Sunday, May 4, 2014

Here's Glove In Your Eye


You can't help but be intrigued with this eye-catching cover:


I mean, what's Cap going to do, somersault his way out of this?


It turns out Dragon Man has been found and reactivated by the villain Machinesmith, who uses a hovering, ball-shaped "gadget" to lure the creature into battle with Captain America. You'd think Machinesmith would just reprogram Dragon Man--but while Dragon Man is indeed a mechanical creation, he defies classification as a robot or android. Dragon Man exists through a combination of engineering and alchemy, as well as an unknown "life force" tapped from a fragment of stone which fell from outer space:




So he's somewhat unique, in the sense that there's no artificial "mind" to reprogram, though he's been shown to be susceptible to control in any number of ways. Machinesmith uses the "gadget" to first lure Dragon Man in the vicinity of Cap's location, and then to emit harmful sound waves that anger the creature and provoke him to destroy the device. Consequently, all Machinesmith has to do is to have the gadget stay in close proximity to Cap, who thereby becomes a living target for Dragon Man:




Cap's only option, then, is to remove the cause of Dragon Man's agony. Unfortunately, the attempt deprives Cap of his only means of defense:



From that point on, Cap has only one possible means of staying alive: to stay out of Dragon Man's path of destruction. But with Machinesmith's gadget remaining near, that proves almost impossible. Soon enough, the inevitable happens:




So, that's that, isn't it? Cap has about as much hope of breaking or slipping out of Dragon Man's crushing grip as--well, let me rephrase. Cap has NO hope of breaking or slipping out of Dragon Man's crushing grip. "But this is Captain America!" you point out, whose middle name is "resourcefulness":



With Dragon Man distracted and a weapon in hand, Cap is free to turn his attention to Machinesmith's bothersome gadget:



Dragon Man, however, pays little attention to Cap afterward, instead focusing on Machinesmith--the man who made the agonizing device that's been tormenting him. And so he angrily heads back to the villain's lab with Cap in tow. Machinesmith, being Machinesmith, makes short work of Dragon Man, but Cap manages to settle the score--though Machinesmith would "live" on to undoubtedly menace again.

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