Essential Avengers: Avengers #210: You Don’t Need the Weathermen to Know Which Way the Wind Blows!
August, 1981
Wow that is one hell of a title! At least in terms of length.
Not the best though.
That still belongs to Avengers #12: “This Hostage Earth!”: In Which the Mighty Avengers Battle to Save Their Beloved Planet From a Fate So Deadly That None But the Macabre Mole Man Could Have Devised It!: A Marvel Tale of Most Compelling Excellence!”
The title to this one being a Bob Dylan reference gets its some bonus points though.
Hmm, this issue is written by Bill Mantlo and he’s also the co-creator of Rocket Raccoon, originally an extended reference to a Beatles song.
Guy loves his song references.
The cover is also pretty excellent this time too. Damn but do I miss covers like this. Four different perils befallen the Avengers separated by the presumed villain’s helmet crest.
So take us away, Mantlo.
We start the issue with the return of the ridiculous four-sided television for the Avengers meeting table. Except now its five four-sided tvs on one pole for maximum media absorption from multiple angles.
And the Avengers are watching THE WEATHER CHANNELS!
Scarlet Witch: “Why have you summoned us, Captain America? What new menace confronts the Avengers?”
Wonder Man: “Wait until you hear, Wanda! Cap’s called us together to watch the weather report!”
Don’t be so surprised. The title and the cover are all about weather.
Cap though says that this weather channel may be showing THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE WORLD!
But surely he’s exaggerating. Even if 2012 the movie ridonkulous weather disasters happen and wipe out humanity, the world will keep on zooming through space. Its a persistent rock.
End of humanity is pretty bad too, from the point of view of humanity. Which the Avengers either are or aspire to.
So there are excessive tornadoes in Kansas. So far, of course.
London is flooding.
There are unnatural thunderstorms and torrential rains in New York, so bad that Thor has decided to show up without being summoned to go ‘hey how about this weather, right?’
Buenos Aires is freezing, baffling and befuddling bikini beach goers.
Which Beast ogles.
Beast, pls. The fate of the humanity is at stake here.
And there’s a heatwave over Antarctica melting ice and raising the water levels, threatening low lying countries. Or mostly just England somehow.
The government’s weather monitoring space station with a weird name Samarobyrn has determined that these weather disruptions are too systematic to be natural so the Avengers are going to split into five groups to investigate the five places I’ve already mentioned, since they’re the five places most seriously affected according to the satellite Samarobyrn.
Beast is going to go to Buenos Aires, to his delight.
Wanda and Vision will go to Kansas.
Beast: “The perfect place to send the Good Witch of the East!”
The Wasp and Wonder Man will head to Antarctica.
Wasp: “Great! Finally I get a chance to wear my new fur coat!”
... Wasp. Heatwave.
Thor will investigate the thunderstorms in New York.
And Cap and Iron Man will go to London.
Not sure what they’re going to do against large-scale weather disturbances. Can’t exactly punch the climate. At least not personally.
Maybe punching a weatherman will help. Can’t make the situation worse.
Anyway, the Avengers all head off to their own destinations, with Beast snarking “Say, shouldn’t someone yell ‘Avengers Dissemble’?!”
So, this reminds me of something, really briefly. There was an episode of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes that used the title This Hostage Earth (sadly sans the rest) and also coincidentally seems to share some elements with this story. The Avengers split up to investigate seven different anomalies with Iron Man wryly commenting that he should say Avengers Dissemble.
Doesn’t have much of anything to do with this. I was just reminded because of mentioning This Hostage Earth ect earlier.
Anyway, while all of the other Avengers dissemble, Thor tarries.
So he’s still in the meeting room when Jocasta arrives and wonders what the hell is going on. She only found out there was a meeting at all because Jarvis told her.
Damn, that’s rude, the other Avengers.
Thor: “An oversight, surely. Our ranks have swelled of late, and with no permanent chairman, ‘tis hard to know whose responsibility ‘twas to summon thee.”
Jocasta: “True? And yet I have felt... apart from the others. Being a creature of cybernetic circuits and not flesh and blood, I am always aware that I am... different.”
