West Coast Avengers 70

”The Big One” Part 1 of 5. Guest-starring Spider-woman. Story by Roy and Dann Thomas. Art by Steve Butler and Danny Bulanadi. Cover by Tom Morgan. The Pacific Overlords storyline begins in this issue. Spider-woman (aka Julia Carpenter) runs into Dr. Demonicus’ underlings at Newport Beach. After being defeated, she turns to the Avengers for help. Avengers Lineup: Hawkeye, Dr. Pym, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Tigra, Wasp, and Wonder Man. 32 pages Cover price $1.00.

Avengers West Coast story ”The Big One! [The Pacific Overlords Part I]”
Characters Avengers West Coast--Hawkeye; Iron Man; Hank Pym; Tigra; Wonder Man; Scarlet Witch; Wasp; Quicksilver (leaves); GUESTS: Spider-Woman [Julia Carpenter]; Living Lightning; Taifu; VILLAINS: Dr. Demonicus; Kuroko; Jawbreaker; The Big One; CAMEO FLASHBACK: Human Torch [Jim Hammond]
Synopsis Spider-Woman, on the run from the government, has no sooner made it to California when she is attacked by two super powered Pacific Overlords as she investigates a boat pulling into dock with no running lights; Even with the Avengers West trying to pull themselves together from their recent reformat (Hawkeye is no longer the leader, Quicksilver is leaving and USAgent has been kicked out), they respond to Spider-Woman’s plea for help; The team tracks down the Overlord’s California base and finds it is guarded by a giant toddler with concussive powers; They also learn that Dr. Demonicus is behind the plot.

May 1991

Marvel Comics

071486025375

70

May

1991

A

Direct

1

United States

$1.00

(Bronze Age, from 1971 to 1985) & (Copper Age, from 1986 to 1992)

Copper Age

English

Magazine

2018-07-02 22:09:58

West Coast Avengers Vol 2 (1985-1994)

The Pacific Overlords

Avengers West Coast #70-74
Issue(s): Avengers West Coast #70, Avengers West Coast #71, Avengers West Coast #72, Avengers West Coast #73, Avengers West Coast #74
Cover Date: May-Sep 91
Title: The Pacific Overlords: ”The Big One!” / ” ...And die in infamy!” / ”Chaos and chrysanthemums” / ”Demonica rising” / ”Operation: Overlords”
Credits: 
Roy Thomas & Dann Thomas - Writer
Steven Butler / David Ross & Tom Morgan / David Ross / David Ross & George Freeman - Penciler
Dan Bulanadi / Dan Bulandi, Don Hudson, & Christopher Ivy / Dan Bulanadi & Tim Dzon / Tim Dzon - Inker
Howard Mackie / Nel Yomtov - Editor
Review/plot:
All you really need to know about this arc is that Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) and Living Lightning join the team, and USAgent is accepted back. And Iron Man finally admits that he’s really still Tony Stark. Oh, ok, and Dr. Demonicus manages to create an island for himself and get recognition from the United Nations. And some horrible characters are introduced for a horrible story, and they will appear again. Ok, fine, a lot of stuff happens during this arc. But it’s terrible and you don’t need to know the details. Go ahead and skip this entry, or scroll down and look at the weird giant baby and then skip this entry. But there’s no reason to read it.
Still here? Well, i’m not responsible.
The story starts off with Spider-Woman having come to Newport Beach for unspecified reasons and is crawling around in costume for reasons even she can’t explain, and despite the fact that she is AWOL from her quasi-government job.

She comes across the villains that we saw at the end of last issue, and winds up getting punched into the ocean.

Meanwhile, a lot going on with the Avengers.
Tigra is hitting on Iron Man (even though she doesn’t know, or claims to not know, who is in the suit).

Scarlet Witch is pushing the emotions about her phantom children deep deep inside her.

Wonder Man is making a big show of setting up a date with a Hollywood starlet in front of Scarlet Witch.
Quicksilver is leaving the team. Henry Pym and the Wasp are supposed to be leaving, too, but they are lingering. It will turn out that Hank is dating Dr. Jennie Falk, the scientist who lent the Whackos the UCLA lab in Avengers West Coast #67, and Janet is writing a movie script.
Meanwhile, the villains that we saw fighting Spider-Woman turn out to be working for Dr. Demonicus.

Demonicus has also captured Living Lightning after he was seemingly destroyed in the fight with the Golden Age Human Torch in issue #63.
Later (after Iron Man and Tigra’s date, which Tigra found unsatisfactory), Spider-Woman shows up at the Avengers compound looking for help. Tigra nearly attacks her but she’s stopped by Iron Man. Who mentions that, along with Hawkeye, he met her during Secret Wars.

