Next week is our 200th episode! It was fortunate timing that it ended up landing right on our episodes about Avengers #16, which was one of the most important issues of the era. If you are enjoying What If Marvel was Real?, now would be a great time to spread the word! Thanks for your help in getting our little show out there, and for all the listeners who have been here from the beginning.

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss the surprise announcement that Hawkeye, the supervillain, will be joining the Avengers as a new member. The Federal Security Agency has given Hawkeye a thumbs up, but how is that possible? What do they know that we do not? Do we need to talk conspiracies again? The rumors are that Captain America and Thor are out of the organization. If true, we will only be left with heroes with technological powers - have the people behind the technology (and masks) been replaced? Is this the end of an era?

Behind the issue:

This is one of the key issues of the mid-60s. The Avengers were originally Marvel’s answer to the Justice League, whereby the publisher put all the heroes from different titles into one book to get the readers excited and turning over their hard-earned cash for tales of camaraderie and adventure. But the individual hero titles continued, and Stan had to keep his developing Marvel universe consistent. He had to juggle the storylines in, say, the individual title Tales of Suspense with what was happening in the team title Avengers. If Thor had been called away to Asgard, then how would be be around for an Avengers adventure that same month? Making it all make sense every month was challenging for Stan, and he wanted a solution.

The answer was to take most of the heroes with their own titles off the team. He kept Captain America, and maybe rationalized it by knowing that the Captain America stand-alone stories could be set back in World War II whenever he wanted them to be. Then he filled in the rest of the team with supporting characters from other titles - characters who did not have their own books (and would not get their own books for many years, i.e. Hawkeye did not get his first solo title until 1983; Scarlet Witch, with Vision, until 1982; and Quicksilver until 1997).

In this issue:

The issue opens with the Avengers once again emerging victorious over the Masters of Evil in New York, with Captain America defeating Baron Zemo in South America. It continues with Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp in New York having a team meeting and deciding to take a break from being on the team. At the same time they are having the meeting, Hawkeye breaks into their headquarters and asks to join the Avengers. His beloved Black Widow has been murdered by her employers behind the iron curtain, and he has had a change of heart on his line of work. The team decide to take him up on the offer, and on top of that, seek out new potential teammates, with the papers reporting this initiative. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver decide to apply to join the team, and they are admitted to the ranks as well. By the time Captain America returns, the team has been completed reconstituted, with Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp out, and Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch in as their replacements.

Assumed before the next episode:

People are excited, and a little nervous, that the Avengers roster has been changed so completely.

This episode takes place:

After the announcement that Hawkeye will be on the team, but before Captain America returns from South America.

Full transcript:

Edward: Mike, I told you that Hawkeye was a superhero. I told you. I told you. You were like, oh no, he's not that good. He can't even fight anybody just as Arrows. Oh, go back to the 14th century. But no. Now Hawkeye is an Avenger. Mike. He's an avenger.

Michael: Yeah. I guess the Avengers, they already had a man who's basically a one man rocket and can shoot energy from his fists as an Iron man. They needed to get somebody who could. Arrows on the team.

Edward: Hey. The last time Hawkeye faced Iron Man, first of all, last time he faced Iron Man, he was a villain. We should talk about that. But when he did, yes, he defeated Iron Man, right? He blasted him with his energy discharge arrow and took him out. So, hey, this guy is versatile. We've had this debate. We don't need to debate it again. I think you are against Team Hawkeye. I am on Team Hawkeye. I think that it's absolutely fine from a power perspective that he's on the team. I'm not sure from a, ethics perspective, he's the red venture.

Michael: Well, okay, let's break into, those two points then. So from a powerless perspective there must be something to him that he brings into the team, right? I can't imagine that it's solely just really good aim. There must be some other, maybe he's got some other ability that like he's, um, some kind of like

Edward: oh, maybe his really, maybe his really good eyesight. Hawkeye

Michael: In the name, I mean alone, but he's got, there's some kind of, maybe, I'm just thinking maybe this is a signal that the Avengers are going from less, overt action to be more in the shadows.

Edward: And nothing says sneaky like a purple costume carrying a bow and arrow.

Michael: It's a dark purple ed. It's a dark, dark purple. No, but there must be something to it. Like he did take on Iron Man. He did seem to defeat him. So in a skills-based contest and maybe he's. Like you notice that Captain America wasn't at the press conference when they announced Hawkeye, so maybe he's a replacement for Captain America's, who's also similarly strategic and stealth based in a lot ways.

Edward: There you go. There you go. Cause the rumors are right now that Captain America and Thor are being replaced and Hawkeye is the first edition to the team, but there will be,

Michael: and your second point was the ethics. It does strike me as being a little odd that there's a guy who's worked with a known terrorist. The Black Widow. Correct. A Russian agent and he's fought Iron Man a few times. And, I would imagine in the course, Committed some crimes may, maybe he did, maybe technically he didn't commit any crime.

He's just

Edward: He did. No, I just did. I think they were doing something robbed. They were robbing Stark Corp or something. Yeah. They kidnapping somebody he was doing bad stuff.

Michael: They kidnapped, they kidnap people. Yeah. Yeah. That seems a bit much to sweep under the rug.

Edward: That's right. Where I come from, kidnapping is a crime, Mike. It's a crime. But come from planet, but not according to the federal security Agency. The federal security agency has approved Hawkeye as a member of the Avengers, says that his record is clean, that he is totally allowed to be on the team.

Michael: Well, I know when I became a lawyer there is a requirement of good character to become a lawyer and. I think that there's a lot of lawyers, so

Edward: I think the bar should be higher for the Avengers. Shouldn't the bar be higher than the lawyers?

Michael: I think it should be. I think it should be. It should be higher than the bar for lawyers. The bar for superhero should be much higher and it turns out that it isn't. And let's be honest, the Avengers are the super team that people are in, are interested in, and it that are called in as the heavy hitters. So this seems like. Quite a promotion for somebody who, as you say, committed the crime of kidnapping

Edward: That's interesting. Let's go back and talk about your issue with, Hey, lawyers have a high bar. I think part of the reason why we can hold lawyers to a high bar is that the supply of lawyers is really high. We're graduating more lawyers every year, and if there's an unethical lawyer, we can say, no thank you. We don't need you. We can replace you with an ethical lawyer. I wonder if the problem is, People who are powerful enough, superheroes who are powerful, super people who are powerful enough to be Avengers. There's not an excess supply. There's a handful of these people. Mm-hmm. There's like a few dozen maybe on the planet. And so if you're looking to augment that team and your bar is high from a power perspective, maybe you have to bend a little bit on the ethics perspective.

Michael: Or maybe, if you believe in rehabilitation, which I do, maybe there's a steep rehabilitation curve? Because as you say, demand exceeds supply. And so if we need to have, Superpowered or super skilled people either we're willing to turn a blind eye or we're willing to go through the process that hopefully allows him to achieve rehabilitation. So behind the scenes there's been this sped up process. Yeah. Because we need to have this person. I know what you're saying. It does seem a little fu but

Edward: it does. I'm stretching a little bit, trying to make sense of the fact that we have a known super villain on the team. And not just on the team, but specifically signed off by the federal government, the federal security agency has come on and said, Hey, this guy is clean. He's totally, totally legit. Now, and maybe the other possibilities that maybe the whole villain thing that Hawkeye was doing before was a misunderstanding, like the, the Avengers declared martial law on America. Turns out it was a mistake. Right? It wasn't actually them maybe and we're okay with that because Avengers do good, Avengers do. We'd say, oh, the bad was a mistake. We're all good. And Hawkeye just didn't do the good part at the beginning.