It was almost 19 years ago that I wrote that the West Coast Avengers were not quite noteworthy enough, or ironically cheesy enough, to do an issue-by-issue breakdown. However, the annuals are usually interesting enough to earn a quick summary---especially this one, part of the "Atlantis Attacks!" storyline, a tie in crisis crossover that ran across all of Marvel's 1989 annuals. It is 64 pages long, with a main story by John Byrne and Terry Austin, and with back-up stories by Mark Gruenwald, Amanda Conner and Fabian Nicieza (in some of his earliest published work).
A quick note on the title: this was published shortly after the name of the comic was changed from "West Coast Avengers" to "Avengers West Coast", and also shortly after John Byrne had started his work on the title. It also took place during (and was the 12th of 14 chapters) the "Atlantis Attacks!" storyline, which combined several of Marvel's cosmic, science-fiction and mystical storylines, where the Deviant Priest Ghaur uses the Atlantean army as a pawn in a quest to resurrect the Serpent Crown, an ancient object that carries the essence of the demon Set, and it gets more confusing from there...which also works into another key fact about this comic book, which is that it doesn't really specifically feature the Avengers West Coast, or, for that matter, even the Avengers. The Avengers, a super group who have a rotating membership of basically every superhero in the Marvel universe, are more a nexus for whatever cosmic slop Marvel was brewing, and the specific group dynamics of the current members were often interrupted to advance the plot. And this is the case here: John Byrne, who had worked on most of Marvel's most important titles, had introduced several new complicated character dramas into the Avengers West Coast, but they are mostly set aside here. Since this is the (next to) penultimate chapter of the saga, things come to a head--- quite literally.
Ghaur, who has used mind control powers to brainwash seven "brides" of Set, has dispatched these brides, who are all superheroines, to fetch McGuffins from around the world in a quest to revive the Serpent Crown into the actual demon Set, a seven-headed snake. The women involved mention not wanting to serve Set, but not being able to resist (and more on that in a bit). A team of various Avengers shows up to stop the ritual, but as is often the case, they show up a day late and a dollar short, with the final scene of the comic being a two-page spread of a revived Set. To be concluded in the Thor annual, apparently!
So, about that entire "mindcontrolled women forced into marriage to a serpent demon" thing--- well, that is all sorts of problematic, isn't it? This was 1989, so we didn't know about the concept of "fridging" just yet, but the idea of women being victims in comic books (and other popular media) was an obvious one. And in this case, the women are specifically "brides", so there is an element of sexual victimization in that as well, as we see all seven of our "brides" (who are usually strong heroines, including Storm and The Invisible Woman) arrayed in gauzy white costumes. I sometimes wonder what type of effect these messages had on my psyche, reading things like this as a child. There are two points to be made about this, however: first, various forms of mind control are pretty common in Marvel comic book stories, of any era, and don't seem to be specifically tied to gender. Basically, any time a lazy writer wants to have heroes fight, they just invent a new form of mind control or brainwashing! The second point that might make it more palatable is that this is obviously in a fantasy context that is far removed from normal life. I think most of us have a certain allowance for certain fantasy tropes, and a woman being forced to serve an eldritch snake demon shouldn't remind us too much of real life human trafficking. And then the third aspect we have to remember is...
RATE THE HUNKS Directly after turning the page over from our world-ending cataclysm of a resurrected Set, we have a back-up story where The Wasp and The She-Hulk (who we had seen a few pages previously as a brain-washed slave of an eldritch demon) are in a movie theater, watching clips of various male Avengers, and rating them based on their sex appeal. This is obviously done for comedic effect, as we get to see the two gossip about the physical and personality draws and flaws of handsome men like Captain America and The Black Panther, as well as less attractive prospects, such as Quicksilver and Doctor Druid. All of this Female Gaze seems like an antidote to women being brainwashed pawns, and I think it is even something beyond that: Marvel Comics are always character driven stories. No matter how many dimensional incursions, alien invasions, or apocalyptic scenarios happen in Marvel Comics, the real way story is always in the character development. So this comedic interlude isn't just a breather from the previous story, it is also a reminder that no matter how big the stakes seem to get in a Marvel comic, the real story is always in the characters, and the sometimes soapy nature of their interactions.
This comic came out approximately 35 years ago, and I am still finding new things and new ways to look at it. As overblown as the story might seem at first, there are decades worth of subtleties.