Marvel Adventures Avengers #28 (Story 2)

Background

This story is Paul Tobin's contribution to issue #28. While Cage and the other Avengers deal with manic robots, plant creatures, and the Brawl Brothers, Spidey—with the help of Cap, Storm, and Hulk—try to get a cat out of a tree.

Story 'Here, Kitty, Here, Kitty!'

"So," says Cap, "you shut down Hammerhead's art theft ring, alone, and then you called all of us here because you couldn't rescue a cat from a tree?"

"True," Spidey replies. "But only because I literally can't touch that cat."

The cat, as well as the tree it is in, are in the corner of Hammerhead's warehouse, glowing eerily purple. They're utterly intangible, but this isn't a ghostly supernatural thing, it's a mad-science thing: the tree and cat are in an overlapping dimension.

While Hammerhead, webbed up in a different corner, shouts insulting remarks, the Avengers try to get the cat down, but fruitlessly. Cap can't touch it, Storm's winds can't lift it, Spidey's antics just scare it. Just for something to do, Cap plays some music over his Avengers communicator (I guess it doubles as an iPod) but this not only fails to entice the cat, it also summons a monstrous squid-man from the Negative Zone.

Okay, sure, whatever.

Now the Avengers have something to do. A mini-fight ensues, which ends when the Hulk smacks the squid-creature around enough to frighten it back to the Negative Zone. And that's not the only value Hulk adds to the mission! Before he transformed, Bruce Banner placed an order with Stark International for a plot device, which arrives by courier just after the fight ends. With said plot device, a de-Hulked Banner zaps the cat and tree into our dimension, allowing Cap to coax the feline into his arms.

Hammerhead thinks this is a fine joke, but no one cares what he thinks.

General Comments

I'm all for stories where the Avengers handle problems that aren't cosmically earth-shattering. But in a story like that, the Avengers have to actually handle the problem. In this one, Bruce Banner picks up a machine, presses a button, and presto! Problem solved. This kind of story leaves the readers without anything to savour. There's no joy of watching them deduce the proper approach; no amusing complications to manage (other than the squid-man thing, a fight in which a quick, painless Avengers victory is never in doubt); no surprising twist ending; no nothing.

This story is, in a word, boring.

Overall Rating

Boring is better than stupid, offensive, or irritating, but it's nothing to brag about, either. Two webs.

Footnote

One amusing point in the whole thing, so that's your stinger:

COURIER: "'Scuse me! Delivery! Is there a Bruce Banner here?"

STORM, standing in front of a slack-jawed Hulk: "Ummm. Well... I can sign for it."