Monday, February 20, 2017

Tales of Suspense #97-99, Captain America #100 Retro-Review








Issue: Tales of Suspense #98-99, Captain America, vol #100
Date: 01/1968- 04/1968
Writer: Stan Lee, Archie Goodwin

General Spoilers

Tales of Suspense #99

- Black Panther visits an outpost that has been attacked.

- He tracts the henchmen response and attacks. He gets blasted by a stun ray.

- BP sends a jet to Captain America's whereabouts and asks him to come to Wakanda because this invasion of Wakanda is somehow related to him. Cap gets in the ship and agrees to come.

Tales of Suspense #98

- Captain America is in a Wakanda ship heading to meet the Black Panther. He is shot at by a laser from above and thinks it might be Wakanda. When he lands in the Techno-Jungle. Cap and BP briefly fight and then realize they are who they say there were.

- They discuss the giant laser beam in orbit and how it could destroy a whole city. They agree they need to take it down.

- They find and attack bad guys that were on the ground... and are hit by stun rays. They wake up, charge towards the bad guys again... and fall in a pit set-up as a trap. The mystery villain reveals himself to be... Zemo. Who Cap thought was dead.

Tales of Suspense #99

- Cap and BP are... let out of the pit? They then attack and are knocked out again.

- They wake up in the Laser space ship bunker thing. Zemo then beats on them a bit while they are weak. He wants them to be his underlings. Instead BP and Cap attack again... and are taken out again. Zemo then wants Agent 13 (who is undercover) to shoot and kill them.

Captain America #100

- Cap and BP wake up. Agent 13 hesitates and she misses on purpose as BP knocks Cap out of the way. She convinces Zemo to save them for later as the Laser machine is more important.

- A13 ends up shooting the controls of the machine. BP, Cap, and A13 then brawl with bad guys and Zemo a bit. An army of people show up and the trio block themselves off and end up the area of The Destruction. They fight him and take him down eventually.

- Zemo and his forces arrive and Cap ends up unmasking him... and it wasn't Zemo, but Zemo's pilot. The rest of the forces then surrender to T'challa to face trial in Wakanda.

- Fury blows up the Laser Death Machine.

- Cap offers BP a spot on the Avengers.


Importance to the Mythos

- First meeting and fight between Captain America and Black Panther. However, we later learned in future issues that Captain America has been to Wakanda and interacted with a Black Panther before.

- Captain America offers T'challa his vacant spot on the Avengers.


Other Thoughts

- These old comics are just so damn goofy. How many times did Cap and BP get knocked out only for the bad guys to let them recover... to get knocked out again... and repeat... and repeat. This was like every old comic trope smashed into three issues.


Should You Read It?

- If you enjoy old stories, yes. This is a fairly extensive guest appearance and T'challa is in the story just as much as Steve. It relies heavily on old comic tropes however, so for new readers, it may be a little ridiculous.

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