The Bibliomancer

US Agent asks whether they're getting replacement Quinjets any time soon.

Ultron knocked one out of the sky and Scarlet Witch crashed another one into him. So they're down two out of. Some number.

Marvel wiki says there Compound hanger has space for four Quinjets. So they might be down to half.

Unfortunately, with Tony Stark dead, currently, Stark International is putting up a lot of red tape in the replacement process.

US Agent: "Boy, since you switched from being Hawkeye to playing Goliath, even your excuses have gotten bigger!"

The Avengers are just back from Carlos' funeral (member of the Compound staff, killed by Ultron) so Clint has 0 patience for US Agent's shit right now.

He almost hauls off and giant-sized punches him but Mockingbird asks him if punching US Agent is really how Clint wants to spend the afternoon. Insinuation, insinuation, subtext, subtext.

She suggests the two of them head inside now that the divorce is off and leave US Agent alone (tfw no love interest) to clear rubble on his own.

Kinda rude. Undoubtedly funny.

Meanwhile, Spider-Woman is moving Rachel out of the Compound. Originally, she was going to move her in, since she's a single mom now and it would be easier to take care of her if she was where Julia worked. And where could be safer than a superhero headquarters! Buuut after a big murder robot attack, Julia has reconsidered.

Spider-Woman got a place in Newport Beach. And Consuela Sanchez, the recurring support staff member, got spooked by Carlos' death and quit the Avengers... to take a job watching Rachel in Newport Beach while Spider-Woman is Avengersing.

A somewhat safer job but she's still helping out the Avengers.

Living Lightning came back from USC to attend the funeral but now he's wondering whether he should quit college and come back to help the Avengers.

I haven't mentioned Wonder Man being around despite Wonder Man being one of the mainstays of the Avengers West team.

The reason for that is that Wonder Man is not around.

Wonder Man's solo series is not available on Marvel Unlimited and the wiki doesn't have a synopsis. But my source for reading order does have a synopsis for what's happening over in Wonder Man.

Ever since Operation: Galactic Storm and the Nega-Bomb that affected Wonder Man's powers, he's only been able to get his powers to work by getting RAGED UP. And he's also been having ionic discharges that start causing powers in his supporting cast.

His behavior prompts one of his friends to call the Avengers West Coast to come check on him and yadda yadda, big misunderstanding fight. Not helped by Wonder Man's anger and self-worth issues making him decide he's just a living engine of destruction, not a hero, and not even a person.

Long story short, Wonder Man quits the Avengers. And since that's the direction of his solo book, the Avengers can't really talk him out of this and just shrug and leave.

Comic books! The 90s!

Anyway. The Avengers West have lost heavy-hitters Iron Man and Wonder Man so Living Lightning is thinking maybe the Avengers need him more than he needs a college education.

(And as we know from Peter Parker, Terrible Multitasker, its really hard to do both superheroics and college at the same time.)

Scarlet Witch tells him that the Avengers are always in one crisis or another. If he waits on the Avengers to be in a good spot before doing college, he'll probably never get to do college. She tells him go do degree and then if he wants his post-graduate career to be Avengers, then they can talk.

Wanda drives off with Spider-Woman, Rachel, and Consuela. And wonders if she said the right thing. She's in a time of uncertainty and flux herself. She finally gave up on Vision so she can build her post-marriage life.

Elsewhere, the media.

Meggan McCambridge is a journalist and she had a galaxy-brain idea. Most of the other journalists covering superhero shit today are at the Avengers Compound, peering through the gate and trying to confirm rumors that the Avengers might relocate after the Ultron attack.

Meggan, though, she's working a different angle. News has leaked that Hawkeye went and Goliath'd so she's at jail, hoping to interview the villain Goliath, Erik Josten.

She even talked the guard into putting Josten in his Goliath outfit because that makes better TV.

Josten Goliath isn't very communicative. Because they keep him sedated so he won't break out and wreck havoc.

And this system worked perfectly until Meggan McCambridge mentions Josten Goliath recently went on a rampage against Wonder Man.

Erik!Goliath suddenly snaps to attention and demands to know where Wonder Man is.

He OH YEAHs through the roof of the jail and stomps off looking for Wonder Man.

Good job, Meggan McCambridge. You really did a thing that should have been harmless but somehow had a huge impact because comic books run on drama.

Also, I kind of love when comic books have to explain why supervillains are allowed to keep their costumes in jail. This is one of the more plausible explanations. That Josten wasn't allowed. And that giving it back to him was a bad decision made by a guard who was doing a favor for a journalist.

