The story starts by adding to some of the ongoing character arcs before moving on to the story. Quicksilver has been missing for some time, but now contacts the Avengers to announce that he was rescued by the Inhumans and has fallen in love with Crystal. Wanda, pleased, announces that she's fallen for the Vision. Pietro does not react well and disconnects after ordering Wanda to dump the android.
More character drama pops up later on and does connect a little more with the main story. Hawkeye, who quit the Avengers after learning that Wanda liked Vision better than him, heads out to San Francisco to see the Black Widow.
Anyway, the drama is appropriate. Marvel Comics had a decades-worth of Soap Opera shenanigans behind it by this point and it was these character-driven arcs that so effectively humanized the protagonists.
But, hey, lets move on to the really cool stuff. Another message comes through on their viewer, showing them the wrecked X-Mansion and unconscious X-Men. The source of this message is mysterious and, not surprisingly, it turns out to be a trap.
Reading this story nowadays, when we are so used to multiple crossovers and various superheroes teaming up on many occasions, it's fun to see the Avengers trying to remember who that Professor X guy is and then reveal that they have no idea where the X-Mansion is. They have to split up and search for it.
They find it eventually. A booby trap gives them a little trouble, but they manage to get the professor, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman and Angel outside.
In dealing with the booby trap, I do wonder why Cap is fighting it while Wanda is barely able to pull Xavier from the room. Couldn't Wanda have hex-blasted the thing while Cap easily carried the professor out? In fact, though I like this issue a lot, my one complaint is that Wanda never gets a chance to show her stuff, even during the ensuing action.
Because lots of action does ensue. Boulders jump up from the ground "like meteors" and we get an awesome Buscema-illustrated three page battle against mind-controlled dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs are defeated and the Avengers are about to confront the Piper, the mutant who has been controlling the monsters. That's when Magneto launches a sneak attack. It was he in Angel's costume, waiting for his chance to strike. He reveals a new mind-control power of his own (something that will be explained in the next issue). He walls off Thor, Vision and Black Panther with boulders, steals the quinjet with the X-Men, Captain America, Iron Man and Wanda are his prisoners.
I do like this story. The action looks cool, with the presence of dinosaurs making everything even better (as is always the case with dinosaurs). Magneto's trap was reasonably clever and the issue ends with an effective cliffhanger. I'm not the biggest fan of Don Heck's art (his figure work always seems a bit stiff to me), but Buscema's art in the second half is great.
I will now rant about something I dislike. The story is said to be continued in Daredevil #99. First, I dislike stories crossing over into different issues, forcing fans to buy something they might not necessarily want to buy. Second, the crossover is largely unnecessary. Most of the Daredevil involves Hawkeye getting into a fight with Daredevil. The uncaptured Avengers show up to get reinforcements. Hawkeye, still in a snit, refuses to come, but Daredevil and the Black Widow do join up.
It's not at all necessary to read this issue to know what's going on in the next issue of The Avengers. A flashback quickly brings us up-to-date and the Hawkeye/Daredevil fight has no effect on the Magneto story. I do love the Marvel Universe of the 1960s and 1970s, but this was a cheap shot.
Anyway, next week, we'll be skipping the Daredevil issue and moving right on to Avengers #111.
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