Rick Jones, don't be a hero, don't be a fool with your life

Rick Jones. He's the Kevin Bacon of the Marvel Universe, serving as sidekick or associate to dozens of Marvel heroes. He's the Hope to Hulk's Crosby, the Lewis to Captain America's Dino, the Pink Lady to Captain Mar-Vell's Jeff. Also, he was on General Hospital and sang the smash hit "Jesse's Girl." Oh wait...that was Rick Springfield. I've made another one of my silly mistakes.

Still, don't forget that Rick Jones palled around not only with Rom (Spaceknigget), and now has his own successful business in the midwest! But if you don't count skulking around in mechanized caves in the southwest with a scientist's grumpy alter-ego, Rick actually started his career of superhero groupiedom with the Avengers! In fact, Rick was running around Avengers Mansion from Day 1, getting under Jarvis's feet and trying to get Cap's shield off the roof following a particular intense game of Frisbee with Hawkeye. And, in a twist ending that is not at all a Mary Sue moment for writer Roy Thomas, Rick saves the universe with his extensive knowledge of Golden Age comic books. So is it any surprise that he wants more than just to hang around with the Avengers...he actually wants to join the World's Mightiest? (Answer to rhetorical question: No. No, it is not a surprise.)


Panels from Avengers #10 (November 1964), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Don Heck, inks by Dick Ayers, letters by Sam Rosen

Now, you or me, if we wanted to be in the Avengers, we'd get ourselves bitten by a radioactive spider, or get a transfusion of blood from our viridian cousin, or wear a snappy suit and a bowler hat and carry an umbrella. Rick hasn't got the time for the pain of those methods, though, so he's going to become a hero the way everybody used to in those days: by answering an ad in a comic book!:



Of course, whenever you answer an ad in a comic book, you wind up being captured by Immortus the Conqueror, who has undertaken the precise task of capturing Rick Jones by placing an ad in a comic book that had to be brought to his attention by a friend. Now that's an excellent use of Immortus's public relations department! Much like Ernst Starvos Blofeld minus the fluffy feline, Immortus sits back and lets his henchmen do the dirty work, but no mere hired goon wearing a black sweatshirt labeled "Timey" is good enough for Mister I: his muscle is Attila the Hun, who uses air quotes and grabs Rick the moment he arrives in answer to the ad. In many ways, therefore, comic book ads are just like Craigslist.



Just like the best ABC Afterschool Special, however, Rick learns to be cool and stay in school only losers do drugs that the hero was inside him all the time. No, no, he hadn't accidentally swallowed Ant-Man at breakfast, but Cap's lessons had turned him into a fighting force to be reckoned with, capable of finding curtains to swing from in an otherwise featureless room and using them to get all Lucy Liu on Attila's butt.



And the moral to the story is, if you want to be a hero, just answer an ad in a comic book. No, not the one Rick was looking at...in fact, there's an ad in Avengers #10 itself that would have turned Rick into an instant hero:


No, no, not that one...there's an ad in Avengers #10 that gives you an easier and faster way to make yourself a hero. Just like the Wizard tells the Cowardly Lion, you don't need muscles or bravery or da noive to be a hero...all you need is reproduction war hero medals:



Later, these medals deflected bullets fired in several different assassination attempts during Rick Jones's 1986 "Rock Me Hulkadeus" tour, so that was $7.75 mooched off of Steve Rogers well spent, don't you think?