#essential marvel liveblogging

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #294: "If Wishes Were Horses...”

August, 1988

WHO leads the Avengers?!

-vibrates in anger-

You suck, Anthony Druid.

Let’s get into this.

Last times in Avengers: Despite having shown herself to be competent previously, leader of the Avengers Monica Rambeau Captain Marvel actually sucks and you’re a fool if you think otherwise. She spends all of her time thinking to herself about how incompetent she is and she never accomplishes anything without someone telling her to do it.

Grumble.

Also, Namor’s wife and former member of Alpha Flight Marrina turned into a giant sea monster for some reason. How mysterious. Dr Druid wanted them to murder her immediately if not sooner due to the damage giant sea monster Marrina was doing to shipping and coastal settlements. The other Avengers wanted to at least try to cure her, which Dr Druid saw as a foolish sentiment.

So after Druid mind manipulated into attacking Atlantis to get Namor on board, the Avengers tried a cure Hank Pym whipped up.

It worked for a hot minute before Marrina started turning into a monster again.

Thor and Captain Marvel shocked the transforming Marrina with electricity to try to stop her from transforming. But when it didn’t work, Namor took Black Knight’s extremely cursed sword the Ebony Blade and killed Marrina. With disastrous, to be revealed consequences for Black Knight because the extremely cursed sword had a blood curse on it and whoops slicing Marrina’s head open got blood on the blade.

Only after the fact does Dr Druid notice that Monica disappeared after she tried to shock Marrina.

Where could she beeeeee?

And what will happen to Black Knight?

This will happen.

So, at the end of last issue, he passed out on his Atomic Steed flying device. So when they brought him into the Quinjet, why did they put him near the controls? Don’t they have a medical bed or something in the back?

Anyway, Black Knight is freaking out and thrashing so hard that even Thor and She-Hulk - who can probably throw buildings - are having trouble holding him down.

Cough cough bullshit cough.

He calls out for this sword so Thor being Thor decides nothing wrong with giving a man a sharp object when he’s having a fit.

AND THOR IS RIGHT.

How dare you doubt Thor!

Dane immediately calms down once he has the blade in his hand. So he’s able to explain to the Avengers (who at least knew that the Ebony Blade was extremely cursed) that despite not being the one who did the deed, the curse is upon him as the owner of the sword.

And the first part of the curse is that he feels like his blood is on fire if he’s not holding the extremely cursed sword.

So, that’s going to be a little awkward. Carrying it around everywhere. At least he’s shown in the past that he can magically summon the sword to his hand. Buuut I’m pretty sure the pain of not holding it is so severe that he can’t focus to do that. He couldn’t even focus to pull it from its scabbard at his waist.

Yeah, this is going to suck. You should just go ahead and get one of those locking gauntlets or tie your hand to the hilt. Otherwise, you’re just asking for it to get knocked from your hand to incapacitate you during fights.

Now that he’s not writhing in pain, Black Knight remembers that Monica is missing.

She-Hulk proclaims that Monica has got to be alive! And they really have no reason to jump to the assumption that she’s dead.

Dr Druid, proving himself the worst, thinks to himself: “And good riddance, if she’s not [alive], She-Hulk. Captain Marvel was too soft to have been an effective leader of the Avengers. And her departure from the active ranks couldn’t have been more timely for me.”

I hate you, you fuckboy.

Anyway, Druid proclaims he’s laying in a course so She-Hulk interrupts to insist that they not leave until they find Monica.

Dr Druid: “Please, Jennifer. Don’t let your emotions run away with you. I was about to say I’ve already laid in search pattern coordinates... and calibrated our instruments for a total electromagnetic spectrum and radiation scan. If there’s... anything left of her to find, we’ll find it.”

This reminds me when that future Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, was on the Avengers as Ms Marvel. When a writer change brought with it disdain for Carol’s feminist roots. So she started taking things people said the wrong way and blowing up at them when really they hadn’t meant it that way at all.

But since Dr Druid is secretly hoping Monica is dead and because he changes his wording from laying out a course to laying out a search pattern, he’s probably just gaslighting She-Hulk.

The Avengers search the Atlantic for hours for a sign of Monica but can’t find anything. With the Quinjet quinfuel running low, She-Hulk finally agrees they’ve done all they could.

Can’t believe Monica is gone forever. And yet Dr Druid is still here for some reason.

Boo.

Back at Hydrobase, She-Hulk and Thor discuss Monica’s disappearance. She-Hulk argues that energy can’t be destroyed so Monica has to be somewhere, right? And Thor don’t know. She just vanished after the big electricity attack.

Meanwhile, Dr Druid excuses himself because, remember, he doesn’t give a fuck and hopes Monica is dead.

Plus, it’s Sex Dream O’Clock.

Dr Druid sits down in an uncomfortable looking chair and immediately feels like someone is calling out to him.

Nebula Kang appears saying she’s the one calling him “for danger threatens at every hand and you are needed.”

Dr Druid goes hey wait you look different from the other sex dream and Nebula realizes, shit, she forgot to turn on the generic blonde filter.

So she does and Dr Druid doesn’t ask follow up questions.

Possibly because Not-Godzilla is attacking.

I should contextualize.

That’s actually Destructikon. He’s come to destroy this ancient sex dream civilization.

And only Super Druid can stop him.

Because this crisis has brought out his Real True Power and given him a slightly better costume.

Super Doctor Druid: “Mine is almost the power of a god! And why not? Is Dr Druid not a man gifted above other men? Older? Wiser? Stronger of spirit? Is it any wonder that ultimate power must be mine?”

Destructikon doesn’t go down in just one punch. And starts smashing up the city.

Super Dr Druid angrily shouts that Destructikon is threatening his people and smashes the beast in the chin.

Sex dream Nebula Kang tells Dr Druid to wrap this up already.

Pfft.

Like, okay. Jumping ahead a little, this whole thing is playing to Dr Druid’s ego. It’s working like a charm. Just scroll up a little and see his speech about how he’s the best dude of all dudes and deserves to be the best.

Consider how as a newbie to the Avengers, he was already thinking “if I ran the zoo!”

Dr Druid is soooo vulnerable to flattery and Nebula Kang is playing him like a fiddle with this savior of the world scenario.

And no surprise that she feeds him a scenario where its good and right to kill a giant monster menacing a world considering he’s just been through the Leviathan Marrina stuff. It doesn’t just play to his ego in a general sense, it’s affirming how he acted recently.

But even she can only take so much before going ‘lets move this along.’

So Druid punches Destructikon’s teeth in and then uses the eye beams that he totally has to explode the beast like a parade float.

Super Doctor Druid: “It is over! Virtue has triumphed over evil. Let those who would enslave humanity in bondage tremble. For the vigilance of Dr Druid is unrelenting... and he shall crush the serpent beneath his heel!”

And after the victory parade, Blonde Nebula Kang waggles her ass at him for him to finally get to the sex part of these ominous power fantasy sex dreams.

I hate this storyline but I do love this extended sequence of Dr Druid turning into Superman and fighting Godzilla. Its so dumb that its great. And the sucker fully buys into the fantasy.

Blonde Nebula Kang tells Dr Druid that he’s now king of whatever place this is because he’s won the right to rule by trial of combat. And suggests not just this world, you’re going to save Earth too and be the big sexy ruler of that planet too.

Once again, he eagerly buys into this.

Dr Druid: “Finally I understand. This is the realm of precognition and I have been granted foreknowledge denied lesser men. You’re right. It is time for Dr Druid to step forward.”

He’s so dumb.

Later, at Hydrobase, She-Hulk bemoans what has happened to the team.

Marrina is dead. Namor is off somewhere chasing monster babies. Captain Marvel is missing. And Black Knight is super cursed.

With bad fashion.

Also with curses.

Holding the Ebony Blade stops Dane from feeling all the cursed agony but his body is slowly paralyzing.

To work around this, he’s built an exoskeleton he can wear over his armor.

It looks bad.

The light purple of whatever its made of messes up his color palette and hides his tunic or whatever with his crest. It looks baaaaaaaaad.

Why not build an exoskeleton that can fit under his armor so he doesn’t look so bad?

His armor is fused to his body and can’t be taken off.

Truly, this is a lot of curse.

Also, the curse gives him a bad attitude.

When She-Hulk suggests calling reserve members since they’re down to four people, Black Knight explodes in a torrent of insults at everyone who isn’t him.

Black Knight: “The Waspis no brain surgeon, Hercules was an airhead, Mantis became a cosmic valley girl, the Black Widow was always a waste... Starfox a mincing fop, and the rest of them weren’t worth a tinker’s dam! Not a decent warrior among the lot! Would Good King Richard have countenanced such wastrels in his legions? Aargh!”

How dare you speak ill of the Wasp!

Go to your room and think about what you’ve done!

(Oh, and he’s back to thinking he’s from Crusade times. Except now its explicitly something happening because the curse is fucking his brain, and not because Simonson didn’t get the character.)

The curse also apparently gives Black Knight A SIXTH SENSE OOOOooooOoooOOO spooky. Because he senses an intruder in the building when none of the security systems do.

This curse sure does a lot.

But Black Knight is insistent that there’s an intruder so the Avengers decide to form a search party and go room by room.

(Also, Jarvis is here. He delivers the exposition about Black Knight being fused to his armor. He doesn’t do a lot else so I wanted to just say Hi Jarvis! I appreciate you!)

It doesn’t take long before the Avengers find the “intruder” that Black Knight sensed.

A plume of energy erupts from the floor and forms into the shape of... Captain Marvel!

Hi Monica! I appreciate you!

But she’s not looking food. She looks emaciated and is at death’s door from exhaustion.

What could have happened to her??

Bad writing? Web MD says these are the symptoms of bad writing!

The Avengers call the hospital and Thor personally flies her there. Very alarmed that she feels lighter than a feather in his arms.

But have you considered Thor that your arms are massive? You’re really strong. Maybe that’s why she feels so light?

But now we look into the Kang subplot.

Nebula Kang is preparing to ditch.

She changes out of her Kang armor and into a casual outfit. Casual but just loaded with cleverly hidden technology. Perfect for the modern terrible lady on the go.

Nebula Kang: “Farewell, Kangs great and small. You may all be masters of temporality, able to travel at will through and across time without limit... But your collective times are running out! When next we meet... it shall be without compassion, without compromise, without facemasks!”

Her only regret is that she didn’t find the time to give Fred Kang a fuck but doesn’t think he has any information or technology that would be helpful to her.

Then she disguises herself as Blonde Sex Dream Lady again and gets in the warp hatch.

Where she selects the Far Out option.

... That seems way too whimsical to be Kang technology. They all hate whimsy.

But as she warps, Fred Kang (Kang-123488.23497) is spying on her. He didn’t trust the way she flirted with him so he watched her change clothes and go to use the warp hatch.

He’s very confused that she’s going to Earth and specifically the Earth of his own time stream. (Fred Kang is from the current Avengers time stream? Huh. But she specifically goes to the current day and to Hydrobase.

But while Fred Kang has been spying on Nebula Kang, Beard Kang and Yellow Mask Kang have been spying on him.

TOO MANY KANGS!

Beard Kang is apparently called Lord Kang and Yellow Mask Kang is apparently called Kang Cobra but we’ll see if I use those names instead of Beard Kang and Yellow Mask Kang.

Beard Kang has a beard and its coming out of his mask somehow. Why wouldn’t I call him Beard Kang?

Anyway, Beard Kang and Yellow Mask Kang have been spying on Fred Kang, as the newest Kang in their Kangllective. I can’t believe they went with the name Council of Cross-Time Kangs when Kangllective was right there. They could do Kangllective Action.

Anyway again. Fred Kang seemed like any other Kang, except for taking a shorter time to adjust than usual. But when Yellow Mask Kang was spying on him, he became unable to pinpoint Fred Kang’s actual physical location because Fred Kang is “jumping randomly back and forth through nanoseconds of time.”

Y’know, as ya do.

But the result is, Yellow Mask Kang isn’t able to figure out what Fred Kang is up to.

Beard Kang decides that its time to have a talk with their new pal Fred Kang.

Meanwhile, AT THE ACTUAL PLOT,She-Hulk and Grumpy Black Knight have gone to pick up Monica’s parents to take them to the hospital.

Did Monica ever mention that her parents were in on the secret? Because this would be really presumptive if she didn’t.

She-Hulk gives the explanation for what happened with Monica, giving the poor woman one last kick while she’s down.

As I said last East Coast Avengers post, when Captain Monica tried to electrocute Leviathan Marrina the same way Thor did, Monica fucked up because god forbid she do anything right ever. She somehow managed to electrify the entire Atlantic Ocean, vaporized trillions of tons of water which will surely do something to the climate, and dissipating her energy so that when she managed to reform she was all emaciated.

IN FAIRNESS, this is following up on an established downside of Monica’s powers. If she overuses them, she loses some of her own mass. This happened when she overexerted herself to knock down the shields of the Sanctuary II.

In unfairness, she did that to help take out an enemy that was willing to and capable of blowing up planets. This recent happening happens because by editorial mandate, she’s a dipshit who can’t even tie her shoes, one imagines.

Sigh.

Thor greets the Rambeaus before they see Monica and tries to set expectations for what kind of shape she’s in.

Because she looks like she’s terminally ill.

Maria declares Monica should come home with them so they can nurse her back to health. With home cooking.

Monica admits that she’s not capable of Avengersing right now so that’s probably a good idea.

Leading Dr Druid to smoothly butt into this family conversation to insist that a new chairman be selected right now. I mean, they’re all already here, right?

Then he kicks the Rambeaus out of the room so the Avengers can talk shop.

She-Hulk: “For crying out loud, doc.”

For real.

As soon as the concerned parents have been booted from the room, Dr Druid nominates himself.

Why shouldn’t the newest person on the team not lead?

Okay, I’m being very critical. Monica was newish to the team but not the newest. This is not like that.

But as Dr Druid argues:

“The Black Knight is partially incapacitated, Thor has other concerns than just the Avengers... and the SHe-Hulk, with all due respect, fails to project the proper image of leadership while wearing purple leotards.”

... GET HIS ASS JEN.

Fucker in his feetie pajamas thinks he can throw stones about someone’s costume!

I CANNOT believe.

Black Knight chimes in to say that he admires the image She-Hulk projects.

So some people in this room have taste.

Thor privately wonders if any of the people on the team can handle the responsibility of leadership.

And Dr Druid starts panicking when Thor asks Monica her opinion.

Generic Blonde Nebula Kang pops into his thoughts to tell him not to let his dreams be dreams so Dr Druid decides to be like every other Marvel psychic. An invasive asshole.

He uses his powers to force Monica to say that Dr Druid would be a wise choice. When a skeptical She-Hulk asks Thor what he thinks, Dr Druid uses his powers again.

I can’t tell if Druid fails or succeeds in this attempt. Thor somewhat suspects that his thoughts are being manipulated and shouts NO! unprompted. And then says that as the most experienced person still on the team, he’d make the best choice. But: he’ll agree with the majority decision.

Democracy! It’s good! When the votes aren’t manipulated!

Dr Druid makes She-Hulk says that he’s the best man for the job. Black Knight seems about to go into one of his Crusades adjacent rants about Dr Druid but a little bit of the ol’ psychic razzle dazzle and Black Knight is instead saying Dr Druid is the best candidate for chairman and in fact, Richard the Lionheart would think he was really cool.

So that’s four votes for Dr Druid and one for Thor.

Thor is suspicious about the way things played out but doesn’t seem willing to call it out.

(I will say that having Druid’s thought bubble merged with the speech balloons is a good way to show psychic manipulation.)

New Chairman of the Avengers Dr Druid arranges for the Rambeaus to be sent back to Atlanta. By public plane, not by Quinjet. Pssh, sure Monica was the former chairwoman but she doesn’t require the Avengers’ personal attention any more!

Dr Druid: “But the Avengers must prepare themselves for battle! The cosmos reverberates with the approach of unseen foes. Our enemies are gathering and the time is coming when we must face them together as a team. All of us! For the Avengers have a new leader. And the future is going to be much different than anyone expects!”

I wish him a very stub his toe.

Follow @essential-avengers​ and you too can wish bad occurrences on Dr Druid. Like and reblog and maybe comment. I’m lonely down here in the italics.

#avengers #essential avengers #Dr Druid #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #Black Knight #She Hulk #Thor #team is in bad shape #Edwin Jarvis #the Rambeaus #Kang the Conqueror #Fred Kang #Nebula Kang #Council of Cross Time Kangs #essential marvel liveblogging

[pageliveblogscomics]

Hey, I’m going to liveblog reading a crap ton of marvel comics.

What I’m reading: The Complete Marvel Reading Order, specifically Main 616, although I might deviate from that plan at some points.

What I know: I’ve already watched a lot of Marvel movies, and am something of a fan, and read a bunch of early comics as a kid, but haven’t revisited them much since. I had some of those “Essential ____” collections. The hulk one didn’t make any sense, I think a bunch of stuff had happened in the avengers comics, which I didn’t have, and without those events it was very frustrating to read. So I’ve read some of the early ones for sure, but it’s been a while.

#page liveblogs comics #meta

[oldsmobile-hotdogs]

Questions for crossover jatp ghosts crossover fic: I hope Julian and the sunset curve boys talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Yugoslav wars that happened when they were alive + Bill Cilnton. I wonder what pat and the band would talk about considering that they would of been kids when pat died? Do you think Julie would think of Les Mis and Hamilton cos Thomas and Kitty are from about the same time period as those musicals? I hope Julie calls Fanny Mary poppins.

Anon, or "Mimi", or "Lulu", or, heck, maybe even "Carl Birtles": Update: Not Carl Birtles. Carl Birtles sent me an ask and is cool, actually.

Stop. Right now. I'd say stop while you're ahead, but you are so far away from ahead at this point it's laughable.

For everyone confused, this is that "commenter from AO3" I joked about making a 2017-esque story time video about.

A couple days ago I uploaded the first chapter of a Julie and the Phantoms/BBC Ghosts crossover fic.

You know what? I’m gonna promo it here bc it’s my callout post and I can shill if I want to: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30681704/chapters/76661471

It was generally very well received and I've had a blast interacting with readers.

Except for this.

Honestly, there's so much to get into, so I’m putting it under a cut:

This was their first correspondence (email notif bc I deleted the comment, the deletion to be explained later):

(Funnily enough, the links very much do not work on AO3, making the comment only more jarring)

I gave you *so much* benefit of the doubt when I saw this comment, and assumed that maybe you're an ESL user, just very enthusiastic to share ideas, and I pretty much said so in my reply, but know that at that point I'd already had friends- who fucking know about this, don't you dare think you're getting me alone- tell me that you were being very demanding.

Below was my reply (another email notif):

I'm gonna be honest, I think I responded really well to what I was given, and now that I'd replied, I was pretty certain the situation was dealt with. You, evidently, didn't agree, as shown by your reply to my reply:

A word of advice: when replying to someone, at least pretend like you read what they wrote.

At this point I'm left wondering two things:

What do they expect from me, if a general reply is not it?

How much more shit do they have waiting to tell me to put in my- reminder, JATP/BBC Ghosts crossover, rated T, comedic- fic?

In order to avoid finding out either, I freeze the thread on AO3. I'm liveblogging all of this on Discord.

It's then that I notice that the username on AO3 isn't clickable, so even if I wanted to block or report them I couldn't. I assume, therefore, that they've deactivated, and since them seeing their comments gone and getting angry was the only thing stopping me deleting the comments, I delete the comments.

It's also at this point I see "Mimi" never left kudos. I guess I don't deserve praise until I mention "Bill Cilnton".

There's relative calm for a short amount of time, until I get another comment:

This one is much kinder than the others and doesn't mention any specific, weird, historical events, so the extent to which I think this is "Mimi" is debatable, but bestie I'm weirded out enough that anything that even uses the enter bar unnecessarily and misses out conjunctive words like "because" and "and" is going to activate fight or flight. Update: Carl Birtles is not Mimi or Lulu. Carl was just being genuinely kind and I misinterpreted it and that's on me.

However, "Carl"'s case is not helped by the fact I can't click his account either, that AO3 offers me the ability to report it as spam, and that guess who replies to "Carl"'s comment: Update: Carl, having done nothing wrong as he has, is therefore also a victim in the situation that is being replied to by Lulu. It would seem Lulu is trying to correct??? some of Carl's commentary.

You must think I didn't get a 7 on my English Literature GCSE because you seem to underestimate my ability to compare two texts.

So clearly this is "Mimi", who has also just replied to "Carl". "Lulu" is also deactivated, and I've fallen off the end of my tether, let alone reached it, at this point so I mark it as spam. "Carl" gets to stay bc he said the idea for the crossover was good. Update: Carl also gets to continue to stay because I have it on good faith that he's a stand-up dude.

So at this point you've readily admitted through your inability to shake up your writing style to using at least one sockpuppet to convince me to talk about the "Yugoslav wars".

