Solo Avengers #4: Review

Mar 1988

Tom DeFalco, Ron Lim

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Story Name:

The Great Escape!

Review & Comments

Rating:

Solo Avengers #4 Review by Peter Silvestro (March 1, 2022)

Review: Another offbeat pair of Avengers tales: first, Hawkeye spends his entire half of the issue escaping from a castle (whereas last issue Moon Knight spent his breaking into a castle) and it’s pretty cool as the heroic archer bests all of Silver Sable’s Wild Pack—at least the ones without names. Eventually she will whittle the Pack down to a small band of mercenaries with names and characterizations and costumes and all that but for now it’s just a bunch of faceless storm troopers. And then the idiot walks into the main baddie and is shot in the chest, which doesn’t seem to leave a mark. A hypodermic arrow, we’re told, something like Doc Savage’s mercy bullets Anyway, a bunch of cool action stuff.

Black Knight falls into an action story with a ton of sci-fi complications as a crazy Knight from the future comes back to go all T-800 on him to screw up his own timeline and other crazy stuff. No clue as to what happened to Last Knight’s own Ebony Blade as we were hoping (or at least those of us who put any thought into it) to see the two Knights whaling on each other with their super-swords. Nah, Dane loses his and spends the rest of the story bobbing and weaving to avoid getting whacked with his own blade. And then he punches the bad guy in the face and that solves everything, except for why Dr. Druid is always hanging around and being useless. What happened to the Last Knight? Nobody cared; in fact, it looks like Roger Stern lost interest before the end of this tale as punches to the face rarely affect time travel in the real world. Still cool, though.

Comments: First story: Part four of five parts. Second story: Sole appearance of Ernst Wythim, the last Black Knight; his future has been designated Earth-8834.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Solo Avengers #4 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

Arrested in Paris by Silver Sable for the murder of Trick Shot, Hawkeye is placed in a cell in a castle. Sable tells him his embassy will send a lawyer later and she leaves….

Silver Sable then reports to the government minister while she does her daily training. We learn that she was actually hired by the French government to capture Trick Shot so she arrested Hawkeye, knowing he will escape and find the bad guy to prove his innocence. And while speaking she beats the stuffing out of five ninjas….

So Hawkeye escapes from his cell, using clubs he made from his bedframe. He recovers his bow and arrows and battles his way through the entire Wild Pack with his trick arrows and basic fighting against their varied weapons. He beats his way through a lot of enemies as Silver Sable watches over CCTV, pondering whether she could hire Hawkeye as an auxiliary. He makes his way over the castle wall and across the moat and then runs right into Trick Shot who fires an arrow into his chest….

“Knight’s Errant” 3.5/5
Writer: Roger Stern. Breakdowns: Paul Ryan. Art: Bob Layton. Colors: Paul Becton. Letters: Jack Morelli.
Synopsis: Doctor Druid comes across Black Knight in the lab at Avengers Mansion. Dane is studying his Ebony Blade, desiring to unlock all of its secrets. He also explains the curse: should the blade ever taste human blood, it would control the wielder’s mind, forcing him to keep drawing blood and then killing. Druid touches the blade but he is then overtaken psychically and he is transformed into Ernst Wythim, the Last Knight. Wythim is a descendant of Dane’s; hoping to end the curse, he seizes the Ebony Blade from Dane and tries to kill him with it, desiring to end Dane’s line and ensure he himself will never be born. The battle is one sided as Wythim holds the sword and his armor is 600 years more advanced than anything Dane can imagine. Dane finally defeats him using fighting techniques learned from Captain America. Knocked unconscious, Wythim fades out, leaving Dr. Druid unharmed. Druid remembers nothing and Dane vows to search for a way to neutralize the curse on the sword…..