Anyway.

Back at the Avengers West Coast Compound, Bobbi and Clint have finished up a romantic afternoon of wine and fucking.

They're in the honeymoon phase of calling off the divorce. Clint is giving her a backrub and they're both saying how crazy it was that they tried to split up.

Mockingbird: "It was my fault. If I'd leveled with you about that business with the Phantom Rider..."

HawkGoliath: "Shhh! It's over, Bobbi. We both acted like jerks." Mockingbird: "Maybe, but I was the biggest jerk."

Well, not sure I agree. I'll agree that they were both jerks or at least were both stubborn jerks. But at least the honeymoon not-divorced glow is making them able to talk about this stuff without yelling.

Anyway. Bobbi hears a noise and goes butt-ass-but-artfully-cloaked-in-shadows naked to the window to see what's going on.

Bobbi insists that there's someone out there so both she and he start to get dressed and then wham bam what are you doin' here, ma'am?!

Kuroko of the Pacific Overlords suddenly appears in their bedroom.

Clint grabs her and pins her against the wall. But when she becomes fully visible, he sees to his shock that she's been beaten pretty badly. Not by him. By her boss, Doctor Demonicus.

Kuroko passes out before she can explain anything, though.

Oh, and Goliath punches through the wall and grabs Goliath to demand Goliath tell Goliath where Wonder Man is.

One of you needs to change names.

Clint wrestles loose from Goliath's hand and grows giant, man. But Josten Goliath still towers over him. AND he's pissed that Clint is calling himself Goliath. Dammit, he's Goliath! He's already had to change his name once because a superhero called dibs and he doesn't want to do it again!

(That was Luke Cage, Power Man, claiming Power Man. And now he mostly goes by his not-codename so he feuded with a guy over the name for nuthin. Also, does this make Erik Josten the supervillain equivalent of Monica Rambeau? The person who everyone steals names from?)

Anyway, Josten is willing to kill Clint over the name.

See? Clint is as tall as a building but he looks like a shrimp next to Josten Goliath.

And Clint can't grow that big without complications. Remember how the Giant-Man/Goliath/whatever Hank is calling himself this week grow real big powerset has always come with weird health complications? Like how Hank could only stay big for so long or he'd get stuck that way?

Well, when Hank gave Clint the Goliath serum during Operation: Galactic Storm, he warned him that growing bigger than thirty feet could cause problems.

Josten doesn't have those problems! His bigness is from ionic energy! He's like a big n tall Wonder Man! He's sixty feet tall without a problem!

Clint!Goliath: "Why is it that even when I trade in my bow and arrows for seven-league-boots -- I still end up second-best? 'Second best'? No! That's not true! Maybe there're two Goliaths now -- but in a minute, there's only gonna be one -- and it'll be ME!"

Wow, you really are going to steal what little this man has left. His name.

Clint trips Josten so that he falls and caves in another part of the Compound. Geez.

He turns away from the fight to check on Bobbi. But that brief distraction lets Josten get back up and put Clint in a bear hug.

Against his doctor's advice (Doctor Pym, bigologist), Clint grows up to sixty feet.

IT WAS A BAD IDEA!

Clint is seized with agonizing internal pain. Like he suddenly has the bends. He can't even stand up and collapses. On top of the building that Bobbi was just in.

Aw, dammit, they'd just cancelled the divorce!

Clint tries digging through the rubble to find her but Josten punches him in the back of the head and calls him a "a normal joe who swigged a few growth hormones" and no match for someone with IONIC SUPERPOWERS!

Barely able to stand, barely able to think good, Clint foggily decides he needs to get away. And he walks out of the Avengers Compound and starts walking where a bunch of bystanders were.

They ran, of course. Because giant man stomping around. But this is a bad look.

Somewhere, US Agent is sulking.

US Agent: "Those jerks never give me a chance. It's the same as when I was a kid. My brother died in Nam -- then the politicos threw in the towel before I could enlist. So Mike's the war hero -- the honored dead. And me? The power of a tank, and I still get treated like the Captain America stand-in I used to be. And women -- ! Mockingbird, Spider-Woman, and the witch all act like I'm some kind of social disease -- and none of them is interested in being the cure. Well, who needs them? I'll find a woman who feels like I do about things -- and then the Avengers West can all kiss my anthem!"

You are a prickly pear, John Jack Daniels Walker.

I don't think I knew his backstory. Unprocessed grief and survivors guilt might explain why he has such a chip on his shoulder about being the Hero Guy. Or maybe he's a dick.

