Avengers: "Rites Of Conquest!"

Avengers #273 (1986)

By Roger Stern, John Buscema, Tom Palmer

Background: The current roster of the Avengers is Wasp (team leader), Captain America, Black Knight, Hercules, Captain Marvel. Namor has recently left for personal reasons.

So, What Happens? At a bar, Hercules is having a good time showing off and chatting, but he doesn't know that his drinking buddy is the Wrecker, who takes advantage of Herc's short temper to learn of Namor's absence and play up the hero's dislike for the Wasp's leadership. After nearly causing an accident, Hercules goes back to drinking, while the Wrecker reports to his boss Baron Zemo, who has assembled an army of villains and is getting ready to strike the Avengers. However, keeping his underlings in line isn't easy for the Baron, with the Wrecker and others complaining for the lack of action while Moonstone, confident of the crucial importance of her role, starts threatening to wrestle the leadership of the group from him. Moonstone's role is to control Blackout, a near catatonic man capable of tapping into an extradimensional dark force, perfect for neutralizing Captain Marvel whom Zemo considers the most dangerous Avenger. A quick demonstration shows that Blackout can indeed do the trick, but also that he's under Moonstone's complete control, and therefore a further potential threat to Zemo. In order to make Moonstone think twice about betraying him. Zemo arranges a little brawl between Piledriver and Mister Hyde, only to calm the latter down with a powerful sedative and make it look like he's completely obedient to him. Unaware of the sedative, Moonstone is impressed and wonders if the Baron has some secret power. Meanwhile, the Black Knight accompanies the Wasp to an evening gala, but the presence of the Paladin ruins his evening as he's jelous of his flirting with Janet. Thanks to the Fixer, Zemo watches everything through the local cameras and notices the Knight's reaction, planning to use it to his own advantage. Ready for his plan to start, Zemo summons his Master of Evil: Moonstone, Mister Hide, the Wrecking Crew, Blackout, Tiger Shark, the Absorbing Man, Titania, Yellowjacket, Goliath and the Fixer. With a powerful speech, the Baron rallies them against the Avengers, promising to defeat and humiliate them. He also proves his leadership to Moonstone, taking control of Blackout away from her thanks to the circuitry inside his new headband modified by the Fixer. When all the Masters accept to follow him, Zemo orders them to attack Avengers Mansion overnight, quickly battling past the building's defences and capturing Jarvis, who is covering for Hercules on monitor duty, like Zemo had planned. With the local traffic diverted and no witnesses around, within minutes the Masters take control of the Mansion and get ready for phase two of their plan.

Notes: Titania and the Absorbing Man don't take part in the attack because Zemo sends them to recruit another potential operative. This pits them against Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #283, preventive the operative - who will be revealed to be the Mongoose - from joining the Masters. 

Something Silly This Way Comes: The way Hercules trashes the truck, the driver should have been killed or at least badly injured even if he was wearing a seat belt.

Review: And so it begins, my joint favourite Avengers saga ever together with Ultron Unlimited. It's not cosmic in scope - quite the opposite, it's very personal - and doesn't have the fate of the world at stake, but the Under Siege storyline will push the Avengers like never before, at the same time establishing the Masters of Evil as a far greater threat than any other group of villains. This specific issue is by all means an appetizer, focusing on the villains with particular emphasis on Zemo. The Baron's plan is nothing out of this world - assemble a greater group and win through superior numbers - and in this sense it's nothing that hasn't been tried before - think Doctor Octopus and the Sinister Six against the lone Spider-Man - but what makes this instance both unique and fascinating are the internal dynamics of the Masters. Usually we see these stories through the eyes of the heroes , but this time, through Zemo's thought balloons and soliloquies, we gain an insight into how hard he needs to plan ahead and juggle egos in order to manage the assembled group. Even his leadership isn't a certainty as he needs to face the threat of Moonstone, biding his time by throwing her off her guard at first, and then devising a strategy to remove her big advantage as soon as possible. From a storytelling point of view his plan isn't perfect of course, heavily relying on a number of external factors that have nothing to do with him and look a little too convenient, but I suppose a great strategist is one who has a way of using anything to his advantage, so it can be excused.

By contrast, the Avengers look ordinary and we get a reminder that, amazing as they are at reacting, they aren't used to be proactive. Hercules, Captain Marvel, Wasp and the Black Knight are all taken by their personal lives and relationships, failing to realize that danger is looming ahead. In fairness, it's impossible to be always ready for everything - and there would be no story if they were - but Herc's annoyance at the Wasp's leadership, Janet's flirting or the Black Knight's longing for her can't help but look complacent in comparison to Zemo's planning. Likewise, leaving Jarvis alone and relying only on the Mansion's defences, which had been breached many times over the years, lays them open to the attack. Once again, looking at it from a storytelling point of view, the most interesting aspect is that they fail while still being written perfectly in character. It would have been easy to have one or two of them act out of the ordinary for plot's sake, but Stern manages to exploit weaknesses they've always had.

Moving on, my personal belief is that you need a great writer to make a great story, and a great artist to make you want to give that story a chance. Here, aided by Tom Palmer, John Buscema is at his very best, with a never-seen-before level of expressivity. Not only everyone looks different, even in a crowd, but every single facial muscle that can add something more to someone's expression is put to work. Wrinkles show, eyebrows are raised, eyes pop wide open, forehead lines crease, mouths twist, all with a level of detail never seen before and rarely after. Mister Hide and Hercules, whose body language is always a little over the top, are the biggest beneficiaries, but thanks to some more subtle work even those characters whose face is covered by some kind of mask manage to convey their feelings.

This week will completely be devoted to the Under Siege storyline. Tomorrow, things go from bad to worse for Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Final Verdict: Not much action, but still the perfect introduction for an epic saga. 5/5