Avengers 2.33 - Avengers #133-#134

To read Avengerous Tales 2.32, go here!

 

Okay guys, chill out already.  The Secret of the Hooded One really isn't all that exciting.

So if you were wondering what the Scarlet Witch got up to during all of this, she was once again locked in Agatha Harkness’ room at Avengers Mansion, trying to expand her hex powers.  It seems to be going pretty well, especially if she plans on moving house anytime soon.

 

WALK LIKE A MAN
FAST AS I CAN
WALK LIKE A MAN FROM YOU-OU-OU-OU

And you don’t even have to pay him in pizza and beer!

Miss Harkness congratulates Wanda on her success and, oh by the way, the Avengers aren’t on Earth anymore did I forget to mention that lol

Back in limbo, I’m pretty sure there was a miscommunication between the writer of the previous issue (Roy Thomas) and the writer of the current issue (Steve Englehart).  If you remember from last time, Immortus did not return the Human Torch to his own timeline, letting him stay to find out how his body became the Vision’s.  Here, however, the Human Torch is nowhere to be seen and isn’t given so much as a name drop.  Whoopsie-doodle.

 

Immortus decides to reward the team for the inconvenience he just put them through by sending Vision and Mantis (separately) back in time so they can finally learn the truths of their respective origins.  The Vision is sent off in one direction while Mantis and the rest go off in another.  First stop for our synthezoid-in-residence: November 1939.

 

“Hear that, Einstein?  Kiss my [CENSORED BY COMICS CODE AUTHORITY]!”

In case you couldn’t guess, Horton is a self-absorbed prick, and when the rest of the world tells him to destroy his synthetic man because it lights itself on fire at the slightest contact with oxygen, he refuses.  Instead, he sticks it in an airtight tube and buries it in concrete in the hopes that someday he’ll figure out a way to tone down the flaming bit and make a fortune off him.

The tube, however, isn’t as airtight as he thought, and air slowly leaks in until the Human Torch (as he will later be known, of course), explodes his way free.  His fire-covered body wreaks havoc in Generic City, and to save the populace, he douses himself in the nearest swimming pool.  Said pool just happens to belong to a gangster, who traps the Human Torch in the pool beneath the winter glass cover.  The suppressed memories of this event explain the fact that the Vision kept freezing up both around swimming pools and in tight, claustrophobic spaces.

That about wraps it up for the Vision for now.  We move onto a quick interlude in Saigon, where the Swordsman’s spirit converses with the mysterious cloaked man who’s been popping in and out for the past few issues.  He now reveals himself to be Libra, Mantis’s dad... who was taken into custody in Avengers #125 and only escaped in Giant-Size Avengers #3... and the cloaked man’s first appearance was Avengers #130... when Libra was still in jail... I’m assuming there’s an explanation for this, but it ain’t here.

Back with the Avengers (minus Vision), who are currently taking a grand tour of life, the universe and everything.  Specifically, Immortus’s magic tour guide stick has taken them to the very first year of recorded Kree history.

 

*spit take*

So this planet, Hala, is currently occupied by not just the warlike, carnivorous Kree but also a race of telepathic plant people called the Cotati.  The Kree and the Cotati don’t really like each other, but they are content to ignore each other until, one day, a Skrull spaceship arrives with a giant exposition dump about how awesome Skrulls are... and an interesting proposition.

The Skrulls want to take advantage of Hala’s resources and are will to pay the inhabitants in technology.  However, since two races live on Hala, they must first have a competition to see which is the dominant species and therefore which deserves to make the decision about the Skrulls’ offer.  The competition involves taking seventeen members from each race and dumping them on a barren moon for a year.  Once that year is over, whichever species has accomplished the most will be declared the winner.  I assume the whole thing aired as a reality show in Skrullian TV.

So the Cotati get left on one moon and the Kree get left on Earth’s moon of all places.  Each race works their tails off for the designated year.  The results?

 

As impressive as it is that seventeen Kree built an entire city in just one year (or is a Kree year longer than an Earth year?), the Skrulls are much more taken with the forest the Cotati have cultivated.  Obviously, the Kree are Not Amused and go on a genocidal rampage, murdering every single Cotati they can find.

The next day, when the Skrulls find out about the rampage, they are even more Not Amused and declare that they will have no more dealings with Hala ever.  The Kree, having learned about Skrull tech from their year on Earth’s moon, now attack the Skrulls, killing them too.

 

This is a fair point.

Not content with the bloodshed they’ve already indulged in, the Kree learn how to operate the dead Skrulls’ spaceship and use it to go out and find more Skrulls to murder, thus beginning the eternal Kree-Skrull War that we’ve already seen bits and pieces of.

