Crime and Vengeance
Writer Terry Austin and artist Mike Vosburg bring us To Battle the Avengers the most tonally jarring Cloak and Dagger story imaginable that barely even features the titular Cloak or Dagger and instead gives us the Avengers battling the absolute bottom of the barrel super-villains in an Acts of Vengeance tie-in.
This double-sized issue of the Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger, a title which I've mostly only ever seen negative opinions on, is a bit of a chore. I've lamented before that I have always found Cloak and Dagger to mostly be shown as terribly monotone characters - especially when not written by Bill Mantlo - but what this book delivers is perplexing. I was expecting standard mopey Cloak and standard Dagger-in-disgress. Hell, even that would be more character for the two than we actually get here. With the exception of the soppy cutesy ending between the two to make us feeling good about ourselves (one of the only bits of the issue I felt good about), the rest of the issue may as well not feature them as it struggles to even have a plot outside of BOOM BOOM POW. And the fights themselves, for some reason, descend quickly into Looney Tunes-style wackiness.
The villains featured are pretty lame. We have the Jester leading a team called the Assembly of Evil. No, it's not the Jester from Daredevil. It's a new guy who's very annoying. For some reason he's the "star" of this issue, we get his entire back story and he is the only one with personality in the entire issue. The problem is the personality is horrible and grating. As for the rest of the villains: we have two Hulk villains in the form of...the Cosmic Hulk and Rock. We also have both Strucker twins (later of Thunderbolts fame) and the biggest name of the entire team: HYDRO-MAN. When your biggest name is Hydro-Man, you know you're in trouble.
The Assembly of Evil decide to kidnap Cloak and Dagger to help them battle the Avengers. This idea isn't even used again, it's just an excuse to get Cloak and Dagger around for the fight with the Avengers because this book is apparently a Cloak and Dagger book. So, yes, the Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Wasp and She-Hulk) end up battling the Assembly of Evil. Did I mention this is a DOUBLE-SIZED issue? And it still struggles to have any story outside of them all fighting.
Now, some of the match-ups actually have potential here. Captain America vs. Baron Strucker's offspring? She-Hulk vs. a robot of her cousin? There's definitely potential for some interesting stuff there. But instead, we just get ridiculous slapstick. Particularly from the Cosmic Hulk. We legitimately have the Cosmic Hulk removing his head to reveal an honest-to-god mechanized mallet like something from Road Runner cartoons! It doesn't end there, he also has a chest compartment that opens up like a Jack-in-the-Box with a giant boxing glove on it! His mouth has a tube that not only fires gas but also has a roll down sheet of paper with a message on like a joke gun! His ribcage opens up to reveal feather dusters he uses to tickle She-Hulk!! I'm not kidding! This type of silly and ridiculous fight can be fun but not when the entire issue (a DOUBLE-SIZED issue) is geared around them.
The problem is none of these fights are really done well. The Avengers are having great fights in the Avengers book, so why am I reading a pretty lame Avengers fight in a Cloak and Dagger book? Why aren't I reading about Cloak and Dagger fighting these guys? Cloak and Dagger's main contribution to the skirmish is helping the Wasp save some civilians and Cloak later uses his power to absorbing Hydro Man. But everything else is just, for some banal reason, a sub-par Avengers battle. I said Avengers Spotlight was like the dumping ground for D-List Avengers material...well this issue is very much the Z-List Avengers material.
This issue doesn't really work. It supposedly stars two characters with a moderately mature story and places them in a weird farsical cartoon scenario where they do nothing and instead you watch the Avengers get involved in embarrassing fights they'd probably never admit to having. The weird thing is, the first time I read this issue I remembered thinking it wasn't bad. This time I feel very much the opposite. This wasn't good.