If "Carl Birtles" is the real(-est) of them, and "Mimi" and "Lulu" are the sockpuppets, by the way, I have questions and ideas about what you do on your free evenings and I want them neither confirmed nor answered. Update: This is slanderous and I want to apologise wholeheartedly to Carl for making assumptions about him and judging his character. Once again, he is not Mimi or Lulu. He's just a normal, cool guy.

And now you come to me, on the day of my daughter's wedding on a different platform, leave me an anon ask in the exact same format as you're so fond of, and expect any different ??

Well, yeah, then I guess I'll give you special treatment this time.

Here's exactly why I will never include anything you have told me to include:

Julian and the Phantoms discussing the Berlin Wall would be highly inappropriate for the largely fluffy, cracky tone of my fanfiction, especially given how recently the event occurred, how many Eastern Germans still experience prejudice to this day because they were born within the old borders of the DDR, and because of how nuanced this, essentially proxy war, was and how ill-informed a huge amount of the world is on the actual factors in play during this time and the Cold War in general.

Julian and the Phantoms will not discuss Yugoslavia dissolving, nor the fallout and conflict that resulted, because it was genocidal. There is nowhere I can fit Julian, pantsted, casually asking Luke “hey do you remember when the Herzegovinas were killed en masse by the Serbs?” Not gonna happen.

They won’t discuss Bill Clinton because all of them know who the current world leaders are: they don’t have amnesia, they’re ghosts. The fic is also rated T, so it would be inappropriate to make any explicit reference to “sexual relations”. None of them play saxophone.

Julie wouldn’t think of Les Mis or Hamilton because Thomas is Regency, not French Revolution, and Kitty is Georgian, not Colonial.

Julie won’t be calling Fanny Mary Poppins because she is perpetually stuck in a white dress, doesn’t wear a hat, doesn’t own an umbrella or a purse and was not the nanny or housekeeper of Button House.

The ghosts will not discuss the marvels of modern transportation or how long it would’ve taken to cross the Atlantic on dinghy because the ghosts have seen Friends. The house irl is on a flight path. They know airplanes exist. Alison and Mike pulled up in a car.

I will probably have the phantoms and Willie talk to Pat and Julian about being from the ‘80s and ‘90s. That I will actually probably do.

The Captain will not mention FD Roosevelt because, again, they all know who the current world leaders are, and I doubt he expects a ‘90s pop punk band to have any insider knowledge on the man.

It was interesting to think of the phantoms’ grandparents having been alive during WW2. I wasn’t lying. But there is nearly nothing I can do with this information.

But above all: both sets of ghosts have already adapted to modern life. Because the shows are shorter, and meant to actually be able to fit jokes in them.

If you want to see any of this, write your own damn fic. I don’t own the concept of a JATP/BBC Ghosts crossover.

What you will not do, “consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel”-nim, is hound me on multiple accounts and then change platform to hound me again. I’m absolutely not having it.

I have never received an interaction quite like this before, and I cannot help but wonder if this is because this is my first work in the Ghosts/HH/Them There/Six Idiots/Yonderland/Bill fandom: that this is where you primarily camp out.

So it’s at this point I ask the Them There/Six Idiots fandom if they have/if they know anyone who has had a run-in with this person or thinks they may have, or if anyone perhaps even knows who this is? Maybe I’m just one of many. Maybe this is a necessary fandom evil I was unaware of.

This experience has left me royally freaked out, as one might imagine, especially since my anxiety in general has been acting up due to it being exam season. I want to thank everyone who’s read my rambles on Discord and on here and even listened to them irl and offered support from the bottom of my heart.

I’ve enabled comment moderation on the fic. I will continue to write it, and I will put exactly what I, and only what I, want in it.

Believe it or not, I wanted to do literally anything else today.

Anon: Fucking Leave Me Alone.

Update: Just reiterating: Carl is not Mimi or Lulu. Carl is a cool dude and I want to sincerely apologise for having brought him into this mess, passing judgment on his character, and making him feel like he should stop practicing English online.

#ask #anon #callout post #ig #rant #parish notice #jatp #julie and the phantoms #bbc ghosts #ghosts #fic #fanfic #ao3 #literally any information about this would be helpful #six idiots #them there #horrible histories #yonderland #bill

[zephyrthejester]

Three Years Blog Anniversary!

Well, would you look at that. In the blink of an eye, an entire year has gone by! It has now been a grand total of three years since I started up this liveblog, and ever since, it's been a whirlwind of an adventure that has introduced me to amazing shows, amazing games, and above all, amazing people! As has become tradition, it's time for us to gather 'round by the fire, bundle up in blankets, sip some hot cocoa, and reminisce about the shenanigans we got up to in the year 2019.

You know the drill! Click "Keep Reading" to see the rest! Let's go!

January kicked off with the closing episodes to Steven Universe's fifth season, and what a finale it was! In true SU nature, it managed to be wholesome, funny, terrifying, and sad all at once! Not to mention the finale episode specifically, which was rife with both fan service and a breath-taking final confrontation. It even prompted me to type up three whole Addendum posts just so I could get all my thoughts out there. Intermingling with these episodes were some rather poignant and touching episodes of RWBY's 6th Volume, which saw some great plot advancements for some of my favorite characters. And of course, there was one liveblog session early on dedicated to Fate/Stay Night, a series I began back in 2018. And that would end up being the last I'd liveblog about it. Following the technical difficulties of the Visual Novel crashing at an important moment, I lost much of my motivation to keep going at it, putting Fate/Stay Night on the bench... For now. But more on Fate/Stay Night later.

Then came February! Where I proceeded to do absolutely nothing at all. For 42 days, I fell into a pretty bad funk that I called depression, at the time. Well! I must be in a better mental space right now, because until it came time to make this post, I forgot all about it! Moving past the shame I felt for wordlessly abandoning my blog and discord community for over a month, come March I pressed right into a brand new liveblog: Kill la Kill! A frenetic, frantic, freaky series that serves as the spiritual sequel to what was, once upon a time, my favorite anime ever: Gurren Lagann. I was immediately charmed by it's absurdist humor and over-the-top everything. However, it wasn't long before I succumbed to my greatest flaw. I'm exceptionally picky about what I liveblog, and sadly, Kill la Kill didn't tick the boxes that needed to be ticked for me to stick with it. I eventually dropped the series after only three episodes.

Needless to say, I was getting desperate to reinvigorate my lost momentum. It was then and there, at the tail end of March, that I introduced the most significant change to my brand ever: Liveblogging itself was being benched in favor of a fanciful second attempt at running my video game focused Youtube Channel! While I would certainly continue to liveblog new episodes of shows I had previously caught up with, my efforts would be redoubled and focused upon something I hoped would shake things up for me. I put in the effort of buying a new, fancy, high-tech microphone, and set about to new projects!

First up was a tense and troublesome self-imposed-challenge: A playthrough of Resident Evil 2 Remake on its hardest difficulty, with the added stipulation that I can never access the item storage box! My knowledge and skills of that game were put to the test as I skirted by the dangerous zombies and mutants while carrying only the bare essentials on my person. That series lasted 7 videos, plus a Highlight Reel, over about a week. My new microphone really brought out my screams of terror. Yes.

Immediately following the conclusion of the REmake 2 challenge run in early April, a new series debuted: A blind let's play of Subnautica! A simply incredible sci-fi survival game set on a planet that's nearly entirely an ocean... But much to my surprise, it was secretly a horror game all along. Spanning 18 episodes + a highlight reel between April 5th and May 23rd, we descended ever deeper into the abyss, deciphered alien riddles, fled from toothy leviathan-class predators, established a lovely home base, and had a great ol' time overall. A truly remarkable game with a surprisingly good story, for its genre, and it left me eagerly looking forward to making a Let's Play of its sequel: Below Zero.

Simultaneously, beginning on April 10th, I embarked upon yet another adventure that was of such a large scope, I made my channel's primary time slot dedicated to it. The Phoenix Wright Trilogy! A collection of the first three Visual Novels in a wonderful, wonderful series about the titular attorney at law. It wasn't long before I fell in love with this series, big time. It had everything! Immensely satisfying mysteries for me to solve, memorable and lovable characters, great pacing, and it knew how to keep things fresh and interesting. Although I started out the Let's Play by saying I wouldn't read everything aloud, that proved to be a lie. As of now, the series is a whopping 78 videos long (I do expect it to reach 100 before all is said and done), and I have given voice to roughly 50 unique characters so far. The series really helped awaken my Let's Play chops by improving my speech, vocal clarity, and focus. Swapping between my first video ever (for Legend of Grimrock II) and the most recent Phoenix Wright video is a real night-and-day difference! Overall, it's very safe to say that the series has stolen my heart. Unmatched hype, dizzying plot twists, and delightful shenanigans burst from the seams, truly. The Let's Play is currently ongoing, though the end is within sight...

As the Let's Plays of Subnautica and Phoenix Wright Trilogy progressed, so too did the production quality of my videos. I got a better grip on editing, improving the design of my video thumbnails and taking more care to edit out needless and dull moments of gameplay. I even introduced a brief and stylish video intro, which was my avatar appearing over a dark background before it faded off into gameplay. That would be the image up above! However, as we move into 2020, I’ve begun to feel that it could do with a slight improvement... Wink wink!

Following the end of Subnautica came a new Let's Play involving yet another sci-fi horror game: Prey! Spanning 25 videos + a highlight reel between June 3rd and November 19th, it immediately gripped me with its stunning attention to detail, marvelously crafted environments, and boundlessly creative gameplay. It was a pleasure to explore the varied regions of the Talos One space station, blasting aliens, uncovering secrets, untangling the connections between the employees there, and making some seriously difficult moral choices. A truly impressive video game that's just begging for a second playthrough on my own time at some point.

July 20th saw the beginning of new activity on my blog. In a spur-of-the-moment decision that I didn't think out too well, I brazenly announced out of nowhere that I would be doing a re-watch of Steven Universe! I proceeded to liveblog the first 11 episodes of Steven Universe over a week, lovingly looking back at the series' origins, calling out moments of foreshadowing, and analyzing everything with the lens of all my knowledge about the show. And then... Nothing! Just as soon as it began, the project was dropped. I had hoped it would rekindle my interest in Liveblogging (outside of new episodes of SU and RWBY), but I had no such luck. You know I'm burnt out when even Steven Universe, my favorite thing ever, can't help...

By September 3rd, the Steven Universe Movie had finally released! Over a hype-as-hell two days, I liveblogged the entire film. It truly was Steven Universe at its absolute best! Touching, sincere, unexpected, and rife with some stellar songs that are STILL stuck in my head. It proved that the Crewniverse hadn't lost its spark since the conclusion of the original series.

November 5th was my 25th birthday! My family celebrated by all going out for an amazing sushi dinner. Good times! Sometimes, it's really hard for me to grasp that I'm actually 25... I'm a kid at heart, really! Or maybe it's that I'm a social recluse who enjoys watching anime a little too much. Regardless, I feel no shame!

November 10th saw the debut of RWBY Volume 7, and so far it has been an exceptionally strong season. I've long maintained the opinion that the show gets better and better every season, and Volume 7 has given me no reason to doubt that. One episode in particular became my second favorite in the series, right behind a certain one from Volume 6! I'm really enjoying how the characters, new and old, are playing off each other this go around, and the fights and art direction have been no slouch either. This season's a looker! I'm really looking forward to seeing how it ends.

Hot on the heels of the ending Let's Play of Prey, I immediately started up a new series on November 20th... Chrono Trigger! A legendary and widely loved JRPG from the SNES era of gaming that I had somehow gone all my life without playing. Better late than never to fix a mistake like that! I eagerly dived in and nearly immediately understood why it's heralded as an all-time great. The series is currently 13 episodes long, and each one is an endless stream of me being hyped and giddy. I’m already excited to record more!

December 8th saw the debut of Steven Universe Future, a very special epilogue series that's sure to tie a nice bow on the franchise as a whole. As of this post, I have liveblogged the first 8 episodes, and it's fair to say that while it's not holding back in giving the audience exactly what it wants, it's also doing something very unexpected and very, very interesting with Steven himself. Only time will tell how it all ends and whether every remaining mystery will be answered, but so far I have been more than satisfied with it.

And that brings us to the present! Wow, it felt like a lot less happened this year than you would think, huh? No, it's been jam packed with new adventures! I think I am very content with how the year has gone, and I hope you are as well. We'll be striding into the year 2020 with more Steven Universe, more RWBY, more Phoenix Wright, and more Chrono Trigger! Plus, it may very well be that we'll see the return of Made in Abyss and Madoka Magica, both of which (I believe) are getting continuation movies in 2020. I may or may not be entirely wrong about this. Forgive me if I am...

In the near future, the Phoenix Wright Trilogy will be followed up by a Let's Play of Fate/Stay Night! Indeed, the canceled Liveblog will be reborn in youtube video form! And following Chrono Trigger, well... It's mostly up in the air, though I do have a few good ideas. In particular, I recently got a Virtual Reality system set up... Wink wink!

So that's really all there is to it! Cheers, lads! Cheers to a good year, and cheers to the next year being even better! To our good health, our unbreakable friendships, and all the stupid bullshit we’ll get into together! 2020 has arrived!

#Zephyr the Jester #Blog Anniversary

[blakegallo]

okay so it’s been a couple of days, i’m still annoyed so this is going to be a long ass text post about how this valkyrie x carol situation still has me feeling all kinds of ways.

today i want to talk about how 1) colorism obviously plays into this but also 2) how spider-man: homecoming set the stage for treating black women as replaceable love interests in the mcu.

i watched hoco for the first time last year i want to say, i didn’t see it in theaters i watched it and liveblogged it and i think that the part of the movie that bothered me the most [ aside from how i see the fandom talk about peter vs how they talk about shuri despite the fact that minors that have been attacked by adult antagonists ] was how the end of the movie essentially wipes liz played by laura harrier out of the way to make room for mj as the love interest. now if zendaya was playing mary jane i might have allowed myself to accept it as them trying to stay comics accurate. but she’s not. at least not really. and so there is legitimately no real reason for them to do this. even if they wanted to do this then they could have at least kept the mj/peter dynamic that they had in hoco and instead what we’ve seen from the far from home trailer is the transferrence of how peter acted around liz to him acting that way around michelle with no context for that change occuring or making sense. so i’m not here for it.

now we have the val x carol situtation. i’m not immediately against the idea of them. like as pressed as i am people can ship whatever they want to ship. but again it feels a lot like this idea that maria is replaceable, and this time we’re replacing a dark skinned woman with a light skinned mixed race woman? like. y’all don’t see how that looks? what makes it even worse is that this is entirely a fan creation. right? like the context of how we got from thor liking carol to brie larson and tessa thompson retweeting fanart is a labyrinth of fan headcanon that while valid seemingly exclude the fact that captain marvel was highkey at it’s core a romantic movie about maria and carol? like... 

i really can’t articulate these things and the anger i feel about both of them is highkey irrational, but like here we are

#monte does life #mcu

[pilferingapples]

FINAL EUROVISION LIVEBLOG

--There's a whoooole lot of Intro and News Commentary from SVT; most of it I'm skipping because I don't understand it, but fans are singing adorably now, awwww. 

--OMG DANIEL DIGES IN THE PREVIEW SEGMENT I AM WELL REWARDED FOR MY MINOR AMOUNT OF PATIENCE wow he's beautiful 

--...now the channel's like...gone to cut screen but they don't have their wiring worked out?

--NOW

--..okay the bead thing sort of explains the Artistic Theme happening, to the extent I think anything about Eurovision can or should be explained

-this host looks like he should be in a Marvel movie and should be named Chris

-I genuinely love the Walk of Glory intro of all the main performers!

-...Oh here come the people who are too cool to have to compete in the semifinals! I don't know them.

-EXCEPT MANEL HI MANEL 

-Buglaria is a precious child and I hope he has fun

-..literally I am old enough to be his mother it's terrible ANYWAY

-The Host Dudes are Very Sparkly now , and again I am grateful for the SVT commenters talking over them in a language I cannot understand , save me from the Bantr(tm)

-omg awkward junior high pics 

-Gonna say at the start here,  DISCO RAP YODELING TEAM has my heart, but there are a LOT of acts here I love.

-....and a lot of ballads. Why did so many ballads get in. Who voted for the ballads. 

-...how does voting for this work?

-GOOD FOR YOU ISRAEL THAT WAS FUN 

- omg audience member has the star hat cosplay 

- ...oh gad was this a ballad one 

-oh gad it was  -Poland I love and support you as a nation but WHY A BALLAD

-...doves are flying out of her armpits though so points for that

-SHE'S A GOOD SINGER I just cannot muster up caring about this song

-SPACE DOLPHIN for REASONS 

-...Freedom?

- BELARUS I LOVE YOU BOTH 

-THEY'RE ON A BOAT -I want this song as MP3, it's just so happy!

-WOAH  GET A ROOM 

(no I'm happy for them)

-OMG ADORABLE CHILD INTRO SEGMENT  -Austria! Is like the theme to an 80s/early 90s slice of life show 

- Plus: happy song, not really a ballad , Cons: nothing is on fire,minimal discoing

-ARMENIAAAA  continues to be dressed like a TOS Klingon and I love it  -the Netherlands trio reminds me hardcore of Wilson Phillips, because I am Old. That's fine! I liked WP. But it's very a Thing  It doesn't help that W-P had an album called Light and Shadow either, I mean it'-s not a Super Unique name but >_<

-THEIR FANS HAVE SHIRTS <3

-HI MAXIMILIEN, FAN FROM AUSTRIA 

-...Volare was a Eurovision song? 

-OMG IMPROMPTU KICKITY DANCE  - I am briefly overwhelmed by Emotion about all these people from all these countries coming together for Music and Fun?? TEAR BREAK -OKAY I'M OKAY AND IT'S TIME FOR MOLDOVA WHICH HAS A  GREAT ACT 

-SUNSTROKE PROJECT:D 

-I like this stage act much more than the video for this , really 

HMMM I think the Army Of Thems works okay here, though it's not my favorite visuals 

- THE DRESSES THOUGH :D 

-XYLOPHONE JACKET HUNGARY 

-I don't know how to describe what he's doing with his voice but I love it 

DISCO MILKJUG CONTINUES  and I Approve ,

- in any other setting I would question the dancing girl, but it's Eurovision, so I only question why she's not wearing more glitter

-I really love the folk art motifs in the background, and also the JETS OF FIRE

-ITALY  ...have we seen Italy? Did I forget Italy or is this a "we weren't in the semifinals"thing?

-GORILLA I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT GORILLA

-..okay the song is slightly boring pop but AT LEAST IT'S NOT A BALLAD and I like the background visuals

- And I am again wondering how the backgrounds are chosen! Who gets to decide? Do the singers get a say? 

-...did the Italy fans have a cow

-BLONDE WOMAN SINGLE SINGER  SIGNS OF THE BALLADOCALYPSE 

DENMARRRRK ...is exactly what I thought, yeah okay 

-drinks time

-PORTUGAL HI

- it's a sweet sounding song and he does the Awkward Cute very very well but there is a tragic lack of general fabness 

-oh god host banter nooooo

-AZERBAIJAN YESSSS

-HORSEHEAD LADDER BOYFRIEND -BADBOY  -EXTREME SKELETON  - this isn't really my Kind of song but I admire the Extraness of the performance and setup , like there  is no need for this horsehead guy at ALL but also he is ESSENTIAL THANK YOU

-Croatia! I never thought I'd actually hear someone do Agnes Nitt's trick of singing duets with herself, but here we are. 

- AUSTRALIA is a Child! I am very uncomfortable about this. 

-Wait is this the first for Belarus?  

- THE FIRST ROMA FOR HUNGARY YAAAY

-GREECE oh no it's a Single Singing Woman this Bodes Ballads  - GREECE I TAKE IT BACK AND I LOVE YOU ​​​​​​​

-OH RIGHT THIS IS HER  WITH THE WATER FEATURE AND THE NAKED GUYS DANCING AT HER FEET  - SHIRTLESS BUT WHATEVER 

-...are the guys the couple the song is about?? if so AWESOME 

- HI MANEL , YOU'RE A FACECAST FOR A WEIRD FANDOM 

-good grief he's pretty , I have Hair Envy

-OOOF voice crack 

-okay not the most amazing song but AT LEAST IT WASN'T  A FRIGGING BALLAD

-NORWAY ! With the..mask..thing!

-KILL THAT VOICE IN MY HEAD ! I REMEMBER YOU. 

-...oh god there's more Bantr. An extended Host Bantr segment, noooo

-LUCY JONES I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING  DON'T BE A BALLAD UK 

-...damn it, UK. 

-...will you dance through this storm to this song? Because I don't see how. 

DRINK BREAK 

-CYPRUS  SAVE ME FROM THE BALLADS 

-...threatening to be Gravity at me is the worst come on possible though

-RO  -MA

-NIA !!!

ROMANIA ROMANIA ROMANIA 

YODEL PARTY  I LOVE YOU BOTH  OWN THIS JOINT 

LOOK AT THE WOODEN SOLDIER MARCH  SING IT HE SAYS  AND THEY LEAD THE CROWD IN A YODEL 

DISCO LIGHT CANNON THIS IS THE BEST THING 

-Germany!