Two problems with that, Iron Man! First, you’re supposed to be pretending to be a new Iron Man. Second, that wasn’t you in Secret Wars, it was Rhodey. Maybe this new Iron Man is speaking for all Iron Mans.
Spider-Woman tells the Avengers about the ”Pacific Overlords” and they trace the villains to the location that Dr. Demonicus was at earlier. They find that the place has been cleared out. Except for that giant baby i mentioned earlier.

The character doesn’t appear outside of these issues, but for what it’s worth it’s name is Big One (hence the big 1 on its shirt). Big One, like ”this is the big one”, the earthquake that will knock California into the sea. The Avengers don’t realize he’s a baby at first. But it becomes apparent after Scarlet Witch uses her powers to knock him down.

The baby is verbal enough to say Dr. Demonicus’ name, letting the Avengers know who they are up against.
More baby:

They calm the giant baby by having Tigra cuddle up to it and purr, and then Henry Pym enlarges one of Scarlet Witch’s dead baby’s teddy bears.

The things i type...
We get to the ”split up the team and run around” portion of the story. Some of it happens at Pearl Harbor, where the Sub-Mariner happens to be doing a memorial. It’s attacked by a mind-controlled Sunfire and a new villain, created by Dr. Demonicus, called Pele.

Manipulated into an anti-Western stance again, huh, Sunfire?
Hawkeye and Spider-Woman help Namor stop Sunfire and Pele.
Meanwhile, USAgent is contacted by Mike Clemson, Spider-Woman’s former government minder, and told to assassinate her.

But USAgent has vowed not to kill anymore.

And Iron Man, with Tigra and the Wasp in Japan investigating the company that manufactured Dr. Demonicus’ equipment, finally lets us in on what a Pacific Overlord is.

So this entire event is based on an obscure play on words. Also, thanks for an actual ”Ah, so!”. I haven’t seen one of those since the 1960s. Classy.
And more of Roy Thomas’ famous verbosity. Tigra’s catlike hearing detects the approach of assassins in a helicopter. But she’s so busy making allusions to April Glaspie that she can’t get her warning out in time, leaving Iron Man to just stand there dumbly as the guy they were talking to gets shot to death.



In response, Tigra tosses one of the shooters out of the helicopter. Good thing Hawkeye isn’t around.

In the aftermath of that battle, Iron Man finally reveals that he’s really Tony Stark.

We’ve been seeing for months that everyone basically already knew. But now it’s official. The reason that Iron Man was pretending not to be Stark - he went on a rampage that resulted in attacks on the government, a breakout at the Vault, the death of a non-evil Titanium Man - is long forgotten.
We learn that Dr. Demonicus has created all of the Pacific Overlord villains - including Big One - with a piece of his Lifestone meteor, the same thing that he used to use to make giant monsters to fight Godzilla and the Shogun Warriors. The one called Taifu (Typhoon) is husband to Pele and father of Big One, and he’s rebelled against Dr. Demonicus, which is why we saw the others - Jawbreaker and Kuroko - beating him up in issue #69. He gets free but accidentally frees the Living Lightning in the process, and Living Lightning accidentally knocks Taifu out, earning some wary trust from Demonicus.

Demonicus gives him a costume that helps him control his powers.

Another Pacific Overlord is Irezumi (Tattoo), who has the power to generate tattoos on his body that shoot whoever they are pictures of.

Irezumi tries to pretend that he’s really a member of the Yakuza, not Dr. Demonicus’ group, but no one cares.
And if tattoo-guy isn’t dumb enough, we also have Cybertooth.

He bites things.

But Wonder Man is too hard for him.

Tigra winds up crash-landing a Quinjet in the wilds of Australia in the middle of the story, effectively taking her out of the picture.



The art in this arc is incredibly mixed and often terrible, with David Ross getting a fair amount of help. The top scan of Tigra above is some of the better art in the book, in an issue said to be by David Ross & George Freeman.
Scarlet Witch also spends a fair amount of time passed out and/or as a hostage.

But luckily here comes Hank Pym to her ”rescue”.

Cybertooth is really weird.

Eventually we get to that point that seems to occur in a lot of Avengers stories, when they are all put in tubes.

Dr. Demonicus reveals that his mask is pretty necessary, and that his horns are real.

And then Demonicus reveals his big plan, which is to raise a small island from the ocean that will be his new home.

I love that the ”strain” of Demonicus’ revelation was too much for the hypnosis controlling Pele. What revelation? That your plan is lame? That she got brainwashed, and that we all had to endure five issues of this, just so Demonicus would have a little tropical home to call his own?
When Demonicus raises his island, the rumbling causes Scarlet Witch to get freed from her tube. So here’s her moment to shine. Oh wait.

But Living Lightning switches sides (prompting slurs from Jawbreaker)...

