Can YOU
Name This Marvel Villain??
Never send a man to do a woman's job.
Talk about a hired gun. This is no ordinary mercenary--though as The Assassin, this little lady met the same fate as any gender that goes up against the Avengers. Her identity and sex concealed until her plan to kill the Avengers went awry, she was given a year and $2 billion ($1 billion, plus another billion for expenses) to take the assignment from a mystery grouping of Avengers foes to kill the members of the super-team.
And she came very close to succeeding. The Assassin first took out Captain America, to both demoralize the team as well as draw them as a group to the hospital so that she could pick them off more easily. By the time she was through, she'd incapacitated Iron Man, Hawkeye, and the Vision, before setting her sights on Thor. But through a loophole in her methods, the three fallen Avengers were able to get the drop on her and turn the tables.
The Assassin had no super-powers of her own, but was obviously a master of stealth and planning. She also used a generous supply of henchmen, who served as both marksmen and decoys--though she also considered them disposable, either executing or poisoning her men once they'd served their purpose, in order to eliminate any possibility of her crimes being traced back to her. Ironically, she met her own death from them, on the run from the Avengers and seeking to join her squad. Never having seen the Assassin unmasked, her men assumed she was a threat running towards them and blasted her.
The Assassin was joined in death by members of her own family, but I'll withhold the details on the possibility that you may choose to read the story. Suffice to say, the Assassin's death deprived the world of a skilled, high-priced killer:
...not to mention a pretty good golfer.
The worst part about this villain is that she DARED to interrupt the awesome Avengers-Squadron Supreme battle that began in #144 and had to be postponed until #147! (Presumably b/c of the missed deadline, which led to fillers like this story back in the day!) Two months waiting for #147 was a killer! (It's one of my favorite Vision-highlight stories, FWIW.)
ReplyDeleteThese stories are always a little jarring, since the characters are usually out of sync with the book's continuity (and the story itself often completely so). The only positive side to them is that, because they were shelved unpublished, we at least got to read something new and not reprinted material when one of them finally saw the light of day.
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