Avengerous Tales 2.12 - Avengers #94, Avengers Annual #5, Avengers #95

To read Avengerous Tales 2.11, go here!

It’s my first Avengerous Tale of the new year, but we’ve still got to resolve the plotlines started back in the old one, so let’s get a-movin’.

So the Avengers sedate the remaining Skrulls (the Super Skrull was so anxious to get away that he abandoned his fellows) and contact renowned Skrull expert Reed Richards, who promises to help them suss out the Skrulls’ scheme.  Spoiler alert: we never hear from him again.

Meanwhile, the Vision has disappeared, making himself useful by pursuing and infiltrating the Super Skrull’s spacecraft.

 

Well, technically Mar-Vell isn’t human, but anyway.  Also, I’m not sure if the Super Skrull is unaware that people can’t reply while they’ve been paralyzed or if he’s just really desperate for conversation after ditching his allies.

Wanda and Pietro’s brainwaves are guiding the ship towards the secret home of the Inhumans, who apparently have brainwaves similar to those of mutants.  The Super Skrull tries to blow up the Inhumans but, in a truly lovely two-page spread, the explosion bounces off a forcefield.

Defeated, the Super Skrull suddenly remembers an important appointment on his home planet and prepares to abandon Earth.  The Vision, realizing he has no chance against the Super Skrull, abandons ship.

 

IT’S JUST A JUMP TO THE LEFT
AND THEN A STEP TO THE RIGHT
PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HIPS
AND BRING YOUR KNEES IN TIGHT

After a quick space-time warp, the ship arrives in the Andromeda Galaxy, where the Skrull homeworld is.  The ship is promptly attacked by the emperor’s soldiers.  See, the Super Skrull is an exile who was hoping to use the capture of Captain Marvel to buy his way back in (and into a position of power).  The emperor has different ideas and imprisons the Super Skrull in an energy sphere that even he can’t escape from.

As much as he dislikes the Super Skrull, the emperor is super-psyched about the captives the Super Skrull brought back, especially Captain Marvel.  The emperor’s daughter Anelle, future mother of Hulkling, doesn’t quite share his enthusiasm.

 

The Emperor tosses the Maximoffs outside and makes them fight a giant monster.  He’ll only save them if Captain Marvel gives him the secret to building the omni-wave weapon, which of course Marvel refuses to do.

Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are on the verge of losing when they receive help from some adorably fluffy native fauna, which multiply every time they hit something.  So basically they’re tribbles with bodies.

Unfortunately, by throwing the not!tribbles at the monster, Quicksilver creates a chain reaction that can’t be stopped.

 

Okay, I gotta ask, did Neal Adams hijack Roy Thomas’s script?  Granted, this third of the issue was drawn by John Buscema, but the moment Adams showed up in this book, everything started sounding like Batman: Odyssey all of a sudden.  Are you okay, Roy?  Blink twice if you need help!

Anyway, while Captain Marvel was prepared to let the twins be eaten, he’s apparently less prepared to see them suffocated by sentient teddy bears, and he agrees to build the omni-wave.

Back on Earth, H. Warren Craddock is busy testing out his spiffy new alien detection (read: torture) device on the three techies who spilled the beans about the Skrull invasion in the first place, and you can bet they’re super-sorry about not obeying the Avengers’ request for secrecy.  As for Craddock, he’s just annoyed that the Avengers failed to show up to the latest Alien Activities Commission hearing, and he’s expressing that annoyance with a court order, tanks, SHIELD helicopters, and a bunch of Mandroids—which, sadly, are not mandrill-shaped robots but rather a bunch of guys in Stark-designed armor.

 

Cap didn’t forget so much as actively try to expunge them from his memory.

As the Avengers fight on, one of the Inhumans, a scaly green fish man named Triton, arrives via sewer.  But before we find out what he wants in Avengers #95, we first make a pitstop in Avengers Annual/Mighty Avengers Special #5.

As you probably predicted given the way the last couple Annuals have gone, there’s really nothing new for me to look at here.  It’s a reprint of Avengers #8, a.k.a. The One Where Random Teens are More Useful Than an Actual Avenger, and Avengers #11, a.k.a. Spider-Man Remorselessly Murders His Android Counterpart.  If you want more detail than that, click on the links I provided and read to your heart’s content.