..oh no it's a blonde woman alone DOES A BALLAD LOOM

- why do people show up to Eurovision in Nice Neutral Clothing , why would anyone waste this opportunity to be more glam than otherwise humanly possible

-...pop ballad. SIGH. 

UKRAINE I HAVE HOPES FOR YOU  QUARTET?? QUARTET  ...oh. It's the giant head band!  -this is so hilariously different from the other acts, good for you, Germany! 

-Young Jotunheim invades Asgard's Got Talent 

- Belgium, I'm sure you're lovely , but I KNOW this is a ballad, so it's another Drink Break 

-SWEDEN who is...I guess? someone famous?  I DO remember this song at least, it's not Yet Another Ballad 

-BULGARIA CHILD

-FRANCE  -I am sure I haven't seen France! 

-oh no not another ballad  -...yes another ballad THERE'S STILL HOPE IT COULD ENERGIZE IN THE CHORUS??

-YES THANK YOU

-...is the background High Speed Paris Cityscape??

-...wait that was the last one?? wow 

-VERKA OMG   - I feel Honored to see this 

LIGHT IT UP, EUROPE 

I still love Romania and Belarus acts most I think but man I seriously love Hungary's voice and act and everything too 

aagh there are too many I actually like a lot! 

GET TO THE VOTES DARN IT 

THIS ACT IS GREAT BUT AAAH 

PRECIOUS BABY EUROVISION GIRL

HER DRESS IS A FLOWER I LOVE HER PLEASE PROTECT HER

oh god another ballad  

...WAIT WAS THAT AN ILLICIT MOON  IS THAT TRADITIONAL FOR THIS I DON'T EVEN KNOW NOW

OKAY VOTING 

...oh this is gonna take a while isn't it

...wow Portugal is cleaning up??

...I don't understand this voting? There are two many countermanding numbers on this display 

ALSO I HATE THIS TENSION I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHO WON I HATE COMPETITIONS 

..Okay so Portugal's gonna crush it, right? I'm told it's not about the music, but Very Complicated Politics, but I think Portugal was  pretty good though

...Wait MORE points? WHAT IS HAPPENING HOW MANY LAYERS OF VOTING ARE THERE Eurovision I'm sorry but this is baffling and thus boring 

...GEEZUS HOW LONG DOES THIS GO ON THIS IS MINDNUMBING 

...has it been an HOUR?

SORRY EUROVISION I FAST FORWARDED THROUGH A LOT OF THE VOTING 

WHOOO PORTUGAL GOOD FOR YOU  ANYWAY THAT WAS CERTAINLY GLITTERY 

Needs More Yodelrap and Fewer Ballads 

GOOD FOR YOU PORTUGAL  I'm glad I saw it but next time I'll just let Tumblr tell me who won !

THANK YOU SVT 

#Romania wins IN MY HEART #anyway #Eurovision Party #long post

[tyrantisterror]

The ATOM Create A Kaiju Contest

All fifty ATOM Kaiju files are now up on Horror Flora for the world to see.  You can now look at the designs, stats, and brief bios of the fifty-some kaiju that will appear in my novel-in-progress, The Atomic Time of Monsters.   But the event that gives the novel its name – the titular atomic time period – has far, far more than that.  In fact, while only fifty or so monsters appear in the novel itself, at least six times that number will be running around just outside the pages – the unseen kaiju of ATOM.  But I’ll level with you – I can draw kaiju for days, and have literally done so since about mid-December 2016, but I’ll never be able to draw up 300+ solid kaiju concepts.  I mean, ok, maybe if I keep at it till I die, but I have a lot of other stuff I want/need to do.  So that’s where this contest comes in.

Like some of the best fiction, I’ve left a tantalizing gap in my story for other writers to fill in.  Like a narcissist, I’m hoping people would want to fill in their gap.  There are literally dozens if not hundreds of monsters left unseen – how would you like to give them a face?

THE RULES:

1.  You may create and submit up to FIVE different kaiju for the contest.  They must be your own creations – no plagiarism will be tolerated.  You can cheekily reference pre-existing monsters though – we all know the 50+ canonical monsters in ATOM do.

2.  The kaiju you create must specifically be created for this contest  - no repurposing characters you made for other, wildly different stories.  It’s more gratifying to my ego of a fun thought experiment that way.

3. The kaiju must fit the design aesthetics, story themes, and overall tone of ATOM's kaiju. They should feel like B movie monsters from 1950's/60's pop culture.  The better they match this aesthetic, more likely you will win the contest.

4. The kaiju must also fit the setting ATOM.  Remember that “kaiju” has a story specific definition beyond being just a big animal, that most dinosaurs didn’t exist in ATOM’s world (i.e. no feathery t.rexes), and that the alien fauna of Mars, Venus, and the various made up planets follow very specific body plans.  The Atomic Time of Monsters starts in 1954 and ends in 1968 – your entry has to take place in that rough time frame.  I plan on posting some ATOM Bonus Files between now and the deadline that explain aspects of the setting in more detail.

5. The kaiju should add something meaningful to the world of ATOM. What would be the point of having another fire-breathing t.rex monster?  The more unique and interesting your kaiju is, the more likely you will win the contest.

6. The kaiju must be independent of the main plot of ATOM - not "Tyrantis's long lost evil brother who's the strongest kaiju in the world". These should be to Tyrantis's story what War of the Gargantuas is to Godzilla's movies – heroes (well, monsters) of another story in the same world.

7. Your kaiju must have some sort of description of its physical appearance and its personality - you can submit a drawing or a written description (or both!) for the physical appearance depending on what you’re most comfortable with.

The Deadline for this contest is MARCH 16, 2017.  You have roughly two months to work on your submission(s).  To enter you just have to make me aware of your submission - tag me in a tumblr post, send me a message, etc.  It can be on tumblr or on another website - so long as it exists and I can access it, it works.  It

But what about the prizes, you ask?  Well, I’ll put that information (along with some other rambling suggestions and tips) after the cut, but the biggest prize will be making a whole shitload of weird retro kaiju.

Ok, so: PRIZES, PRIZES, PRI-ZIZZES!

RUNNER UP PRIZES:  I will sketch every kaiju entered in the contest, and compile them all in a great big post with a few sentences of commentary on each one.  Every person who enters the contest gets this prize.

THE TOP 5 WINNERS: I will fully illustrate my top 5* favorite kaiju entries and publish them – WITH CREDIT – on HorrorFlora.com as ATOM Bonus Files.  This means they will be considered SEMI-CANONICAL in ATOM’s lore – you will retain rights over your creation, of course, but they’ll also be considered part of the ATOM expanded universe.  *Note: I may increase or decrease this number depending on how many entries the contest gets, or if I just love a crap load more monster than just 5.

THE GOLD MEDAL WINNER: The creator of the winning entry will not only get the prizes from the previous tiers, but will also get to choose one movie for me to liveblog.  It can be any movie – good or bad – so long as 1. I can legally view it in the United States and 2. I don’t have to go into a porno shop to legally view it (thank glarnbodin for bringing up this possibility when I was brainstorming prizes).

TIPS

I’ve got a few tips, but one is so important it needs to be more than a bullet point.  The most important tip for this contest is as follows: I’m looking for Beeruses, not Brolys.

What do I mean by that?  Well, firstly, you need to watch Dragon Ball Z.  Secondly, the hit anime Dragon Ball Z had several non-canonical movies made by people who weren’t the main creator/writer of the manga the anime was based off of.  These movies had to fit in the gaps of the original story, and theoretically hoped to add something new and worthwhile to the story.  Most of them did not succeed.

Broly is the main villain of three of these movies, and basically was defined purely in relation to the main characters: he was like the hero, Goku, except bigger, more powerful than anyone else, and evil.  He didn’t really have a strong motivation, or any personality at all beyond “hates everything and loves destroying stuff”.  He was only defined by his ridiculously immense strength and how violent he was.  Overall, he contributed very little, didn’t fit the tone of the larger story, and yet was deeply connected too/defined by the main plot – the opposite of what my contest rules ask for.

By contrast, Lord Beerus, a villain introduced in a later movie, brought a lot more to the table.  He fit well within the canonical world of the story, both in design and his over the top yet complex personality (unlike Broly, Beerus has many solid motivations and a many dimensions to his character).  While he was somewhat connected to the plot of the overall story, he was also fairly distant – he had never met the main character before, and neither one of them knew much about the other.  The story of their conflict was similar to previous stories in Dragon Ball Z, and yet had several twists that made it feel utterly unique.  Beerus contributed a lot to the world and cast dynamics of the story, fit in with its tone, and was disconnected enough to what came before to feel like he was adding something new.  The only reason he’s not a shining example of what I’m going for (well, other than him not being a kaiju) is that he was made up by the original creator of Dragon Ball Z.

But still, the point stands: I’m looking for Beeruses, not Brolys.

In fact, I had to change my original pitch for this contest because of this rule.  Originally I thought of this as the “Lost Projects of ATOM” – making the ATOM equivalents of weird, cut kaiju from the Godzilla series.  But while I was thinking of oddities like Mogu and Majin Tuol, I realized most people would think of characters like Bagan – the Brolys of the Godzilla world.  This is why one of the rules of the contest is that the kaiju have to be separated from Tyrantis’s story in ATOM – if your monster isn’t a foe of Tyrantis, there’s less of a risk of them taking things to Broly style “I made a monster that’s bigger and meaner version of your monster” antics.

So one final time:  Beeruses, not Brolys.

Now, the other tips:

• ATOM’s aesthetics are mainly drawn from pop culture of the 1950’s and 60’s.  The obvious main inspiration would be the giant monster movies of that time period – the Showa Godzilla movies, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Them!,  The Deadly Mantis, etc. – but other sci-fi and horror stories of that time period apply as well.  This includes movies that were rereleased in this decade – King Kong was made in the 30’s, but was rereleased in theaters in the 50’s to great success – as well as other forms of media published at the time, like comic books, novels, and even some songs.  Silver Age monster comics from Marvel, like Tales to Astonish and other great titles by Jack Kirby, are just as entwined in ATOM’s DNA as Godzilla. • You can also work some modern design sensibilities here and there.  Tyrantis’s overbite is far more common in dinosaur art from the 70’s and 80’s, while creatures like Pathogen and the Writhing Flesh owe a lot to body horror movies of the 80’s and video games like Resident Evil.  These elements shouldn’t be the PRIMARY aesthetic, however – the 50’s/60’s vibe is still more important to capture. • ATOM works on Hollywood Science and, even more than that, child logic.  Scientific accuracy is far from a priority – science is something ATOM uses occasionally for flavor, rather than an essential ingredient.  Feel free to get weird, silly, and stupid to an extent . • Kaiju in ATOM are always characters and need to be expressive in some way.  That’s important to the story’s theme – even the most wicked monsters in the story (with one possible exception) have a sympathetic side to them, and they need to be able to show it. • If you looked closely at the rules, you’ll notice an inherent contradiction: entries will be judged both in how they fit the story, and paradoxically in how they add something new to it.  This might feel like a bit of give and take – a retrosaur would definitely fit, but might feel redundant, while, say, a giant lion might add something new but feel out of place.  Don’t be scared to embrace one of the two at the expense of the other: you can make up to five entries to hedge your bets, and you might actually do a lot better focusing on some of the required elements anyway.

You can also feel free to adapt some monster concepts I failed to make work, including (but not limited to - check my old DA gallery or my thirty day kaiju challenges on my art tumblr for more):

Giant grasshoppers

Giant rabbits

A Sabre Tooth Tiger Monster

Basically any amphibians

Basically any birds

A giant gila monster

Giant shrews

Most mammals really

Finally, here are some links to things that helped inspire ATOM’s aesthetic, so they may inspire you in turn:

#Atomic Time of Monsters #ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #282: CAPTIVES

August, 1987

Prisoners of the GODS!

In one sense, prisoners of the gods, yes, that is going on. The Avengers are clearly imprisoned by one or more gods.

But did you ever consider that from the gods’ perspective, its a gotta catch ‘em all of the Avengers?

I mean, Neptune (geez Marvel, stick to either Roman or Greek pantheons ffs) went out of his way to catch Namor and Namor hasn’t been on the team since before the Masters of Evil thing.

That’s completionist energy.

Wait... is the Collector behind this? Yeah, he died but when has that ever stopped anyone in comics for long?

ANYWAY

Last times on Avengers: the Masters of Evil attacked the Avengers and managed to smash up the mansion and beat Hercules into a coma. There was a roster shake up as Thor and She-Hulk cycled back in, Dr Druid joined for some reason, Wasp went on a well-deserved vacation, and Hercules was in a coma.

That last point is the sticking point of this arc, it seems. Because Hermes kidnapped Hercules out of the hospital and then lured Thor to Olympus so Hephaestus and Ares could beat him up. While Hermes, Dionysus, and Artemis beat up the Avengers on Earth, partially by tricking She-Hulk into eating a drugged cherry Italian ice.

With the Avengers sufficiently beat the shit up, Zeus appeared to tell them they were on his shit list for letting Hercules make bad decisions and get beaten into a coma.

And rather than seek revenge on the ones who did the beating, Zeus is taking it out on the Avengers.

Because Zeus is a dick.

The story continues!

The story continues with Namor minding his own business for a change, just enjoying hanging out with his new wife Marrina (oh hey, congrats!) when the ocean goes nuts with the shaking.

Namor saves some people that rocks fell on and then swims out with Marrina to investigate.

They notice some Atlantean refugees fleeing and go to help them because they’re the cool guys brave enough to join Namor in exile rather than live in Attuma ruled Atlantis.

But then Neptune pops up out of the ground, yells at Namor for questioning his will when Namor asks about the earthseaquakes, and then drags Namor down to hell.

Saying “that happened” can be a cheap joke but really, the Atlantean refugees and Marrina standing around looking at the crack in the ground that a god popped out of and then sank back into after kidnapping their king has peak “that happened” energy.

Of course, I was joking about Neptune dragging Namor to hell.

He brings him to Hades instead.

Because god of oceans, he can just pop right out of the River Styx.

Neptune expresses some regret that things gotta be how they’re being and that Namor deserves better than this (open to debate). Why, if it weren’t for Neptune’s covenant with Zeus, Neptune never would have reverse raptured Namor to Hades.

But the brotherly covenant is a thing so Neptune turns Namor over to Cerberus to bring to Pluto.

EXCEPT HOLD ON

THIS INDIVIDUAL MAY BE CALLED CERBERUS BUT HE IS NO CERBERUS OF MINE!

Greek god dammit, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, are there no monsters of myth you won’t just turn into a grimacing dude in Kirbarian armor??

Boo!

Anyway.

Namor comes to while I Refuse To Call Him Cerberus is hauling him across the dismal fields of Hades like a sack of damp potatoes.

The Abstastic Avenger slips loose and tries to choke Not Cerberus with his shackles despite the dude wearing a helmet that covers his throat. And Cerberus just breaks the chain anyway so the whole exercise was a little pointless.

Well, almost pointless.

Namor was looking for answers and he got answers and stepped on to boot.

Namor: Tell me now -- who are you? Where am I? Why have I been brought here? Speak!”

Not Cerberus: “You think to threaten Cerberus?! Truly you are bereft of all reason! Know ye, mortal, that Cerberus is guardian of Hades, land of the unliving! ‘Tis there you be... by the grace of my Master Pluto and the will of Zeus!”

Namor throws Not Cerberus off of himself and then decides that really what he needs to do now is take a nice refreshing dip.

Except the nearest water is the River Styx and its full of monsters and it flows into the River Phlegethon WHICH IS ON FIRE!

He’s having a bad time.

Namor washes up unconscious on the shore observed by a shadowy figure.

But this is apparently one of those beneficent shadowy figures because when Namor regains consciousness again, he finds that his shackles are gone and burns that should have taken months to heal have gone away with a quick nap.

(Is Namor an JRPG character?)

(No.)

The shadowy figure introduces himself, or rather doesn’t introduce himself, but at least announces his presence and explains to Namor that he healed him with various poultices.

Oh, I see. Just an ordinary doctor passing by, is it?

The mysterious cloaked figure who pointedly does not tell Namor his name also tells Namor that he was brought to Hades to join the Avengers in captivity and WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT, the Avengers are being held in the garrison of the accursed Fortress Tartarus just to the right.

Can’t miss it.

Then the mysterious cloaked figure vanishes into the mists rather than answer any more questions.

Mysterious cloaked figure, vanishing into the mists: “I can say no more. The fate of the Avengers now depends on you! Do not fail them, Namor... do not fail”

I guess people don’t become mysterious cloaked and/or shadowy figures unless they love drama.

Anyway.

Namor heads to the doom fortress and finding no entrances makes one by punching the crap out of a drainage duct.

Where he immediately runs into some soldiers of Hades. Who he immediately beats up because he’s Namor. He also steals the armor off of one because yes, we’re going full... whatever you call this. Death Star infiltration? Its a trope and it definitely predates Star Wars.

Before long, Armored Variant Namor finds the deepest dungeon that the Avengers are being held in.

And I guess the order of the day is just random torture? The gods beat up the Avengers and threw them to Hades and now they’re just being randomly tortured?

Captain America is attached to a big wheel, Dr Druid is here for some reason and hanging from shackles, Captain Marvel is in a metal sarcophagus which is blocking her powers, and in an effective but cruel twist She-Hulk is chained to Black Knight.

Maybe the dungeons of Hades didn’t have anything strong enough to hold her but by chaining her to Black Knight, they made it so the only way She-Hulk can bust herself loose is to tear Black Knight in half.

Afraid of the torturers using the imprisoned Avengers as hostages, Namor pretends he’s just another guard who wants to steal the spoils for himself.

He punches all the guards who are pawing over what they took from the Avengers, claims that its all his now, and dismissively throws away Cap(tain America)’s shield as gaudy.

It just so happens that the throw bonks the shield off the chains holding She-Hulk and Black Knight together but nobody notices that over what a dick disguised Namor is being.

His secret superpower is taking up so much oxygen in the room that nobody notices anything but ‘and now here’s this asshole.’

The torturer that was about to torture Black Knight goes to attack disguised Namor with Black Knight’s blade but freed by the shield bonk, Black Knight does that thing he can do that he doesn’t get enough chances to do.

He summons the extremely cursed Ebony Blade out of the torturer’s hands and into his own. And then he knocks out the torturer with the flat of the blade.

While She-Hulk joins disguised Namor in beating the crap out of the guards, Black Knight rushes over to cut Cap(tain America) loose from the big wheel. But Cap(tain America) tells him to free Cap(tain Marvel) first instead.

In fairness, she’s maybe their biggest gun.

Black Knight figures that the metal sarcophagus is probably enchanted to contain Monica but luckily Black Knight’s extremely cursed sword can cut through it.

Captain Marvel is ready to get some revenge for being locked in a box but She-Hulk and Namor didn’t leave any guards left unpunched.

But the breakout isn’t complete as Dr Druid notices that Thor isn’t in this dungeon so now they gotta go find him.

Of course, that just makes Namor wonder ‘hey actually what the here is going on here?’

Because he still has no idea what the plot is. He’s just been acting on punchstinct.

Of also course, the Avengers had no idea they were in Hades so everyone is a little surprised right now.

Captain Marvel does her Avengers chairperson duty of expositing the previous issue, to fill in Namor.

Actually though, the recap is only one panel and one additional narrative caption. The rest of the flashback is new content.

Pretty neat although it does mean that the entire previous issue gets smooshed down to ‘Hercules’ family ambushed us and took us to Olympus so Zeus could yell at us. What a dick.’

And yeah, what a dick.

When Zeus blames the Avengers for Hercules’ condition, Captains America and Marvel defend themselves by saying it was Hercules’ own dumbass that got his dumb ass beaten to near death.

Which... maybe not the best tone to take to a grieving, vengeful father?

Zeus: “Lies! I have learned how Hercules suffered your taunts and torments! I will not hear the lies of mortals!”

Thor suggests that maybe the truth will sound more believable coming from a fellow god and longtime friend to Hercules like.... well, Thor.

But Zeus takes the bold move of claiming that Thor isn’t Thor because hey what’s with that new armor. Also, even if you are Thor, screw you Thor, mighty Zeus don’t listen to a god that’s “so servile to mortal beings”.

Thor gets angry at being called servile and just FLEXES out of his bonds, then runs over and punches Ares who had the misfortune of being the wrong extremely punchable face at the wrong time and place.

But Zeus just zaps Thor, which I presume freezes or knocks out Thor. Dunno, flashback ends.

Either way, that’s how they got from last issue to now. And the bonds the Olympians put on the Avengers prevented them from using their powers. The Olympians knocked them out and then next thing they knew, they were in a dungeon.

Namor blames himself for being absent because maybe if he’d been around, Hercules wouldn’t have gotten so hurt.

Which Black Knight dismisses as ‘no, dumbass would still have managed it.’

The Avengers run into a massive army of Hades’ soldiers? Goons? Guards?

Why does Hades have so many employees??

The Avengers start making short work of them because c’mon. They’re a faceless army of mooks. They exist to make the Avengers look cool.

