West Coast Avengers 34 Prisoners of the Slave-World!
Published: July 10th,
1988
Writer: Steve
Englehart Penciler: Al Milgrom
Cover Artist: Al
Milgrom
Meanwhile, the rest of the Avengers have
recovered from their poison. Madam X says that they can all leave except
Mockingbird and Moon Knight, who are considered criminals due to their past
SHIELD and mercenary roles. Which, of course, the other Avengers don't agree to
so they get back to fighting.
And they avoid getting poisoned this time
and the gorillas have such a bad showing that I'm not even going to include a
scan. But they find out that Mockingbird and Moon Knight have already been
shipped away somewhere. The American Ambassador convinces the remaining
Avengers to come back to the US embassy, where he's got Phantom Rider waiting.
Phantom
Rider just happened to be in Budapest on business and he heard about
Mockingbird being captured, and says that he feels like he owes her a debt
because of his Old West ancestor. Meanwhile, the Communists are transporting
Mockingbird and Moon Knight, and one of the apes lets it slip that he knows
that Mockingbird spent some time at the Vault in the US. The apes dump the
heroes in the same prison that was holding Vision and Scarlet Witch, and we
find that Hank and Jan wound up getting stuck in there too. There is an
anti-super power beam in the prison.
The
comparison to the Vault brings up a contrast. The point of the Vault is that it
takes pains to find a way to counteract each individual prisoner's powers.
There isn't just a simplistic anti-power beam. But the Communist Vault here is
just a quick hand-waving plot device. Anyway, Vision and the Scarlet Witch say
that they were lured to Eastern Europe by a note purportedly from their
cow-nanny, Bova. And it's soon revealed that this whole thing is another scheme
by Quicksilver.
Quicksilver's
plan is to help the Communists develop super-powered soldiers by experimenting
with mutants, and also to take up his father Magneto's mantle as "King of
the Evil Mutants". Those two goals seem somewhat at cross purposes. The
Avengers try to fight Quicksilver for a bit but they're unable to and he runs
out of the cell again.
Scarlet
Witch worries that she too might go mad one day, but the Vision says that won't
happen as long as they are together. And also breaks the camel’s back for
Mockingbird, and she confesses that she killed the Phantom Rider in the past. The ghost of the Phantom Rider had
been lurking in the room during the discussion. And he wants Mockingbird to
suffer for letting him die ("She must not be happy") so when he sees
that the other Avengers are accepting of what Mockingbird did, he goes back and
tells Hawkeye about how he died, spinning it his own way. We nonetheless see
Hawkeye and company busting in to rescue the other Avengers, and before any
discussion can happen, they find themselves facing a swarm of Scarlet Beetles.
It's
during what should be this goofy fun fight that the "murderess" stuff
comes out. The conversation is deferred as they escape into a quinjet, which is
blasted out of the sky by a missile from the People's Security Forces. And the
Avengers crash land in Latveria.
