The West Coast Avengers had some of the trippiest adventures in the Marvel universe, probably thanks to maverick editor Mark Gruenwald who invited his writers to invent as many new villains as possible, but was also a fan of bringing back those old one-shot villains created in the same spirit. I was really saddened by his death, even though the comics he wrote and edited were clearly the work of a madman, or most probably because they were.Picking an issue of the series at random, however, may or may not yield the best results. Crazy, yes. Good? Not necessarily. Re-reading WCA#18, I was a little put off, for example, by the fact that the Avengers all seem to hate each other (even Hawkeye and Mockingbird's marriage is strained). The plot is silly, but the angst is X-Men level! There's even a scene where Hank Pym (the failed Ant-Man, failed Giant-Man, failed Goliath and failed Yellowjacket) attempts suicide (I wonder why?). It's a bit jarring.
At this point in an extremely convoluted story, the Avengers are lost in time with a broken time machine. Each issue, they're basically in a different time zone, meeting Marvel characters who lived at the time. As Mockingbird thinks after Hawkeye's handy condescending recap of the story so far: "Maybe when I've been an Avenger as long as he has, I'll think a story like that is logical -- but I doubt it!"
To me: Funny.
Turns out this time they're in the wild west, and of course, they have to meet Marvel's most important western stars - the Two-Gun Kid, the Rawhide Kid and Night/Ghost/Phantom Rider. Two-Gun's guest-starred in the Avengers before, so he and Hawkeye go way back... um, way forward. Anyway, it's not their first time travel story. While Wonder Man goes to a blacksmith shop to try and get the time machine fixed, the Avengers will help the cowboys stop their own brand of super-criminal.
Yep, it's the return of the weirdest bunch of characters ever seen in a western comic. When superheroes started getting big, and westerns took a dive, there was an ill-advised attempt at making the latter more appealing by giving the cowpokes some super-powered (or at least gimmicky) opponents. Problem is, no matter how outlandish these guys are, they're simply no match for any roster of the Avengers. Even one with Mockingbird and Tigra (I'm kidding, I love these gals to death).
So take the Red Raven, for example. He's got a magic Indian suit that allows him to fly. How long will it take Iron Man to clip his wings?
Answer: Not long at all. Doctor Danger, the Master of Magnetism just has a horseshoe magnet and that's it. He manages to disarm Hawkeye with it though:
Hawkeye gets the last laugh by detonating a bomb-arrow that's been nabbed this way. Tigra rips the wall-crawling Rattler to shreds and throws him naked at the quick-draw artist Hurricane. And Two-Gun holds his own by disarming the Fat Man, a fat guy with a boomerang (surely a concept born of a peyote session). Speaking of peyote, this is when the Iron Mask (a steampunk-style Iron Man) springs his secret weapon on the heroes: The Living Totem!
"I-am-slow-but-I-am-inexorable!" This one actually takes teamwork. Tigra uses him as a scratching post, Hawkeye drives him back with arrows, Mockingbird trips him up with a battle-staff, and Iron Man makes a mountain fall on his head. Ok, Iron Man could've beat him alone, but sometimes being part of a team means letting the third-stringers feel useful.And that's it. There was never any real challenge. As the Avengers take their time machine further back into the past, the Phantom Rider grabs Mockingbird off the pad (he's fallen in love with her after one horse ride - dude's lonely), splitting the happy couple. And now we have West Coast Avengers in three time periods. Hey, I appreciate the trippiness, but this particular issue is so irrelevant as to get the Jaws rating:
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