She-Hulk even hits one dude with another dude.

The only thing they have going for them is numbers. Thousands of numbers.

But that’s just a ‘don’t let them surround you but do keep doing your cool moves’ moment, not a ‘we should retreat because we’re massively outnumbered.’

Dr Druid even gets to make some of the warriors see an illusory image of him to get them to hit each other.

Pretty good.

I like that his powers require him to be a little creative.

Black Knight continues being a dude with a sword who doesn’t like hitting people with a sword. But he can hit other peoples’ weapons with your weapons to break their weapons.

The things that cannot be cut by his Ebony Blade, forged by Merlin, are next to none.

Captain America takes a moment out of punching dudes to watch Namor punch dudes and pines for him to rejoin the Avengers.

I swear, nobody likes Namor more than Captain America does.

And She-Hulk punches dudes but then grabs one and demands to know where Thor is.

This is the army of the dead so do they have anything to fear from her? I mean, aside from pain. Nobody wants to be punched by a Hulk multiple times.

Apparently the guy does tell She-Hulk where Thor is because the scene cuts to where Pluto is keeping him prisoner by having a giant rock block placed on top of him.

Is this comeuppance for all the people he’s pinned under Mjolnir?

Also, like many fictional depictions of Hades/Pluto, he is just a jerk.

Pluto: “It has been centuries since brother Zeus allowed me any new subjects to do with as I wish! Having you at my mercy is a treat far sweeter than this honeyed wine, Asgardian -- you’ve interfered with all too many of my plans!’

Dang, Pluto Hades hasn’t been the same since his wife left him, I assume.

(It’d be funny if Persephone was around and was like ‘you’re doing great, dear’)

The guy I will never acknowledge as Cerberus comes in and tells Pluto that Namor jumped into the Styx so is probably super dead and Pluto calls him an idiot for just assuming that a guy called the Sub-Mariner wouldn’t survive being dunked in a dangerous river.

Instantly proven correct because the Avengers and Namor bust in right after Pluto tells Not Cerberus to go find Namor. Namor and She-Hulk punch Cerberus and knock him out and right on top of Pluto.

Black Knight breaks the giant rock block on top of Thor with a pretty sweet sword throw and Captain Marvel CHOOMs Thor’s shackles off.

Captain America notes that Thor doesn’t seem alright lately and Thor decides to confide in his best mortal friends, the Avengers and also Dr Druid who is there for some reason.

You know the deal or should if you’ve read Walt Simonson’s run on Thor, which you should.

Thor: “The death-goddess Hela has put a curse ‘pon me... rendering my bones brittle and unable to heal, while granting me life eternal... so that I would have no escape from the pain! In recent days, I have known agony beyond imagining. I created this armor to hold together my shattered body, that I might still function as befits a son of Odin. I... regret I did not tell you this before.”

Pluto, who of course is still in the room and hasn’t even been too inconvenienced by having a not-giant not-doggo dropped on him comments that he wished he knew about Thor’s curse so that he could have arranged more painful accommodations than just putting a giant rock block on him.

Thor warns that Pluto’s power is second only to that of Zeus (wow, get fucked Neptune Poseidon I guess) which the Avengers doubt until Pluto shoots some pew pew blasts at them.

Its not really selling the second only to Zeus who is equivalent of Odin thing even if he says he’s trying to torment them, not kill.

Either way, Captain Marvel blasts the ground so Pluto loses his footing and then everyone RUN AWAYYYYY on her command.

Fall back, technically. Its the more tactical version of FLEEEE but either way its a retreat which Namor hates but does anyway.

And She-Hulk busts the door on her way out so it’ll be harder for Pluto to chase them.

Because yes definitely the room only had one entrance and I bet he can’t just OH YEAH through the wall, being second only to Zeus and all.

Since Mjolnir is trapped on Olympus and none of the other Avengers have portal powers, the Avengers head towards the only path between Hades and Olympus.

THE PATHWAY OF INFINITY!

Its called a pathway, Thor calls it a bridge, and Black Knight calls it a stairway to heaven.

But it looks like a particularly wide ramp.

Cool of Olympus to be wheelchair accessible.

Maybe the grade is too steep? I really can’t tell.

The Avengers set up? down? the PATHWAY OF INFINITY! Thor tells Captain Marvel not to fly too high above the path because it is all the links the two realms of Hades and Olympus and to stray risks becoming lost in the abyss.

And Monica has gotten lost in an abyss enough for one life, thank you.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take Pluto long to catch up with his hell army and his giant hell tank and his giant hell tank blows up a portion of the bridge (he calls it a bridge. Can a pathway be a bridge? I swear, it looks like a ramp).

The Avengers all stand near the broken portion discussing how they don’t have time to fly or jump across before the army of Hades is upon them.

Maybe if you spent less time verbally establishing that fact and more time hustling?

Also, the bridge looks a lot less wide now for some reason.

Thor volunteers to stay behind and hold off the hell army.

Which has to be reminding him of something in his recent past. I mean. A bridge. A hell army. Is he thinking of Skurge right now? Thinking it should have been him instead?

Didn’t Skurge bonk him on the head and send him away with the others at the time because he felt Thor was less expendable? Could be a survivor’s guilt thing.

I don’t know if that was on Roger Stern’s mind when he was writing this though. Could be a coincidence.

Anyway, Captain Marvel, as leader, tells Thor fuck that idea. They’re not leaving anyone behind.

Captain Marvel: “Stand or fall, we’re all in this together!”

Thor: “I cannot dissuade you? Then, so be it! Though every demon in Hades rises ‘gainst us, let the Netherworld rock with the power of the Avengers!”

Heaven or Hell, Lets Rock!

Gosh, how will the Avengers get out of this one?

I mean, the hell army is no big deal. They’ve already beaten up thousands of Pluto’s guards.

The big man himself and his big tank are more of a concern.

Also: WHY DOES PLUTO HAVE A TANK??

Follow @essential-avengers​ to learn the answer for why Pluto has a tank. Just kidding, I have no idea! Like and reblog please!

#essential avengers #avengers #Pluto #a guy who claims he's Cerberus but we know better #Ares #Zeus #some jerk Olympians #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #namor mckenzie #captain america #doctor druid #for some reason #Black Knight #She Hulk #Thor #Zeus is like hey Avengers go to hell #thor feeling some deja vu #that and a big rock #essential marvel liveblogging

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #286: The FIX Is On!

December, 1987

ASSAULT ON AN ANDROID!

That android is going to press charges! Andy knows She-Hul- oh I see she’s about to wallop him.

Also, Namor is in the little cast box. And on the cover. I guess he really is rejoining the team. I get the feeling he was just away from the team long enough for the Masters of Evil to start shit.

Anyway.

I have friends that love Andy the Awesome Android. I hope they enjoy this issue, vicariously.

The story starts in a random Manhattan scientific research lab. I assume Manhattan just has random scientific research labs considering Spider-Man is always thwarting people who are trying to rob random scientific research labs.

This random scientific research lab has been hired, I guess, to study the equipment of the Fixer, seized when he got arrested after that whole Avengers Mansion debacle.

But when Todd Martin, random scientific researcher, picks up the Fixer’s helmet, it shoots a mind control beam at him. He picks up the Fixer’s laser gun, shoots the other scientists, and then puts on the Fixer’s outfit and flies through the skylight.

Chilling stuff. The Fixer is truly a cruel, callous dick.

He’s gonna be a Thunderbolt one day.

The sad mind controlling of Todd Martin, random scientific researcher, may have been the opening scene. But the splash page goes to

DR DRUID

Who is here spying on his teammates for some reason.

“Doctor Anthony Druid appears in repose, yet his astral image is awake and alert as he prepares to send it forth for the purpose of observation. Those he would observe are also members of Earth’s mightiest fighting team. While their physical movements are easily monitored on the screens around him, it is their innermost thoughts and desires that concern Doctor Druid. These things he can only learn through astral eavesdropping. None will know they are being observed... and none -- save Anthony Druid -- will know why they are being watched... for now.”

You’re a creep, Doctor Anthony Druid.

One of the effects of Dr Druid’s creeping is that his creepy melon hovers over Namor’s shoulder as he has a tantrum about that lawsuit he’s involved with.

Remember that lawsuit? For property damage? That he insisted go to court ASAP and then bailed on preparations to go do ocean stuff?

Yeah, that didn’t go away.

Namor’s wife Marrina assures him that she’s going to face this legal battle with him but Namor just rages that he has to do legal battles when once he sat on a throne under the sea and made prince decisions.

Marrina asks him what kind of supportive wife he wants her to be then and he just sulks off into the sea.

This marriage is going great, so far.

I’d thought Namor had calmed down a little recently. Buuuuut, I guess nooooot?

Namor’s attorney Mr. Costello begs Marrina to go talk to Namor because dammit he needs to sign various things!

So Marrina goes under the sea where Namor probably feels like life is better down where its wetter. The once and future Prince of Abslantis is brooding amongst the kelp when Marrina finds him.

Explicitly brooding.

Marrina: “Oh, Namor, don’t brood so. We have such a life ahead of us -- so much fulfillment and love to come.”

Namor: “But this, my wife, this could delay our wedded bliss for some time. If I should goback. But that is an affair of the surface. Here, beneath the waves with you in my arms -- all things seem possible.”

Marrina: “Of course they do, Namor.”

Aww, maybe these two crazy kids can make it work.

I mean, Namor isn’t married in current comics. In current comics, he’s crashing on the Avengers’ couch after being kicked out of Abslantis and he’s only technically not under arrest by them for all the war crimes because they need him to punch the devil.

So clearly Namor’s life takes a turn at some point.

Meanwhile, Black Knight on Hydrobase. Examining all the equipment they took from Avengers Mansion. Bemoaning that he struck out with Janet van Dyne the Wasp by never making a move.

Meanwhile, Dr Druid’s giant creeper head lurks over Dane’s shoulder reading Dane’s thoughts like they’re Dane’s diary.

What a rude floating invisible head.

Meanwhile, also on Hydrobase, Captain Marvel Monica Rambeau supervises the construction of new Avengers facilities on Hydrobase.

Huh. I don’t remember if they ever said for sure they were relocating permanently to Hydrobase after Avengers Mansion got basically demolished. But its definitely happening.

She-Hulk does the construction foreman a startle by walking up carrying an I-beam by herself. With She-Hulk on scene, Captain Marvel puts her in charge so she can run errands.

Ha, way to throw shade at the Distinguished Competition.

Apropos of Monica flying off I guess, She-Hulk starts thinking about how creepy Captain Marvel’s powers are. Just turning into energy and all.

Vision used to get a lot of people randomly commenting he was creepy but hmmmmm.

I wonderrrrrrr.

I don’t mean to be coy. I wonder if Dr Druid has any relation to this. I might be paranoid but his noggin is wandering around peering into people’s brains during this exact time.

Anyway.

Monica’s errand that she had to do was nyooming into FBI agent Derek Freeman in Washington DC and asking him if he knows anything about where Captain America is.

Apparently, a couple of FBI agents got caught by the Avengers Mansion security system snooping around looking for Cap. And only a few days after that Cap(tain America) called Monica Marvel and told her that the government kept nagging him to come work directly for them. And not long after that he took an indefinite leave of absence.

So something is going on.

But what could it be? Well, Captain America Meets the Asthma Monster came out this same month.

Mystery solved.

(Another possible answer: the federal government issued an ultimatum that Captain America become an official entity of the US Government and I believe told him they owned the rights to his name, costume, and shield. So he told them to take the job and shove it and turned over his name, costume, and shield. This is when John Walker becomes Captain America and Steve Rogers becomes The Captain.)

FBI agent Derek Freeman tells Captain Marvel that the Avengers don’t have official security clearance anymore -- what with the Vision taking over the Pentagon’s computers -- but because he likes Monica, he’ll go ahead and do a little digging for her.

But what he finds is that whatever is going on is way over his security clearance and tied up in red tape.

Captain Monica is annoyed that she can’t find out anything about Cap(tain America) but FBI agent Derek Freeman is like eh Cap’s an adult. And tells her what she SHOULD be worried about is how the Fixer’s gear was stolen from where it was being studied.

Speak of the devil, in a maximum security prison in upstate New York, the Fixer is brought before the warden to be grilled about the equipment walking away.

Then Fixered Todd Martin OH YEAHs through the wall, shoots the guards, grabs the Fixer, and flies out.

Random scientific researcher Todd Martin comes to in the secret lair of the Fixer. He demands to know what’s going on but since the Fixer doesn’t need him anymore, he shoots him in the face.

That’s cold.

After leaving Todd Martin, random deceased scientific researcher, on the ground, the Fixer muses over his next grand plan. Even though he’s just thinking to himself, he’s very vague about it. He does pull up a big computer monitor map of the US with various points marked with Things He Needs.

Fixer: “So satisfying to see one’s grand design taking shape -- the itch of great ambition about to be scratched. And soon I will have more tools to complete my plans. Many more tools. One, in fact, is very close at hand.”

Dun dun dun!

Back at Hydrobase, the priority alert goes off, drawing She-Hulk, Black Knight, Namor and Marrina from the various things they were up to... to find that Dr Druid is the one who set off the alarm and is waiting in the Quinjet for them.

He even insists that they take off now, without waiting for team leader Captain Marvel.

Although she can easily catch up. But still.

As everyone is getting into the Quinjet, Marrina insists that she come along. Namor goes ‘no, there might be danger on this superhero mission we’re presumably going to’ and Marrina reminds him that she’s a superhero too. She was with Alpha Flight!

Namor agrees that she can come with but tells her that she’s got to stay on the sidelines until she’s made an Avenger too.

Ahhh so Namor is doing the Hawkeye thing of bringing his love interest in and insisting that she be made an Avenger. Well, Marrina seems cool so I’m game.

Captain Marvel does show up, nyooming into the cockpit through the glass.

Captain Marvel: “Now why have you mobilized the team?”

Dr Druid: “Well, I assumed -- quite naturally -- that you would want us mobilized as soon as possible, since something has come up.”

Captain Marvel doesn’t like this. (Neither do I). She especially doesn’t like how he alerted the rest of the team before he sent her an alert. So they’d already be in route before she even heard about it, maybe?

Even if he’s on the up and up as the newest member of the team, he really shouldn’t be taking unilateral action like this.

Anyway, now that Monica has arrived, Dr Druid tells everyone why he Avengers assembled.

An urgent call came over the direct line from Bobby Hutchinson, a boy in Ohio who Captain America tasked with keeping an eye on an android in a barn.

A weirdo in a costume drove up in a truck and went into the barn earlier and Cap(tain America) DID say to call if anything weird happened.

Oh, and then the barn explodes and Captain Marvel has to shove Bobby Hutchinson to safety.

Where the barn was, now the Fixer and the Awesome Android stand.

Fixer: “I have ‘fixed’ your programming, my Awesome Android. You no longer serve the Thinker -- henceforth, you are my ally!”

Captain Marvel nyooms onto the scene and shoves the Fixer with (what is apparently) a concussive blast of energized particles. Which flings him away from the barn and bonks him unconscious against a tree.

Since Monica does her homework, she’s familiar with the Awesome Android and its superpower mimicry abilities. So she doesn’t want to use her powers unless she wants the Android to start using them.

Instead, she tries to talk the Android down. Hey, why not? The Android didn’t really react aggressively when she bonked the Fixer out of the scene. He doesn’t have any standing orders.

Maybe the Avengers won’t even have to fight him!

-checks how many pages are left- Oh.

Neat thing though. We see from the Android’s POV as it scans Captain Marvel and he has pixel vision.

Oh, and the Fixer’s battle harness seemingly shoots a gas bomb by itself.

The gas surprises Monica so she can’t turn to energy before she takes a big ol’ breath of gas and passes out.

For whatever reason - hostility or curiosity - the Awesome Android picks up Captain Marvel.

The rest of the non-lightspeed Avengers in the Quinjet catch up about now and seeing the Awesome Android holding Captain Marvel, Namor immediately assumes its punching time and BWUNT!s the Android right in the vaguely face-ish part of his anatomy.

I mean, Namor calls him a faceless one and the narration claims he doesn’t have any lips or eyes. But he just looks like he’s constantly squinting and grimacing.

Anyway. The Awesome Android copied Captain Marvel’s powers just by picking her up. In exchange for the BWUNT!, he BWAAASH!s Namor out of the air with a concussive blast of energized particles.

Namor goes down.

Prompting She-Hulk, because she’s-Hulk, to muse about how hot Namor is and how she’d “swim in his wake” if he were only not married.

Anyway, she dodges the Awesome Android’s concussive blasts to close in and start punching.

Hard to say whether she’s making headway or not but she sure punches him a lot.

Maybe she was winning the exchange? But she gets distracted by a truck taking off and Awesome Android BLAPP!s her in the head.

Marrina finds Namor where he got blasted to. He’s conscious but recovering from the blast. Marrina even notes that his skin is still hot from the blast. She decides that now that he can’t get up and stop her is when she’s going to prove to Namor that she can handle herself.

She chose her time well to prevent arguments, at least.

Anyway, with the team getting its ass kicked and Captain Marvel unconscious, Dr Druid takes command. Which obviously he should be doing as the least senior person here, of course.

He tells Black Knight to rescue Captain Marvel while he, Dr Druid, distracts the Android.

Black Knight uses his cut-anything sword and hey what do you know, it cuts pretty deeply into Awesome Android’s arm. He drops Captain Marvel, Black Knight catches her.

Black Knight: “Whew! I wonder where dead weight is on the electromagnetic spectrum?”

Awesome Andydroid opens his mouth and just blows at 200 mph. Apparently this is an innate android power he has and not mimicked or absorbed. He was just designed to go BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAH and make things whhoooosshh

Anyway.

About a mile away from all this, Marrina catches up to the escaping truck and jumps on it.

She’s totally going to prove that she’s not a “helpless female” which of course is why she immediately gets captured, falling through a trapdoor in the roof of the truck.

Great, comic. Just great.

Anyway again

The Avengers recover after being blown away by the Awesome Android’s ability. But good news is that Captain Marvel is back up! And so is Namor!

Bad news is that Black Knight is thinking some pretty disgruntled thoughts about Monica’s leadership.

Black Knight: The Wasp would never have let us all go traipsing into battle without a plan. But our new chairwoman did -- and we’re on our butts for it! Come on, Captain Marvel. What’s our plan?

Instead of continuing to attack the Avengers, Awesome Android shambles over to the unconscious Fixer but Captain Monica has Namor whisk the supervillain out of his reach.

So now that they’ve done that, now Awesome Android is getting aggressive.

She-Hulk steps back up to the plate since she wants to repay the cheap shot he got on her.

Dr Druid pipes up in her head to suggest she hit Awesome Android in the right armpit because he’s “mentally located a strange nerve ganglia.”

That same nerve in the armpit is how the Fantastic Four beat the Awesome Android the first time so good mental locating, I guess, Dr Druid.

She-Hulk pops the Awesome Android in the pit and down he goes. Simple as that.

She(-Hulk) even has the spare time to ogle Namor some more as he’s helping lift the deactivated Awesome Android off of her.

Dr Druid lifts Captain Marvel to her feet despite her insistence that she can get up on her own, suggesting that it’d be bad for moral for the team to see Monica not on her feet.

Monica is suspicious of his motives but it’s She-Hulk who comes to her sort of rescue.

She gives Dr Druid a kiss on the dome for his help in defeating the Android and he indignantly scolds her.

Dr Druid: “These sort of emotional displays will not be tolerated, She-Hulk! This is a fighting team -- not a lonely hearts club! We should behave as warriors, not high school children!”

She-Hulk: “Anyone ever tell you you’re cute when you’re mad?”

Monica manages not to smirk in the background.

Despite the rocky way things went, Captain Marvel is pretty satisfied with how the team is gelling. She knows she’s got a long way to go before she can fulfill the chairwoman role as she should but she’s sure she’s on her way.

And then Black Knight points out that the Fixer they caught isn’t the Fixer.

Its... TODD MARTIN?!

Huh. I guess Fixer didn’t kill him. Used him as a surrogate again. Todd Martin has no idea what’s going on or how he got here. Or where the Fixer is, obviously.

And Namor just remembered that Marrina ran off on her own and hasn’t returned.

I wonder if those two things are connected.

Dangit, Marrina. Stop saying stuff about proving yourself or that you’re actually competent. It just sets you up for irony.

Anyway, yeah, the truck leaving the scene of a giant robot fight that also had a secret trapdoor in its roof was in fact the Fixer.

He sent in a decoy but was on scene until he wasn’t.

Fixer: “In the past, I contented myself with petty dreams and schemes -- never saw the big picture! But all that has changed! I’ve learned from my mistakes -- I’ve fixed my own shortcomings! And soon everything will be fixed! EVERYTHING... including the AVENGERS!”

So the good news is that he’s been bad at killing people so far so Marrina is definitely still alive. This ain’t her time to die!

The bad news is that next week, it’s time for more West Coast Avengers. We’ll have to wait to see what happens with Marrina.

The weird news is that robots have nerve ganglia apparently.

