Battered by Batroc

Battered by Batroc!

Hawkeye is in a training session with the Avengers’ newest recruits, Firestar and Justice.[1] He finds their lack of polish a danger and after the session reminds them that in order to survive they need to gel as a team.[2]

Heading upstairs, Clint is greeted by Jarvis — the Avengers’ butler — who tells him that there is a woman who wishes to speak with him. Hawkeye agrees to meet and hear what she has to say. The woman is Augusta Seger, who claims that she has created a powerful computer virus that, if unleashed, could infect every computer on the planet and throw the entire world into chaos.

Barton agrees to take the case and Augusta takes him to the warehouse where she works. Once inside, the archer is ambushed by Batroc’s Brigade. However, Hawkeye already knew he was being lured into a trap because Seger’s story was full of holes and he is ready to face Batroc, Machete, and Zaran.[3] While Hawkeye is pre-occupied, “Augusta Seger” heads into a backroom where a man lurking in the shadows is recording the battle. The mystery man has what he is looking for and they quickly retreat.

Hawkeye Quickly wraps up Batroc’s Brigade and goes looking for Augusta Seger. Hawkeye finds the deserted back room where “Seger” left behind the life-like mask she was wearing for him to find.

Assaulted by Oddball

Hawkeye then returns to Avengers Mansion to try and figure out the truth identity of the woman who claimed to be Augusta Seger. Helping him out are Firestar and Justice. However, none of the Avengers records match up with the woman he encountered.[4] Frustrated, Clint decides to go to the police station and interrogate Batroc and his crew. Justice decides to tag along with him while Firestar remains behind to see what she can find online.

At that same moment, the mystery woman — a master of disguise who calls herself the Albino — gasses the cops and frees Batroc and his crew. When Batroc wants to go after Hawkeye again, Albino insists that his services are no longer needed and pays him extra to leave the archer alone.

Later, when Hawkeye and Justice have arrived, the Albino’s operatives have taken the police of the cops. One, disguised as a police detective, take the two Avengers down to the jail cells to interrogate Batroc. However, the pair quickly realize it’s a trap when the cell doors suddenly open freeing the crooks locked up. The “detective” who lured them into this trap also turns out to be the juggling criminal known as Oddball.

Meanwhile, Firestar searches the internet for the true identity of Augusta Seger, and discovers that whoever Hawkeye’s mystery woman is, Augusta Seger is her real name!

Back at the police station, Hawkeye makes short work of the crooks with a generous helping of glue and net arrows. Oddball, on the other hand, is able to keep Hawkeye on the defensive. However, this doesn’t last very long before Justice uses his telekinesis to slam the villain into the ceiling, knocking him out.

The entire fight is once again being observed by the Albino and her employer, who turns out to be the Taskmaster. Having seen enough, Taskmaster believes that he has learned enough to finalize his current scheme.

Trounced by Taskmaster!

After failing to capture his mystery woman a second time, Hawkeye and Justice return to Avengers Mansion. There, Firestar has pulled up a full dossier on Augusta Seger. She was once a geneticist who specialized in mutation. She set the scientific community against her by conducting dangerous unauthorized experiments. She since experimented upon herself and became the spy known as the Albino. Although they now know who they are working with, Hawkeye can’t fathom why she would be targeting him in the first place. Justice figures she must be working with one of the Avengers old enemies.

Hawkeye doesn’t care what the situation is and decides that he is going to go after the Albino himself to get the bottom of it. When Firestar and Justice try to tag along again he refuses their aid and orders them not to call the other Avengers either. That’s when they get a surprise phone call from the Alibno who wants to arrange a meeting with Hawkeye. Now the two rookie Avengers insist on coming, and Hawkeye reluctantly allows them to come along.

The trio soon arrive at a railyard and spot the train car that the Albino is apparently holed up in. Hawkeye checks under the car and sees that someone has set some explosives. After disarming it, the three Avengers are caught off guard when a secret panel opens and they are sprayed by gas. Not only does it knock them out, but it also contains Pym Particles which cause them to shrink in size.

The Taskmaster then places them in a miniaturized arena where Hawkeye and his friends are forced to fight robot duplicates of Goliath, Quicksilver, and the Black Panther. The trio make short work of these robots, prompting the Taskmaster to unleash the rest. This includes duplicates of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, the Beast, the Vision, and the Sub-Mariner. However, this is only slowing them down, so Firestar uses her powers to melt a hole through the enclosed chamber, allowing the three Avengers to smash open a canister of enlarging gas.

However, this allows the Taskmaster to activate his latest weapon, a device that will allow him to mimic the powers of other superhumans. Duplicating the powers of both Firestar and Justice, Taskmaster takes to the sky to combat the two in open space. This leaves Hawkeye to deal with the Albino, which is no easy task as she can make herself invisible. However, he quickly captures her in a net arrow. He then goes outside and blasts Taskmaster’s ears with a sonic arrow allowing Firestar and Justice to knock him out.

As they are wrapping things up, the New Warriors — Night Thrasher, Nova, Rage, and Speedball — arrive on the scene. As it turns out, they were called in by Firestar. Clint appears to be unhappy with this, but Firestar points out that she didn’t break her promise not to call in the other Avengers. However, Clint begins to laugh, as it turns out Clint is proud of them for not blindly following orders and exercising some initiative. He then tells the new recruits that they’ll make fine Avengers after all.

Recurring Characters

Hawkeye, Justice, Firestar, Batroc’s Brigade (Batroc, Machete, Zaran), Oddball, Taskmaster, New Warriors (Night Thrasher, Nova, Speedball, Rage)

Continuity Notes

1. A footnote here states that this story takes place before the events of Avengers (vol. 3) #7. After that issue, Hawkeye begins focusing on the Thunderbolts, a group of former villains trying to reform themselves. Hawkeye will eventually leave the Avengers to become their leader. See Avengers (vol. 3) #9 and Thunderbolts #21.

2. It’s mentioned here that Hawkeye petitioned the rest of the Avengers to get Firestar and Justice reserve status. That happened in Avengers (vol. 3) #4.

3. This issue’s “Guide to the Marvel Universe” states that Machete is Ferdinand Lopez. However, Ferdinand was killed in Captain America #442. This is actually his son, Alfonso who took on the mantle of Machete in Elektra (vol. 2) #7. This discrepancy is corrected when these events are recounted in the Machete profile in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z Update #4.

4. The Avengers computer has pulled up files on various female masters of disguise and/or shapeshifters. The include Madame Masque, Alpha Flight’s Snowbird, the female Yellowjacket, the assassin Elektra, Moonstone, the shapeshifting Mystique, Nekra, and two others I can’t recognize (If you know who they are let me know) It couldn’t be Yellowjacket because she was murdered in Avengers: The Crossing #1.

Topical References

• The computer monitors and TVs in this story are all depicted as CRT displays. This should be considered a topical reference as this is an obsolete technology.

• When hearing about “Augusta Seger’s” computer virus, Hawkeye jokingly asks why she doesn’t got to Radio Shack instead. Radio Shack an electronics store chain that has been around since 1921. While they once had physical stores all over North America, they have all been shutdown since 2017 with the company shifting entirely to online commerce. That said, its reference here should be topical as it is a real world company.

Publication Notes

It looks like this issue was supposed to be a limited series that was supposed to be published in three issues. However, for whatever reason, Marvel opted to publish the entire storyline in a one shot. That said, they kept all the issue breaks with each chapter starting with a splash page that includes a title and the usual credits, and the end of each chapter tagged with a ‘to be continued” narration box at the end. Forthe sake of clarity, I have chosen to include all the chapter breaks in my summary.