"Avengers West Coast: Vision Quest” by John Byrne & Steve Englehart with Mark Gruenwald, D.G. Chichester, Margaret Clark, Tom DeFalco, Ralph Macchio, Kieron Dwyer, Fabian Nicieza & Peter Sanderson

            The following is a review of the “Marvel Epic Collection, Avengers West Coast: Vision Quest” graphic novel by John Byrne & Steve Englehart with Mark Gruenwald, D.G. Chichester, Margaret Clark, Tom DeFalco, Ralph Macchio, Kieron Dwyer, Fabian Nicieza & Peter Sanderson.

            The original Avengers started by happenstance. The villainous Loki mind controlled the Incredible Hulk to attack the Earth and lead Loki to conquer the world. The Invincible Iron Man, the Mighty Thor, Ant-Man and the Wasp gathered together to defeat Loki and force him back from whence he came. The heroes realized that working together, they could stop threats more efficiently if they worked together as a team, and the Avengers were formed.

            Over the years, the Avengers roster has prospered and changed many times, and the team had so many Avengers that a grouping of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes traveled from their base in New York City off to California, and thus the West Coast Avengers were formed. The following is a list of their members and a little bit about each West Coast Avenger:

            Clint Barton/Hawkeye: Expert marksman. Preferred weapon are a bow and tricked out arrows. Team founder and leader.

            Bobbi Moorse/Mockingbird: Skilled hand-to-hand fighter. Preferred weapons are batons. Hawkeye’s wife. They are in the process of divorce.

            Hank Pym: Former Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Goliath/Yellowjacket, currently tech support.

            Janet Van Dyne/Wasp: Able to shrink down to insect size while still retaining human strength, wings when shrunk, and “wasp stings,” concentrated blasts of electricity. Hank’s ex-wife, currently working through their problems.

            Simon Williams/Wonder Man: Able to transform into ionic energy and redirect them into energy blasts, and flight. Actor.

            Greer Grant-Nelson/Tigra: Feline form, enhanced strength, speed and agility.

            Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch: Mutant with hex powers that can alternate probabilities.

            Vision: Synthezoid, able to fly, energy blast fueled by sunlight, can alter density to be diamond hard to intangible. Created from the body of the robot Jim Hammond/the Human Torch, contains Wonder Man’s brain patterns when Wonder Man was presumed deceased. Scarlet Witch’s husband.

            Tony Stark/Iron Man: High tech suit of armor.

            John Walker/U.S.Agent: Super soldier, enhanced strength, speed, agility, and accelerated healing.

            The full force of both the Avengers and their West Coast counterparts are united to face the threat of the High Evolutionary. Bill Foster, a scientist and associate of Hank Pym, takes a dose of the Pym Particles and becomes the new Giant Man to assist in their battle. The High Evolutionary has been experimenting to fuse animals and human together to create new species and wishes to conquer the world with his hybrids.

            The W.A.C. then return to California to defeat the Defiler, who is kidnapping and corrupting teenagers.

            The Swordsman, a deceased Avenger, returns from the dead to reunite with his wife, the Avenger Mantis.

            The Night Shift assaults California, leaving Hawkeye to tell a major lie to the rest of the W.A.C.

            The Phantom Rider strikes, and a familial link between the history of the Phantom Rider is revealed.

            Tigra is going through a transformation, becoming more cat than woman.

            The Vision had linked to every computer on earth, and fearing his repeated attempt, representatives from world governments form a unit to abduct the Vision, disassemble him, and wipe all records of the Vision’s memory from both the Vision’s mainframe and the Avengers’ back-up files, effectively killing the Vision. The team is shocked to see that Mockingbird has betrayed them and given the task force access to the Vision and the virus that wiped the Vision’s memories. The W.A.C. are able to rescue him and reassemble him but all of Vision’s memories have been wiped, not knowing his wife, the Scarlet Witch. The W.A.C. find Phineas Horton, the creator of the original Human Torch, who was believed to die in the Vision’s arms, but a shock comes when Horton reveals that the Vision is not Horton’s work and not a refurbishing of the Human Torch but a different android completely. Meanwhile, Vision and Scarlet Witch’s children William and Thomas keep disappearing, but Scarlet Witch is under the impression that the twins’ governesses are incompetent and progresses to fire six governesses in the process.

