Avengers West Coast 53 - Acts of Vengeance

Avengers West Coast was the series that brought John Byrne back to the mainstream Marvel universe after a two-and-a-half-year absence over at DC, latterly also working on a bit of the New Universe. At this stage he'd been writing and drawing the title for nearly a year making bold changes such as literally deconstructing the Vision, to be rebuilt as an all-white, emotionless being, or bringing back the Original Human Torch. In the process a lot of this change has wreaked havoc on the Scarlet Witch.

Avengers West Coast #53

Writer/Penciler: John Byrne
Inker: Keith Williams
Letterer: Bill Oakley
Colourist: Bob Sharen
Editor: Howard Mackie
Ed.-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

But also Byrne was now writing both of the Avengers team titles, in a period when Marvel was trying to build a clear franchise mentality, much as it later did in the mid-2000s. One factor to watch out for is just how this crossover handles the perceived second tier status of the West Coast based team. Were they subordinate to the New York team, with the latter being THE Avengers, or were they the co-equals of the "East Coast Avengers"? Over at DC the recent expansion of the Justice League International had seen the existing title renamed "Justice League America" but that was at least close to the team's historic title, so it was less of a problem to give parity of esteem to "Justice League Europe" (and even to "Justice League Antarctica"). But over at Marvel the Avengers retained their historic title and there were often periods when readers of that book might as well not have been aware of the existence of the West Coast title. Hopefully a major crossover based on the Avengers with both teams written by the same writer would not fall into this trap.

However this particular issue is focused more on getting its characters caught up in the crossover rather than advancing the wider plots, whatever Magneto and/or the mysterious lackey may think in the opening pages. One thing that does seem clear is that the lackey isn't Immortus (not that he was a strong suspect anyway), who is shown operating his own schemes to eliminate alternate timelines as part of some unspecified plan involving the Scarlet Witch. Otherwise we have an issue in which various characters are still coming to terms with recent events, with the Scarlet Witch having suffered a breakdown due to recent events, the Vision determining to switch to the east coast team and the Human Torch still coming to terms with learning about the death of his partner, Toro. Into this mix comes an attack by the U-Foes, a group who recently clashed with the east coast team but are predominantly obscure Hulk foes. Their mixed abilities mean they're a good match for this current crop of Avengers (Scarlet Witch, Vision, Original Human Torch, Wasp, Hank Pym and Iron Man) but ultimately the fight is set-up as a holding tactic to occupy the team until the U-Foes discover they've been set up whilst Hank discovers much bigger things are going on.

This isn't a bad issue for bringing the West Coast Avengers into the bigger event, but we've already had a lot of issues in the crossover (even if we stick to just publication dates a good dozen came out before this one) and a chapter written by the head writer in one of the main books really should be advancing the overall plot at this stage rather than still going through the preliminaries.

Avengers West Coast #53 has been reprinted in:

• Avengers West Coast: Darker Than Scarlet (2008)
• Acts of Vengeance Omnibus (2011)
• Avengers West Coast: Darker then Scarlet (Panini pocketbook, 2015)
• Avengers by John Byrne Omnibus (2016)