Avengers Spotlight gets the honor of officially starting the Acts of Vengeance. If you're not familiar, Spotlight was usually split up into two separate 15 page stories, showcasing the lesser known Avengers in solo adventures. Hawkeye was often prominently involved. Needless to say, it was clearly the second-best Avengers spin-off book of 1989, especially with John Byrne in charge of Avengers West Coast. Strangely enough, this obscure little book gets the honor of kicking off this company wide crossover. The story itself reflects this quandary. Even though it has a central role in the beginning of the crossover, Avengers Spotlight #26 is surprisingly irrelevant.
This issue, like the rest of the run, is split into two stories. In this case, both stories deal with the same central plot: the breakout at the Vault. In part one, we follow the Guardsmen as they process the Wizard and the rest of the Frightful Four into custody. Then, eight pages in, we finally
get an actual crossover with Acts of Vengeance when we catch a glimpse of the Mysterious Stranger:
That's it. He doesn't explain anything about the master plan: he simply opens the Wizard's cell and disappears. After that, the Vault is in trouble.
However, instead of showing a big fight scene, we cut over to the main control room where the warden calls for help. He can't reach the Avengers, but he can reach...Damage Control? More to come on that revelation later in the series. Anyway, after beating up the Guardsmen (off-panel), most of the villains escape (also off-panel). End of Part One.
Part Two picks up with Iron Man arriving on the scene. Somewhere during the act break, we must assume that they've finally gotten through to somebody. He beats up a few supervillains before he's menaced by a real challenge: fellow Avenger Hawkeye! Yes, Hawkeye shows up, shares some sarcastic barbs with the warden before he runs into Iron Man and we get a wacky misunderstanding.
It's hard to have a "fight then team up" moment when the two participants have known each other for years and are on the same team, but they manage to pull it off here. To be fair, Hawkeye has a fair reason to be suspicious. Iron Man *did* break into the Vault during the Armor Wars to steal the Guardsmen's armor. It's certainly understandable that Hawkeye might think he had something to do with this incredibly similar event. But if we learned anything from Civil War, it's this:
Iron Man is a dick.
The threat of a repulsor blast upside his head straightens Hawkeye right up and they manage to put aside their differences and rescue the crippled Guardsmen. They make it outside, just in time for one last joke:
Oh, Hawkeye. You and your wacky trick arrows. Nice to see that they have the side effect of turning two Avengers into a vaudeville comedy team.
McDuffie plays with the reader's expectations throughout this issue. We don't get to hear anything about the master plan or how this ties in to the rest of the Acts of Vengeance. Most of the breakout and the fight scenes happen off-panel. There are frequent jumps back to the central command post There's an act break in the middle when most of the prisoners escape. Then, at the end, when our heroes need to fight their way up through the Vault to the surface, we get the least exciting caption in comic book history: "Outside, 20 minutes later."
It's an intriguing conceit, but one that leaves this issue disjointed and needlessly obscure. As an adjunct, he also adds a large dose of comedy to the occasion, as seen in the last scene of the issue. Even though this issue has many flaws, it shows a willingness to play with the standard tropes of the mega-crossover that helps give Acts of Vengeance such a unique flavor. It doesn't fully work in this issue, but it's an attitude that really pays off in the stories to come.
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