All-New, Rebranded Avengers #27 – ‘The Gentle Art of Making Enemies’

Posted on by phil.wrede
In New York City, Moon Knight and Rage stand guard together. Rage remarks, "...I just think white robes and a hood are a bad look," referencing Moon Knight's traditional costume from the comics. The title of the comic strip, "All-New, Rebranded Avengers Presents... 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies'," at the top of the image.
Rage further calls Moon Knight out for cultural appropriation, and the best defense Moon Knight can offer for himself is that he only happened to get rich after the Egyptian god Khonshu made him his avatar on Earth.
While the NYPD chases a Hummer H2 through the street, Rage asks why, with all his abilities and resources, Moon Knight spends time beating up street criminals in the dark.
As the car chase continues, Rage leaves his conversation with Moon Knight to go and speak with his neighbor, Mailcarrier McGinty (a reference to a character Bebe Neuwirth played on The Adventures of Pete & Pete) and their grandmother. Mailcarrier McGinty is a nonbinary person, and Rage does not address them using gendered pronouns.
As Rage explains his belief in respect as the foundation of a community, an NYPD cruiser smashes into the H2, and it loses control, sliding across the street.
Rage barely pulls Mailcarrier McGinty and their grandmother out of the way of the H2 as it tips over and crashes into cars parked nearby.
HYDRA agents pour out of the crashed H2, with weapons drawn. Moon Knight emerges from nearby, with his own crescent-shaped throwing weapons ready.
Moon Knight quickly dispatches two of the three HYDRA agents. The last conscious one prepares to fire, nicknaming Moon Knight the "Dork Knight," before realizing that Moon Knight had more of his own weapons available.
Moon Knight nails the third HYDRA agent with a throwing crescent. Rage compliments Moon Knight's fighting abilities, and asks if he'd be willing to work with him to fight more significant bad guys than street thugs. Moon Knight agrees.
The credits for the comic strip, citing the Unsplash users whose photographs were the background art, the ownership of Marvel by Disney, and the figure photography/script/lettering by me, Phil Wrede.

Two of the earliest comics I remember buying at the grocery store are Avengers #332 (where Doctor Doom, in the guise of Iron Man, crashes an Avengers social function, and where, in the following issue, Rage tries to punch out Doctor Doom) and Amazing Spider-Man #354 (part two of “Round Robin: the Sidekick’s Revenge,” where our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler teams up with Night Thrasher, the Punisher, Darkhawk, and Moon Knight to rescue Nova from Moon Knight’s former sidekick Midnight and the Secret Empire). I have a lot of affection for all the feature players* in these formative comics, and I’ve tried to give most of them fun moments in the Phil Wrede Marvel Action Figure Comic Universe.

Now that we’re out of the unspecified upstate location of the A.I.M. base of operations, and having adventures in New York City properly again, I’m trying to build out the supporting cast of the comic a bit more. I’ve referred to my affection for The Death and Return of Superman before, and for the “civilian” characters who make the world feel alive, and make the actions of Superman and those who came after him really mean something; the only way for me to achieve anything remotely similar in my comics is to introduce similar characters, and make their existence full and meaningful, too. That takes being intentional. I’ll do my best!

Speaking of doing your best… the HYDRA boys never really do their best. They’re not really self-aware enough to. If the bulbs in their heads were much brighter, they wouldn’t want to be in HYDRA!

*I’ve never really cared for the Punisher, truth be told, so I don’t foresee him making an appearance here, unless I can think of something really creative to do with him, and I haven’t yet found a Nova action figure I like. And, actually, the only Night Thrasher figure I know about is stupidly expensive on eBay and the like, so I don’t have one of him, either. I guess I’m really just referring to Rage, Darkhawk, and Moon Knight.

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