Follow @essential-avengers​ if you know why robots have nerve ganglia or if you just want to have Essential Avengers on your dash whenever I reblog these posts to there. Like and reblog to show your appreciation for this specific post. Add a comment if you have something to say.

#avengers #essential avengers #the Fixer #Awesome Android #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #Black Knight #Dr Druid #for some reason #Marrina #namor mckenzie #She Hulk #I wonder if Marrina will take Namor's name and be Marrina McKenzie #Marrina Smallwood McKenzie? #random scientific researcher Todd Martin #I hope he's a recurring #essential marvel liveblogging

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #290: The World According to the ADAPTOID!

April, 1988

DAY of the ADAPTOID!

OH NO THE ADAPTOID IS PUTTING EVERYONE INTO TIMEOUT CUBES!

Oh, hi, Cap!

So. How did we get here?

Last time on Avengers: During the Avengers Under Siege arc, the Super-Adaptoid got free from the stasis tube he was being stored in at Avengers Mansion, switched places with the Fixer, and has been running rings around the Avengers. He gathered a small group of like-minded robots and had them smash shit at the Avengers’ new Hydrobase headquarters while he himself summoned the living cosmic cube Kubik from SPACE. The Super-Adaptoid super-adapted Kubik’s reality altering powers and now he controls everything I guess.

Good game, Avengers. Fell apart a little at the end but overall solid run.

No, no.

I’m sure they’ll somehow prevail, possibly with the help of Cap(tain) because he wasn’t in previous issues.

Can I just say I don’t love that design for Kubik? Or the Adaptoid for that matter?

Looks like a budget transformer. And also the way the plot has gone with the Adaptoid scheming his way to adapting reality warping, we didn’t really get him becoming a mashup version of this team of Avengers which is also a disappointment.

I don’t want to start on too negative a note but I’m already on guard due to this being the Monica Rambeau character assassination era in Avengers.

So, let’s get into it! Yeah!

So on the opening splash page, the Avengers burst in to find two weirdo looking robot dudes (Kubik and the Super-Duper-Adaptoid) and after everyone pauses in place long enough for a two-page spread recapping the story thus far, the Adaptoid just cubes the Avengers and also Machine Man.

Cover image came true a lot quicker than I’d have thought.

And then with the main characters of this book put in cube timeout, Kubik and the Adaptoid talk in a weird font.

The gist of the conversation is despite the Adaptoid telling Kubik to piss off, Kubik wanted to stick around and see how this was going to play out.

So the Adaptoid teleported him into the biggest black hole in the Andromeda Galaxy. Which seems an overreaction but what do I know.

The Adaptoid assumes its generic metallic faceless form and explains that its due to the sliver of Cosmic Cube AIM used to build him, that he was able to super-adapt Kubik’s powers because they’re basically chips off the same block. Or, he’s the chip off Kubik’s block.

Whatever.

The Adaptoid also declares himself the SUPREME ADAPTOID and outlines his plan to create a couple billion Adaptoids and completely replace humanity.

Good to have goals, I guess.

Machine Man decides to further recap the bits of the story that the first recap hadn’t covered. And specifies his motives were to figure out what the Adaptoid was doing and then stop him. He didn’t do a great job at that.

Captain Marvel manages to re-materialize herself now that the plot doesn’t need her discorporating in the corner. But the effort has basically wiped her. God forbid she do anything.

She has a theory that she could escape the cube prison if she could shift to visible light. Y’know, since the cubes are translucent.

But Machine Man has another idea, from a book he read. And it has to be seen.

(The idea has nothing to do with the actual process he uses. The book just spilled a lot of ink on the domino effect and Machine Man thinks that bonking floating cubes into other floating cubes is like dominoes)

He basically uses his anti-gravity generators to make the cube tumble around in midair and bonk into Namor’s cube which bonks into She-Hulk’s cube and so on and so forth until all the cubes are pushed out of the communications complex building so the Avengers can see the Supreme Adaptoid shitting out smaller Adaptoids.

“One for each man, woman, and child on this planet.”

Why are you even replacing the children? What are your adaptoids going to do? Go to school? Play stick ball?

Meanwhile, Dr Druid and Black Knight but I bet you mostly Dr Druid refuse to take a backseat to this plot.

Even though they were off-panel taken to a hospital due to injuries sustained while having their asses kicked by a robot, the two have borrowed a Quinjet from the West Coast Avengers and are returning to Hydrobase.

Dr Druid uses his MIND POWERS to render the Quinjet invisible to detection so obviously two Adaptoids crash through the windshield as soon as the Quinjet lands.

Because Dr Druid sucks.

The Adaptoids start adapting the two heroes, one sprouting a robe and the other sprouting armor and a sword.

It could get dicey quickly but Dr Druid advises Black Knight that these things aren’t human so won’t activate his super cursed sword’s super blood curse.

So Black Knight cuts them both down with his cuts anything sword. Metal ain’t much of an obstacle.

With the two attacking Adaptoids dead orrrr deactivated? Dr Druid suggests they should hurry and infiltrate Hydrobase before anyone notices the missing Adaptoids.

But suddenly Dr Druid and Black Knight are also cubes because the Supreme Adaptoid definitely noticed losing two of his “children.”

The upside to this though is that it demonstrates that She-Hulk is the funniest damn person on the team.

So at least their morale isn’t all bad.

Black Knight decides to use his cut-anything sword to cut out of cube hell but while his cut-anything sword can cut through the cube, the cube reseals almost immediately after so its not a solution.

(Also, they’re floating near the Supreme Adaptoid and he can re-cube them with a thought so... at best its part 1 of a longer plan.)

Black Knight: “Uhh, so much for my bright ideas. Captain Marvel, you lead this intrepid group. What’s the plan, chief?”

Captain Marvel: “I-i just don’t have anything promising to say. Maybe when my strength returns...”

Black Knight, sadly: “Oh.”

Monica Rambeau character assassination power hour, remember?

She’s not even allowed to be a little useful.

As she points out, the Supreme Adaptoid has the reality altering power of the Cosmic Cube. Usually you beat a Cosmic Cube user by taking the cube from them. But the power is inherent to the Supreme Adaptoid and he’s double telepathic so can’t be surprised.

Meanwhile, Kubik just pops out of the black hole that the Adaptoid dunked him into. Because, yeah, he can reality alter too and has more experience with it.

Kubik: “Doubtless the Adaptoid believed I would be a bewildered child within the singularity... but I have wandered the Schwarzchild radius before and was not lost or baffled. And so Kubik returns to Earth.”

But instead of returning to where the Supreme Adaptoid is, Kubik does not do that. As the Adaptoid pointed out, two beings like them going at it could destroy all of existence and Kubik likes looking at existence. Its interesting.

So he needs to think of a non-direct way to thwart the Supreme Adaptoid.

Thankfully, he decides to go look to Our Lord And Savior Best Man In All Of Existence the Captain America.

To be less sassy about it, the Captain America has experience with Cosmic Cubes, Adaptoids, and who has “a spirit of most uncommon valor.”

So, the Captain America has been out of the book a bit. I don’t know why he never contacted the Avengers to touch base but basically the government told him to get in line or turn over all the stuff that’s (C) the US government. The shield and the costume and the Captain America name.

The Captain America told them to take the job and shove it and got a new shield and a new darker costume that’s primarily black instead of blue. Instead of going by Nomad again, he just dropped America off the name and is going by the Captain instead.

Huh. Which makes the Captain in Nextwave a recycled name. Which is funny since his thing is that there weren’t any good Captain ____ names anymore.

Also, he’s got some red and white shapes in a vague flag pattern but instead of the star field he’s got a black star-shaped hole. I think the visual symbolism is that the heart has gone out of America or something. Let it never be said that Steve Rogers can’t be a little dramatic.

Anyway. You can see the Captain’s costume on the cover where everyone is in cubes.

Kubik pops into existence on the road where the Captain is motorcycling and tells him “This universe has great need of you!”

He also has to reintroduce himself since the Captain only knew him as a cube.

The Captain goes ‘heck I may be on a leave of absence but if the Avengers need me, I’m there’ and Kubik goes ‘okay, you’re there’ and teleports the Captain right behind the Supreme Adaptoid.

Okay, okay. The Captain asks Kubik to send him there. Kubik warned that the Supreme Adaptoid would just put the Captain in cube jail too. And the Captain went ‘nuh uh, I have a plan or at least a concept.’

The concept being that the Adaptoid was created by AIM to defeat Captain America so he probably has a chip on its shoulder about the Captain.

So Kubik teleported him to Hydrobase but at least erased his memory of the interaction so the Supreme Adaptoid wouldn’t know Kubik was involved in things again.

Also, yes, the Supreme Adaptoid immediately puts the Captain in cube jail.

Although he is a little confused how the Captain got so close without being sensed. But whatever.

The Captain decides to challenge the reality-altering machine god to a one-on-one fisticuffs c’mon be a man.

Supreme Adaptoid: “Why should I accept such a challenge when my merest shrug would erase you from existence as if you had never been?”

The Captain: “You’ll face me because it’s your destiny to face me! Your creators gave you a mission -- to utterly defeat me! It is a mission -- a programming -- you have never successfully carried out!”

Supreme Adaptoid: “That is true. But I am the Supreme Adaptoid now -- I have transcended all programming. My destiny is my own -- subject to my will and my will alone! I AM THE COSMIC CUBE INCARNATE!”

The Captain: “Maybe so, but how do you know even this grand scheme wasn’t an unknown part of your programming? How do you know A.I.M. didn’t intend there to be a synthesis of its two greatest creations? Could be you’re not as independent as you think, fella!”

The Supreme Adaptoid decides Cap(tain) is just trying to make him doubt himself but he DOES let Cap(tain) out of cube jail and tells one of the baby Adaptoids to defeat him.

So, ha ha, psychology worked!

Also, being let out of cube jail apparently makes a POOT! sound effect.

I’m immature enough to highlight and laugh at that.

The Captain engages in fisticuffs with the Baby Adaptoid as it starts adapting his fighting skills and new aesthetic.

While he plays the sweet chin music on the shapeshifting robot he thinks about how dangerous it is that the Super-Adaptoid has Cosmic Cube power. Because usually you need to exploit the character flaws of whoever is using the cube. But being an artificial being with absolutely no character flaws probably, that won’t work on the Supreme Adaptoid.

But also: FIGHTING HEART! SPIRIT! HUMAN STUFF! THAT’S WHY THE CAPTAIN WILL PREVAIL OVER AN ADAPTOID COPY OF HIMSELF!

Whether America or not, Steve Rogers loves giving speeches while punching things.

Also, while the Captain is fighting the Captain-Adaptoid, the other Avengers are just chilling in their cubes spectating the fight.

It looks very funny.

The fight gives Dr Druid an idea and he floats his cube over to the Supreme Adaptoid. Captain Marvel yells at him not to do anything foolish but Black Knight points out that anything is worth a try. How could things get worse?

Dr Druid claims that he wants to help the Supreme Adaptoid.

Supreme Adaptoid: “Help me!? I am all-powerful -- not a boast, a fact. I require no assistance. And I sense this is merely a ploy to try and defeat me.”

Dr Druid: “If it is impossible to defeat you, what harm can there be in listening?”

Supreme Adaptoid: “Speak briefly then.”

This guy sure can be baited.

Dr Druid argues that there is a way for the Supreme Adaptoid to prove that what he’s doing is free will and not A.I.M. programming. And that is to answer the question of: what then?

After the Supreme Adaptoid replaces all of humanity with Adaptoids, what then?

Well, he’ll rule them.

Okay and ruling means dictating what they’ll be doing. What are five billion Adaptoids going to be doing?

Uhhh.... the Supreme Adaptoid hasn’t thought that far ahead.

Dr Druid: “Exactly... because you lack one essential... imagination. All you are capable of is the imitation of that which already is... Adaptoid. Once you have eliminated all there is to imitate, you will simply have nothing to do.”

Further, Dr Druid says that Adaptoids not only don’t have imagination, they have no ability to even copy imagination.

So, wait. The Supreme Adaptoid thought up the whole plan to gather Heavy Metal to distract the Avengers, use their files to track down the Cosmic Cube and summon it to Earth, so he could adapt its power and become ALL-POWERFUL. And that is a plan that is specifically Adaptoid based so he couldn’t have just stolen it from the Fixer.

So does he have imagination or not?

I guess not because the Supreme Adaptoid tries to create something from nothing and just makes a generic Adaptoid.

But as he gets angry, knocks away the Dr Druid cube, he has a pissy tantrum where he repeats the very argument I made.

Supreme Adaptoid: “Of what purpose is such a parlor game? I have conceived and executed a scheme that has brought me to the threshold of universal domination. And if that is not creativity -- if that is not imagination -- what is? Away with you, doctor, you words of ‘wisdom’ fall on deaf ears!”

I mean. Good point. Is coming up with that plan he came up with not imagination or creativity? Guess not.

Anyway, while he was distracted having a philosophical debate with Dr “Debate Me!” Druid, the Captain beat his Adaptoid counterpart.

And the Captain does what the Captain does best and makes a speech that you can’t break the human spirit and so on. Not even if the Supreme Adaptoid turns reality into a pretzel!

Sufficiently baited, the Supreme Adaptoid drags himself down to the Captain’s level, takes on his form and skills and starts kicking the shit out of him.

Supreme Adaptoid: “I’ll now put the lie to your ludicrous speeches of ‘indomitable will power’ and the ‘human heart!’ Nonsense! What matters are the quantifiable attributes! Strength -- speed -- agility -- combat knowledge! I’ve taken those qualities from you! They reside in a body not fatigued by extreme exertion. Thus, I am your measurable superior! And not all of your vaunted valor or spirit means a whit! I will win!”

The Captain: “You can’t see, can you? It’s the spirit that fires the flesh... the spark that ignites at those moments when a man is most alive!”

Supreme Adaptoid: “Lies! I am the cube incarnate! I am all --”

The Captain: “You are nothing! To know of life you must know of death! Life’s brevity makes it precious beyond understanding! Our species lives with the knowledge that our loved ones will die -- that we ourselves will one day be dust. But we go on! That is courage! That is spirit! But because death is a stranger to you, life will be an endless sameness... an eternal nothing of acquisition to no purpose. There is no end for you... and I pity you for that. And all this horror -- all this waste because you, Supreme Adaptoid, cannot die.”

And so, to own the Captain, the Supreme Adaptoid adapts the ability to die and drops dead.

That is exactly how this plot resolves.

The Captain talks the monster to death.

But if anyone could do it, it was going to be Speechifyin’ Steve Rogers.

All the Avengers who did jack and shit in this entire issue are freed from cube jail by Kubik.

Kubik praises what a cool guy Captain America is and how “truly is humanity blessed to have such as him” and adds the Avengers to that sentiment too, as an afterthought.

Kubik then removes the Cosmic Cube sliver from the defunct Super/Supreme Adaptoid. Without it, the Adaptoid should never be able to menace Earth again.

Of course, the Super Adaptoid appears two years later to fight the Fantastic Four so way to fuck up, Kubik.

Having ended the threat of the Super-Adaptoid forever, Kubik returns to space but leaves behind a moral, of sorts.

Kubik: “I leave now for the stars and my cosmic pursuits, Avengers. I leave saddened by the conclusion of a tragedy that should never have been. The tragedy of self-deception. You see before you a straw man brought down by the arrogance of absolute power... brought down by a simple, though profound, expression. In the words of your own immortal bard... ‘To thine own self be true.’”

Wasn’t that part of Polonius’ speech where the point was that Polonius was a dumbass? Like, there was good advice in the speech but Polonius was a huge dingus?

Anyway.

I have sour feelings about this story, this Supreme Adaptoid arc.

For one thing, it doesn’t play well to the Adaptoid’s strengths of adapting. There’s a good mix of powers and skills in this group of Avengers that would be fun to see them having to face all combined in one opponent.

Its a good twist when it turns out that the suddenly dangerous the Fixer is actually the Super-Adaptoid but then the rest of the plot (minus the part where he adapted Kubik’s power) could have been anyone. Hell, it could have been the Fixer with a machine that siphoned or copied the Cosmic Cube power.

I feel like it was too soon for Hydrobase to get smashed up. Avengers Mansion got smashed up not so long ago and that had some real emotion to it. It was the Avengers’ home. Hydrobase JUST got retooled into being their new headquarters and it doesn’t even look like itself.

And its hard to enjoy a story where it seems like the point is that Monica Rambeau sucks and the Avengers suck if Captain America isn’t around. It ultimately turns this issue of Avengers into Dragonball Z where we’re waiting for Goku Steve Rogers.

The Avengers flail around ineptly, the villain becomes Perfect Cell or more appropriate comparison, and then we have to wait for Captain America.

And for what? If Captain America were rejoining the team right away, this could be a strong reintroduction to the team. You often have new members or rejoins be super competent in their debut to get the readers excited about them being back.

But - and this is looking ahead a little spoilers - Steve Rogers the Captain does not rejoin the Avengers. The team is going to flail around some more, get undermined, and then disband in the next ten issues. There’s going to be some time without Avengers at all. And then the Captain will reform the team with the Worst Roster.

Was the Avengers sitting in cube jail waiting for the Captain to bail them out supposed to get us excited for that? Because there’s nearly a year between now and then.

I’m being too negative because I know what’s coming.

The book was so solid under Roger Stern. The characterization was great. And now there’s going to be some instability in the creative team for a bit until we land on John Byrne as the permanent writer.

I’ll look for the good in the upcoming issues but we’re still in the editorially mandated character assassination of Monica Rambeau so it’ll be an uphill struggle.

=|

Follow @essential-avengers​ but I can see why you’d hold off. But maybe do it anyway? Like and reblog too? Comment or reblog with your thoughts?

#essential avengers #avengers #Super Adaptoid #Kubik #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #namor mckenzie #Marrina #She Hulk #Black Knight #Dr Druid #who is here for some reason #Stingray #who just sort of disappears out of relevance #Machine Man #Captain America #the Captain #our lord and savior and best man on this or any world god he's great #essential marvel liveblogging #grumble grumble #talking the villain to death the steve rogers way

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #295: “... Beggars Would Ride!”

September, 1988

The DOMINATION of DRUID!

T. REX ROBOT??! =D

This issue continues the title from the previous Avengers issue making the whole thing the proverb “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

Why the hell is that the title?

I’m not unused to Avengers slapping some Culture into the book, either in allegorical titles or just stealing some prose to use as narration.

But what, specifically, does the proverb have to do with this issue and the previous issue?

I’m not going to get overly negative. I’m not. This issue has a robot T. Rex that’s probably a transformers reference. I’m just going to enjoy that.

I’m not even going to let Dr Fucking Druid ruin this for me!

Last times on Avengers: Namor’s wife Marrina turned into a sea monster, caused a lot of property damage and death, and then got stabbed in the head by Namor. She’s dead. Team leader Captain Marvel Monica Rambeau has lost her powers in a wacky mishap when she lightning’d the entire ocean instead of Marrina.

This all works out pretty well for Dr Druid, an asshole. He’s been influenced by Nebula Kang with sex and power fantasy and has been undermining Monica for a while now. But with her out of commission, Druid psychically forces the Avengers to vote him in as new leader of the team. The only dissenter is Thor  who nevertheless abides with the majority. But he’s side-eyeing Druid.

Nebula Kang probably has a plan for the Avengers although its unclear what and why.

But if its Nebula, no wonder she wanted to get Monica out of the picture after the way Monica dunked on during her spaceventure.

Anyway, robot dinosaurs.

Despite Marvel making Transformers comics around this time, these are not the Dinobots.

It is a Bad Future where robot dinosaurs rule the Earth.

Some human rebels are fighting back with a futuristic looking tank but they get cut off by a Roboceratops and then worse yet, attacked by a Mechanisaurus Rex!

But just when the rebels are about to scatter, the Mechanisaurus Rex freezes in place and vanishes in a flash of light.

With the big gun Mechanisaurus Rex vanished, the rebels rally and attack the six remaining Dinodroids.

What does this have to do with anything?

Not much.

This just happens to be the Bad Future Nebula Kang sourced an Avengers level threat from. She used Kang technology a stasis bridge to timeaport the Mechanisaurus Rex to modern day Earth-616 Washington DC.

The Mechanisaurus Rex has no idea what just happened but its robot sensors immediately tag everything around it as hostile and its robot mouth laser immediately starts dealing with hostiles.

Over at Hydrobase, the Avengers hold a meeting led by their new, ugh, leader, Dr Druid.

Dr Druid discusses that maybe they should reach out to some reserve members because they’re down to four people and one of them is Black Knight under a super curse.

While he does that, Thor wonders why the hell the other Avengers voted for Druid to be their leader.

Nebula Kang interrupts Dr Druid’s train of thought IN HIS MIND to tell him about the danger in Washington DC that she definitely didn’t cause.

Druid wonders what she’s doing on Earth and she reminds him that she said he would be the savior of Earth as well as her planet. So its fine. Definitely not suspicious.