            The Vision, now devoid of color and the emotions he had developed after years with the Avengers, decides to announce his new presence and goes on live television to reintroduce himself to the world. Meanwhile, Wonder Man, whose brain wave patterns were the Vision’s personality foundation, refuses to give Vision back his personality due to Wonder Man’s romantic feeling for the Scarlet Witch and feeling that now that Vision is out of the way he now stands a chance at winning Scarlet Witch’s heart.

            The team is forced to accept a new member, the U.S.Agent. Hawkeye, dismayed by the Vision’s dismantlement, Mockingbird’s betrayal, and U.S.Agent’s imposition, leaves the team. He then meets a new team calling themselves the Great Lakes Avengers and takes to them, offering training, advice and expertise, becoming the team’s leader.

            Scarlet Witch is then lured into a trap by a group of mad scientists, who experiment and corrupt her. Captain America and She-Hulk from the East Coast Avengers arrive and must rescue Scarlet Witch and avoid being put through the same corrupting process.

            Ann Raymond, widow of Thomas “Toro” Raymond, the partner of the original Human Torch arrives at the Compound, which leads the W.A.C. to recovering the Human Torch’s body and resuscitating the Human Torch.

            Iron Man arrives in time for an attack on the W.A.C. by Master Pandemonium, where Agatha Harkness, Scarlet Witch’s magic teacher, arrives to send the W.A.C. to Pandemonium’s dimension to attempt to rescue Thomas and William from Pandemonium.

            The Deviant Ghaur then kidnaps seven women to be the brides of the banished God Set to restore Set to the world.

            Wasp and She-Hulk then rate the hunkiness of all the male Avengers and allies.

            U.S.Agent goes on a secret mission.

            Firebird assists a party of Atlanteans who get stranded in the desert.

            The Squadron Supreme go on a quest to keep Set from attaining the Serpent Crown.

            Okay, so we have the synopses analyzed, now it’s my turn for critiquing. Yes, a lot happens in this book, which, to me, was actually a bad thing. First off, “The Evolutionary War” was taken completely out of context. This was a crossover event contained in the 1988 Marvel Annuals of every major series at a time, but only the West Coast Avengers Annual was featured in this book. This was Part Nine and not the last Part in the storyline, so honestly, this issue gave little information to me as a reader, and led be to thoroughly dislike this issue. The same applies to the 1989 Avengers West Coast Annual, Part Twelve in the “Atlantis Attacks” storyline crossing over through every 1989 Marvel series’ Annuals. Because of this, they felt like a waste of space to me, but the Marvel Epic Collections contain all issues from their respective time periods, this book’s issues ranging from 1988-1989, so the inclusion was “needed” but the execution failed. Also, the micro-storylines fell flat to me. I just didn’t really enjoy them, particularly the “Great Lakes Avengers.” First off, what gives them the right to call themselves “Avengers?” This was, of course, brought up in the book, and the story was called “Franchise” but honestly, this team just did not appeal to me. They were all unknowns, characters created specifically for this storyline, and this team did not meet the conditions of what I’d call a team of “Avengers.” And Hawkeye’s defection from a team he created and Mockingbird’s betrayal as team co-founder just didn’t make sense to me. And U.S.Agent is a character who I have never come to enjoy. Walker had at one point been Captain America, so I can’t quite call him a knockoff, but he seemed to me like a cheap substitute. As far as Tigra transmogrifying into more cat than woman, that was disgusting, her lurking in the pantry, waiting for small rodents as her meals. And let’s talk about the elephant in the room here. We have Scarlet Witch, a mutant (well that’s what was believed at the time, a few years back they did a retcon revealing she was a human enhanced by the High Evolutionary, but that wasn’t written in 1988, so we just have to say she’s a mutant), and Vision, a synthezoid, who have children? If that’s what you’re wondering, then honestly, read the book, I’ve given too much of a spoiler as is, but that is explained in this book. Now this was a GRAPHIC novel, and a graphic novel must be appreciated in two ways: story and artwork. While I didn’t fancy the story, I must say, I thought the artwork was amazing. Now, you Millennials might not appreciate art from the time, you want the computer generated art and not the hand-drawn stuff. So you may think along the lines of “I thought it was amazing art for the time.” Last week I did a review of another graphic novel from the eighties, and I talked about this as well. Comic books have specific qualities of artwork for the time periods they’re released in, the realism, the proportions, the colors. Now, some of that post may have to be taken back this week later, but I appreciate art for its time period. Eighties art had quality that today’s art doesn’t, back when a comic book actually looked comic book-y. Artists these days sometimes make art that doesn’t fit the original concept of graphic storytelling. But the style in the late eighties looked like a comic book. The colors in this book are so vivid and bright, and I just loved the quality of the art. I’d mention the artists, but this has been long enough already. But I don’t think this was “amazing artwork for the time,” I just think it was amazing art period. So for me, I preferred the “graphic” to the “novel.”

