This is the one where Mockingbird dies. Also, the cover has USAgent having repeatedly been punched in the face. Yay! I hate him!
Sattanish offers a bunch of dudes the ability to regain their souls.
They’re actually famous villains like Stalin and Himmler, recreated as super-villains.
Okay. I’m on board with this.
The villains attack AWC.
And they take apart US Agent.
That’s the best part of this story.
And then flee.
USAgent gets put in the hospital and the rest of the team hunts down this new iteration of the Lethal Legion.
Scarlet Witch actually does some witch stuff that she learned from Agatha Harkness the witch-nanny, and the team goes after the source of power, Satannish, only to find out that the souls occupying the Lethal Legion bodies were stolen by Satannish from Mephisto.
Note that USAgent is back with the team and has no so much as a band-aid.
Also note that Mephisto calls Satannish his “alter ego,” which is not my understanding of who Satannish is (he’s an independently operating demon/soul harvester—just like the “Satan” that begat Damon Hellstrom, Son of Satan). It’s also not what an “alter ego” is, i.e., if Satannish were merely an alter ego, they’d be the same person. Which would make this fight impossible…
So, the West Coast Avengers have teamed up with Mephisto to defeat the new Lethal Legion. Rather than return the souls to Mephisto, Sattanish destroys them.
Remember how I started this post saying “this is the one where Mockingbird dies?” Well, that’s about to happen so pay attention.
Mephisto hits her with a fireball during the fight, and she dies.
And there is a poorly attended funeral.
But it’s okay. That’s not really Mockingbird. The real one will be returned many years later. This one was a skrull, who fooled Hawkeye just like Human Torch was fooled into marrying skrull-Alicia.
ook, the writing is clunky. It’s Roy Thomas. But this is a good comic book story. It’s much more of a 1970s, “out there” kind of story, what with Joseph Stalin being in it and all, but it’s fun. Big dumb fun.
There are back-up stories to the oversize #100. Hawkeye visits Mockingbird’s grave. USAgent visits his parents’ graves. Len Kaminsky offers a War Machine story in advance of his creating a series by that name next year. They’re all pretty mediocre.