Avengers #60: Review

Sep 2022

Mark Russell, Greg Land

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Story Name:

The higher rooftop

Review & Comments

Rating:

Avengers #60 Review by Rob Johnson (September 23, 2022)

This issue is part of the A.X.E.: Judgment Day event and lies somewhere within #3-4 where Progenitor is going round judging people.

It is completely out of sync with the ongoing storyline in this series where the Avengers are bouncing around through time fighting Mephisto. It doesn't even matter that Hawkeye isn't involved in that story because other Avengers are appearing in both that and the AXEJD event.

Crossfire originally appeared in Marvel Two-In-One #52 vs Moon Knight & Thing. The mercenary assassin has since appeared in a variety of titles, most recently vs Shang-Chi and Jimmy Woo in the lead tale in the Marvel's Voices: Identity 1-shot.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Avengers #60 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

In A.X.E.: Judgment Day #2 the newly-revived Celestial Progenitor declared that he was going to judge everyone in the world individually and collectively (and like Santa Claus he can do it all in 1 day). In this issue he judges Hawkeye.

Hawkeye has just dealt with an alien monster in the sewers of New York and he's now walking home covered in blood. But 1st he walks into a diner and asks to use the bathroom to clean up. He orders 2 cheeseburgers to justify it. When he returns he finds Black Widow waiting for him beside the burgers. Except she says she's really the Celestial god come to judge him in the shape of someone he respects. Clint Barton thinks Natasha Romanoff is joking until she briefly makes it seem they're out in space (near Saturn).

She claims that humanity is what the Celestials call a TILF, Technologically Inclined Life Foragers, that spreads out through the universe and then implodes taking lots of innocent bystander alien races with them. So when they find a TILF the Celestials examine it to judge whether it's safe to let it continue to exist.

Clint takes it calmly and tries to reason with her. He asks if he would be judged satisfactory if he took his bow up to the roof and started killing people who offended various arbitrary standards. Nat responds that Celestial standards aren't arbitrary but are beyond his comprehension. Clint interprets that as meaning that she can judge humans because she's more powerful than them. He enquires what baseline he's being judged against. She suggests he consider whether he brings more joy and meaning to the universe than the mailbox across the street. And he's got 24 hours to beat it. Clint says he's not playing this game and heads home.

In his apartment he gets a message that the alien isn't dead and now it's a wounded and angry monster rampaging through the sewers. Hawkeye says he'll go consult the Mayor. On the way he sees a man posting a cheque to a friend who really needs the money. And a little girl assuring her parent that she can reach the slot herself. And an old woman posting a box of cookies to say sorry. It looks like he's not doing very well in his competition against the mailbox.

At the office of Mayor Luke Cage he asks him if he thinks superheroes like them actually do more good than harm. Luke points out that he has a city to run, but then agrees to humour him for a while. He suggests you can't judge an action by its consequences because they tend to be complicated and unpredictable. Clint suggests intentions as a better criteria but Cage trots out the omelette/eggs and road to Hell cliches. Hawkeye leaves but on the way out mentions the botched alien monster killing task.

He's still thinking about judgement criteria as he goes on another job, where he actually does go up on a rooftop terrace to shoot at somebody. His target is Crossfire who appears to be about to assassinate someone from a lower roof. He knows that the villain is armoured and so would be difficult to wound. So he fires an arrow into a water tower which floods Crossfire's position. Then he slides down an arrow-line and finishes the encounter off with fists and kicks. But in the process CF muddies the ethical waters by claiming that he had been going to kill a black market arms dealer.

We see Black Widow/Progenitor posting a letter to Clint which he gets the next morning. We also see that the Celestial had been posing as Luke Cage as well. The letter tells him that he was at least *trying* to be better which a mailbox can't do and so he passes the test.

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