Avengers #194: Review

Apr 1980

David Michelinie, George Perez

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Story Name:

Interlude

Review & Comments

Rating:

Avengers #194 Review by Peter Silvestro (March 2, 2010)

Part one of a three-part story. Falcon resigns from the Avengers. Avengers: Captain America, Iron Man, Wasp, Vision, Beast, Wonder Man, Ms. Marvel, Jocasta, Falcon.

Avengers #194 Review by Rob Johnson (April 7, 2015)

George Perez is back on interior pencils. Falcon returns to being an occasional guest star in Captain America, his next app in CA#261 where he gets invited back to Avengers mansion as a guest. But his next app after that is a solo team-up in Marvel Team-Up #114. It'll be a couple of years before he gets his only solo series (until he becomes Captain America). This is Wonder Man's 1st-ever issue credited in the Official Index as an actual Avenger. He replaces Falcon on the masthead next issue. Tony Stark muses here how Cap fits the job of Chairman of the Avengers. He reckons that the stress of juggling the Chairmanship with his roles as Iron Man and head of Stark International contributed to his alcholism in IM#117-128. So he figures it's better he doesn't take the job back. However he rejoined the team after that episode in Annual #9 and #189. Cap had the Chair while IM was away, but Stark *did* resume the Chair then. And the OI has only listed Cap as Chairman again for #192-193. This could just have been while IM was away in Pittsburgh. But there is no obvious gap between those issues and this, so maybe Cap just hasn't handed over the gavel yet. Jocasta has only been popping up for the odd issues since #177. But now she starts an almost-unbroken run to #211. Wasp changes costume in the middle of this issue, from the concealing red and black 1 she's had since #182 to the more revealing asymmetric white 1 on next issue's cover.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Avengers #194 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

As the tale opens, Wonder Man is undergoing an identity check in order to be reinstated in the Avengers. His acting career has fizzled though he has taken a part-time TV job that he is reluctant to talk about. The Falcon, who was added to the team temporarily by government mandate, turns in his membership card, preferring the life of a loner. In the snowy courtyard, Captain America explains to Ms. Marvel how the Avengers is a team of heroes with special abilities who have learned to work well together. (As they are talking, a punk kid tries to conk Cap with a snowball; without looking Cap hurls his shield so that it ricochets off a wall and intercepts the icy missile, sending the frightened kid home to change his pants.) Iron Man is inside, thinking of relieving some of the pressure on him by relinquishing his role as the team leader—or buying a Maserati. Lonely with the absence of the Scarlet Witch, Vision seeks tranquility in precision testing of his synthetic body; when Jocasta compliments him on his poetic turn of phrase, Vision reacts violently, denying that he is in any way human. Beast and Wonder Man relax with a game of ping pong, then in front of the TV where the Furry One discovers Wondy’s secret acting gig: as Mr. Muscles, the patsy of pie-throwing Uncle Elmer on a goofy kids’ show. Before the pie-in-the-face payoff, though, they are summoned to the medlab. Jan has admitted a refugee seeking help, a frightened man named Selbe, dressed in the gown of the Solomon Institute for the Criminally Insane. Shortly thereafter, a pair of white-coated attendants from the Institute arrive with a court order for Selbe. Since everything is in order and the Avengers can’t prove that his rantings are anything but the result of paranoia, they do not intervene as the unfortunate man is carted off in a straightjacket to a meeting with an unseen figure in a waiting car. Adjourning to the conference room, they notice that Wasp is missing, correctly assuming she went off to investigate the matter on her own.

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