Solo Avengers #10
The Sinking of Los Angeles
An astrologer named Seymour the All Seeing is going over his charts and is horrified to discover that the city of Los Angeles will sink into the ocean at noon that day. Wanting to warn people, he tries calling the local newspaper but his warning is dismissed as a crank call.
Meanwhile, the annual Los Angeles Manufacturers Convention is in full swing. Hawkeye has been asked to make an appearance by organizer Richard Johnston who wanted security for the Star of Angels diamond which is being put on display atop a scale model of the city. Johnston hopes that the convention will be a complete success and that he can parlay that into a rewarding career in politics.
However, a gang of crooks intend to spoil the occasion by stealing the Star of Angels. They are unafraid of Hawkeye, figuring that he is the weakest of the Avengers. They manage to ambush Hawkeye from behind and shoot him in the back. Luckily his quiver of arrows absorbs the impact, it ruins many his arrows. However, Hawkeye isn’t limited to his archery skill and uses the environment against the crooks. He blasts a number of them with a massive speaker, something he can shrug off since he has already lost 80% of his hearing.[1]
Meanwhile, Seymour the All Seeing warnings have been ignored by every TV and radio station in town. It is now 11:51, he happens to pass by the convention center and decides to go in and try to warn people of the impending disaster direcetly.
Inside, the leader of the thieves tries to snatch the Star of Angels from the model of Los Angeles. Hawkeye catches him and fires a concussive arrow that knocks the crook into the model. This shatters the tank of water which represented the ocean and floods the mock up of the city. As it turned out, Seymour’s prediction turned out to be true, just not in the way he thought. Despite this oversight, the media jumps on the astrologer’s prediction and he becomes an instant sensation. He tells the gathered members of the press that he predicts that Richard Johnston has a future far more grand than local politics, prediction that he will eventually become the President.
Hawkeye and Richard muse over Seymour’s predictions and given the scope of them, Johnston figures he’ll probably end up being the president of a small company instead of running the entire country.
Recurring Characters
Hawkeye
Continuity Notes
Here Hawkeye states that he lost 80% of his hearing and needs to use a hearing aid. Hawkeye damaged his hearing in Hawkeye #4 in order to get out of a death trap set by Crossfire. However, Hawkeye (vol. 4) #19 states that Clint was actually mostly deaf since he was a kid. His hearing loss being caused by the abuse heaped onto him by his father. Marvel hasn’t explained this contradiction yet, but I have a theory on that here.
Topical References
The event that Hawkeye is attending is identified as the 1988 Los Angeles Manufacturers Exposition. The year listed here should be considered topical.
Token Sacrifice
Doctor Druid is waiting take take the New York City subway as his agent tries to convince him to promote his book on the late night talk show circuit. When the next train arrives, Druid is surprised to see that it is covered in Celtic runes. As he approaches, a man comes out of the passenger car begging for help. Suddenly, there is a flash of light and the man is nabbed by a woman. Sensing Druid’s mystical powers, the woman — named Stonecutter — warns Druid not to interfere in her sacrificial ceremony and teleports away with her victim.
As this man is in danger, Druid uses his magic to change into costume and follows Stonecutter’s aura down into the subway tunnels. There he is attacked by a horde of demonic creatures. However, the Doctor discovers that they are sensitive to light and drives them away by using his magic to create an orb of bright light.
His investigation discovers that Stonecutter was using a Celtic maze spell to steal subway trains full of unwitting victims for some evil scheme. Hearing the demons coming back and with his light orb beginning to fade, Druid causes a cave in and continues further down the tunnel. There he finds that Stonecutter has arranged the stolen subway cars into a makeshift Stonehenge and that she is about to being the final sacrifice that will allow her and her people to travel to the surface and conquer the Earth.
Druid interrupts the ceremony and drives away Stonecutter’s minions. After he topples some of the stacked subway cars it breaks down the spell, causing Stonecutter to lose her human appearance and revert back to her demonic form. With their plan foiled, Stonecutter and her minions flee into the bowels of the Earth. Rather than go after her, Doctor Druid stays behind to tend to her would-be victim. When asked why he would save an old man, Druid explains that before he mastered the occult he was an ordinary physician and he could not abandon the Hippocratic oath he swore all those years ago.
Recurring Characters
Doctor Druid
Topical References
Doctor Druid’s agent is trying to get him on David Letterman’s talk show and name drops Shirley MacLaine. These are topical references as they are real world people who are now very old. MacLaine in particular who, as I write this in March 2022, is now 87 years old.
