Super-Villain Team-Up (1975) #1

This title may sound familiar if you've stumbled here before. A couple of months back, I picked up a different issue of SVTU.  Marvel published two giant-sized editions, for the most part reprinting material from a few years prior, before making the book a bi-monthly regular.

The giant-sized book sucked, but how about this one?  Let's find out!

Attuma AND Tiger Shark? This CAN'T suck!

Oh, Dr. Dorcas, too. Okay, so maybe it can suck in parts...

The book opens with Namor and Doc Doom arguing about who is partnering with who (whom?). Regretting a very recent decision to work alongside Doom, Namor bails.

Low blow. Namor should have turned around and beat his ass down. I'm fairly certain that Latveria will never make a list of great places to live, either.

At least Doom recognizes his error quickly. He reminisces about all the times he's been defeated by inferior folk in the past and swears to make this partnership work. He fires a fish-rocket camera thing to follow Namor around and record the prince's activities, presumably to sweet-talk him later. No, for real!

For no reason I could identify, Namor heads to a joint called Hydrobase and when he gets there, he's caught in some energy field. He gathers the strength to demolish the machine creating it...

...Then is approached by some douche named Jennings.

Oh, THAT Jennings! Still have no idea who he is, Len.

They are interrupted by Atlantean barbarians who are defeated by Namor in no time. Namor recognizes them as Attuma's men and Jennings confirms that Hydrobase has been taken over by Attuma and his horde. Namor calls bullshit on that and says he'll see to it that freedom is restored, but...

The trinity of evil reveals itself! Namor recovers his wits, flings both Tiger Shark and Attuma into the ocean to fight them and, naturally, ignores Dr. Dorcas.

As logical as that might seem, it comes back to bite him in the ass. Namor holds his own against two mighty opponents but Dorcas blasts him from behind with a very convenient weapon.

Yeah, imagine!

To be continued.

That was much more fun than the giant-size book I read a while ago, helped by the fact that it was Namor-heavy.

Who will rescue the Avenging Son now?! If only someone had tracked his movements with a fish-cam!

Oh, right!  Looking forward to that.

Thunderbolts (1997) #163

This is a much shorter appearance by the Avenging Son than the book's cover would have you believe.

Based on the recap in the inside cover of the book, The Thunderbolts were fighting an evil force known as The Serpent then made "The Great Escape". Their base of operations began to glow then disappeared. Why an escape was required is a little less clear because according to that very same recap, the tide had turned in their favour anyway, but here we are.

The Thunderbolts come to find out that they've gone back to the 1940s when they are suddenly attacked by Nazis. They are specifically in Austria, though they don't seem to be aware of that detail at this point. Regardless, if you're in Europe during WW2, you're going to get a visit from...

Unfortunately, that grand entrance doesn't happen until page 19 so up to this point it's really just a bunch of talking, second-guessing about what got the team where they are, etc. Rather dull, to tell the truth.

And since page space is limited by now, Namor's contribution is likewise limited. Now that I own several issue from his Invaders days, I marvel at how often he has found himself redirecting torpedoes towards Nazi U-Boats. Well, in this one, he throws a rocket back at them. More of the same, really, but at least we get the old battle cry out of it.

This all builds to a "golden age Thunderbolts" story in which the team will ally itself with The Invaders, or at least those two members.

That story actually skips an issue (sort of...it's number is 163.1. Marvel numbering, y'all) before resuming in 164 and concluding in 165. This issue might have taken a while to get going but I do look forward to seeing the story takes us.

AVX: VS (2012) #1

I haven't had a lot of time to devote to this little ode to Sub-Mariner awesomeness lately. This book is perfect, then, because it devotes only 10 of its supposed 22 pages to a fight between The Avenging Son and The Thing from The Fantastic Four. Or actually, based on what he's wearing, it may be accurate to say that he's The Thing from The Future Foundation.

There isn't much point to this book but it makes no bones about it. It was a six-issue extension of the Avengers vs. X-Men limited series that ran throughout most of 2012. It features nothing but fights that would normally have taken place somewhere during the second issue of the main series.

A scrap between Magneto and Iron Man kick things off, then we get into the meat of the matter.

Of course they're fighting in the ocean. We don't know why they're there or why these two in particular are scrapping for the umpteenth time. Either that's explained in the main series or it isn't at all. We're just here for the fights, remember?

The ending, which I won't give away even if the book is six years old as I write this, is a little unclear. It involves outside interference, to borrow a wrestling terms, by a sea creature that I would have thought Namor could have simply controlled. In any event, if you simply consider where these two characters have been in the pecking order over the years, you can't probably figure out who was awarded the "victory". A fun distraction that doesn't pretend to be anything but.