Avengers #178
The Martyr Perplex!
The Beast is proving quite the ladies man at a local nightclub. This angers one of the patrons who is disgusted that a furry mutant is picking up all the girls. This leads to a fight that the Beast easily wins. Being attacked with a knife sours his mood and he decides to leave, vowing not to come back until the club invests in a bouncer.
Walking home in the rain, the Beast is greeted by a strange man in tattered clothes and a walking stick. This stranger tells Hank that he will die for McCoy in order to expunge the desolation in his soul, saying the mutant is suffering from wounds to his spirit. When the Beast asks who this man is, he says he has no name. Seeing that the man is in physical pain the Beast tries to offer him aid. However, the man with no name assures him that nothing can be done and is then struck by lightning and reduced to ash. This encounter deeply disturbs Hank who wants to get home now more than ever.
When he returns to Avengers Mansion, he tells Wonder Man and the Wasp about his strange encounter. Unfortunately, none of the Avengers have encountered that similar strange individual. Hank then goes to bed but he can’t get the ideas that the man with no name put in his head and soon Hank goes into a deep depression. One night, while out with a woman named Winnie, she suggests that she knows what he needs to get out of his funk.
Little does the Beast know that he is being manipulated by a two-faced criminal called the Manipulator. He has hired Winnie to earn the Beast’s trust and she will have convinced him to break into an apartment and steal a certain black box, even though he hardly knows her. This is all a display he is putting on for potential employers to showcase his ability to manipulate people to do his bidding. Watching through one-way glass, they observe the Beast breaking into the apartment to steal the black box. When he does, an electrified cage drops on the mutant, making him the Manipulator’s prisoner.
Convinced that he is stealing back the life’s work of Winnie’s father, the Beast opens the black box and is blasted with a hypnosis ray. With McCoy now docile, the Manipulator opens the cage and then orders the mutant to sing and dance. The mobsters are impressed and give the Manipulator payment for his services against other superheroes. After receiving the money, the Manipulator hypnotizes the mobsters because he was also showing off his skills to some federal agents. They are very interested in using the Manipulator’s techniques and pay him a large some of money before they all part company.
When the Beast snaps out of his hypnotic trance, he has no memory of what happened or why he is in the apartment. He decides to leave before the frozen mobsters wake up as well. The two federal agents watch the Beast go and as they turn to leave themselves they are suddenly confronted by the man with no name.
Recurring Characters
Avengers (Captain America, the Wasp, the Beast), the Manipulator, Edwin Jarvis