He's definitely a dick about women.

The way he's been needling Mockingbird and Spider-Woman lately about Clint has been, I guess, a weird way of flirting? Or whatever you call it when you accuse all of the women around you of being into this other dude and insinuate repeatedly that this means they have shitty taste. It doesn't sound like flirting because flirting should involve at least an attempt at establishing a rapport with a woman.

I dunno. John Jack Daniels Walker is a prick.

Somewhere else, at a Palos Verdes schmancy shopping mall, Clint Goliath is still getting his ass kicked not by Josten Goliath but by the self-inflicted harm of growing too big too fast.

He manages to get a cheap shot by turning around and punching while Josten Goliath is standing behind him, mocking him for being totally screwed.

This punch knocks Josten to crash into the parking garage and towards a populated area.

YOU ARE BAD AT BEING BIG, CLINT. GO BACK TO ARROWS!

Josten just starts pounding on Clint. Literally knocking the big out of him. I'm not sure of the comic book physics of it. But every time Josten punches Clint, Clint loses ten feet of height.

Josten!Goliath: "I'm going to pound you all the way through to China!" Mockingbird, suddenly arriving: "The Chiense have enough problems, Man-Mountain."

Mockingbird has arrived flying Hawkeye's sky-cycle and wielding Hawkeye's bow and arrows. Because, I mean, someone has to.

Josten!Goliath laughs that a single arrow from Clint's 'girlfriend' won't do anything with an arrow when he's a big beefy manbeef of sixty feet tall.

Mockingbird: "Not his girlfriend, creep -- his wife! His wife, I might add, with a background in science..."

Science is truly the best of superpowers. And Mockingbird doesn't get credit for being one of the smart ones. But she took one of Hawkeye's electro-arrows and modified it to be a power dampener for ionic beings. Because: ions. Ions are just atoms with electric charges. All the arrow needed to do was absorb electrons.

Still, it was just one single arrow that she MacGuyvered in. What? Ten minutes? It's only going to work for about ten seconds before Josten's ionic body generates new electrons.

But Mockingbird knows that teamwork is essential in superheroics AND relationships. So she tells Clint to punch him. REALLY HARD.

She needs to offer a little extra guidance because Clint is still so woozy that he barely knows where he is.

But biff POW, teamwork made the dream work.

How nice that their first post-divorce-cancellation super fight required both of them working together.

The press wanders over now that the fight is over and when they give Clint credit for winning the fight, he quips "it was beauty killed the beast!" because he's the exact kind of dorkus that's always wanted to say that.

Then the two head back to the wrecked Avengers West Compound.

Clint!Goliath: "... Y'know, honey, I'm proud of how you remembered all those archery lessons -- and even improvised an improvement on that electro-arrow! What's a brain like you see in me, anyway?" Mockingbird: "Hey, don't get me started on that!"

For inexplicable reasons, she finds you charming, Clint. When you're not being an ass, you're a fun person to be around. And you're such a romantic that when you love a woman, you make her the center of your universe.

I guess she likes that.

(Don't look the gift horse in the mouth.)

When the two lovebirds land at the Compound, Scarlet Witch and Spider-Woman have returned from dropping Rachel off at her new home. And Scarlet Wanda asks where the other Goliath got off to.

Answer: Mockingbird used her science brain to help a doctor create a sedative that will keep even an ionic man dosed long enough for the Avengers to send him back to jail.

Scarlet Witch thinks its weird that they just left him lying unconscious in the street instead of sticking around to guard him. But Clint has an answer for that.

Remember that subplot? Remember Kuroko? She showed up slightly before Goliath and foreshadowed something was going on?

Well, the Avengers head upstairs to where Clint and Bobbi left her. She's regained consciousness! And she has news! About Doctor Demonicus!

Kuroko: "[Doctor Demonicus has] gone mad -- and means to DESTROY the WORLD!"

Dun dun DUUUUUN!

Weird. Giving the madman his own island nation and immediate admittance into the UN did not, in fact, stop him from being a dick in the future.

I knew we'd be swinging back to the Pacific Overlords again. It'd be weird to introduce a new villain group over a multi-part story and then just end with 'lol he's in charge of a country now!'

I just kind of figured that Demonica would be a recurring problem. Like one of those trendy crime countries that comics have. Like Madripoor or Bagalia or Qurac or Zandia.

Comics love fictional countries!

And we're following this plot to its conclusion! Next week, more Avengers West Coast!