Saturday, November 29, 2014

J'accuse!


It's never a pleasant experience to watch an Avenger get called on the mat and endure the formality of a disciplinary hearing. We've seen it with Ms. Marvel, as well as Henry Pym and, to a lesser extent, Hawkeye--so it's been made clear that the Avengers' gavel will come down hard when it needs to. But there was unfortunately precedent for all three of these examples, when charges were levelled against one of the Avengers' most long-standing members.

Which means it's time to charge into another


Marvel Trivia Question



Who was the first Avenger to be disciplined for misconduct?



The answer should perhaps come as no surprise to anyone:



As to what incident the Avengers are referring to, it concerns a rather aloof response to their summons:



There's a bit more to this story than what appears to be Stark blowing off the Avengers. At the time, Stark was throwing a major self-pity party, feeling trapped in his identity due to his heart condition and seeing no way out for himself. But all it took was for those closest to him to be put in danger to make him suit up again and not look back:



By the time he faces the music with the Avengers, Stark is past his crisis and is resolved again to be Iron Man. But since he's unable to level with the Avengers, and since they're forbidden to pry into his affairs, they're forced to pass harsh judgment on him:



Talk about a slap on the wrist. Stark is probably thinking, "Gee, I ought to be brought up on charges more often--I'd have more free time to myself." But even his "banishment" is soon forgotten when the Avengers are facing danger from the Masters of Evil, and Stark realizes that all hands are needed:



The team would of course refine its procedures to give their members less cause to roll their eyes at a summons to a hearing.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nothing I enjoy more when I'm recharging the old transistors is a good cig and watching the telly!!!! Who needs the outdoors!?!

The Prowler (Breaking the law, breaking the law Breaking the law, breaking the law Breaking the law, breaking the law Breaking the law, breaking the law).

dangermash said...

Is this the one and only time Tony Stark is caught smoking on panel?

Comicsfan said...

dangermash, that sounds like a good subject for another trivia question! I don't know offhand, but let's see if any other commenters would like to take a shot at it.

Anonymous said...

I think I've seen Tony smokin' a cig more than once.
Probably not a good thing to do if you got a problem with your ticker, but probably not as hard on ya as suckin' down a bottle of scotch, which he later known to do. mp

B Smith said...

The Marvel Universe back then was chock full of smokers - many was the panel Jack Kirby drew of heroes and (mainly) villains using the Zippo to light one up.

(of course, I could be misremembering all of this)

George Chambers said...

Mr.Smith is correct. Steve Rogers smoked a pipe once or twice, as did Don Blake and Reed Richards. Black Widow smoked using a cigarette holder when she was an unreconstructed Commie spy. Of course, Ben Grimm and Nick Fury loved their stogies. I seem to remember Michelinie and Layton did a retrospective mini-series of Iron Man in the clunky gold armor, lighting up a Turkish cigarette, having a bad reaction and deciding he'd have to give them up for the sake of his heart.

George Chambers said...

Sheesh, I mean the series was set in the clunky gold armor days. Yony lit up as Tony, not as Iron Man.

Anonymous said...

In October 1976 Marvel UK launched its' 'Captain Britain' weekly and in #1 Brian Braddock (CB's alter-ego) is seen smoking a pipe which bemused me at the time - BB was only supposed to be about 25 and pipe-smoking was something I associated with old men. I mean, my father sometimes smoked a pipe and he was 49 which was ANCIENT !!! - I'll be 49 next February but these days 49 is the new 20 :)

Anonymous said...

Colin, if I may be so bold as to call you Colin, I was under the impression that when the world went Standard, everybody's aged reset to 0. I also admit there were days when I spent more time drawing in my notebooks than taking notes. And nowadays, as I sit watching telly, I'm mostly doing it to sip scotch and suck on a cig.......I guess I'm old school that way.

The Prowler (Those were the days of our lives the bad things in life were so few those days are all gone now but one thing is true - When I look and I find I still love you. You can't turn back the clock, you can't turn back the tide ain't that a shame).

Comicsfan said...

I'm definitely leaning more and more toward a character-smoking post--if only so I can include Dr. Doom's panel from FF #116 where John Buscema has him casually blowing smoke rings.