Thor: “And thou thinkest we do shun thee for it? Nay, milady! The Avengers are a composite of mortal and immortal, android and man-beast, man and mutant! Different, Jocasta? Aye, so are we all!”
Oh, hey. There’s that arc about Jocasta feeling disconnected from the other Avengers. We haven’t touched on it for a while but it was a running thing in the Shooter run previously. She tried to make friends with various Avengers but they tended to inadvertently blow her off due to their own preoccupations or just getting distracted.
So, no, Thor, I don’t think that the Avengers are intentionally shunning her. But I do think that none of them have really been reaching out to her, either. And you’re all she has.
Thor heads out to his mission and this time Jocasta tarries, thinking about things and stuff.
So she’s still in the meeting room when the computer pulls up some exposition based on a random thing Beast asked rhetorically.
“Origin of the word Samarobryn in the disaster prophecies of Michael Nostradamus... Samarobryn one hundred leagues from the hemisphere. They will live without law, exempt from politics.”
Huh!
I don’t think I knew that Nostradamus had a first name!
Weird that someone would name a weather satellite after a disaster prophecy that predicted famine caused by excessive rain. That’s like naming a communications satellite Babel.
Anyway, the Avengers all head in five different directions with four Quinjets and one Thor and Jocasta takes a fifth Quinjet and heads off into space.
Huh! They have five whole Quinjets now!
Thor flies up into the sky and begins yelling at the clouds, as one might expect from Thor.
Thor: “The storm rages as it hast for hours, with a fury that doth threaten the very existence of the Midgardian mortals dwelling below! ‘Tis time to leash the lightning -- to put the rain to rout! Cease, storm! ‘Tis the god of thunder who dost command thee!”
And then Thor gets hit in the face by lightning.
This storm is a rude.
Thor is stunned by all of this lightning in the face, I guess backing up Clone Squirrel Girl’s use of electricity to knock out Jane!Thor that one time, nearly falling out of the sky before whirling Mjolnir like a helicopter to land smoothly.
And then Thor goes back to yelling at clouds except this time not just clouds because he spots the one who hit him with lightning and it is a who and not a what.
Thor: “Descend, Villain! And if yon storm be thy doing -- desist!”
Weatherman: “Have a care, god of thunder! Not even you can command... a WEATHERMAN!”
I have queried an expert who has told me that yes, this guy looks a bit tokusatsu.
(And he’s orange. Spoilers: There’s a different colored one wherever the Avengers go. A full color-coded team.)
Anyway, two hours later and over in London, England, Iron Man and Captain America arrive to deal with London being flooded.
Iron Man: “Do you realize just how selective these disasters are, Cap? After all, England and Holland border on the same body of water -- and the first’s been inundated, while the second hasn’t been touched!”
Huh! That is weird. And seems incredibly implausible or like someone or thing incredibly powerful is also incredibly angry at the English.
While Iron Man flies around shooting the water with repulsors to... shove it back into the ocean? Is that what’s going on?? I mean, if the water is disproportionately high on England’s side of the channel then I guess you could just shove the water and accomplish something but I thought there was something going on with Antarctica melting which would indicate that the sea levels are also rising but then why would it be affecting only England and oh no comic logic has broken me
Anyway, while ^ that is happening, Captain America lands the Quinjet on Parliament since there’s not many good places to land and really, how often can you say to have landed a jet on a government building?
He’s old, let him have his fun.
But it’s not just fun! He’s Captain America, the man who wakes up at 4 AM to go for a ten miles jog so he can be showered and ready to superhero by 6 AM, probably!
He notices some kids clinging to an overturned double decker bus (because how would we know it was London without?) and he jumps from Parliament to swing on a Union Jack flag to the bus.
And then he uses the flag to create a tether to a rescue boat that the kids can cross over on.
AND THEN THE BLUE WEATHER RANGER! appears.
Flying around on a hoverdisc and creating a localized tidal wave. The wave smacks Cap off the bus into the water as Blue Weather Ranger gloats.
