What is this book about?

This book was primarily created for the purpose to have a 99¢ price point.

The interesting thing here is, right around this time Marvel was actually going bankrupt. How they were able to afford printing costs and selling books at 99¢ is beyond me.

The title of the book actually using the word “unplugged” kind of makes sense. This book came out around the the early 90’s so it’s no surprise that it fed off of MTV’s acoustic live performance show that also started in the early 90’s, MTV Unplugged. MTV’s unplugged was a series for showcasing music that only uses instruments whose sound is not electronically modified, for example acoustic guitar, acoustic piano, etc., as opposed to electric guitar, synthesizer, etc. And Avengers Unplugged was a series for showcasing characters that could be read apart from the main team book where confusing convoluted storylines made it difficult to read if you didn’t know the back story.

Why should you read this book?

Avengers Unplugged is actually kind of a diamond in the rough.

I know that might be difficult to see when this was widely considered to be a “low” point in Avengers history. What with all the big guns, bigger muscles, 64 pack abs, giant boobs, brown leather jackets, cyber tech, etc.

Most of the stories has an interesting premise actually. For instance, the story I would like to recommend you read is titled, Legacies. This story resolves which hero should bear the name “Captain Marvel.”

To give you some small back story there was a hero named Captain Marvel (aka Mar-Vell) who died of cancer. Then a few years later a woman (Monica Rambeau) is imbued with powers and decides to use her powers for good, in a funny turn of events she is dubbed Captain Marvel by the media. She just kind of accepted it and went about her life trying to do the best she can with the powers she has. At some point it comes out that the original Captain Marvel (Mar-vell), had a son (Genis-Vell). He was given the powers and inherited the weapons of his father and appropriately named himself “Legacy,” to fight evil across the galaxy just like his father did.

Which brings us to the story at hand, Legacies.

The story starts with the villain, The Controller, taking over Monica Rambeau’s mind. The Controller uses “slave discs” to control other people’s minds. So at some point he slapped one on Monica Rambeau and proceeded to take away her ability to control her body and sends her after Legacy (Genis-Vell).

After a brief battle between Genis-Vell and Monica, the Avengers intervened and stopped the fight by dislocating the slave disc that had been attached to Monica by the Controller. Taking the fight directly to The Controller the two Marvels and the Avengers subdue The Controller and they find out that someone actually attached a slave disc to The Controller as well! So someone has been pulling the strings this entire time.

The thing I thought was interesting about this book was the moral about losing control and/or people thinking they have control when in fact they don’t.

Legacy was ready to attack The Controller and beat him senseless but Monica looked past her rage of being taken advantage of and was able to see The Controller wasn’t in control, and she saw somebody was controlling him. Even though The Controller is a criminal, he doesn’t deserve to be beaten to death for no reason, Legacy wasn’t able to see that The Controller was entirely innocent here.

It made me think of how people react to wrongdoings in the real world. Isn’t it when we’re violated we want to blame the person and not the why. People associate people of middle eastern descent as terrorists because of the attack on the World Trade center. People associate African Americans as violent armed criminals because news reports and media showcase stories like that. People are terrified of certain animals and associate them as violent aggressive creatures because the media highlights stories involving such attacks.

If someone is bitten by an animal, shot by a black man, or had a relative killed in the World Trade Center they take it out on the face; the face of the Middle Eastern, the face of the black man, and also one of an animal, because that’s the source of their rage. People seem to inherently realize they cannot defeat a concept such as terrorism, envy, societal upbringing, instinct, or self defense mechanisms so they attack what caused them pain.

That’s what Legacy did. He was ready to attack the person and not the concept. Which is what Monica realized. Instead of Monica beating Controller senseless for doing anything he did do to her, she realized it wasn’t his fault, but instead decided to come out of super hero retirement and fight against ‘the concept.’