And now back to our regularly scheduled fight scene, already in progress.

 

You can bet H. Warren Craddock loved THAT.

Now that the fight is over, the Avengers are free to focus on the newcomer, Triton.  Triton actually wanted to contact the Fantastic Four, but since they’re conveniently out of town, I guess the Avengers will have to do, so he tells them his story.

 
Like any great king, he’s got a crazypants brother screwing things up.  Black Bolt’s brother is Maximus the Mad—well with a name like that, how’d you expect him to turn out?—and he’s got some pretty strong mental powers.  So strong, in fact, that when Black Bolt leaves for San Francisco, Maximus zaps his brain from halfway around the world, inflicting his brother with total amnesia.  Triton and three other Inhumans left to search for him, but no luck.

The Avengers of course want to help out… except the Vision, who’s like “guys, hello, we’ve still got three missing friends and an intergalactic war to worry about here.”  It takes everyone a moment to remember that, oh yeah, they’re a team and can split up and things like that.

Captain America, Goliath, and Rick Jones go to help the Inhumans while Iron Man, Thor and Vision head back into space.

Now let’s see what amnesiac Black Bolt has been up to all this time.

 

These punks wanted Black Bolt to help them go on a crime spree for some reason, and they’ve taken Black Bolt’s young friend Joey as hostage to try to convince him.  Beyond that, I’m afraid I have no idea.  Why do they think Black Bolt will be useful?  Who the heck is Joey?  This sounds like it was continued from another issue, but since there’s no citations anywhere, I’m afraid I can’t look up anything.  Sorry, folks.

Oh, and Black Bolt has his memory back now for some reason.  Again, if anybody could shed some light on this, I’d be grateful.

Captain America jumps in to save Joey, and Black Bolt then begs him and the other Avengers to accompany him to the Inhumans’ hidden city—Attilan, the Great Refuge—to help him with something important.  (And by begs, I mean with sign language, since BB’s voice creates destructive vibrations.)  The Avengers, plus Rick and Joey (how many teenage tagalongs do we need here?), immediately fly off while Black Bolt reminisces (to himself) about his and Maximus’s childhood.

They were your average, mischievous young princes until the day Black Bolt caught Maximus scheming with a member of the Kree.

 

The Kree tries to escape, but Black Bolt uses his powers to send his ship hurtling earthward, accidentally killing his and Maxi’s parents.  Needless to say, this put a damper on their brotherly relationship.

Back with the other Avengers, Vision has a change of heart and decides it’s their duty to help the Inhumans.  Thor complies and uses his hammer to transport himself, Vision and Iron Man to the outskirts of Attilan.

 

Did you not think to look for a doorbell?  Why did you skip straight to shooting at the people you want to help?

Fortunately, that’s when the others arrive, and Black Bolt whispers at the city’s protective dome until it shatters.  Inside, Maxi’s hypnotized soldiers are waiting to attack, but Black Bolt whispers some more, telling them he’s their rightful king… and somehow this doesn’t destroy them?  Exactly how much control does he have over his vocal cords of death?  I always got the impression he couldn’t talk at all without wrecking a city block.

In any event, the soldiers come back to their senses and tell our heroes that Maximus is conferring with the Kree in the palace.  The Avengers storm the place, and of course it takes three panels for Rick to get himself kidnapped.  Also, Maximus conveniently loses what’s left of his marbles, providing us with an anticlimactic conclusion to an anticlimactic side plot and leaving the Avengers free to turn their attention to the Kree-Skrull War and their missing teammates—all of which we’ll see next issue.

And Joey was never seen or heard from again, I guess.

The inclusion of the Inhumans in this storyline felt a little pointless, to be honest.  I know about their connection with the Kree, but why are they here now?  They have nothing to do with the war going on in the Kree Galaxy, and Issue Ninety-Five in particular accomplishes nothing except allowing Rick Jones to be kidnapped, but did we really need an entire issue to do that?  Did we have to introduce Joey and Maximus the Mad and Black Bolt’s amnesia?  How did that contribute?

To read Avengerous Tales 2.13, go here!

Images from Avengers #94, Avengers Annual #5 and Avengers #95