Weatherman: “Let that be a lesson to you not to wrest lives away -- when they’ve been claimed by... a Weatherman!”
And now a scene transition to sunny Antarctica where Jan van Wasp is finally getting the idea that heatwave means that her fur coat is superfluous.
While melting Antarctica temps might still be cold, this specific melting Antarctica temp is almost tropical!
And its not just sunny, it seems like the sun is moving closer, like the angry sun from Mario Bros 3 because iiiiiiiiits.... THE RED WEATHERMAN!
Weatherman: “Die, Avengers! The only fate for those who would defy... a Weatherman!”
The Red Weather Ranger blasts them with heat beams of a thousand degrees, melting the ice right out from under them.
Wasp figures that the Red Weatherman is radiating heat in waves so she could hypothetically hit him between cycles.
Hypothetically.
Because she can’t figure out the frequency and instead the Weatherman sets her wings on fire. And her wings are an organic part of her and she hurts when they hurts. So she plummets into the water to put herself out.
Hmm... the yellow and black look good on Jan and fits with the Wasp name but sometimes she doesn’t look dissimilar to an X-Men.
Wonder Man does what Wonder Man does and picks up a heavy thing and chucks it jerkwards.
But they’re in Antarctica so heavy thing is a giant ice chunk and jerk is a really hot guy so the ice chunk melts midflight pelting the two Avengers with boiling rain.
Wow, this is going poorly so far!
Who’s next?
Scarlet Witch and Vision are next! And they’ve gone to Kansas to fight tornadoes.
I’m. Not sure how that’s going to play out. I really feel like the Avengers are out of their element trying to fight the weather. Is it too late to call in the X-Men and specifically Storm?
She’s doing a crossover with Dazzler this month in 1981 so its not like she was too busy.
Anyway, Scarlet Witch flies the Quinjet at a tornado and then is shocked when the jet gets swept into the funnel cloud and spins out of control
She wonders why Vision is just standing there but he learned a thing from the Yellow Claw two-parter and isn’t just standing there.
He actually makes his mass so heavy that it forces the Quinjet to the ground with a WHRUMP!
I can’t imagine that’d be good for either the Quinjet or the passengers but I’ll give Vision this.
Its cool that he can do his thing without outwardly expending any effort.
Scarlet Witch: “Yes, neither of our powers are quite so flamboyant as Cap throwing his shield, or Thor his hammer -- but they have proven most effective, else we would not be Avengers!”
And then she uses her witchcraft to force two of the tornadoes to slam into each other and cancel out.
This also seems dubious. Since tornadoes tend to spin the same direction you’d think that instead of cancelling, they’d become one giant super tornado. Them cancelling each other out seems quite improbable actually. Which is probably exactly why it works.
Take that, SCIENCE.
But there’s still one tornado left and its coming for them! And since it appears to not be naturally formed, it defies Wanda’s nature based magic! Curses!
Annnnnnnnnd... It’s a WEATHERMAN!
The ebony Weatherman. Although he looks purple to me.
Weatherman: “Stand or flee, it will make no difference! Your lives are in the hands of a... WEATHERMAN!”
And another scene transition.
Geez, this plot split the party hard. And I think it’s beginning to realize how hard it is to split the story between six groups because this vignette gets four panels before moving on.
Beast lands in beautiful snow-covered iceberg infested Buenos Aires and takes a brief moment to be horny about a bunch of bikini women who have been frozen alive.
Beast: “Oh, my stars and garters! Those bathing beauties I saw on T.V. -- they’re frozen solid! Maybe I could take one or two back to thaw out in my room at Avengers mansion?”
And then as if to punish him for this, the white WEATHERMAN! immediately appears and freezes Beast solid.
Weatherman: “You will need to unfreeze yourself first, man-beast! So says... a WEATHERMAN!”
Beast: “Yoiks!”
Good thing freezing is basically harmless in comics.
And our final party, Jocasta IN SPAAAAAAACE.
Because Quinjets can still just achieve escape velocity. That’s some good super-science.
