Does Force, Indeed, Work?

Welcome to the... for a little while... first entry of the weekend-exclusive editions of the blog!  Since I'm now actively employed, my life's grown a little bit complicated... and A LOT more tiring... for the standard every-single-day blog writing.  (I won't complain about having a job, but I can CERTAINLY hope what I'm currently working on isn't going to be my career.  My legs, after three days of heavy physical labor, are pretty well shaky and worn, with enough scabs and bruises to make modern comic coloring techniques JEALOUS of my body's ability to create colors!)  So I decided to switch gears for however long this employment period lasts to weekend writings, where I've plenty of time, and renewed energy, to guarantee you're not just reading a lot of hastily assembled gibberish.  I can already hear some readers thinking, "You mean this is NORMALLY 'high quality' material?".

To mark the beginning of my becoming a member of an established team, I shall drag out a topic I DID actually have in mind for this week.  It deals with a long-lived Marvel team that had it's own title shot down... BUT that wouldn't stop them from reorganizing, redesigning their looks, and even taking on a NEWBY, like myself!  But alas, this "noble experiment" led to an unusual creative result from a talented writing duo, a highly rotating writing team, and a title that lasted 1/5th less issues than the title it originally generated from!

"Force Works" rose from the ashes of "Avengers West Coast"... or is that "WEST COAST AVENGERS"... in July 1994.  Yep, we're square in the middle of the 90's for the launching of a newly "relevant" take on the West-SIIIDE Avengers.  (To prove how 90's this book was, it was actually previewed in a black-and-white Ashcan issue.  For those not in the know, Ashcan comics were about the size of a standard trade paperback novel, and feature about 10-pages of either a sneak-preview story, sample pages from the first issue, or character profiles.)  Carry-overs from the WCA team included:

• U.S. Agent- Remember him from another blog post a few days back?
• Spider-Woman- No, not the standard red-and-yellow Jessica Drew, but the black-and-white styled Julia Carpenter, who first appeared in "Secret Wars #6", and had a BRIEF run as a member of the former Brotherhood of Evil Mutants... soon to be Freedom Force... before proving her mettle to the Avengers.  By the way, last I checked, Julia transitioned over into becoming the new Spider-Man mystic exposition deliverer... Madame Web!  (But during her Avengers tenure, she was a single mother whose powers included the creation of psionic webbing, and the standard... er... "Spider" powers.
• Scarlet Witch- After the Vision was dissembled, then reassembled, then finding out her twins with the Vision were constructions of the villain, Master Pandemonium... and a LOT of personality switches, Wanda Maximoff pulled herself together enough to become a stabilized leader of the new Force Works team.  While her probability-altering mutant ability and sorcerous hex powers were intact, her costume... Well... It must have shrank DRASTICALLY between the finale of "West Coast Avengers" and the launch of this issue.
• Wonder Man-  I don't even know WHERE to begin with the legacy of Simon Williams to this point.  Seriously, he can be just as confusing... and ANNOYING... of a character to backtrack a sensible history for as Kang proves to be.  ANYWAYS... He's the team powerhouse by default, his mortal frame powered by ionic energies. 

You may be wondering where two West Coast Avengers stalwarts are in this line-up.  Mockingbird was pretty much deceased near the wrap of the WCA title.  (And this was after a failed rescue attempt of her immortal soul from the clutches of Mephisto in the red-foil covered 100th. anniversary issue!)  And with his then-loving wife deceased, Hawkeye ceased being an active Avenger for a time.  (He DID show up for the title on occasion, but never as a full participant.  It was more like being a bitter grouch about losing his team, and brushing up against the semi side-leader, Iron Man.)

Another change you may have noted, on a cosmetic angle, was how different U.S. Agent looks for this title.  After being drafted by Tony Stark for the "Force Works" project, John Walker wanted to establish an identity more separate from Captain America.  Hence, the new costume, and the Stark Industries-powered gauntlets that could create "ionic shields" and force blasts.  Yep... 90's!  Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning designed for this team to be less of a "defensive" force, and more of an aggressor.  ... I'm still REALLY confused where that actually played out for any of the book's run, but hey, whatever works! 