...and the cavalry arrives in the form of USAgent, Hawkeye, Spider-Woman, and Sunfire.

Kuroko, aka the Dark One, uses her invisibility much more effectively than the Invisible Woman. She also beats Spider-Woman with an ugly stick.

On the other hand, this never happens to the Invisible Woman.

Irezumi actually returns his opponent’s powers when he does his tattoo thing. I didn’t quite get that the first time.

For once, Hawkeye’s super-deafness doesn’t save him.
Scarlet Witch is nearly made a hostage again. It’s like there’s a big sign floating over her that all the villains can see.

Demonicus’ final move is to grow one of his random technicians (Kain) into a Godzilla-sized dude. That prompts Henry Pym to wish that he could turn into Giant-Man still. That is actually at least the second time in this story that the possibility of Pym being able to use his Particles on himself is teased.
But the giant guy is basically a delaying tactic. While the fighting is going on, a clone of Demonicus is at the United Nations, pushing recognition of his new country through an apparently super-efficient fast track process.

Once his nation is acknowledged, the Avengers are forced to leave the island.
The story ends with USAgent and Living Lightning replacing Henry Pym and the Wasp on the team (Pym to USAgent: ”You’ve earned my spot”), and Spider-Woman filling in for Tigra, who is still stuck in Australia.
The Wasp changes costumes at least once during this arc (and both are new compared to last issue), but don’t worry; her boobs are always on display.



Between that, the sidelining of Tigra, and the Incredibly Passing Out Scarlet Witch, this isn’t a great arc for the female members of the team. But i do like the addition of Spider-Woman, a character that i of course like since she was in Secret Wars but who has been in limbo after her stint in Freedom Force, due to a planned mini-series that never manifested. The Pacific Overlord villains, on the other hand, are at best notworthy for the fact that some of them are really weird, and i find them silly and uninteresting. And this whole plot feels more like the start of something rather than a story in its own right. In other words, pages 1-3 of a story might start with Dr. Demonicus raising his island from the sea and declaring it a new nation, and then we could have an actual story. Instead it’s a ton of running around and random machinations on the villains’ part just to get us to that point. I could potentially see Dr. Demonicus becoming a regular arch-villain for the West Coast Avengers, but you have to start with him doing the thing that he’s actually known for: creating daikaiju! Otherwise, what is the point of using him?
On top of all that the scripting is Thomas at his worst and David Ross, generally a so-so workhorse, is sometimes kind of good, but sometimes pretty messy on these issues. Clearly there were deadline issues. Steven Butler actually draws the first part, Tom Morgan draws some of the pages on part two, George Freeman helps out on part four, and parts three and four have extra inkers.
Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - Spider-Woman and Living Lightning join the West Coast Avengers. First Pacific Overlords (”Cybertooth, Irezumi, Jawbreaker, Kain, Kuroko”). Dr. Demonicus gets his own island nation.
Chronological Placement Considerations: The first five pages of this story, where Spider-Woman is tossed into the sea, continue directly from issue #69 from the point of view of the Pacific Overlord baddies. Since we need USAgent to appear in Captain America #386, we can assume that the part of that story from issue #69 actually was a flash forward (in which case i really shouldn’t have listed the Pacific Overlord characters on the entry for #69), or that the first 5 pages here are a flashback but then it takes the baddies a VERY long time to walk from Newport Beach to Dr. Demonicus’ base in Costa Mesa, which happens by page 14. That’s normally a 6 minute drive, but they are walking and maybe they stopped at a motel along the way.
Sub-Mariner is still missing his ankle-wings in this story.
References:
• Dr. Demonicus previously appeared in Godzilla #4-5, Shogun Warriors #12-14, and Iron Man #193 and Iron Man #196.
• Living Lightning was captured by Dr. Demonicus after his fight with the Human Torch in Avengers West Coast #63 (incorrectly footnoted #62).
• Hawkeye and ”Iron Man” met Spider-Woman in Secret Wars, and Iron Man met her again in Iron Man #214.
• Henry Pym met Jennie Falk in Avengers West Coast #67.
• Dr. Demonicus is aware that the Living Lightning is the legacy of the Legion of the Living Lightning, from Tales of Suspense #97-99.
• USAgent vowed not to kill anymore in Captain America #383.

Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
Inbound References (9): show
Characters Appearing: Cybertooth, Doctor Demonicus, Hawkeye, Henry Pym, Irezumi, Iron Man, Jawbreaker, Kain, Kuroko, Living Lightning, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter), Sub-Mariner, Sunfire, Taifu, Tigra, USAgent, Wasp, Wonder Man

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Captain America #385-386
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1991 / Box 31 / EiC: Tom DeFalco
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Namor #15-20

2018-07-02 22:09:58