Avengers #30

Despite what it says here, Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch's 'relationship' has always been one-sided. In the early Avengers he was smitten with her. (But in those days Stan Lee always had his heroes falling for the nearest available woman.) In #109 he quit because he was jealous of her and Vision. The only time she responded was when he found her in New Avengers (2004) #26 after House of M. And at that time she had amnesia. Or may have been a Doombot, as shown in Avengers: Children's Crusade. But Beast and Jessica Jones heard about Hawkeye's sexual encounter with the possible Doombot during that series, and I'd have guessed the story spread through the Avengers before now. Spider-Woman was duped or brainwashed into being an agent of Hydra in her earliest appearances. Later Madame Hydra (Viper) claimed to be her mother. Her career as a SHIELD agent seems a well-established myth. Hawkeye presumably refers to these separate periods when he says she belonged to both organisations. Her time as a SHIELD/Hydra double-agent in New Avengers was actually her Skrull replacement. Hawkeye also mentions Jessica being screwed up by her father (as Wanda was by Magneto). This refers to the origin of her power. But both versions of her origin are more benign than her statement here that "he did experiment on me in the womb". In Spider-Woman (1978) #1 he injected her with experimental spider-serum when she was a young girl to save her life from accidental radiation poisoning. In Spider-Woman: Origin she was accidentally hit in her mother's womb by a laser carrying spider DNA. Hawkeye fails to note another connection between Jessica and Wanda:- Both their origins involve Wundagore Mountain and the High Evolutionary.

I don't think Walt Simonson's art is as suitable for the acrobatic action scenes here as it is for brute power battles like the double-page opener. But his exultant Madame Hydra at the end is quite good. The opening scene from Avengers vs X-Men #11 doesn't show Hawkeye and Spider-Woman. If this is supposed to indicate that the duo start on this adventure while the other Avengers are at the main fight, then it misfires because they're both in AvsX#11, and Hawkeye is one of the few characters who actually *does* something there. The scene of the Big 3 relaxing suggests this issue follows the not-yet-published AvsX#12. So this is really an epilogue to the AvsX event, as probably is last week's New Avengers #30. Mr Negative has been a super-powered crime boss since the beginning of Spider-Man's Brand New Day. His Inner Demons followers seem to have supernatural resilience.