Avengerous Tales 2.29 - Avengers #127-#128

To read Avengerous Tales 2.28, go here!

Between the last issue and this one, Captain America made good on his vow to give up that particular secret identity, so we won’t be seeing him in The Avengers for a while.  You can check out Captain America #176 if you want the details (and/or Cap’s origin story), but the rest of us have tuxes to rent and flowers to sneeze over—there’s a wedding in the offing!

 

(Today’s issues feature art by Sal Buscema and Joe Staton.)

The Avengers are just sitting down to a nice dinner (how does Iron Man expect to eat, exactly?  Through his nose?) when Gorgon and Lockjaw, two of the Inhumans, materialize at the dinner table. 

It’s been a while since we’ve seen the Inhumans, mainly because Scarlet Witch’s brother Quicksilver vowed to never speak to her again so long as she was dating the Vision.  Gorgon is here now to make sure everyone’s ready to go to the wedding of Quicksilver and the Inhuman Crystal… which of course, none of them knew about, because Pietro didn’t invite them.

 

AND he lied to his future in-laws about who he’d be inviting.  What a nice guy!

Despite her shock and unhappiness at discovering the depths of her sibling’s douchebaggery, Wanda announces that they’ll go to the wedding anyway.

After a brief scene in which Black Bolt’s brother, Maximus the Mad, is attacked by an unknown assailant, we see the Avengers arrive in the Inhumans’ Great Refuge.  There they are greeted by the Inhumans royal family and, surprisingly, the Fantastic Four.  I guess the Human Torch got over losing Crystal to Pietro enough to score an invite.

 

Not half as sinister as the Vision’s discolored face.  Yikes.

Anyway, the statue isn’t really a statue: it’s one of Maximus’s inventions called Omega.  Omega harnessed the Inhumans’ guilt over their long-term enslavement of another race of mutants called Alpha Primitives, and led the Alphas in a rebellion against the Inhumans.  The Inhumans defeated it by overcoming their prejudices and instituting reforms, and now everything’s hunky-dory… mostly.  Unbeknownst to our heroes, a few renegade Alphas still lurk in the shadows, led by the person who downed Maximus scant pages ago…

At dinner (which Pietro does not attend because, again, nice guy), Iron Man and the Inhuman Medusa are mind-controlled into attacking some Alphas.  They pass out soon enough, but one of the Alphas, RN-62, accuses Black Bolt of wanting all Alphas dead in spite of his reforms.

While Black Bolt holds a meeting with the other heroes to figure out what to do, Wanda finally meets with her jerkweed of a brother.  It goes super well.

 

Pietro’s problem seems to boil down to this: one, he’s prejudiced against synthezoids.  Two, in the Balkan country where they grew up (Transia), sisters always listened to their brothers without question.  So not only is Pietro a bigot, he’s also a controlling misogynist.  Good to know.  Also I feel really sorry for Crystal now.  If this is Pietro’s attitude towards a woman’s right to use her own brain and think for herself, I can’t imagine their marriage is going to be a very harmonious one.

While Pietro and Wanda “talk,” Crystal is kidnapped by Omega, who is definitely not a statue anymore.  The Swordsman and Mantis witness her kidnapping and rush to tell everyone else—“everyone else,” as you’ll recall, being dozens upon dozens of folks with superpowers willing to fight for Crystal’s safe return.  First step: the Avengers (and Quicksilver) go to question the Alpha Primitives, and everyone else goes to see Maximus the Mad, who they feel sure is behind all this.  They quickly discover that Maximus has been on enforced naptime since the start.

Meanwhile, with the Avengers, RN-62 says that all the Alphas feel the way he does: that the Inhumans continue to oppress them.  Quicksilver gets upset and attacks, only for Mantis to take him down… a little too hard.

 

Mantis passes out just as the Alphas attack and then all heck breaks loose.  One by one our heroes succumb to the strange unconsciousness that grips Medusa, Iron Man and Mantis, and with the renewed hatred of the Alpha Primitives comes a strengthened Omega.  His very presence seems to cause the remaining heroes to freeze in place, able only to watch as Omega pulls away his disguise…

 
He’s baaaaack…

…But if you want to see the culmination of his evil scheme, ya gotta go read Fantastic Four #150.  Here’s a synopsis for you: after his defeat in Avengers #68, Ultron’s head was retrieved and revived by Maximus the Mad, who stuck it on Omega’s body in the hopes that Ultron’s power would help him conquer the Inhumans.  Ultron obviously didn’t like that.  Now, he revives/un-paralyzes the heroes so he can have the pleasure of destroying them, but he didn’t realize that Reed and Sue Richards’ son Franklin had latent mental powers that far outstrip his own.  Said powers now reveal themselves to fry Ultron’s circuits.  The issue ends with Quicksilver and Crystal finally getting married in a quiet, uneventful ceremony.

