So once Little Timmy Trouble successfully infiltrates Avengers Mansion, we get a couple truly wonderful moments, like this one<\/a>: I\u2019m not 100% sure what\u2019s supposed to be happening in this panel, but truly, who among us could reasonably expect to survive being spanked by the Norse god of thunder?\u00a0 (Of course, if Chris Hemsworth Thor was willing to participate in this study, I would report back to you, dear reader, with my findings.) \u00a0But the very next panel<\/a>, oh my god you guys, this\u00a0is the one that just sets me all a-giggle.\u00a0 “Steeeeve\u2026 is this another one of your boys<\/em> hanging around, getting underfoot?\u00a0 Avengers Mansion simply isn\u2019t equipped to accommodate all of the foundlings you insist on bringing home, and poor Jarvis is absolutely at his wit\u2019s end!” \u00a0“No, no, I recognize all of my<\/em>\u00a0boys, Tony, and this little scamp\u00a0isn’t one of them!” \u00a0I just love that Captain America uses the phrase brought around<\/em>. \u00a0Sure, I suppose I could do some research on Captain America 267 as\u00a0recommended by the footnote, but I don\u2019t wanna<\/em>.\u00a0 (Well.\u00a0 Maybe someday.) \u00a0And so, when Iron Man asks the boy’s name to see if they can contact his parents, the boy instead reaches into his wee little jacket with an air of “calm uncertainty”<\/a>(?), straight-up pulls out a revolver, and before the Avengers can do anything to stop him, he shoots himself in the head<\/em>.<\/p>\n Dear reader, at this point, I would like\u00a0to show you the eye-catching cover of this issue:<\/p>\n This is the cover of Avengers 218, released in April 1982, and I can only imagine that it stood out among the other offerings displayed on newsstands! \u00a0I want you to think about\u00a0how many adult professionals in the comic industry\u00a0signed off on this issue, gave it their stamp of approval, and said, “Yeah okay, this looks good, let’s send it off to the printers.” \u00a0This issue includes\u00a0a full-page ad for Bubble-Yum bubble gum<\/a>, and when one turns the page, literally the very next page<\/em>, we get a five-year-old boy shooting himself in the head<\/a>.<\/p>\n Anyway!\u00a0 Upon resurrecting from a wad of Silly-Putty<\/a> — and thereby finally succeeding in grabbing the Avengers’ full attention — this child tells them his tragic tale.\u00a0 Formerly some dumb minor Captain America villain, “billionaire\/inventor” Morgan MacNeil Hardy, he was reborn after his apparent demise, but with full memory of all his many lives, going back thousands of years.\u00a0 For lack of a better option, Captain America refers to him as “this… ‘Forever-Man,'” which, c’mon you guys, he’s from the ’40s, his name is Captain America, what does he know about cool super-names?\u00a0 Good ol’ Thor basically says he doesn’t see the problem, since he knows from firsthand experience that immortality is awesome, but the Forever-Man replies that yeah, it’d be awesome if you were a thunder god<\/em> instead of just an endless succession of regular boring jerks, which I think is a valid point. \u00a0(Though doesn’t it\u00a0make this self-professed immortal’s earlier assertion that he wouldn’t “live through” Thor spanking him\u00a0somewhat… peculiar?) \u00a0So the Avengers run some tests, after which Iron Man has no problem referring to this kid as “a freak of nature” while he’s in the same room, and in the space of two pages, dear sweet Wasp goes from “the Avengers will do everything in their power to help you!” to “But who are we to provide him with a means of suicide?”<\/em>, even though that is what he is literally demanding!<\/p>\n So what happens afterwards? \u00a0Well, what else is a Forever-Man to do if Earth’s mightiest heroes cannot aid him in his plight? \u00a0He sneaks out from Avengers Mansion under the cover of night, stows away on board a south-bound freight train, and uses his trusty revolver to fend off a pair of hobos with untoward intentions towards this young boy traveling alone, who, by the way<\/em>, are drawn to resemble Laurel and Hardy<\/a>(??????????<\/em>).\u00a0 He then exploits his child-like appearance to bluff his way into a research\u00a0base\u00a0and on board\u00a0a space probe headed toward the sun, in the hopes that he can take matters into his own hand and bring about his own demise… resulting in the following nightmarish ordeal<\/a>.<\/p>\n You guys, let’s… let’s just take a moment here. \u00a0Can you even wrap your head<\/em> around the fact that this guy, this tragic immortal, stowed away on board a solar probe with no life support, continuing to suffocate and die and resurrect and suffocate and die and resurrect over and over again, for as many weeks <\/em>as it takes to reach the sun?\u00a0 Oh and P.S. he\u2019s in the body of a naked five-year-old boy???\u00a0 <\/em>That is DARK<\/em>, sirs!\u00a0 They just don’t make ’em like this anymore, and there is probably a valid reason for that<\/em>.<\/p>\n As much as I hate to admit it, the latter half of this issue is comparatively dull (in that it does not actively<\/em> portray the Avengers as helpless to stop the repeated suicidal demise of a child).\u00a0 Once the Forever-Man reaches the sun, he is repeatedly obliterated and resurrected to the point where he becomes a deranged amnesiac giant sun-monster, then makes his way back to Earth to wreak vengeance upon the Avengers, even though he can’t remember why.\u00a0 A by-the-numbers superhero battle follows ensues, after which Thor summons a vortex to hurl the Forever-Man into orbit before it goes nova and explodes. \u00a0The Avengers explore the resulting crater and find the young boy resurrected yet again, only this time, with no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. \u00a0As the issue draws to a close and Iron Man wonders if this amnesia, if legitimate, might be a bit convenient, he and Captain America ponder the ramifications<\/a> of what they’ve learned from this adventure. \u00a0And I can only hope that they continue to wonder about it “for the rest of their days.” \u00a0To this day, while Steve Rogers\u00a0is passing down the mantle of Captain America to his longtime friend the Falcon, or pursing fugitive Avengers suspected of annihilating entire parallel Earths, or even fighting in an alien gladiatorial arena alongside his pal Devil Dinosaur, I hope he sometimes takes a moment to pause, reflect, and wonder about this day in which the Avengers\u00a0encountered a little naked boy who just wanted to shoot\u00a0himself in front of them when he wasn’t rampaging through the city as a giant sun-monster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the course of my occasional perusals of the Official Index to the Marvel Universe, I came across the entry for issue 218 of the Avengers, co-written by J.M. DeMatteis and Jim Shooter, and I knew from the synopsis that this issue called for a more thorough, in-depth analysis! Our story begins on an ordinary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-can-we-talk-about"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.codyscomiccorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/GtPQU7X.png\")
<\/p>\n