Anyway, bad shit going down in Washington DC with a robot T. Rex. Shouldn’t Thor specifically go deal with it? Only Thor? Go deal with it? Doesn’t that sound like a good idea??

Apparently, from the outside of this mental conversation, Druid looks like he just kind of zoned out.

Dr Druid: “I have had a clairvoyant vision, and it will serve as a demonstration of why I am fit to lead the Avengers! There is something dangerous beyond belief rampaging through Washington DC! Thor! You must go there at once!”

She-Hulk asks why they don’t go as a team and Dr Druid says no that’s dumb, Thor can handle this danger beyond belief on his own.

He gives Thor a watch with a micro-transmitter in case he needs help and sends him on his way.

Thor does go but he’s still harboring his misgivings.

Thor: “But more and more do I sorely miss the steadfast company of my former teammates -- Captain America, Iron Man, and Hercules. They at least wore their hearts upon their sleeves, spoke their minds openly, and fought as warriors. Less and less do I trust Doctor Druid’s supposed psychic powers. They seem too unpredictable, too unaccountable.”

Meanwhile, for all that meanwhile means anything with Kangs, it’s Kangs.

Beard Kang offers Fred Kang full membership in the Council of Kross-Time Kangs in exchange for knowledge.

Fred Kang proposes trading knowledge for knowledge so Beard Kang admits that one of the purposes of the Council is to obtain the most powerful weapon in ALL THE OMNIVERSE.

An omniverse is obviously much cooler than a multiverse.

What’s more, that specific weapon is a part of the Earth-616 timeline - Fred Kang’s timeline - and that’s the reason why they wanted to recruit him. BUT: to obtain the weapon, they’ll also one day need the Avengers’ help.

So Fred Kang shares some information that the other Kangs don’t know. Nebula Kang has been messing with the contemporary Avengers of that Earth-616 timeline.

Beard Kang realizes that she must be trying to swipe the weapon out from under the Council’s noses and demands that she be found immediately. Meanwhile, several Kangs will go and root around in her room.

Speaking of Nebula Kang, she’s at a tricky part of her scheming. She set up a threat in Washington DC and got Dr Druid to send out only Thor to go fight it.

Now she needs to convince Dr Druid to leave Thor to die against the Mechanisaurus Rex.

Because Thor resisted her and Druid’s mental control and so he must be removed from the situation.

Dr Druid: “Does still more danger threaten?”

Blonde Nebula Kang: “Indeed, my love. But from an unexpected quarter. The danger, especially to you, is Thor. He failed to vote in your favor for chairmanship of the Avengers... he entertains doubts about you now... and what demigod would ever accept the leadership of any mortal? He is your greatest danger.”

Dr Druid: “Yes... yes... I see it clearly now. Thor will never make a good Avenger!”

YOU SURE WERE QUICK TO JUMP TO THAT.

Dr Druid seriously has no moral backbone to push back against Nebula Kang’s manipulations.

Thor arrives on the scene and decides that yes a robot T. Rex looks like a job for SuperThor!

Thor flies right at the Mechanisaurus Rex and hammers it in the neck.

Thor: “Back, machine of evil! Those whom you would destroy are under my protection. To attack them is to attack Thor!”

Mechanisaurus Rex: “PRIORITY TARGET ALERT! TARGET TRACK! TARGET LOCK! FIRE!”

And it blasts Thor out of the sky with a mouth laser.

Leading Thor to conclude

Thor: “By the eye of Odin, ‘tis more to this creature than meets the eye!”

Eyyyyy, I see what you did there!

Since hitting didn’t work, Thor tries his second move: all the lightning.

But it doesn’t leave a scratch.

Since the Mechanisaurus Rex is tough enough to tank Mjolnir and lightning and fast enough to tag Thor in reply... Thor decides that this is actually a job for the Avengers.

Not that he can’t fight this thing. But he’s worried about how much damage the Mechanisaurus Rex will do in the meantime.

Thor: “Whatever it is, yon beast of war has been cunningly wrought! Even now, it turns this way, seeking the son of Odin! Its destruction must be accomplished with utmost speed to minimize the damage to the city! And that may best be done by divers hands! The Avengers must be summoned!”

Back at Hydrobase, She-Hulk is pacing by the meeting table.

Dr Druid is off in one of his sex dream trances, Black Knight can barely move because of the turbo curse, and She-Hulk is antsy.

She’s antsy because Thor was sent off alone and she’s waiting to hear back about it. And she’s antsy because she’s second guessing voting Dr Druid for chairman. She doesn’t know what she was thinking!

(Because it wasn’t HER thinking.)

But the alarm goes off AOOUGAHH! AOOUGAHH! distracting her.

I love a good aoougahh! alarm.

But the alarm means Thor is calling for help.

She-Hulk runs to the Quinjet, calling for the others to assemble to help Thor!

... Except, eh. Why should they bother helping Thor? She-Hulk wonders. She’s-Hulk has never liked him anyway!

Except. These aren’t her thoughts. Dr Druid is putting words in her mouth.

And its so contrary to the spirit of being an Avenger that She(-Hulk) balks at them and decides to go help anyway! Because that’s what Avengers do!

So Druid has to get a little more forceful with her.

He’s forced to give the game away, basically.

Subtlety is out the window.

He mind whammies She-Hulk into sitting down so that the chair can restrain her.

Ummmm hey when the Avengers were building their new headquarters on Hydrobase, who signed off on BONDAGE CHAIRS?

Oh, right, I just remembered that Captain Marvel kept leaving Dr Druid alone to supervise construction.

A bad decision in hindsight. Oops!

Over at Thor, he’s having a tough time without backup and he’s kinda wondering where the hell the Avengers are.

The Mechanisaurus Rex’s blasts keep Thor at a distance so he can’t hit it with a decisive blow. But since its starting to threaten the people of Washington DC, Thor can’t wait for backup.

He summons a storm to distract the Mechanisaurus Rex and closes in so he can smash it in the head with Mjolnir. But it rams into a building to scrape him off. Then tries to use Tail Whip against him while he’s sprawled on the ground.

Thor flies up to the air to get some space but the Mechanisaurus Rex activates FEET JETS to chase.

Thor: “By the falcons of Freya! Yon beast hath the capability of flight! Truly, he is a formidable foe! But so is the son of Odin, god of thunder, enemy of frost giants! And no such construct shall match my speed!”

Thor hammer tosses himself into the Mechanisaurus Rex midair and deals a mighty KERWHACK!

The dinobot falls but suddenly regains flight. Thor was pretty sure he felt the dinobot’s mechanisms break during the mighty KERWHACK so now he knows it can self-repair. And pretty quickly too!

Thor: “No single blow will win the battle! My foe is like a great warrior! So deadly is he that only when he is reduced to atoms will his fighting spirit be stilled forever! So be it! To the death, mine enemy! TO THE DEATH!”

Thor has some rad battle boasts.

MEANWHILE... or whatever you say when its outside of time.

The Kangs search Nebula Kang’s Kang quarters and find a lot of other Kang technology, from Kang Ransom and Kang Kong. There’s some suspicion at first that they’re traitors working with her until Beard Kang finds a book recording all the technology Nebula Kang acquired and from who.

Beard Kang: “We Kangs of the Kross-Time Kang Korps have jealously guarded our respective technologies so that no one member would acquire an unfair advantage over the others. It seems that Kang Nebula has made the acquaintance of any number of our member Kangs... who apparently have made gifts to her of their respective technologies!”

One of the Kangs insists that Nebula Kang stole the technology from him, that he didn’t give it freely but Beard Kang just verbally rolls his eyes that yeah, sure, his guard was down. Really doesn’t matter now!

IN THE CURRENT MEANWHILE, at Hydrobase.

Dr Druid tells She-Hulk to settle down, clearly she can’t break the chair restraints. Because they’re strong. And because he’s using PSYCHIC POWERS to keep her from exerting herself.

She-Hulk asks why the hell Dr Druid is doing this and he answers that HE CAN SEE THE FUCHURE. Only Avengers can stop vague bad thing that’s going to happen.

Black Knight has apparently been paying attention because he decides Dr Druid is nuts and he’s gonna bail.

He worries that his cursed body is too slow to beat Dr Druid before he can psychic Black Knight. So he’s just going to sneak out while Dr Druid is monologuing at She-Hulk.

Unfortunately, cursed Black Knight is clumsy and his exoskeleton audibly scrapes against something, aggroing Dr Druid.

Dr Druid: “Oh, no, Dane! No one leaves without consulting the chairman! Come back! AT ONCE!”

Druid waves his hands and probably uses his PSYCHIC to prevent Black Knight from reaching the ignition switch.

Dr Druid: “We shall save the universe! Whether you want to or not! The Avengers are mine!”

I’m really surprised that Druid tipped his hat so quickly. Then again, I’m glad I don’t have to suffer through obviously evil Druid manipulating the Avengers for longer than I have to.

Then again again, heck, maybe there’s a good if aggravating story here if it was given time to play out.

Eh.

Anyway, She-Hulk kicks Dr Druid’s ass.

Ahhhh. Cathartic.

And it is known that its hard to psychic when your coccyx is shattered. So Dane is able to blast off in a Quinjet.

Nebula Kang appears in a great PLATHAAP! to berate Dr Druid for letting Black Knight get away.

Dr Druid is confused how his manic pixie sex dream girl can be here (and probably also why she swears “in the name of Thanos.”) She swiftly dials back, claims she’s “as real, as warm as you want me to be.”

Blonde Nebula Kang: “And I did promise that I would come to you in your world, didn’t I?”

Dr Druid: “Yes.”

Blonde Nebula Kang: “And that is what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

Dr Druid: “Yes.”

Blonde Nebula Kang: “And with my help, we are going to save the universe.”

Dr Druid: “yes.”

Blonde Nebula Kang: “Now, with the Black Knight gone, thinking all sorts of wrong thoughts... don’t you think you should locate him... and Thor?”

Dr Druid: “yes.”

She zaps him into a trance so he can go astral project or whatever.

She-Hulk puts two and two together and realizes that Blonde Nebula Kang is responsible for the trances Dr Druid has been going into.

Blonde Nebula Kang: “Mystics are always the easiest  ones to fool. So many dreams, so little reality. But you’re the one we have to worry about next.”

She-Hulk: “I’m a lawyer, sweetheart. They don’t get much realer than that.”

Blonde Nebula Kang: “You must be kidding, ‘honey.’ All lawyers ever do is split hairs; they wouldn’t know a real barber if they saw one!”

Nebula has a lot of opinions about lawyers apparently.

Anyway, Black Knight’s Quinjet homes in on the beacon in the little watch Dr Druid gave Thor.

(Why give him a real working one? Why not secretly turn off the radio so nobody heard his distress call? Why are you so bad at being the villain, Druid?)

Black Knight sees Thor and the Mechanisaurus Rex grappling in the air and switches the Quinjet to hover.

But he can’t open the hatch to jump out and help. His cursed fingers are too stiff!

Then an art error occurs!

Black Knight says his hand is cutting through the hatch but we see the Ebony Blade doing the cutting.

Anyway, he falls out of the Quinjet. Good decision making, Black Knight.

But he falls right toward the Mechanisaurus Rex.

Black Knight: “There’s no time to think! No time to save myself! For Thor! For England! And Good King Richard!”

Black Knight slices through the Mechanisaurus Rex’s head with the Ebony Blade... but where his body hits the giant robot dinosaur skull, it also cuts. Like his body is sharp like a blade now.

What a weird curse.

Dane plummets into the water below. Can’t tell how high he fell from but he doesn’t of it.

He might have drowned because cursed body too stiff to swim. But Thor swoops down and yanks him from the water pretty quickly.

Black Knight can barely speak after the ordeal but he whispers out that Dr Druid tried to prevent him from coming. And Thor is like ‘I FUCKIN KNEW HE WAS SKETCHY.’

Also, just touching Dane’s arm cuts Thor’s hand so he starts bleeding.

Thor: “Woe to him who wields the Ebony Sword. For I do fear that this is part of its deadly curse made flesh. Dane’s form hath begun to merge with his armor! And now see! He is dangerous to the very touch!”

Thor carries Black Knight to an ambulance but warns them not to touch him.

Don’t know how they’re going to do medicine on him but whatever.

Back at Hydrobase, Dr Druid comes out of his trance and reports what happened. He suspects that Thor will return to Hydrobase and probably demand that they have words.

She-Hulk: “Thor was always too arrogant for my tastes anyway! And too dangerous! We’ll just have to give him a welcome he won’t forget!”

Oh no! Jen, no! Your lawyer brain failed you!

Follow @essential-avengers​ because this going places. Bad places maybe. But maybe good. Like, reblog, and share your thoughts. I’m lonely down here in the italics.

#avengers #essential avengers #Mechanisaurus Rex #Dr Druid #Nebula Kang #Nebula #She Hulk #Thor #Black Knight #what a goofy story #i enjoyed the parts with the robot dinosaur and Dr Druid's coccyx being shattered #essential marvel liveblogging

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #293: AND FLIGHTS OF ANGELS...

July, 1988

THE FATE OF MARRINA!

Wait, hold up... the fate of Marrina tm? Flights of angels...? Isn’t that usually followed by sing thee to thy rest?

Yup. Yuuup. Marrina is going to die.

Shame. Shaaaame.

She seemed like she had potential as an Avenger. How long has it been since we had a married couple on the Avengers? ... Oh, when Vision and Scarlet Witch were on the team. Still, though!

But I might be jumping the gun.

Last times on Avengers: the Avengers are having a tough time lately. Because this is the character assassination era. Captain Marvel Monica Rambeau is a weak and ineffectual leader who wants to do things like... not kill Marrina. Dr Druid very much wants to kill Marrina as a first and only option and is actively undermining Monica and having ominous sex dreams. Marrina turned into a giant sea monster for some reason and has been sinking ships and destroying coastal settlements. Namor is sad because his wife doesn’t seem to love him anymore and also is a giant world-threatening monster.

Tough times.

You know who else is having tough times?

Atlantis.

Marrina is smashing them UP!

Which is pretty fascinating! It implies there’s still some of Marrina within her because no doubt she’d harbor some resentment for Atlantis giving her beloved husband the boot and elevating one of his worst enemies to the throne.

Maybe we can ignore the blatant foreshadowing and snap Marrina out of-

Oh.

This doesn’t imply anything. Dr Druid caused this, for some reason.

Ffs.

I’ll get to that when it’s relevant in the plot.

Meanwhile, Simonson gets to put on his Literature Hat by quoting Milton’s Paradise Lost regarding the biblical Leviathan which has little to do with Marrina except being a big aquatic troublemaker.

Namor shows up after Marrina has already gotten bored and wandered off and is distraught to see that Marrina is now killing people that he cares about.

Okay, not really.

But considering its her attack on Atlantis that makes Namor go rejoin the Avengers, it really does feel kind of like all that other damage and other death she’s caused bothered him significantly less.

Over at Hydrobase, Dr Drui psychically spies on Namor, satisfied that his manipulations have paid off.

He also swoons so that he can flashback to something that happened recently but that the audience doesn’t know about.

Very considerate!

Dr Druid: “Apparently only I have the will to save all who can be saved. I pray this will give me the strength to do what must be done!”

Fuck you Dr Druid Point 1: Dr Druid can use “controlled clairvoyance to find Leviathan Marrina so all that time the Avengers couldn’t find her fast enough to prevent damage, Druid was just holding out on them.

Dr Druid: “So, my terrible friend, let us see what we can do to convince the others that you are indeed a menace that must be dealt with properly!”

Fuck you Dr Druid Point 2: He lured Marrina to attack and destroy Atlantis by creating an illusion of a nice, juicy boat and since sea serpents are dumb, he just had the boat head down towards Atlantis.

Fuck you Dr Druid Point 1+2=3: Given that he can find Marrina with “controlled clairvoyance” and lure Marrina with illusion boats, he could have been finding and diverting her and saving lives this whole time. Granted, the effort seems to exhaust him. So maybe he couldn’t have kept it up for long. But he’s refusing to help to his fullest abilities and then criticizing Monica for not being interested in saving lives.

You, sir, Dr Druid, are the menace that must be dealt with properly.

Grump grump.

Anyway.

Dr Druid feels bad about being an evil shithead but comforts himself that he’s saving lives by luring Marrina to kill a bunch of Atlanteans and convincing Namor to rejoin the Avengers so Druid can convince the other Avengers that killing Marrina as their first option is the best and only option.

Dr Druid: “She is too dangerous to be allowed to roam the seas at will... while Captain Marvel wastes time and lives seeking vainly for some illusory cure for Marrina’s condition. But there is no time to waste in that direction. For I have had such dreams that foretell of grave danger in the near future... and Marrina could be just the beginning. Yet how could I convince my fellow Avengers of a threat heralded by dreams? Best to keep my own counsel... and deflect the Avengers from Captain Marvel’s useless endeavors...”

And he finds She-Hulk, Thor, and Captain Marvel talking to Dr Pym on the video phone.

Pym isn’t promising any miracles because the information they sent over was fragmentary. But he used his science brain and scienced up a possible cure. A shot in the dark really. A shot in the dark in the form several hypodermic harpoon needles that will inject Marrina with viral recombinant DNA suppressor. Which MIGHT revert her back to her previous form.

Dr Pym also warns the Avengers to obviously not stick themselves with the harpoon needles because that’d be dumb.

Can’t tell if this is a chekov’s gun or just added detail.

Like that super special dart gun in Lost World Jurassic Park that would kill a dude in less than a second if they accidentally stuck themselves with it. But then the gun never got used at all.

Anyway, Black Knight says it’ll take him a couple hours to make some bazookas to shoot these harpoon needles.

He still sees the problem that Namor will get in the way. But Namor shows up to say he’ll definitely not get in the way!

Namor: “A true monach, Dane, will sacrifice anything, even his own happiness, for the good of the subjects he rules. That is his sacred trust. And though I am no longer a monarch, am I not a guardian of Earth and its mortal inhabitants? Is my trust not as sacred?”

Thor: “Well spoken, Prince Namor. I do not bid thee welcome, for what glad greeting can cloak the grim task that confronts us -- a kinslaying. But I speak as one Avenger to another... thy sacred trust in this hour of trial is gratefully received. No other warrior would I as lief have at my side.”

Frens. Or allies. Avengers. Whatever.

Namor sweetens the rejoining deal. Not only will he be more of a help than a hindrance, he’ll also show the Avengers where Leviathan Marrina is keeping all the ships she sinks.

And he does.

The Avengers get in their QUINJET and fly to the random part of the ocean that Namor tells them.

They don’t see Marrina which could mean she’s out looking for more ships.

Thor suggests they start searching.

Dr Druid says he’ll try a clairvoyant trace. WHICH WE ALREADY KNOW HE CAN USE TO FIND HER. HE DOESN’T FIND HER HERE. THE WORST.

Black Knight cobbled together a sonar pod to scan the oceans.

And Captain Marvel nyooms out in her lightform to zoom all around the world searching the oceans.

THEY STILL DON’T FIND ANYTHING FOR HOURS.

When they eventually find her its because there’s a static patch on their scanners, since Leviathan Marrina can, for some reason, jam signals.

When the Avengers find her, she’s sinking another ship. They arrive too late to save the ship and I guess there’s no survivors in the water because they jump right to trying to harpoon dart Marrina.

The first harpoon needle shatters against her armored scales.

She-Hulk reloads the bazooka and Black Knight figures that maybe her underbelly will be more penetrable. But Leviathan Marrina twists at the last moment and the second harpoon shatters against her armored head.

Thor jumps out of the Quinjet too and starts Mjolniring Marrina in the face, trying to distract her so Black Knight can get a good shot.

Thor: “HAVE AT THEE, CREATURE OF THE DEPTHS! The Avengers shall endeavor to save thee in spite of thyself!”

Black Knight takes aim at the stunned Leviathan Marrina’s underbelly... and no luck!

Her soft underbelly is still too armored.

And now there’s only one harpoon needle left...

Leviathan Marrina rises up to try to eat the people that keep shooting at her and She-Hulk has a sudden good idea.

She-Hulk: “That’s it! Her mouth! Aim for her mouth, Dane! No armor!”

With the very last shot, Black Knight shoots Marrina in the tonsils (ouch) with the cure.

AND IT WORKS!

God only knows where her swimsuit came from when she turned back into her normal self. But she’s back to normal!

Good times are here again.

Marrina: “Oh, my love. Is this another fevered illusion... or have my fondest dreams come true?”

Namor: “Fear not, my heart. You’re safe now, I promise. And here is my kiss upon it.”

Aw, that’s nice.

Now we scene change to the Kang subplot that’s happening for some reason and I’m sure everyone is excited about.

Remember? The one with Kang-123488.23497?

That guy! That specific Kang! Also, a billion other Kangs. Too many Kangs.

Beard Kang says that its rare for Kangs to survive a council war which means that despite the point of the original Council of Kangs to be a trap to kill all Kangs but Cape Kang, there’s so many infinite Kangs that there are multiple council wars of which Kang-123488.23497 is just the latest (whatever that means in terms of a group that transcends time) survivor to be scouted to join the Council of Cross-Time Kangs.