By now, you might be wondering what the heck this has to do with Mantis’s origins.  Mantis is wondering the same thing.  To you both, the magical mystery tour stick says to shut up and keep listening.

The next issue picks up in the Kree year 476.  As you may recall, not all the Kree are as power-hunger as their fellows, and the pacifist Kree were driven to the city’s fringes, where they taught themselves defensive martial arts and mental abilities.  One day, decades later, they hear a telepathic voice telling them to go into an abandoned building...

 

Yes, but can they dance to the Jackson 5?

Being plants and all, the murdered Cotati possessed seed pods which fell into the ground when they were killed.  After many years, a new generation of Cotati arose, but they have been concentrating so much on developing their mental abilities that they can no longer get up and walk around like their ancestors.  They therefore need the pacifist Kree to take care of them, and in return, they will help these Kree develop their own mental abilities.

But we’ve spent enough time in outer space for now.  Let’s head back to Earth and see what the Vision’s up to.  His own stick has taken him to 1949, when the Human Torch was supposedly killed in battle.

 

The Human Torch is revived by the power of radiation which, unlike what usually happens in comic books, soon causes health problems for our second-favorite android.  A mere two years after his return, he realizes he is losing control of his flame, so he returns to the desert to go supernova without hurting anybody except some cacti, which had probably been horribly mutated by the atomic blast anyway.

Back on Hala, another century has gone by.  The pacifists have built up a temple around the Cotati.  The rest of the Kree don’t know about the Cotati, but they don’t need an excuse to harass those dang sissy pacifists and invade the temple.

Fighting ensues, and ultimately, as you already know, the priests are expelled from Hala.  At first I thought they had to leave the Cotati behind, but later events show them all together, so I guess they were allowed to bring their “trees” along and the other Kree just didn’t realize the trees were sentient?  Either way, the pacifists are still not happy about being exiled to a lifeless planet.

 

Wow, what a clever dig.  Can’t you just imagine some generic bully from a 90s kids movie saying that?  So. Clever.

But the Cotati aren’t about to let their buddies rot on some empty hellscape.  Through the power of telepathy they encourage the Star-Stalker—you all remember Tiny Smaug from Avengers #124, dontcha true believer?—to attack the priests, forcibly providing them with a new mission in life.  That’s some tough love right there.

Back at the old homestead, a.k.a. Avengers Mansion, the Titan known as Moondragon has shown up in response to the Avengers’ radio signal meant for Captain Marvel, who is too busy to answer himself.  I absolutely loathe Moondragon for reasons we’ll get to in future issues, but for now, she decides to head out to Vietnam to find the team.  She invites the Scarlet Witch to come along, but...

 

Even Moondragon knows this is out of character for our good mutant, but when she tries to use her telepathy to find out what’s going on, Scarlet Witch kicks her butt and goes back upstairs with the increasingly creepy Agatha Harkness.

The Vision, meanwhile, is in 1966, when our old buddy the Mad Thinker finds the Human Torch’s body and brings him back to life as his slave.  Poor Torchie eventually dies AGAIN (and yet Jean Grey is the one with the reputation) after a battle with Johnny Storm (don’t worry, Johnny didn’t kill him).  The Fantastic Four mourn his loss... to an extent.

 

Tonight, on Episode 850 of Reed Richards Being An Insensitive Asshole...

So the FF just freaking leave his corpse there, which of course leaves the door wide open for Ultron-5 to come steal it later.

Back with the Kree pacifists, we already know part of that story: they get the Intelligence Supreme’s permission to go off and protect other worlds from the threat of the Star-Stalker.  They each bring a few Cotati with them, so now both Cotati and pacifists are forever free from the oppression of the Kree.  The pair of pacifists who come to protect Earth—named Terress and Son-Dar—decide to settle in what will eventually become Vietnam.  They plant their Cotati friends in a very nice garden.  Say... didn’t the Avengers bury the Swordsman in the priests’ old garden?

Before they can get any farther, the Avengers are mysteriously zapped back to 1975, specifically, the crucial garden itself, where the ghost of the Swordsman and Libra are waiting for them.  What happens next?  You’ll just have to wait and see.

I notice that, despite claiming they would tell us two issues ago, “Mantis’s” origin story seems to have more to do with the Priests of Pama and partially explaining how the Swordsman’s ghost is still floating around than it does with her.  Honestly, I’m really ready to move on from all this and start on a new plotline already.  I think we’ve focused on Vietnam and Mantis for long enough, don’t you?

To read Avengerous Tales 2.34, go here!

Images from Avengers #133 and Avengers #134