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Selector

Avengers #241

Mar 1984
Roger Stern, Joe Sinnott

Story Name:

Dark Angel


Synopsis

Avengers #241 synopsis by T Vernon
Rating: 4.5 stars
Various Avengers and associates (She-Hulk, Wasp, Tigra, Shroud, Starfox) come running to the hospital room of JessicaSpider-WomanDrew, in response to an alarm. They find the doorway magically sealed. The heroes, however, find they can penetrate the barrier and enter the room. Doctor Strange explains that he made the magic barrier to keep the hospital staff out. Scarlet Witch, Captain Marvel, and Hank Pym bring them up to speed about Spider-Woman’s astral form being paralyzed and Jessica’s body dying. Dr. Strange is exerting massive power to keep the astral form from crumbling. Suddenly, the face of Morgan Le Fay fills the room, coming from the Astral Plane and explaining her desire for revenge against Spider-Woman by destroying her astral form and occupying her physical body. She then hurls a number of nasty little magical things into the hospital room. The heroes battle the things while Wasp and Dr. Strange plan to take the battle to Morgan. The Shroud’s darkness enters the Astral Plane via the portal and with it Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk, Shroud, and Starfox who attack the evil witch. Back in the hospital room, Captain Marvel and Tigra fight off the magical nasties while Dr. Strange continues to hold Spider-Woman’s astral form together and Wasp joins Hank Pym in monitoring Jessica’s vital signs….

Back at Avengers Mansion, Captain America returns after a long absence to some changes, starting with a hologram Vision running the place. Hawkeye greets Cap and takes him downstairs to meet Mockingbird while Vision concerns himself with the same mysterious monitor readings as last issue….

Morgan Le Fay grows into a giant, forming a body out of the stuff of the realm, and seizes She-Hulk. Magnus awakens from his coma and, seeing Morgan, realizes he has led Jessica into a trap. Back on Earth, Tigra and Cap M are finally making progress in battling the nasties but the portal is shrinking. Dr. Strange is concerned and Hank reports that Jessica is in danger of going into cardiac arrest. By the power of the Eye of Agamotto, Strange forms a link with Jessica’s mind in her paralyzed astral form, trying to draw her back to her body but the mystic winds are holding her back. Magnus approaches Jessica and tells her that he was once Morgan’s servant and lover but he stole the Darkhold from her so she trapped him in his astral form for 14 centuries from which he was occasionally able to enter the real world and he fell in love with Jessica. And now he is willing to sacrifice all he has left to empower Jessica to return to the real world. And so he does, fading into smoke while Jessica is returned to her body. Her hold over Jessica broken, Morgan is now vulnerable to the attacks of the heroes, breaking the giant stone body. Strange arrives and forces her astral form back into the broken stones and helps the heroes escape to the real world before the portal closes. Hank Pym breaks the news to Jessica that she has lost all of her super-powers, rendering her a normal woman. She decides to make the best of it and become a private investigator and everyone is happy.  


 

Review / Commentaries


Avengers #241 Review by (February 10, 2023)
Comments: Cover title: The Mighty Avengers, on issues #241-255. Part two of two parts. Ann Nocenti is credited as Story Consultant. Morgan Le Fay’s clash with Spider-Woman was in SPIDER-WOMAN #50. No longer Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew’s next appearance is in WEST COAST AVENGERS (1984 miniseries) #1 as a human private investigator; her subsequent history is a bit complicated but she eventually becomes Spider-Woman once more….  Despite dying here, Magnus returns in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #22. And Morgan Le Fay is spelled “Morgan Le Fey” in this issue (and her next appearance is in IRON MAN #209). Despite being named in the synopsis, Mockingbird is not seen or named in the issue.

Review: Magic-based stories have a lot of potential to be fun since the writer can get away with anything he can give some sort of crazy explanation for and even when he can’t. Here, a disembodied witch fills a hotel room with zigzags and beach balls (but, like, evil zigzags and beach balls) while various heroes…do something in her general direction. And then the witch turns into a giant with a yellow polka dotted body, orange flesh and a pink perm. Then a wizard uses his eye-shaped amulet to smack her down and everybody runs and all is good. And the best creators of this sort of thing are those that can balance the clever and the dumb while paired with an artist who can make it all look cool. Such is what we have here. I really liked this despite the goofy bits because it all looked cool. The only debit was Magnus taking some time out to give Jess his life story but it only filled most of two pages and it played its part in bringing back Jessica Drew, who wasn’t gone long enough to miss, even though Marvel was going to come up with a different Spider-Woman within less than a year but hey, these pages gotta be filled with something, right?  



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Elektra

Excelsioring your collection:
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Holy smokes, Batman!
(The Boy Wonder)

Joe Sinnott
Joe Sinnott
Christie Scheele
Al Milgrom (Cover Penciler)
Brett Breeding (Cover Inker)
? (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Layouts: Al Milgrom. Letterer: Jim Novak.
Editor: Mark Gruenwald. Editor-in-chief: Jim Shooter.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Captain America
Captain America

(Steven Rogers)
Captain Marvel
Captain Marvel

(Monica Rambeau)
Doctor Strange
Doctor Strange

(Stephen Strange)
Hawkeye
Hawkeye

(Clinton Barton)
Scarlet Witch
Scarlet Witch

(Wanda Maximoff)
She-Hulk
She-Hulk

(Jennifer Walters)
Spider-Woman
Spider-Woman

(Jessica Drew)
Starfox
Starfox

(Eros)
Tigra
Tigra

(Greer Nelson)
Wasp
Wasp

(Janet Van Dyne)

Plus: Magnus, Morgana Le Fey (Morgan Le Fay), Shroud.