I’ve dilly-dallied too much, so let’s just move on to my recommendation. If you only know Wanda and Vision from the MCU and have never touched a Marvel comic book before, I honestly don’t recommend this book to you, the differences just do not match up with “WandaVision” and you probably wouldn’t like it. I’ve been reading Marvel Comics regularly for over twenty years, and I didn’t particularly like this book, but don’t go by me, this whole post is my opinion and I welcome (even encourage) you to have a different opinion, and I would love to hear from you, leave me a comment if you’ve read this book either as from this book or if you read Avengers West Coast comics in the late 1980s, that would be THE BEST (in my year-and-a-half of doing this blog, no one has commented, so you can be the first, wouldn’t that be cool?)! If you liked Avengers at this time, however, I’d recommend this book to you. It did have many twists and turns, I’ll give it that, and I was surprised many times over the course of the book. But if you weren’t big on comics from the 1980s (either actually living in the time or just collect classic comic books here-and-there), I’d honestly deter you from reading this book. And if you’re only interested in modern comic book artwork and can’t appreciate art from before you were born (cough-Generation Z-cough), then this book probably won’t appeal to you. I will tell you that if you are a comic book fan of Vision and Scarlet Witch, you should check this out. I thought the emotional impact is amazing, especially the ending, but I just didn’t fully like the execution of the rest of the story. And if you are a fan of the Great Lakes Avengers (I’m not, but hey, you might be, I’m not going to judge you on that), this is their first appearance, so if you haven’t read their origin before, you might benefit from reading this book, and would probably like that story arc, so I’d recommend that to you. And if you are a fan of “West Coast Avengers/Avenger West Coast” from any point and haven’t read this story yet, check it out.

Okay, I know, you’re getting bored of me, so I’m cutting to the chase here. I always give a numeric score in my reviews on a scale of one to ten. One means I regret reading this, ten means I’m going to read it again soon. My regulars know I’m very hard to please, so a high score from me might tell you that maybe you should read this book. I’d love nothing more than to tell you I give this a high score… but unfortunately, I can’t this time, I’m so sorry to tell you this. But, despite all of my negativity and criticism, I didn’t think it was a bad book, per se, but it just felt average to me, so I have to score it as a six.

Okay, enough dillydally, shillyshally you want to go back to your cat pictures, so I’m wrapping it up here. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a few more things. First off, this blog has been mostly book reviews for the last several months, but I promise you, I have more content planned, a few B’ings here, a few poems there, mix in an editorial, maybe an essay, we’ll see where time goes. I post very frequently, so you won’t have to wait too long for more posts, and it’s Tuesday May 3, 2022 right now, so on Friday I’m doing another post, so be sure to check it out when it’s done, or hey, maybe instead of the cats, you can read some more posts by me, that’s be great, you’d be THE BEST! So I’ll say goodbye for now, please come back, and til next time, Tim Cubbin… out!