Civil Vengeance
John Byrne delivers the 3rd chapter of the core Acts of Vengeance storyline which features the Avengers (Hank Pym, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Vision and Wasp) going up against Freedom Force (née Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) and begins to explore the relationship of the Cabal a bit more.
While I've been positive towards the previous two instalments from Byrne's Avengers, this one is definitely the best so far. The fight between the Avengers and Freedom Force is just a great fight and John Byrne was always ridiculously creative with Hank Pym. For a guy who wasn't even wearing a costume and had no codename, Byrne really managed to make Hank stand-out among the rest of the Avengers. When I think of John Byrne's Avengers run, I definitely tend to think of Doctor Pym in his orange jumpsuit carrying miniaturized arsenals in his pockets. How this awesome and inventive Hank Pym got replaced with Giant Man I'll never know.
The rest of the Avengers have cool moments too, Vision vs. Blob is interesting as it winds up more or less as a stalemate between the two density shifters and Avalanche and Pyro fare surprisingly well against the Avengers until they flee. As I said in my review of the previous Byrne issue, he really nailed how to write a team book with Avengers - every team-mate featured here gets something to do and has a part where you think back and go "Oh, yes, the Falcon's wings got clipped by Avalanche" or "What did the Scarlet Witch do again? Oh that's right, go nuts with her hex power".
Although the fight itself is brilliant enough to make the issue a great one, the best part features the Cabal. In this issue we see, more or less, the entire Cabal turn on Red Skull for basically just being a racist douche. Byrne really pours the stupid Nazi comments from Skull on heavy and it's actually really interesting to see folks like Mandarin and Wizard, who we don't traditionally see as being decent, basically be all like "Listen, you stupid bigot, just fuck off, ok?". The tension between the Cabal has hit high gear and they're already at each other's throats... and we're just half way through the major parts of the crossover. While the dynamic of the villains turning on each other isn't anything new or innovative, it works really well here because the villains used are ones we don't often see having much character outside their own delusions of grandeur.
Honestly, I couldn't recommend this issue enough. This is a fantastic issue of the Avengers and has some really great fights combined with some tremendous use of villains. It's issues like this that explain why I remember Acts of Vengeance so fondly. This is just a really good crossover based around a simple premise that works much better than any of the over-complicated bogus events of today.