

(Odinson)
Plus: Amphibius, Barbarus, Brainchild, Equilibrius, Gaza, Lorelei (Lani Ubanu), Lupo, Silas Grant, Tana Nile.

Thor

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