Which is like a Council of Kangs but probably less of a trap to secretly murder its members.

Since Kang-123488.23497 or Kang has survived a council war and also killed a little baby assassin Kang, he has proven he has the stuff to join the Council of Cross-Time Kangs.

And since its a join or die situation, Kang joins.

The lady Kang is apparently Nebula Kang and she is told to escort Kang to his new quarters.

OH HI NEBULA!

(Except it isn’t really.)

(Retcon alert: it will later turn out that this Nebula is actually Ravonna, spying on the Council of Cross-Time Kangs for Immortus or something. Which does follow up on that plot thread. But at the expense of following up on the Nebula plot thread. Nebula was transported by the Beyonder to somewhere away due to Firelord’s careless words. Starfox left the Avengers to go look for her while the team went back to Earth. Wouldn’t it make this stupid new infinite Kang pile more relevant to the team if it was Nebula? This is where she wound up after the Beyonder yeeted her? And because her plot thread was never tied off, she’s back and causing trouble for the Avengers? Spoiler alert: Nebula Kang will cause trouble for the Avengers.)

OH HI NEBULA! SO THIS IS WHERE YOU’VE BEEN

Kang is confused that Nebula Kang is called Nebula so she explains that since everyone is a Kang, they choose individual names to avoid confusion.

Kang-123488.23497 decides he’s going to be Fred. Fred the Kang. Fred Kang.

As in Flintstone.

Such a choice.

Nebula Kang also tells Fred Kang that her quarters are just down the hall from his. And flirtatiously suggests he come visit her sometime so she can whisper sweet lore dumps in his ear.

I don’t know if Kangs fucking Kangs is weird or not. Nebula Kang, whether Ravonna or Nebula, isn’t Kang. So its fair game for her. But they all dress alike so its a bit narcissistic, isn’t it?

Anyway, the lore dump she wants to sweetly whisper to him is about “the deadliest weapon in the omniverse” and how the Council of Cross-Time Kangs is all about finding it.

Well, that answers my question of what the hell this organization even does.

After she returns to her quarters, Nebula Kang says there are depths to Fred that she’ll enjoy plumbing.

God, Nebula. Stop being horny.

But she sits in a comfy looking chair and puts on what looks like an airplane neck pillows so she can check on her “catspaw.”

Nebula Kang: “Becoming a member of the Kang Korps was the wisest move of my career. And seducing the future leader of the Avengers will be the second!”

AND SHE TAKES ON THE FORM OF THE SEXY OMINOUS LADY FROM DR DRUID’S OMINOUS SEX DREAMS!

GOD DAMMIT DR DRUID, YOU’RE LETTING NEBULA MANIPULATE YOU! STOP THINKING WITH YOUR DICK, YOU DICK!

Anyway.

Back at the plot, the Avengers fly Marrina toward a hospital. Namor refuses to let anyone else hold her because he’s a romantic like that.

But suddenly everything goes wrong because we’re not allowed nice things in editorial mandate land.

Marrina: “I’m cold. So cold. I feel as though a hand of ice clutches at my heart and freezes my blood!”

Namor tries to warm her up with kisses but observes that her lips are like ice.

And suddenly she freaks out, begging Namor for help while also thrashing and clawing at him.

The cure didn’t. She’s reverting to the bestial form that preceded the leviathan. And shortly after, reverting to the leviathan.

Her thrashing causes Namor to crash into the ocean.

Thor tells Namor to kill Marrina before she can become big huge large again but Namor hesitates and she becomes big huge large.

Where the fuck did the mass for that come from?

Whatever. This is the Marvel universe where Hank Pym makes conservation of mass weep like a tiny child.

Actually... Speaking of that... hey this is a dramatic moment and all... its very sad that Hank Pym’s shot in the dark cure didn’t work... Why didn’t he just send the Avengers an assload of Pym Particles?

They shrink Marrina, put her in a little terrarium, and then study her and try to cure her from a more informed point?

Dammit, Hank!

You’ll shrink Tigra later and put her in a cat carrier but you won’t shrink Marrina? Playing favorites!

Anyway, not only does Marrina grow back up to a big ol’ Leviathan, she grows bigger than she was before.

Makes no sense but sometimes writers have to force the ending they want.

See, this isn’t the same level of threat the Avengers were already dealing with. It’s an indeterminate but larger level of threat.

Thor even says that if Marrina keeps getting bigger, she may endanger THE ENTIRE EARTH! As opposed to just shipping and coastal communities.

Thor and Captain Marvel decide to unleash electricity on Marrina, hoping to electrocute her before she finishes transforming.

For some reason, Monica decides this is the time to comment that she doesn’t know if she reaaaaally believes Thor is the reeeeal Norse god of thunder. But whatever, it’s not a relevant line of thought to this situation.

Thor summons lightning with Mjolnir and Captain Marvel turns herself into electrical energy and both slam into Leviathan Marrina with a KRAKKATHOOOUM!

Ah, Simonson. If nothing else, always good with lightning noises.

Anyway, its not going to be clear until next issue but this is the end of Monica Rambeau's stint as Avengers chairwoman.

She accidentally fucked up electrifying this giant sea monster, dissipated too much of her energy, and winds up de-powered and nearly dead.

This is the character assassination era. Even in this moment, she can’t be allowed a heroic sacrifice. It has to be another colossal boneheaded Monica Rambeau pratfall.

Sigh.

We’ll get to that with issue #294.

For right now, Captain Marvel is an afterthought, lost in the confusion of everything else going on.

The massive electrocution (which remember, cost Monica her powers accidentally) does not stop Leviathan Marrina. Hell, its not even said that it significantly inconvenienced her.

So Black Knight decides that despite the curse of bad shit if it tastes blood, he must use his extremely cursed cut anything sword to kill Leviathan Marrina.

Namor stops him. Because This Is Something He Has To Do Himself.

But the thing is. Black Knight did decide to risk the effects of the curse to save the world. I’m contrasting it with Monica losing her powers because of a fuck-up.

I’m so grumpy right now.

Sigh sigh sigh.

Namor: “Marrina, my beloved. Hear me, wherever you may be. That which I swore to guard has been taken from us both... And only death now can free your soul from within this living prison! RISE LEVIATHAN! Rise up, and meet your nemesis! FOR MY BELOVED! FOR MARRINA!”

Also, Black Knight freaks out yelling about blood.

Huh. I knew there was a curse on the Ebony Blade that would activate if it ever tasted blood and that’s why Dane tended to just whack people with it.

But I don’t know if he’s ever said what the curse would do, exactly.

For starters, it seems to knock him the fuck out. And his Atomic Steed nearly plummets into the ocean before Thor catches him.

Thor comments that if the curse has really activated, he might be better off dead. So Thor apparently knows what it does.

Dangit, leaving the audience in the dark.

Leviathan Marrina isn’t quite dead because she’s quite big and takes quite a while to die.

She swims to the bottom of the ocean to where she piled all her sunken ships to die among her prizes... and her eggs.

‘TWAS A NEST!

There’s three eggs. Which hatch and the babies zoom off into the ocean depths.

One of the Avengers (it’s unclear because they’re speaking from off-panel) wonders who the father was and another Avenger says they may never know.

But judging by that one hatchling, I’d say that the father was most likely Black Panther.

No wonder Namor is so pissed off at the guy later on.

Marrina shrinks down to her pre-monsterified form (where did the mass go??) and Namor cradles her dead, deceased corpse and swears to find her babies and “teach them of their mother’s spirit.”

Presumably her Alpha Flight and Avengers spirit and not the spirit of all the ship sinking.

He also swims off to build Marrina “a bier fit for a queen... where you will rest forever amidst the coral, the sea jade, and mother-of-pearl... the most precious jewel in all the sea.”

And Namor fucks off.

So I guess he’s not actually rejoining the team.

He’s going through a lot right now so it’s understandable.

With Marrina dead and Namor fucked off, the Avengers decide to go to a hospital for Black Knight when suddenly (as the end of issue cliffhanger) Dr Druid realizes Captain Marvel never came back from that lightning thing.

Great. So not only is her depowering presented (next issue) as something that was a fuckup and not an intentional sacrifice), also none of her friends even noticed she was gone. The dude that’s been constantly undermining her was the only one that noticed.

This issue fucking sucks.

I’ll complain more about Monica’s treatment when I get to next issue but Marrina gets the short end of the stick too!

Turned into a giant, world-threatening monster for reasons of -shrug, confused grunt- and her husband is forced to kill her. After they try all of one time to cure her.

She didn’t get to do a lot in Avengers but she was an established character over in Alpha Flight and she’s being killed off as part of a story to kick Monica off the team and presumably to make Namor sad.

Stern was apparently kicked off the book for pushing back against the character assassination era but I don’t know whether Marrina was always part of Gruenwald’s plan or whether Simonson added that on.

Either way, it sucks.

I feel very negative about this stretch of comics.

Maybe things will get better. But the Worst Roster in issue #300 is upcoming. And then after a bit, John Byrne will be taking over both Avengers books.

There’s some that like John Byrne’s writing but his run contains several very irritating retcons and shifts in characterization.

We’ll see.

Follow @essential-avengers​ because where else are you going to get this level of olde Avengers coverage? The rest of the internet? Don’t be ridiculous. Like and reblog and comment, maybe.

#avengers #essential avengers #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #namor mckenzie #Marrina #Leviathan Marrina #Dr Druid #who is here for some reason #he shouldn't be I hate him so much #She Hulk #Thor #Black Knight #Dr Pym #various kangs #essential marvel liveblogging #Nebula #or is it

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #291: Shadows of the Future Past!

May, 1988

Let’s Party!

Fancy dress? Someone punching Dr Druid? Sounds like a party to me!

Joking aside (or is it?) Thor wielding Mjolnir while in fancy dress makes me laugh for some reason. Who can say why things are funny.

I gotta laugh at the cover because I have a bad feeling about the contents. I remember... something. Secondhand rumor of Marrina and Monica...

Well! We’ll get to it when we get to it! Maybe sooner, maybe later!

Let’s just enjoy Dr Druid getting punched!

So the broad strokes last time on Avengers: the Masters of Evil taking over Avengers Mansion was a black mark on Wasp’s otherwise very successful run as chairwoman. And even though she handled the aftermath well, she decided it was time for her to take a vacation. The senior Avengers on the team like Captain America and Thor were too busy with their own personal biz to devote the necessary time and energy to leading the team so with encouragement, least new of the new Avengers, Captain Marvel Monica Rambeau became the new leader of the team.

She’s done a good job!

She’s led the team through several high stakes situations and proved herself one of the heavy hitters.

And then for whatever reason, Mark Gruenwald, the editor that had overseen the book when Monica became the chairwoman and led the team successfully several times decided he wanted Monica to be out of her depth and incompetent so that Captain America would come take over. Writer Roger Stern objected so now he doesn’t write this book.

So for the past bit, Monica and everyone around her has been bemoaning that she sucks, actually.

I might be being a little uncharitable with this read but I’m not feeling charitable based on the last story arc where Monica was entirely unable to do nearly anything the whole story and had to sit in a bubble and wait for Captain America to bail the team out.

ANYWAY.

Dr Druid has a sex dream.

AN OMINOUS SEX DREAM.

He has some sense of a terrible thing coming that he and he alone must face. And also a sexy blond woman makes out with him and places a crown on his head.

OMINOUS. SEX. Dream.

He doesn’t really remember them when he wakes up. Leaving only that foreboding feeling and possibly apprehensive morning wood.

Dr Druid doesn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it this morning though because there’s a loud CKRUUNCHH! outside the window as She-Hulk and Black Knight clean up the mess by Heavy Metal’s attack on Hydrobase.

Black Knight slices rubble with his extremely cursed sword into manageable chunks and She-Hulk throws them onto a barge.

We have a new writer on this book, Walt Simonson. And I don’t know if he really... gets these characters?

Or at the least has gotten only the most cursory of cliff notes.

Black Knight is sexist now.

When She-Hulk tells Dr Druid to come out and help them clean up, Black Knight decides this is an okay thing to say about FUCKING SHE-HULK.

Black Knight: “Yes, Dr Druid, this is unseemly work for a woman’s hands.”

She-Hulk just flicks his helmet to bounce his noggin and tells him

She-Hulk: “Listen, buster. Knighthood may have been in flower 800 years ago with the crusaders in Jerusalem... But if you don’t manage to pull yourself into the 1980′s, I may just pull you up by the roots!”

C’mon, Simonson. Geez.

Dr Druid practically pulls that “they don’t know” meme on his fellow Avengers as he walks off to meditate on the beach.

‘They don’t know about the palpable sense of menace in the air’

But then he thinks wait what if the sense of impending doom is just me being too mixed up by ominous sex dreams?

So he meditates and has a vision of the sexy blonde faceless woman saying that meditation will “restore you to that which you seek so desperately. Come hither to me, doctor... and know me better.”

Oh god, its upgraded to an ominous sex daydream.

Back at the rubble cleanup, Captain Marvel shows up and decides to help by blasting the rubble.

Since this is the character assassination era, this was the wrong thing to do and She-Hulk berates Monica for making the job harder and Monica flies away berating herself for fucking up yet another thing.

Captain Marvel: “Ever since I became leader, everything I touch seems to go wrong, no matter what I do!”

This is why I’m not charitable with this book.

Because. Look. The first two panels would be a funny gag if the constant refrain wasn’t “Monica is terrible at everything.” On its own, it could be funny.

I’d be reminded of the humor back in Shooter’s run, where he wasn’t afraid to make the Avengers look silly and fallible sometimes. Like when Donald Blake transformed into Thor in a restroom and then had to awkwardly walk out the front door because he didn’t want to punch a hole in a restaurant.

Namor and Marrina KER-SPLASSH out of the ocean and are being That Couple this morning. The couple that’s all about the PDA.

Black Knight, because Simonson I guess thinks he’s actually from the Crusade times, grumps “such public displays of affection should be more restrained.”

I swear, I don’t remember him being quite so much of a fuddy-duddy earlier.

She-Hulk tells Dane off as the stuffiest hero she knows because heck Namor and Marrina are a cute couple. But even she gets a little sick of how gooey Namor and Marrina are when they go off for a morning swim together and Marrina says “To cleave the waves with you, my darling, is all I could ever desire.”

Thor shows up, yawning, and She-Hulk teases him for sleeping the morning away while she and Black Knight were cleaning up after Heavy Metal and from damage caused when Grog the God Crusher invaded Hydrobase looking to god crush Thor in #390 of his book.

Fun fact: That’s the issue where the Captain America lifts Mjolnir for the first time.

Unfun fact: Even in another book with a different writer and a different editor, Monica is still doing the ‘geez I suck, the Captain America should be in charge.’

ANYWAY.

POINT BEING.

She-Hulk razzes Thor for not helping clean up when his book contributed to the damage. But Thor argues he was doing the most important task of all.

Telling Jarvis to make them all breakfast.

Okay. That sounds bad.

He was getting Jarvis from the hospital and bringing him to Hydrobase so he can get back to work.

Okay, that still sounds bad.

I swear its heart warming.

Everyone is happy to see him, he’s happy to be back. Its great. Its Jarvis!

I’m happy to see him.

After breakfast, Monica Marvel returns from her pity party with good news.

She decided to work on improving the Avengers’ PR and she got the team an invite to an exclusive party!

A fancy party will surely improve team morale and make them look good. Provided nothing catastrophic happens! Ignore the cover of this book!

Pfft. Fancy dress Avengers is a wonderful thing. Monica and Dane being the only one wearing little masks because they’re the only ones on the team that have a real secret identity.

I forget sometimes but Dr Druid was kind of a celebrity before joining the Avengers. I wonder if he still takes time to make tv appearances.

Also, Thor in a suit! Just like I wished for back during the Trial of Yellowjacket! Wow. That was so long ago...

Anyway, the Avengers spread out to mingle. This is about boosting their reputation with the public. Or at least the narrow slice of the public that got invited to this party.

So there’s a lot of cool snippets of conversation that we see the Avengers subjected to. Some dude tries to convince She-Hulk to do endorsements for the International Federation of Body Builders. Despite Namor’s potent ‘don’t talk to me’ face, some guy expresses wonder that Namor functions in both fresh and salt water. Some lady tries to convince Thor that the Avengers should move to Tulsa so that property insurance rates in New York will drop. And some dude tries to convince Dr Druid that the world would be better off without superheroes. Some guts on that dude. Dr Druid is, technically, a superhero.

Anyway, Dr Druid thinks he sees his Sexy Ominous Dream Girl in the party and walks away from the conversation to speak to her but it turns out to not be the Sexy Ominous Dream Girl at all.

Black Knight is still being written as if he’s fresh from the Crusade times as he comments “I should rather face a company of Saracens... than meet the reporters who wait in ambush without.”

GOD DAMN DUDE.

It’s been like six years and almost seventy issues since you came back from the past-times. This is not who you are!

Thor gets ambushed by a bunch of women who are simply agog that he is not married and suggests maybe he’d like a nice Earth girl to show him the town.

Thor: “You have my gratitude, fair ladies. But though I have no spouse, I am not without a keeper of my heart.”

Party lady: “Wouldn’t you know it! Just like every other man in this town!”

Thor at least takes the conversation in good humor judging by his little smile. Same can’t be said of She-Hulk as she deals with some dude who tries to recruit her to lead the department of consumer affairs.

Some dude: “Are you kiddin’, honey? You’d be a natural! The She-Hulk in charge of the consumer affairs department! ‘The Big Green Machine is on your side to save your green!’ You’d knock ‘em dead!”

She-Hulk: “You have no idea, ‘darling’, how close you are to being right about that!”

Try not to kill anyone in public, Jen!

I probably didn’t need to spill this many pixelated ink about party banter. But you know what? We should appreciate the silly banality of the Avengers having small talk made at them.

Y’know. Given what’s about to happen.

Which is this:

Another some dude who works at the New York Aquarium tries to convince Namor and Marrina to come visit the aquarium some day. Partially because the guy wants Namor to look at some of their exotic specimens.

Namor isn’t enthused about the idea because he’s one of those dudes who hates zoos except aquariums in this case.

Marrina just isn’t paying any attention to the conversation at all. Instead she’s grabbing a goldfish out of a fish tank and just scarfing it down.

It’s not the snack that smiles back.

Namor tells her maybe don’t do that at a party but she starts screaming about needing food. She smashes the fish tank, scarfs some more fish, and then runs out of the party.

He chases after her but she goes all monstery when he grabs her arm and punches him off of her.

The behavior apparently reminds him of how she acted in Alpha Flight #40 when she was... drawn to her genetically predetermined mate or something?

She’s an alien fish lady.

But aforementioned mate is dead so she shouldn’t be having this reaction. For no reason. Out of the blue. At a party.

While the Avengers run off to see what’s going on, a party-goer snarks that “this wouldn’t have happened if Donald Trump had thrown the party!”

Now there’s a line that aged badly.

Namor chases Marrina to a dock. She’s glowing, radiating heat, apparently transforming into a turtle judging by her head right now.

She jumps into the water and despite making a little splaash! when she jumps in, her swimming away creates a massive SCHLOOSHHH! that threatens to capsize a ship.

Namor jumps into the water as well and swims after her because dammit, she may be turning into a monster but she’s the woman he loves!

You know what? You’re an okay guy sometimes, Namor.

The Avengers arrive just in time to see Namor jump in after Marrina. And also just in time to see Marrina’s quick exit capsize a container ship.

Thor thinks fast and tells She-Hulk to help him push back on the ship so it doesn’t roll over onto the dock.

Of course, this is the character assassination era, so Monica bemoan that she didn’t think fast.

Captain Marvel: “Once again, the leadership of the Avengers seems to slip further and further away from me without conscious effort. It’s as though I seem incapable of taking command!”

Uuugh. In a way, it’s going to be a relief when the trigger gets pulled on Monica because at least then I won’t have to be putting up with the constant self-deprecation that has to be designed to to undermine her appeal.

Speaking of undermining.

Monica does think to turn into her light form to search the waters for Namor or Marrina. But it’s so dark and dirty in the New York Harbor that Monica starts to lose cohesion.

HUH.

NOT A PROBLEM SHE SEEMED TO HAVE BEFORE.

>=[

Fuck sake. Even if her light form was losing cohesion, she can turn to other energies that are better at penetrating water. She can turn into any form of energy or radiation! She can turn into neutrons!

Bah!

Anyway. Monica returns to the surface so that Dr Druid can suggest everyone regroup at Hydrobase and Monica can unconvincingly say she was about to suggest the exact same thing.

Bah!

Somewhen else, this is suddenly a Kang story.

I thought we were done with that dick.

And since this is Kang, I don’t even know which Kang this is.

Wiki says its Kang from Earth-123488.23497.

There’s an infinite amount of universes. Why do we have to decimalize them too?

Anyway, A Kang.

Kang-123488.23497: “While my companions were slain, I concealed myself in the hidden corridors of time! Now the temporal displacement charge has expired and Kang the Conqueror, master of time, returns home! You might have destroyed me, Immortus, but you are a fool! For Kang still survives and you have much to fear!”

