Faith in Vengeance
Acts of Vengeance continues in Second Thoughts by Dwayne McDuffie and Dwayne Turner. Wasp and Wonder Man battle Gargantua and Hawkeye and Mockingbird battle imposters perpetrating robberies pretending to be them.
Remember when I said that Avengers Spotlight was the dumping ground for Avengers material not good enough for the main books? Boy howdy, does this issue prove my point. The entire thing is a pretty silver age-y ordeal complete with cringe inducing Silver Age humor. And it's not a parody. We get the token hilarious jokes about Hawkeye being deaf in one ear that we've come to expect from Avengers Spotlight and also get plenty of silly jokes with Wasp commanding the mentally deficient Gargantua to position himself correctly so Wonder Man can punch him in the face.
The good? There is actually one good scene. And it's almost entirely unrelated to the rest of the issue oddly enough. The Fantastic Four's villain Mad Thinker is locked away in jail when he receives a visit from our mysterious benefactor. Mad Thinker turns down an offer to join the Cabal (having thought long and hard about all the eventual probabilities) but the best bit is when Thinker reveals he knows who the benefactor is. Unhappy with this development, our villainous mastermind makes a hasty retreat. Also it turns out Mockingbird's impersonator is Screaming Mimi. You know, Songbird from Thunderbolts? So that at least made me me think of something good.
But, yes, this is pure Avengers filler. Cheesy jokes, unimpressive bad guys and nothing really stand-out about it. Considering Avengers Spotlight had oddly delivered two decent issues in a row before this, it isn't all that surprising that a major stinker was due. If Avengers Spotlight was a consistently decent book, then everyone involved would've been upgraded to working on the real Avengers book.