Synopsis and review by Raymond van der Geugten (rayito@zdnetonebox.com)


AVENGERS #129 (November 1974)
"Bid Tomorrow Goodbye!"
Writer: Steve Englehart
Art: Sal Buscema and Joe Staton
Lettering: Tom Orzechowski
Coloring: Bill Mantlo
Editor: Roy Thomas
Avengers Assembled: Iron Man, Mantis, Scarlet Witch, Swordsman, Thor, Vision
Guest: Agatha Harkness

GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #2 (November 1974)
"A Blast From The Past!"
Writer: Steve Englehart
Art: Dave Cockrum
Lettering: Tom Orzechowski
Coloring: Bill Mantlo
Editor: Roy Thomas
Avengers Assembled: Hawkeye, Iron Man, Mantis, Scarlet Witch, Swordsman, Thor, Vision
Guests: Agatha Harkness, Rama-Tut


Synopsis: 

A new star suddenly appears above Avengers Mansion, followed shortly by the time-traveling Kang the Conqueror, who attacks and quickly defeats the Avengers using his powerful Macrobots, creations of Kang's advanced 40th century technology. He tells the captured Avengers that the star heralds the coming of the Celestial Madonna, who is destined to mate with the most powerful man on earth and whose child will be the ruler of the heavens. Kang intends to be the Madonna's mate and he abducts all of the Avengers except for the Swordsman, who he derides as being weak and incompetent. In his secret base, Kang encases the paralyzed bodies of Thor, Iron Man and the Vision inside his Macrobots to serve as their power sources. Kang's plan is to use the Macrobots to attack each of the world's superpowers and thus spark World War III. In the meantime, he will attempt to determine if the Madonna is Mantis, the Scarlet Witch or Agatha Harkness. 

The Swordsman's track record as an Avenger isn't the best, and he is already depressed because Mantis has broken off their relationship for her own selfish reasons. So he's both enraged and ashamed by Kang's words because he fears that they may be true. But he can do nothing to help the others until he receives a telepathic signal from Agatha Harkness that guides him to Kang's hiding place, the Egyptian pyramid of Pharaoh Rama-Tut. The Swordsman breaks into the pyramid and is about to strike at Kang, but is prevented from doing so by the recently resurrected Rama-Tut. The two form an alliance and return to Avengers Mansion, where they are joined by Hawkeye. Hawkeye is immediately suspicious of Rama-Tut's desire to help them rescue the Avengers, and he has good reason to be--he knows that the Pharaoh Rama-Tut traveled in time from ancient Egypt to the 40th century to become Kang the Conqueror. 

What Hawkeye doesn't know is that this Rama-Tut is not the younger Kang, but instead, an older Kang who had hit bottom in his addiction to conquest. This Kang decided to return to his past in his earlier identity as Rama-Tut; he would be a monarch again, but with a compassion and wisdom that he did not have before. He was happy with this new life, until he remembered what he had done as Kang. At great risk to himself, he has journeyed to the present to intervene in his own past, so he can try to undo the damage he once caused. 

With Rama-Tut's help, Hawkeye and the Swordsman begin to free the other Avengers one by one, until the entire team is freed. As Rama-Tut confronts him, Kang learns that Mantis is the Celestial Madonna, and he is astonished when Rama-Tut tells him that he will come to regret his life of conquest, and will return to this day, as Rama-Tut, to stop himself. Instead of accepting defeat, he vows to kill Mantis. Rama-Tut is unable to stop Kang from firing his weapon as the Swordsman jumps in front of Mantis and receives a fatal blast. Rama-Tut reveals that the day's events have happened exactly as he remembers them from when he first experienced them as Kang, but the one thing he most wanted to prevent was the death of the Swordsman. He struggles with Kang and accidentally activates Kang's time sphere, throwing both of them into the time stream. As she holds the dying Swordsman in her arms, Mantis cries and begs her ex-lover to forgive her. He tells her that he wasn't worthy of being an Avenger, and, declaring himself to have been a failure, dies. The Avengers, gathering around a grieving Mantis, say goodbye to the Swordsman, and Iron Man tells him that his last words were wrong. 


Review: 

This two-part story is the beginning of the ten-part saga of the Celestial Madonna, which continues through AVENGERS #135 and GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #4. The theme of the Celestial Madonna saga is redemption and transformation; the story is the journey of Mantis as she is transformed from a self-centered and impetuous Vietnamese bar girl to an Avenger, and then to a spiritually evolved cosmic entity, and the repercussions of that transformation on her fellow Avengers. But these first two chapters can stand alone as a self-contained story with the similar theme of a search for redemption, but one that ends in tragic consequences. 