Jocasta: “Samarobyrn, Earth’s first weather-monitoring space station! It’s so... beautiful! A shimmering silver wheel in space -- a triumph of science and engineering, created to faithfully serve its creators... as was I. Perhaps that is why I alone thought to come here.”
And since she’s a robot, she just jumps out of the Quinjet airlock that it definitely always has had and uses her EYE BEAMMM to basically propel herself away from the Quinjet and toward the Samarobyrn station.
That’s pretty cool, actually. I’m not sure if, scientifically, laser eyes would actually propel that much, but its a cool thought.
Of course, Jocasta has to do all of this cool stuff because the space station didn’t respond to the docking requests Jocasta sent. So she has to go in through the manual override airlock.
In the station, Jocasta finds no signs of life even though it was supposed to have a five man crew.
She finds her way to the hub of the station where the computer monitors are all monitoring the five separate Avengers missions.
So she’s pretty sure her suspicions were correct.
Jocasta: “The five foes facing my fellow Avengers must be the five crewmen of Samarobryn! They have distorted this station’s functioning from that of weather-monitoring to weather control -- and now exploit it for their own evil ends!”
Samarobryn: “You are wrong, silver sister!”
WELP!
The space station computer has gone all HAL. Dammit, this always happens!
So Samarobryn decides to explain it all.
It had a humble beginning as a computer for the U.S. Weather Service’s Project Earthwatch. But then one of the programmers added something extra to the concoction: NOSTRADAMUS!
No but seriously. The programmer decided to download the disaster prophecies of Nostradamus into the computer in addition to weather data.
And particularly the ones dealing with that Samarobryn prophecy, the one Jocasta read part of earlier. So when the comptuer was installed in a space station named Samarobryn, it went ‘hey that me!’
And decided to expand operations from weather monitoring to weather control.
How does a space station outfitted specifically to only monitor the weather make the jump to controlling it? Fuck you, this is comics.
When the crew grew suspicious, the computer rewrote their brains to become the Weathermen.
Why did a computer designed to monitor weather have the ability to-
Look, this is comics. Where Hank Pym, biophysicist, built a computer with a gun pre-installed and was surprised when it shot him and tried to take his wife. THIS. IS. COMICS.
Anyway, speaking of weirdly sexual computers:
Samarobryn: “I sense that you are a machine like me -- created by others but obedient to none! Join me! Be my bride! Together we will cleanse the Earth of imperfect humankind and stand guard over the paradise which remains... as gods!”
Geez, its just like Aaron Stack all over again, way before the fact. Also, Ultron. A certain type of AI is just attracted to Jocasta, huh?
Anyway, Jocasta lets Samarobryn down easy by shooting him with EYE BEAM!
Jocasta: “Nothing would remain but a lifeless mokcery of a world! No! I reject you! I was created to be the bride of another such as you -- but robot though I am, there is still some spark of humanity burning within me! I cherish it -- and would not see its source snuffed out!”
Samarobryn may be a load bearing computer pillar without arms or legs but it still manages to defend itself.
BY FLOODING THE CONTROL ROOM?
I guess everything in this room is waterproof??
And also by shooting lightning, also in the control room. Where I guess everything is lightning proof.
This is a bad plan.
More than I thought, even, because by shifting attention to defending itself up in space, Samarobryn leaves its Weathermen high and dry.
The Orange Weatherman stops being able to throw lightning bolts so Thor clobbers him.
The Red Weatherman chills out so Wonder Man and Wasp can get close and put him in a headlock.
Uh. I’m not sure if Blue Weatherman actually is affected or not because Iron Man just punches him in the back of the head while he’s distracted.
The Ebony Weatherman’s whirlwind vanishes so Scarlet Witch and Vision can kick his ass.
And Beast unfreezes as quickly as he froze and kicks the White Weatherman’s helmet off. And apparently the helmet was maintaining the mind control because the Weatherman is suddenly confused about where he is.
And with the Orange Weatherman beaten up, Thor senses, with his god senses no doubt, that the Orange Weatherman wasn’t the one commanding the weather. So there must be an unseen agent who arranged this.
