Wonder Man gets a new costume and Tigra finds him “scrumptious.”
(I like how he explains the need for a new costume in terms of his movie star status–recognizing that there is no functional use for super-outfits, it’s all about appearance.)
Mockingbird gets a new costume, too, to show more leg, and the men are speechless.
And Hawkeye ditches his long sleeves, and Wonder Man is homophobically grateful he’s not showing more leg. And he also made a dick joke.
So, this story starts with lots of emphasis on heroes’ appearances, and that continues when the villain, Graviton, appears.
He’s salivating at Tigra, from miles away, without binoculars. Gravitron, with two new alien ally villains, Quantum (strength powers)…
and Halflife (power to temporarily make people elderly)…
.. and also with Zzzax (the real Zzzax, not the recent Thunderbolt Ross version).
They attack and defeat the West Coast Avengers.
Creepy.
Speaking of creepy, Graviton literally puts Tigra on a leash. And if that’s not kinky enough…
This is clearly a domination/discipline theme—weird to see comics exploring sexuality in this way, mostly because it’s so uncommon, but it is consistent with Tigra’s sex slavery to Molecule Man back when she was on the East Coast Avengers team.
Apparently, the modifications to her cat powers in earlier issues of this series have made her extremely vulnerable to sexuality, but when she morps back into her human, Greer Nelson persona, that spell is lifted. And as a flesh-and-blood normal person, she bests the foursome who just defeated the entire WCA team.
This is really dumb. Interesting, but dumb.