But other than the first issue featuring a REALLY complicated cover gimmick... which involved strategically folded sections that, when unfurled, created a nine-page poster cover... the book DID manage to start off with a bang.  LITERALLY, a bang!  After the first of many run-ins with Kree terrorists that the team squared off against, that first issue featured the team's first casualty of war.  Wonder Man gets blowed up by the Kree terrorists REAL good!  But while I question a LOT of Abnett/Lanning's decisions with the book, the one solid credit I gave them was that... not ONCE in the 22-issue run of the title... Wonder Man was never returned to life.  I don't believe he was even resurrected once until the Kurt Busiek/George Perez "Avengers" run of the late 90's!  To fill in that gap was a character that kind of acted like a surrogate Vision in terms of human understanding, and a surrogate Shatterstar for how battle-driven he was.  Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Century...

Century was pulled into this dimension by accident from the team's first adventure.  (I WANT to say it was a combination of Scarlet Witch's hex powers, and Spider-Woman's webbing.)  This led to the team actually going back to the dimension of Century's capture, where they do battle with some standard insectoid aliens.  (As you do in any given Sci-Fi sequence.)  Century's character arc through the series was trying to piece together the mental blocks that his kidnapping placed on his brain.  He also was integral to uncovering a multi-issue conspiracy instigated by a Recorder android the team captured from the Kree terrorists.  And Century's main power contribution was from his dimensional pole-ax... named Parallax, probably because the creators realized Century was SO naturally forgettable, DC wouldn't bother taking copyright infringement action for the namesake! 

In the course of the team's adventures, Force Works had at least two or three rematches with the imprisoned Kree terrorists, along with two repeat bouts with characters that were NOT AT ALL mirrors of the then-current Croatian civil war situation in real life.  Ugh...  The team WAS involved in at least one major crossover called "Hands of the Mandarin".  And as you can guess, it involved Iron Man's movie-star nemesis.  Only it was his standard comics Chinese heritage, with dragon-hands to replace the alien-ringed hands he once possessed... then lost.  Force Works' part in this crossover between "Iron Man" and "War Machine" involved them battling a group of Chinese villains the Mandarin recruits, who are COMPLETELY not worth bothering researching about.  I can feel safe in saying they more likely than not didn't show up for repeat appearances.

The title's life didn't even get a chance to last into the last major Avengers crossover, "The Crossing".  But "Force Works' " cancellation may have been a saving grace for THAT event, which featured time-travel, an evil Tony Stark, and the plottings of Kang the Conqueror.  (Grr... That Kang...)  But while the book felt mediocre, even compared to the REALLY lackluster final period of "West Coast Avengers", it's kind of a shame the series didn't even live long enough to see ONE annual be published.  But I would like to theorize that without the Avengers name attachment, and the glut of books being published in the 90's, this was just naturally ear-marked to fail.  (I even wonder how a full-on relaunch would fare today, in a Marvel Comics environment where it feels like EVERY OTHER book they publish is Avengers-related!)  But maybe it was also due to the fact that "Force Works" was a book that included the HORRIBLE revision of War Machine's armor for the 90's that also signaled its downfall...

Still, while "Force Works" may have faltered as a comic series, the team DID achieve a weird form of immortality... in cartoon syndication!  The 90's "Iron Man" cartoon launched at the same time the updated "Fantastic Four" cartoon did, and they were packaged together as the "Marvel Action Hour".  Each segment featured opening narration by STAN "THE MAN" LEE, and while Tony Stark was the likely star of the series, this show was almost a stealth series for the Force Works team!  SERIOUSLY!  Not counting for the fact that Hawkeye is a member of the team, and Wonder Man is completely excluded for mention, the party was in full swing for the entirety of the "Iron Man" series.  Even Scarlet Witch's rather "revealing" costume made the cartoon cut!

Not every incarnation of the Avengers can always work, no matter how you "force" it.  (I HAD to make the pun.)  And I'm sure if you saw Abnett or Lanning at a convention these days, and asked them about this book, you might get a blank stare in return.  But while the book was a muddled goulash, it wasn't an massively irritating read.  Just not really memorable... at ALL.  But compared to the subject of tomorrow's blog, you may be regarding Force Works in the same legacy of the Justice Society of America in comparison!