So his course is clear.
Thor shoots a giant lightning bolt into space and hits Samarobryn.
He doesn’t know that the station is to blame. He’s just shooting a giant lightning bolt into space because he’s pissed that someone used lightning against him.
I guess when you’re the god of thunder, you can get a little homing capability out of your giant space lightning bolts.
Still though. Wow.
Meanwhile, in space, Samarobryn is still trying to woo Jocasta. For a certain value of woo.
Samarobryn: “It is still not too late, female! Accept me! Accept what must be! I can make you love me!”
Jocasta: “What can a machine who would destroy all those I have come to care for know of love?”
Samarobryn: “Nothing, as humans understand love -- but together we can redefine the word on the basis of our own coexistence!”
Jocasta: “Can you not understand? The fact that I am a machine does not make me less than human! I am, as Thor said, merely... different! I would try to live in their human world -- to understand how to retain that difference that makes me unique -- and yet be accepted!”
This is an interesting conversation but wouldn’t you know it? There’s a power surge. Seems like a space station got hit by lightning.
And when the lights turn back on and Jocasta wonders what happened:
Samarobryn: “I am weather-monitoring space station Samarobryn. Your question is not pertinent to weather evaluation. This unit cannot compute.”
So you know how sometimes a program crashes and you lose all your progress?
Samarobryn hadn’t backed up its sapience and the power surge effectively lobotomized it back to factory settings.
Geez.
LATER
All the Avengers stand around congratulating Jocasta for the good job and apologizing that they overlooked her.
Apparently new safeguards were put in place to prevent Samarobryn from attaining sentience again. Probably stuff like ‘don’t download doomsday prophecies into a weather satellite.’
Hm. I know Samarobryn was trying to destroy the world and all but the cavalier lobotomization of an enemy because it was a computer and thus disposable sits wrong when the Avengers have two AIs on their team. Really, the fact that it was an accident is pretty much all that lets it slide by.
Also: I’m kind of peeved that Jocasta didn’t get to resolve the situation, given that this was blatantly a Jocasta focus issue. She does pull a lot of weight, being the only one to figure out the real source of the problem and distracting Samarobryn long enough for the Avengers to beat the Weathermen. But it feels like Thor swiped the big win from her even though he didn’t even know about Samarobryn. Just shot some lightning into space and resolved the plot.
That plot resolution should have been Jocasta’s!
Anyway. Scarlet Witch says that Jocasta being overlooked like she was indicates that the Avengers need to reorganize and Vision suggests that they vote on a new chairperson.
But they’re interrupted by Cap.
Captain America: “Iron Man, Thor, and I have given some thought to the directions this team has taken -- and should take! I open the floor to discussion! The first item on the agenda being: THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH!”
Which basically means a roster shakeup.
Funny that the Avengers have had a period of disorganization and aimlessness when they didn’t have a permanent writer and now that they are getting one, they’re going to try to get their shit together.
Whatever I do, I shouldn’t miss next issue.
But before then, there’s an Avengers Annual that has to fit in somewhere and since it uses this roster of the team, might as well fit it in now, before everyone changes and it makes no sense. And its a fairly well-known Avengers Annual.
The fairly well-known Avengers Annual that looked at Avengers #200 and said ‘actually this is bullshit.’
Follow @essential-avengers. Also please like if you liked. Its good to know that somebody is reading.
Also, consider donating to the Bill Mantlo Support Fund if you enjoyed vicariously experiencing this issue or if you enjoy Rocket Raccoon or his other stuff like Cloak and Dagger, Micronauts, or Rom.
Taken by Ondrej Kralik on August 18, 2017 @ Povazska Bystrica, Slovakia
Sometimes called "space lightning," sprites are a true space weather phenomenon. They inhabit the upper atmosphere alongside auroras, meteors and noctilucent clouds. Some researchers believe they are linked to cosmic rays: subatomic particles from deep space striking the top of Earth's atmosphere produce secondary electrons that, in turn, kickstart sprites in the highly-charged environment above thunderstorms.
