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Avengers #16: Review

Jul 2024
Jed MacKay, C. F. Villa

Story Name:

Blood hunt finale


Synopsis

Avengers #16 Synopsis by Rob Johnson
While the main Avengers team is away in the Blood Hunt mini-series fighting the source of the dark skies and vampire hordes (it's the ancient 1st vampire Varnae), Captain America (Steve Rogers) has assembled a small team (Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Hazmat, Hercules and Quicksilver) to protect the civilians of New York. But they wound up trying to rescue many who were taken by Nazi vamps to a stolen SHIELD Helicarrier under the control of Cap's old vampire foe Baron Blood. They killed a lot of vamps and sent as many prisoners as they could down in escape capsules. But there are lots more of both. But now Cap has taken control of the 'Carrier.

He's flying the huge beast with a simple joystick control. It's a rough ride but at last we see his plan. The vampires have covered the sky world wide with Darkforce, blotting out the Sun. But Cap just flies the Helicarrier up *through* the cloud into the light. He uses comms to advise his troops to continue the fight, while he puts the craft on autopilot and returns to *his* battle with the Baron. Blood reminds him that sunlight can't harm *him*, so Cap just has to keep beating him up.

The vampires have painted over the portholes. But Hercules just rips 1 door open and starts throwing vamps out. And Hawkeye uses a sonic arrow to melt the paint (maybe) on others. Hazmat just continues to us her radiation, tuned to simulate sunlight, to kill vamps directly although she feels bad about doing it while they're running away. Quicksilver notes that they are all running in the same direction so he contacts Cap by Avengers Communicard to say he suspects they're up to something. Steve tells him to deal with it (but possibly with a coded subtext), but Blood gets him with a low blow while he's distracted.

Cap goads John Falsworth into bragging about his plan. His troops will scuttle the ship, killing Cap and his Avengers and the abducted humans in the crash/explosion because none of them can fly unlike Blood himself. Cap points out it will kill the other vampires too, but the Baron boasts that he can easily find more credulous followers. However we learn that the Communicard link is till open and Pietro Maximoff has recorded the conversation.

Q tells Hazmat and Hercules to keep killing vamps and protecting the humans. Hawkeye says she'll come with Pietro as a guide because as a 12-year old SHIELD geek she memorised the layout of helicarriers. He picks her up and zooms to her recommended destination - the reactors on Deck F. Jen Takeda and Herc continue with the enforced sunburn and forced ejection. Jen reminds the demi-god how they met when she was at the Avengers Academy. In its #29 he was a guest instructor to demonstrate Olympic wrestling in the nude (as they did in ancient Greece). She also recalls that the Academy feared she was destined to be a supervillain. He replies that now he's fully-clothed and she's an Avenger so it's all worked out fine. Except, she points out, that they're stuck on a helicarrier that's going to explode.

When Pietro and Kate get to Deck F they have to kill more vampires. She explains to him that she learned from her study that the fastest way to scuttle a 'carrier is an emergency reactor dump. But they are locked out of the control room and the plans she studied obviously didn't include the access codes. Pietro makes Kate wait before smugly saying he has a way to get in. He presses a communications button to talk to the (4) vamps inside who claim they are willing to die with the ship for the cause. Baron Blood will ensure they are remembered as heroic martyrs. But then Quicksilver plays the recording of Blood's conversation with Captain America and they are immediately disillusioned. Q promises to let them live and they unlock the door and run out and away.

Pietro leaves Kate to handle the reactor and says he's going to help Cap. But instead he quickly catches up with the fleeing 4. And he has a bag of wooden stakes. They protest that he said he'd let them live, but he points out they're vampires and not alive. And anyway breaking his word doesn't bother him because vamps have his sister Wanda and he's very angry about it.

The Herc and Jen team have run out of vampires to kill and are trying to find Cap (and neither of them have ever studied helicarrier plans). But find him they do, still fighting BB. Hazmat reports that Hawkeye has the reactor sorted and they've killed all the vamp troops. So Blood dives through a window into the sky to fly away. Cap throws his shield but misses because it's the special silver edged version for killing vampires and werewolves. Pietro arrives too late to do anything but he says he learned from Cap himself to always have a backup plan. And his backup plan is Hawkeye currently aiming a silver-tipped arrow at the Baron.

But the issue ends there so we don't know if she gets him.


 

Review / Commentaries

Rating:
4 stars

Avengers #16 Review by (July 12, 2024)
This is the end of the 3 issues of this Avengers series that tie-in to the Blood Hunt mini-series/event. As very often the tie-in is just set in the environment of the event but has no effect on the event itself.

It does arguably have 1 lasting effect in that the upcoming Avengers Assemble series seems to be a continuation of the idea of Cap leading an ad-hoc team for particular missions. Only Hercules continues from this story-arc into (at least the (cover of the) 1st issue of) the new series. But it does include the male Hawkeye (instead of the female 1).

Why doesn't sunlight affect Baron Blood? Nazi experiments during WWII made him somewhat immune to it. The same experiments stopped him from shape-shifting (eg to a bat), but somehow also gave him the ability to fly. Vampires: The Marvel Undead theorises that this is his own latent levitation power.




C. F. Villa
C. F. Villa
Federico Blee
Joshua Cassara (Cover Penciler)
Joshua Cassara (Cover Inker)
Guru-eFX (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Letterer: Cory Petit.
Editor: Wil Moss. Editor-in-chief: C. B. Cebulski.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Captain America
Captain America

(Steve Rogers)
Hawkeye
Hawkeye

(Kate Bishop)
Quicksilver
Quicksilver

(Pietro Maximoff)

Plus: Baron Blood, Hazmat (Jennifer Takeda).