The Swordsman joined the Avengers in AVENGERS #114, to make up for a long criminal past that left him a broken man near death, until he was nursed back to health by Mantis. His luck never seems to be good, however, and although he tries his best, he's painfully aware that he's the weakest team member in terms of physical power, and he was badly injured in the recent Avengers-Defenders war. Mantis just dumped him, apparently because she wants to pursue the Vision, so Kang's contemptuous dismissal of him, combined with his own self-pity and doubts, puts him over the edge. As he muses on their previous time together on page 14 of AVENGERS #129, " . . . that was a lie, like everything else in my life!"

The future Kang is suffering the same kind of doubts when we see him on page 14 of GSA #2. He realizes that the desire for conquest that had been his entire life has not made him happy or fulfilled. Thus, he travels thousands of years into the past to resume his former identity as Rama-Tut, pharaoh of ancient Egypt. This time, however, he vows to change--"I ruled them well", he reflects on page 14, "with the virtue I formerly loathed most: compassion." As a time traveler, he can do what many of us can only dream about: to live his life over again with the benefit of experience and wisdom. 

Yet it is not enough for him to change his life. He realizes he must try to undo the damage he did when he was Kang. Since he has destroyed his time machine, he has himself put into suspended animation and sleeps for five thousand years so that he can be awakened in the twentieth century to confront Kang. This is an ingenious idea on Englehart's part, but it also underscores Rama-Tut's urgency to atone for his past. The need to make up for his past crimes must weigh heavily on his conscience for him to take this extreme risk. 

But how much of a choice does he have? It's suggested at one point in the story that fate or destiny makes these events inevitable; it could be argued that Rama-Tut must be successful in defeating Kang, because, as Kang, he remembers being defeated by Rama-Tut! However, as seen on page 34 of GSA #2, Rama-Tut himself once hoped that he could avoid confronting Kang. He must make a conscious decision to do so because he feels he must try to make up for the damage he caused as Kang. It's likely that the power of Rama-Tut's conscience is just as implacable a force as fate or destiny. 

Kang cannot believe it when he discovers he is fighting Rama-Tut. To Kang, his life as Rama-Tut is something long over and done with, and it must seem to him as if a long dead part of his past has come back to haunt him. Then he learns that Rama-Tut is not from his past, but from his future, and his future self is telling him that he's going to regret all of this one day. If any of us could go back into the past to counsel his younger self to avoid a certain course of action, I suspect we would have just as little success as Rama-Tut does. 

The death of the Swordsman is genuinely tragic and affects the Avengers for several issues to come. In particular, it forces Mantis to confront the selfish and venal aspects of her personality, a development necessary for her to become the Celestial Madonna. Too often in superhero comics, death is trivialized. Long-established characters are killed for shock value or to provide a writer with a "clean slate", and just as often, characters that were killed by one writer are brought back to life by another, thus negating any dramatic impact the character's death might have had. I would like to think that no later Avengers scribe has brought back the Swordsman out of respect for the dramatic integrity with which his death was handled. 

It could be said that Rama-Tut won a great victory in that he was able to stop Kang's plans, but the one thing that he wanted the most was to prevent the death of the Swordsman. His horror and anguish that he could not do so is starkly evident on page 37 of GSA #2. He represents every person who has reflected on the mistakes of his past and who tries, at great risk, to make amends for them. His inability to prevent the Swordsman's death is a reminder to us that we can, and must, try to make up for our past mistakes, but not all of them can be undone, and at that point, all that we can do is to mourn the loss. 

Englehart's entire run on the AVENGERS is exemplary but I feel that this is his best single story. The Kang/Rama-Tut history makes for an extremely complex story, but his dialogue is crisp and clear (unlike some of his later work which seemed to consist of characters delivering speeches to one another), and the story never lags, nor does it ever seem too complicated or confusing. There are maybe one or two slow points in AVENGERS #129 but there are none at all in GSA #2; the story speeds along like a runaway truck and remains exciting and engaging throughout. 

The pacing of the story is excellent, with the complicated back-story of Kang and Rama-Tut adroitly broken into digestible parts and interwoven with the battle against Kang. The logic of how Hawkeye and the Swordsman, two of the weakest Avengers, are able to challenge Kang and free the other Avengers is well thought out and never seems contrived. Among many exciting battle scenes is one spectacular sequence in GSA #2 where Cockrum shows the Scarlet Witch bringing down a meteor from outer space to crash into the Macrobot containing Thor. All of the things I love about superhero comics--adventure, action, memorable characters, and a story with a heart and soul to match its intelligence-are here in this excellently-crafted tale. I have every issue of every Avengers title and although there are many other Avengers stories that I love, this one is still my favorite.