Avengers 312 - Acts of Vengeance

With this issue of Avengers we see the central core of the crossover pulling together ever more. Significantly most of the Avengers seen here are from the west coast team (the Wasp, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision and Hank Pym) or reservists called up (the Falcon), a sign of how the attacks are continuing to occupy and cripple the Avengers' operational ability. So now would be a good time for a major attack by the alliance of leading villains.

Avengers #312

Artists: Paul Ryan and Tom Palmer
Writer: John Byrne
Letterer: Bill Oakley
Colourist: Christie Scheele
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

Instead the alliance is squabbling. With this issue we get to see a meeting of the alliance in depth for the first time. And it's not going too well. One of the biggest criticisms of the whole alliance is that it is composed of villains with huge egos and some very different perspectives on the world. The panel showing the opening of the meeting is a glorious piece that conveys just how little the six like each other, with only the mysterious stranger holding them together, and there's a particularly nice touch in the way Magneto is staring at the Skull with undisguised hatred. Here the tensions spill over with the Red Skull and Magneto especially showing their hatred of each other and contempt for everyone else and most of the others pile in to refute the Skull's dismissal of them as "common criminals". Only Doctor Doom stands above it all. But the meeting is also a wonderful parody of the real-life world of organisations and corporations where everyone is expected to gather together in person merely to receive reports they could have been sent in writing. Absolutely nothing is achieved in this meeting though later in the issue we see the alliance watching the Avengers on monitors where it's confirmed they had nothing to do with an attack by Freedom Force and suggest taking a more active role. Luckily, we don't witness the processes of someone coming up with a motion, formally tabling it, entering in a row because of the very different meaning of the term "to table" in meetings on either side of the Atlantic, then eventually discussing the proposal etc... But overall the implication is that the limited central action is largely because of squabbling egos.

Consequently the Avengers face a group of villains who have been manipulated by the mysterious stranger without his allies' knowledge. The Blob, Pyro and Avalanche have actually fought the Avengers before in the annual that introduced Rogue and both the Vision and Scarlet Witch were on the team at the time but there's no acknowledgement of that here and instead the Avengers react like these three are an unknown quantity. Given the high profiles disagreements between the creators, one does have to wonder if John Byrne simply blanked out anything written by Chris Claremont. What should be a simple fight proves anything but, with the three villains a strong match and clearly well briefed, forcing the Avengers to find some unusual ways to take them down, especially the Blob. And all the time the fight is leading to ever greater debate amongst the public about the value of super-heroes.

This issue works well in bringing the core threads of the crossover together with the leading villains' committee meeting an especial highlight. However the clues to the mysterious stranger's identity are extremely obvious.

Avengers #312 has been reprinted in:

• Acts of Vengeance Omnibus (2011)
• Avengers by John Byrne Omnibus (2016)