Avengers: The Initiative #8-11 (2008): Thor Girl, Dragon Lord, Trauma die

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Ever since this team was introduced, there’s been this bubbling under storyline about MVP, who died in one of the team’s earliest training exercises.  His body has been held in a lab under the team’s base where a reluctant Hank Pym and an enthusiastic former Nazi named Baron von Blitzschlag used the body to create the three Scarlet Spider soldiers.  In these issues, we finally see this plotline move ahead, as Henry Peter Gyrich demands a whole army of these clones.

But we start with Hank Pym becoming even more concerned when Taskmaster (looking particularly grotesque) is hired to train the new recruits.

Taskmaster is replacing Gauntlet, who was beaten into a coma by Slapstick in issue #6. He’s also controlled by nanites, so he has to behave himself.

Note that the “irredeemable” version of Ant-Man is on the team.  He gets into a fight pretty quickly with Stature, daughter of Scott Lang, the prior Ant-Man.  

Stature thinks Eric O’Grady is a disgrace to the Ant-Man suit but…Her dad wasn’t the original, either.  The original Ant-Man was Hank Pym, who beat his wife (The Wasp), betrayed The Avengers, and is experimenting alongside a Nazi doctor.

My point is, the Ant-Man name isn’t exactly honorable.

So Eric O’Grady is still a bastard.

And Taskmaster’s still a badass.

Back to the MVP storyline: One of his clones goes nuts.  He carves the letters “KIA” into his chest, and goes on a killing spree using the “Tactigon” gun–a powerful alien weapon that up to now nobody has been able to figure out how to use. 

After seemingly killing Hank Pym (but of course he’s not dead), MVP-Clone turns to Trauma and Thor Girl, who were part of the training exercise that killed Van Patrick…

And kills them both. Too bad.  I never liked Thor Girl, but Trauma had potential. 

He also beheads one of the Scarlet Spiders, shoots off Crusader’s hand, both of Constrictor’s arms, and kills a whole bunch of civilians.

The last person MVP-Clone has to revenge-kill is Gauntlet, who ran the fatal training exercise.  Just as the clone seems to have been “awakened” by the Tactigon weapon, Gauntlet’s weapon raises him from his coma to take on the clone.  The weapons seems to “know” each other and are natural foes, so it’s really the sentient weapons that are fighting here–they’re just using the bodies of Gauntlet and MVP clone.

At this point, the story gets more than a bit confusing.  Nazi Baron put his own DNA into the MVP clones, which he says it why they can’t stop the clone now. Because they need brain scans. Hm.

Cloud 9, Komodo, and Hardball go to Tennessee to get “brain scans” from the real MVP (who isn’t dead after all) because (I’m not sure why but the Baron told them to do it) and the New Warriors show up to protect MVP because the brain scanning machine will leave him in a coma.

So those are NOT the New Warriors (they have their own series reboot on sale at the same time as this issue).  But they used to be the New Warriors.  If this was a way to reboot that old team as cast-offs from The Initiative, I would say, “Cool idea.”. But it’s not.  

Anyway, KIA (clone MVP) shows up for a big final fight that takes up most of issue #11.  Rather than use the Baron’s brain-scanner on MVP, they put it on KIA’s head and it does the trick–zapping his mind.

Also, Komodo and Hardball do it in a closet.

This was easily the best A:I story so far, with the exception of the third act where it really kinda fell apart.   Christos Gage signed on as cowriter with this arc and he’ll be series creator Dan Slott’s partner for many issues.  The effect is immediate and positive.  The storyline has a better pace, the dialogue is better, and the characters much more distinct.  I’m not a Dan Slott hater (recognizing he’s been in some controversies of late), but it’s interesting how much this book improved as soon as Gage joined the team.  

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