I’m not sure if I was able to review Issue 127 in a cohesive manner, since it moved very quickly and they really threw a lot of stuff at us.  The build-up was exciting, but the pay-off didn’t do it for me.  Maybe it’d be better if I was following Fantastic Four and had been worried about Franklin’s health all that time, but since I didn’t, it came off as kind of anticlimactic and deus ex machina-ish.  It’s like the comic got bored of itself and wanted to skip ahead to the wedding already.

The next issue begins with the first appearance of the famous Avengers introductory text, which later got reused in the theme song to the second season of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.  You know the one.  Say it with me!

 

ASSEMBLED WE ARE STRONG
FOREVER FIGHT AS ONE

So the Avengers and the Fantastic Four return to New York after the wedding, only to be immediately attacked by a lightning storm.  Thor, being the god of thunder after all, tries to stop the strange storm with no success.  Ultimately it is Agatha Harkness, the Richards’ nanny and magician extraordinaire, who puts an end to it, much to the Avengers’ surprise.

Miss Harkness then lays three bombshells on our heroes in quick succession.  One, the lightning storm was a mystical attack against herself, not the heroes.  Two, now that Franklin Richards is okay, she won’t be his nanny any longer.  And three, she’s got a new job lined up for herself: training the Scarlet Witch!

“I know of a desire in you,” Harkness says to a flabbergasted Wanda, “a desire to be more than you have been—”

 

Uh, did Poor Unfortunate Souls just pop into anyone else’s head, or is that just me?

The Scarlet Witch accepts Harkness’s offer, unaware that the cause of the magic lightning storm, a menacing red-eyed figure in a cloak, lurks in the street below, swearing that he will possess the souls of both Agatha Harkness and Wanda Maximoff before the night is through.

So the Fantastic Four, minus Harkness, head for home.  While the Scarlet Witch shows Harkness—and her cat Ebony, who appears right the heck out of nowhere—to the guest room, the Vision asks if he might have a chat with his girlfriend.  Harkness rebuffs him, saying it is absolutely vital that Wanda remain with her until sunrise, and a confused Wanda agrees to stay.

The minute a dejected Vision leaves, Agatha Harkness casts a spell over the room so that, no matter what happens inside it, the Avengers won’t see or hear a thing.  Wanda is justifiably freaked out by now, but things are just getting started: the creepy man from earlier, named Necrodamus, magics himself into the enchanted room and demands Harkness’s soul so that he can be pretty again.

 

How can she avoid the conflict when you’re the genius who locked her in there???

Necrodamus shapeshifts into a giant half-naked muscular guy, so Harkness transforms her cat into a panther to fight him on their behalf.  Ah, so that’s why she enchanted the room: so the Avengers wouldn’t call the ASPCA on her.

Necrodamus easily defeats Ebony and then Agatha Harkness, leaving Wanda to defend them all.

Out in the rest of Avengers Mansion, a very different kind of conflict is brewing…

 

Damn that’s cold.

While the poor Swordsman vents his heartbreak to Thor and Iron Man, Mantis goes to see the Vision, and they bond over their shared experience of being a pawn in someone else’s game with no will or voice of their own.  Of course, the Vision is just trying to be helpful while Mantis is clearly angling for a pathway into his heart.

Meanwhile the Scarlet Witch throws everything she’s got at Necrodamus but is still overcome.  Necrodamus prepares to suck out her soul when Ebony, uh, does this.

 

Somehow being the subject of a Judgmental Cat Stare gives Wanda the strength to cast one last hex, and this one cracks open the box Necrodamus was going to stash her soul in.  All the other souls in the box come screaming out into the open.  They carry Necrodamus away, but Ebony holds Wanda in place until they disappear.  As for Agatha Harkness, she’s totally fine.  In fact, she planned this whole encounter to prove to Wanda that she has untapped reserves of magic within her.  Again, I know Harkness is a good guy, but I get the feeling that’s only because she hasn’t gotten anyone killed yet.

Back outside the room, Mantis tries to convince Vision that they’d be really cute together.  The Vision tells her no, and we don’t get a chance to see her response before a blinding light appears outside.  The Avengers all rush out to find a star now shines above Avengers Mansion and that it has already attracted an unsavory pilgrim: Kang the Conqueror, who believes the star is a sign that Earth is ripe for the taking.

I smell another plotline coming on!  But maybe this time, can we refrain from stomping all over the Swordsman?  HE’S TRYING SO HARD AND IT’S MAKING ME SAD.

To read Avengerous Tales 2.30, go here!

Images from Avengers #127 and Avengers #128