All-New, Reacquired Avengers #63 – ‘You Can’t Escape My…’

Tony Stark stands, impatiently, in his private lab in Avengers Tower. “Where’s my dinner?” he shouts. The title of this comic strip, “All-New, Reacquired Avengers Presents… ‘You Can’t Escape My…’,” is visible on the right side of the image.

Tony shouts at a figure we can’t quite identify, reminding his anonymous assistant that they were hired to, you know, assist him!

We see the mystery assistant is revealed to be… Luis, Scott Lang’s buddy and business associate from the Ant-Man movies! As Luis hadn’t, at least at the time this strip went live, been officially given a last name, for the purposes of the Phil Wrede Marvel Action Figure Comic Universe, I decided his full name would be Luis Garcia-Lopez, in honor of legendary comics artist Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. In my continuity, Luis is assisting Tony Stark at Avengers Tower, not being an executive at his perpetually-in-danger-of-failing security company Ex-Con. He runs down the hallway with a box of pizza in his arms.

Luis finally arrives with Tony’s pizza, apologizing profusely. He compliments Tony on the new pizza boxes Stark Industries designed, which retain heat internally and don’t allow any of it to pass through the box to threaten human hands. Tony insults Luis, after all his compliments.

Luis tries to remind Tony that he’s worked with Hank Pym, so he knows how to act around a genius, and Tony goes out of his way to repeat an insult about Hank that his father, Howard Stark, taught him.

Tony very abruptly pivots to asking Luis to consider taking on a covert mission on behalf of Stark Industries and the Avengers. Luis can’t believe what he’s hearing.

Luis agrees to at least hear Tony’s briefing, and they walk down another hallway to a darkened room, where the superheroine Tigra waits for them.

Luis tries to be friendly with Tigra, but she can barely even stand to be in the same room as him and Tony. Before the conversation takes a bad turn, Tony activates the holographic display in the room, and an image of the Earth pops up before them.

Luis asks where this mission is taking place; Tigra looks at the globe and guesses, Europe?

In the top half of the image, Tony confirms Tigra’s guess is correct, and that their mission, more particularly, will be happening in a little country called Latveria. In the bottom half of the image are the credits for the comic strip, citing the Unsplash users whose photographs were the background art, the ownership of Marvel by Disney, the creation of Marvel characters by actual human beings, and the figure photography/script/lettering by me, Phil Wrede.

I love Michael Peña as an actor; ever since I first saw him in Observe and Report, I’ve been in awe of his willingness to make weird choices as a performer, to step at a slightly different rhythm from his costars, and even the whole movie. When I heard he was going to be in Ant-Man, I was so excited to see what kind of weird little corner he’d be able to carve out for himself in the MCU. While my opinion of the movie itself has shifted and shuffled around a lot over the years, I still enjoy his fast-talking, rambling storytelling.

I knew I wanted to find something for Luis to do in the Phil Wrede Marvel Action Figure Comic Universe. Well, I knew what I wanted to ultimately do with him, but I needed to take him on a little journey, before arriving at the destination. He has plenty of get-up-and-go, so I think Tony Stark would recognize his value, and give him some scut work tests before letting him turn his talents loose.

Speaking of Tony Stark, I feel like I did a better job here than I usually do at evoking the cadence of RDJ’s speech. I hope I’ve been improving, as the comic has gone along!

It didn’t seem like Luis canonically had a last name in the MCU – at the time this strip went live, anyway – so I was at least able to bring the name of another comics creator whose work is beloved to me, when I got to name him Luis García-López.

With the introduction of Tigra, I’m one step closer to including the full roster of my beloved Avengers West Coast. I hope she makes her way into the MCU soon, either on Disney+ or in a movie. If there’s another season of She-Hulk (which I dearly hope there is), she’d make a stellar addition to that cast…

All-New, Reacquired Avengers #63 – ‘You Can’t Escape My…’

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