Solo Avengers #14-16 (1989): 1st SODAM

Don’t be fooled by that pretty cool cover.  The interior art is Al Milgrom and, worse, the script is Tom DeFalco.

The constant use of the tool “marriage is so awful but it’s funny how awful it is” is tiresome.

And efforts to make Hawkeye more relatable through fashion also don’t land well.

Nor does using jealousy as an excuse for characterization with Mockingbird. She’s a trained SHIELD agent and there’s no reason for her to be this one dimensional.

Hawkeye, Mockingbird and Black Widow fight an A.I.M. plot to…

It really doesn’t matter, except that this is the first appearance of S.O.D.A.M.

Along the way, they find Hank Pym being held by A.I.M.  

Now if you recall, Hank quit the West Coast Avengers to try to restore his wife to sanity. Instead, she’s become a terrible MODOK ripoff going by the acronym SODAM: Specialized Organism Designed for Aggressive Maneuvers.  She blows herself up in the end.

And Bobbi never reveals herself to Hawkeye, assuming that his teaming up with Black Widow is some kind of extramarital affair.

Stupid.

The multi-part Hawkeye stories in these anthology books are just awful. With all the real estate this series gives to Hawkeye, nothing consequential about his character ever develops.

Anyway, that story takes up the first half of each of these issues. In the back halves, first, with #14, we have Shulkie.

It’s a courtroom drama.

She-Hulk is trying to defend a mutant who failed to register under the Mutant Registration Act, but outside the courtroom Titania keeps showing up and the guards ask She-Hulk to step outside and beat her up, which she does, but then she gets free and shows up again.

And again.  

And again.

It’s pretty funny, and it’s a nice way of showing that being a superhero and having a secret identity with an actual job that requires actual work is almost impossible.

Issue #15 offers Wasp going inside a rogue Red Ronin, busting up his brain circuits, and basically making him fall down drunk.  

It’s not bad.  And it’s nice/weird to see Red Ronin again, about a decade after everyone forgot all about the Shogun Warriors.

Issue #16 has a Moondragon story that is covered separately.

Hawkeye: Tom DeFalco, Al Milgrom.  Grade: F
She-Hulk: Chris Claremont, Alan Davis.  Grade: B+
Wasp: Fabian Nicieza, Tom Morgan.  Grade: C

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