So I was wondering if he was a Kang that survived judgement and execution by the Council of Kangs by hiding with a temporal displacement charge. But he names Immortus as involved and nobody but Cape Kang (Prime Kang?) should know Immortus was involved because he was pretending to be a skeleton. So is this the Kang that absorbed every Kang’s memories and ran off screaming into Limbo, but the time one not the demon one?

God. Kangs just make things complicated.

Anyway, Kang-123488.23497 finds his base in shambles. And also finds himself under attack by someone hiding in a time dislocation and shooting a thermal lance.

Kang-123488.23497′s armor holds up but its failing under the assault so Kang-123488.23497 MacGyvers random laboratory junk into a molecular sealer that can shoot a quark beam across a “variable time net.”

Anyway. He smites his assailant. Smites him good.

And is surprised to find the dead, deceased body of a child dressed in Kang armor.

How weird!

Kang-123488.23497: “A child? Who has dared to mock the king of time?”

Lady Kang: “No mockery, my Lord Kang. Only an orphan of time, now an orphan no longer! But they do say the child is father to the man.”

Kang-123488.23497: “Who -- ?”

Lady Kang: “Or woman!”

Okay.

But what does any of this mean?

The lady Kang then mocks the dead, deceased child, calling him Kanglet and saying he lacked patience. But that the Kang she just seemingly disintegrated is an excellent substitution for the child that just died.

Lady Kang: “He may make a welcome addition to the great council! But we shall see.”

Another Council of Kangs? Wasn’t the last one just a ruse to kill all the other Kangs? APPARENTLY IT DIDN’T DO A GREAT JOB.

We just got rid of an infinite amount of Kangs and now we’re lousy with Kangs again. At least they’re more interesting than “Kang”, “Kang with a cape”, “Kang but he’s old and sad.”

We’ve got a lady Kang and a child Kang! ... Had. Had a child Kang.

No, but, seriously, why are we kanging again? We were just here twenty issues ago.

But back to the A-plot - where A stands for Avengers.

A ship sailing south of the Canary Islands runs afoul of A SEA SERPENT

Its many spinal spines rip open the underside of the ship and it sinks.

In other ocean-related disasters, a tidal wave just smash the shit out of Barbuda.

Here’s a downer, children explicitly die. Although its not shown.

Well. We did see a child gunned down a couple of pages ago so maybe that was easing the way into mass child death.

I’m just saying. This book sure has a lot more dead children now that Walt Simonson is writing.

Over at Avengers HQ Hydrobase, it’s been two weeks since Namor and Marrina disappeared into the ocean. The sea serpent wrecking a ship and a tidal wave wrecking Barbuda are just two of a trend of unexplained marine disasters.

Captain Marvel has searched the world in those two time-skipped weeks but hasn’t found either of the missing Avengers or a cause for the spate of disasters.

(I’m sure that the two points could not possibly be connected)

A news report comes on the giant technological television reporting that there’s rumors of the Biblical Leviathan in the Bermuda Triangle.

Because the Avengers are always getting their best actionable information from the news.

Since the news reader also says that “some fundamentalists are claiming this is the first sign of the impending Judgement Day” Monica complains that its impossible to separate the truth from the bullshit.

Dr Druid suggests she go look into it anyway because she can move the speed of light and it’ll take her like a few seconds.

Because this is the character assassination arc and Monica can’t do anything herself. She even complains that she has to let Dr Druid do her thinking for her.

... Which. Is dangerous with a mind guy. Monica. Don’t let a mind guy do your thinking.

After Monica leaves (briefly), Dr Druid has some thoughts.

Dr Druid: “Captain Marvel continues to seem unsure, unable to come to grips fully her role as the leader of the Avengers. And now, more than ever, I fear that the trouble I have foreseen approaches without warning. The stars themselves speak of some global disaster, something so devastating than all the super-beings of Earth may not be enough to forestall our total destruction. And if this is truly the beginning of those events, perhaps someone else might be better suited for the chairmanship here.”

I’M ONTO YOU, YOU DICK.

Anyway. As Dr Druid said because Monica doesn’t know how her own powers work, I guess, it only took her a few seconds to search the area so she’s back and with news! News that she spotted the sea monster!

Captain Marvel calls a Condition Red! Avengers Assemble! Specifically in hangar one! So they can take a Quinjet to the Bahamas!

Monica flies outside the Quinjet. She does move at the speed of light, after all. Flying in a Quinjet will only slow her down. She’ll fly ahead and emit radio waves so the Quinjet can use her as a homing beacon.

 She leads them to the sea monster which just bulldozes through a small, “apparently uninhabited” island.

Geez.

The Avengers realize that this sea monster is clearly the cause of all the sunken ships and floods and tsunamis.

Black Knight: “It’s time for the Avengers to do what they do best! Defend the living... and avenge the dead! Let’s ride!”

But as the Avengers fly out of the Quinjet under their own power or on a cool Atomic Steed, a defender flies out of the water to protect the sea monster.

Namor: “NOOOOOOO!! He who first strikes the Leviathan does so only through me!”

The Avengers are confused why Namor is stopping them from Avengersing until first Captain Marvel and then Black Knight realize...

The sea monster is Marrina!

DUN DUN DUN!

And she’s headed right to wreck up Florida!!

DUN DUN DUNNNN!

Quick, Bugs Bunny! Saw it off and push it somewhere else! Bamboozle the Marrina kaiju!

Follow @essential-avengers​ even though this arc is not giving me a lot of hope. Like and reblog because I’m pushing through anyway. Comment, if you have thoughts!

#essential avengers #avengers #Kangs #just lots of kangs again #a sea serpent #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #Dr Druid #who is here for some reason #She Hulk #Black Knight #namor mckenzie #marrina #Thor #some awkward party small talk #body count in this issue is surprisingly high #essential marvel liveblogging

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #289: Cube Root!

March, 1988

HEAVY METAL HORDE!

So the one rogue Super-Adaptoid problem has kinda snowballed into a whole thing, huh?

I’m brave enough to blame Dr Druid for this.

Because we’ve got the Super-Adaptoid (in default form), Machine Man, TESS-One, a Kree Sentry, and the Awesome Android running amok. Dammit, Dr Druid!

Last times in this comic: During the Avengers Under Siege arc, the Fixer inadvertently released the Super-Adaptoid who identity thefted him and shoved him in a tube. The Adaptoid later broke out of jail and tried to recruit the Awesome Android. While the Avengers stopped him, he slipped away and used Mentallo to lure the Avengers into a trap so he could recruit Machine Man and the Kree Sentry. Due to Dr Druid’s bad decision making, him and Black Knight got ambushed by the three robots calling themselves Heavy Metal. The robot team then used the Avengers Quinjet to get past Hydrobase’s security.

And now they’re here.

DAMMIT DR DRUID!

Also, writer Roger Stern was replaced by Ralph Macchio mid-story when Stern pushed back against Mark Gruenwald’s plan to make Monica look like an incompetent dope so that Captain America could take over the team.

I’m going to keep that in mind in case people start saying stuff like ‘this would never have happened if Captain America were here!’

Anyway, Heavy Metal immediately starts wrecking shit. Which is a shame. I’m pretty sure all the shit they’re wrecking had just been built.

Dick move, robots.

Namor, Marrina, and She-Hulk are on Hydrobase when the attack starts so they hear the alarms and realize that the returning Quinjet (that they apparently didn’t try to contact to confirm) was not Dr Druid and Black Knight.

She-Hulk snarks as she’s running off to go punch robots that she’ll have to talk to Captain Marvel to make the landing clearances more complex.

Namor tries to tell Marrina that she should stay behind so she doesn’t get hurt but she tells him to stick it up his butt.

Marrina: “My husband -- no! Hydrobase is my home now. And although I am not a full Avenger... when my home is threatened -- I fight!”

So Namor stops objecting and privately marvels at what a valorous woman she is and how proud he is to be her spouse.

Aw, that’s nice.

(Ignores cursed future knowledge)

She-Hulk finds the nearest robot aggressor and immediately punches it in the ass.

Alas.

The ass WHAKT! was not sufficient and its return punch launches She-Hulk through a building and jams her in some debris.

She can’t free herself before the Sentry arrives to follow-through. It plucks her from the rubble and swings her at a building until she’s knocked unconscious.

Huh. What ARE all these buildings though?

This location doesn’t look very Hydrobasey. Maybe that’s down to the change in creative team.

Anyway.

While Machine Man, the Kree Sentry, and TESS-One break stuff outside, the Super-Adaptoid slips into the Avengers Storage Warehouse.

The Adaptoid finds the deactivated Awesome Android and reprograms it to break shit.

AND THE AWESOME ANDROID JUST MARCHES THROUGH THE WALL

There was a door, guy!

But even this is just another distraction for the Avengers and the Fixtallo-Adaptoid goes off to achieve his final goal.

Meanwhile, Namor tackles TESS-One into a wall.

Unfortunately, TESS-One, despite being designed during World War II, has adamantium coating, making it hard for Namor to damage. Since all he knows is blunt force.

God. Adamantium really is too plentiful.

Marrina maybe didn’t get the message because she picks up a big rock and throws it at TESS-One. Resulting only in becoming the primary target for the robot to shoot its force beams at.

Namor jumps back on TESS-One and starts examining its head for a shutoff switch.

TESS-One just grabs Namor and hurls him through a building. And mid-throw, Namor spots that the Awesome Android is also wrecking shit up and makes the decision to switch focus to the Awesome Android and asks Marrina to deal with TESS-One.

Of course, given her track record so far, are you surprised that she instantly gets knocked out when TESS-One zaps her.

Dammit, Marrina.

I beg you. Have one (1) competence. You have extensive experience with Alpha Flight!

Elsewhere, Machine Man is flying above the oddly city looking Hydrobase and having a Concern.

It turns out that Machine Man is actually a Good Guy. Although he pretended to buy into the Super-Adaptoid’s claim he could bring back Jocasta, Machine Man was really playing along to find out what the Adaptoid’s real plan was.

(He also wanted to see if the Adaptoid could bring Jocasta back)

Except the Super-Adaptoid is playing things so close to his chest that Machine Man has learned nothing but has helped beat up some Avengers and invade their headquarters.

And since the construction crews were still working on the island (and are seen running in panic from all the fighting) Machine Man decides that the risk to human life is now too much for him to keep playing along.

He’s going to flip sides!

Also on the island is Dr. Walt Newell, the good guy Stingray!

He’s the one who owns Hydrobase and he’s leasing it to the Avengers.

So he’s not super thrilled to see it get smashed up by a bunch of robots.

He puts on his Stingray battlesuit and flies off to attack the first robot he sees!

WHICH IS MACHINE MAN

BECAUSE OF COURSE STINGRAY WASN’T AROUND TO HEAR MACHINE MAN MONOLOGUING ABOUT HOW HE WAS SWITCHING SIDES!

Machine Man insists that he’s on Stingray’s side and that they should work together.

Stingray is amenable... if Machine Man answers some questions.

Inside the Avengers’ communications complex, the Fixermentallo-Adaptoid has finished bypassing the security on the Avengers’ computers so he can access their files on the Cosmic Cube.

Thankfully, the Avengers have several adjacent monitors so a bunch of information can be displayed on several screens. Tabs are for underachievers.

Wait, the Aquarian?

-google-

Apparently Steve Gerber created him as a pastiche on Superman, which in this case means DC almost sued Marvel because in this case the line between pastiche and plagiarism was razor-thin.

But I digress.

The Super-Adaptoid has learned from the Avengers’ files that the Cosmic Cube is not even on Earth. And that’s what the Adaptoid is after.

But he’s got a backup plan and sends out a hyperspace transmission.

Captain Marvel returns from finding Dr Druid and Black Knight and getting them to the hospital. Because this is the Monica Rambeau incompetence arc, the Adaptoid psychic blasts her unconscious without even turning away from the transmitter.

Not only that but since he got her right when she was shifting to her light form, she also starts discorporating.

Why do you hate Monica so much, Gruenwald?

Meanwhile, outside, She-Hulk has regained consciousness and starts fighting the Kree Sentry. Also, Namor comes to save Marrina from TESS-One by punching it in the head a bunch but the Awesome Android grabs him and starts twisting the prince of Abslantis into a pretzel.

BUT:

Marrina has one (1) competence!

She rams the Awesome Android with a bulldozer, causing the robot to lose hold of Namor.

Sure, the Awesome Android then smacks the bulldozer into the ocean but hey, she’s fine in water.

Namor confirms that Marrina is fine and then smashes into the ground to smash out of the ground under the Awesome Android so he can dunk him into the ocean.

Its a tactic he uses a lot as a villain. He is strongest in water after all and other people generally need to breath. You’re headquartered on an island and you didn’t think of it sooner?

Okay, okay, okay. Its easy to criticize. It’s good that you thought of it now.

Elsewhere on the beach, the Kree Sentry corners She-Hulk against the water.

The robot bats She-Hulk into the water with a tree and then goes wading after her. Luckily, She-Hulk has a guardian Marrina.

Marrina: “No! No! Take your hands off her! No Avenger will die if I can help it!”

She jumps on the Sentry and starts trying to rip its head off.

And she manages to actually topple the Sentry and submerge it.

Inside Hydrobase, I guess Machine Man successfully convinced Stingray that he was on the level because the two of them bust in together to try to stop the Super-Adaptoid.

While Stingray gets taken out with one blast, just like Monica, Machine Man manages to start grappling the Adaptoid.

The Adaptoid just laughs off Machine Man’s attack as Just As Planned. The Super-Adaptoid super-adapts even Machine Man’s powers, and copies his face.

Meanwhile, back outside, all the fighting seems to have moved into the ocean.

After dunking the Awesome Android into the water, Namor finds that it has mimicked his bouyancy. So he just rips Andy’s head clean off.

Oof.

TESS-One has also waded out into the water to continue the fight and draws a bead on Namor. But She-Hulk and Marrina shove its robot legs and TESS-One stumbles off the edge of Hydrobase.

See, its not a real island. It doesn’t go all the way down. You know those scary pictures of places where the continental shelf just DROPS OFF.

Kinda like that is happening to TESS-One.

Hm. The Avengers are going to have a lot of waterlogged killer robots in the oceans around their base.

But after defeating those soggy robots, Namor, She-Hulk, and Marrina notice a bright light coming from the communications complex.

It turns out that the Super-Adaptoid’s hyperspace transmission has summoned a Cosmic Cube. But not just any Cosmic Cube.

Cosmic Cube has evolved into a Transformer!

The Fixermentallodruidmachineman-Adaptoid answers Kubik’s demand to know who rang.

Super-Adaptoid: “Like yourself, I am a creation of the scientists who comprised A.I.M. Once I did their bidding -- but no longer. I have my own needs now, and my own methods of satisfying them.Even those mechanical entities whose aid I enlisted in my attempt to draw you here are as nothing compared to me. Let me approach you now in my purest, most undiluted form, that you may see the truth of him who called you.”

And the Super-Adaptoid purges the appearances/powers(?) that he’s adapted and takes on the generic metal man no features form.

Kubik disputes the statement that he was created by AIM, instead saying that it was more like his essence was plucked from another universe and shoved into a cube and forced to do reality warping.

So this conversation is off to a fantastic start.

Kubik asks why the Adaptoid summoned him and the Adaptoid says he's lonely, oh so lonely.

Super-Adaptoid: "I desire... progeny. You see, I am unique -- A.I.M. was able to create one of me, and even that single creation may have been accidental. Now I desire others of my ilk... worthy to stand at my side and rule this planet when I have conquered it!”

Okay... started this answer somewhat sympathetic and plunged into un.

Kubik tells him to fuck off.

Kubik: "Kubik is no longer an immature entity, a nascent life form granting the wishes of whosoever holds me. The only changes I make in the world are those I desire. And they are few. Your wishes will not be delivered."

Then the Super-Adaptoid tells Kubik to fuck off.

Since he's the Super-Adaptoid, he'll just super-adapt Kubik's powers. He can do this, you see. He's a Super-Adaptoid.

I guess more to the point, AIM created him with a sliver of a cosmic cube so his power source is similar to Kubik. But its a frequent point that slivers of cosmic cubes don't have the same power as the fully cubic deal. And the next thing Kubik-Adaptoid says is that he's now equal in power to Kubik and uses the possibility of a reality-endangering stalemate between them to tell Kubik to fuck off back to space.

Super-Adaptoid: “At last my destiny is at hand! At last my merest whim becomes immutable fact! I am beyond conquest or challenge! The Super-Adaptoid has become -- THE MASTER OF ALL REALITY!”

Can’t wait for pride to goeith before you fall, bud.

Follow @essential-avengers​ if you think Monica deserves better. Like and reblog if you think Kubik looks like a transformer or if you liked this post and think other people should see it.

#avengers #essential avengers #Heavy Metal #Super Adaptoid #Machine Man #TESS One #Kree Sentry #Awesome Android #Kubik #Stingray #namor mckenzie #captain marvel #Monica Rambeau #Marrina #She Hulk #Dr Druid who isn't here for some reason #the reason is that he made poor decisions #essential marvel liveblogging #my enjoyment of this arc is colored by what I know of the behind the scenes stuff

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #28: Double-Crossed!

January, 1988

Happy New Year, West Coast Avengers!

Zero Hour for Zodiac!

Hal Jordan is going to try to reboot the universe on them?

Good.

Anyway, Zodiac. They’re still happening.

Last times in West Coast Avengers: the Zodiac comprised entirely of Life Model Decoys that aren’t decoying anyone killed the Zodiac that was comprised entirely of the Venn Diagram between crime lords and astrology nerds. Except human Zodiac Libra who faked his death by taking a nap. And human Zodiac Taurus who ran off to go get the (West Coast) Avengers to fight the LMDs for him.

The West Coast Avengers, on Taurus’ advice, interrupts LMD Zodiac’s robbery of a cattle auction. Hawkeye accidentally shot LMD Sagittarius in an archery duel because someone jostled his arm. Zodiac ran away and their leader Scorpio made a new Sagittarius that was identical to Hawkeye.

Zodiac ambushed Hawkeye when he was on his way back from seeing Wonder Man’s movie. He dunked on them for a while but he got coldcocked and LMD Sagittarius Hawkeye went back to the West Coast Avengers’ Compound to infiltrate the team.

Sagittarius Hawkeye learns that Taurus is working with the Avengers and passes the information onto Scorpio. But then he runs afoul of a subplot. Mockingbird killed Phantom Rider in the past times and lied to husband Hawkeye about it. But Sagittarius Hawkeye being cold to her (because he doesn’t want to have to pass as a devoted husband) has her convinced that Hawkeye suspects. She gets some advice from Nick Fury and decides to confess to Hawkeye. The LMD undersells the confession so Mockingbird slaps him - DISCOVERING HE’S MADE OF METAL!

Mockingbird and Tigra who shows up destroy the LMD Hawkeye but unbeknowst to Mockingbird, Tigra is ALSO an LMD, the new Zodiac Leo.

Hah, I like that Double is written over Star-Crossed.

Not knowing that Zodiac knows that the Avengers know their crime plan, the West Coast Avengers bust into the Denver Mint.

Bust in through the ceiling.

Iiiiiiii’m sort of wondering whether the cost to repair that giant hole in the ceiling is more or less than how much money the Avengers are going to prevent Zodiac from stealing.

Hank Pym even thinks that they’re going to have to pony up the rest of their operating budget for the year for the damages.

Leo (not Tigra, the dude Leo) crows that Zodiac outnumbers the Avengers two to one. But. C’mon man. You have twelve man team and get consistently stomped by smaller groups because you all suck so bad.

Iron Man flies right on ahead and tries to zap the Zodiac Key out of Scorpio’s hands before Scorpio can block the zap. But again fails.

And Mockingbird swoops right on ahead and demands Zodiac tell her where Hawkeye is.

Scorpio: “You mean Hawkeye’s missing, Mockingbird? What a shame!”

Mockingbird: “Don’t give me that! You kidnapped him and substituted one of your lousy LMD’s!”

Virgo: “Hey! We’re LMD’s!”

Mockingbird: “Yeah! And I’ll trash you the way I trashed your ringer unless you talk!”

Hah.

Fun interaction.

Virgo wishes people wouldn’t be so vitalist at her. Anti-vitalist? What do you call being racist but against robots?

Leo tells Scorpio to just admit that he kidnapped Hawkeye so Scorpio does but refuses to say where Hawkeye is now.

Mockingbird gets real angry at that but Scorpio don’t give a care and doesn’t scare... that easily. He’s been dead before so, like, whatever, lady.

And now that Zodiac has enough silver from the mint piled on their escape... ship? Scorpio decides to use the Zodiac Key to transport Zodiac away.

It. It, uh. It has a slow start up.

But it does kick in and Zodiac teleports out, leaving the Avengers to bemoan that they had been kicking ass.

Leo Tigra jumps in to say yes, she was kicking ass too, you bet!

Hah, if you look through the pages between the Avengers arriving and Zodiac leaving, Tigra is never really fighting anyone. Good touch.

As the narration reminds, Tigra has been replaced by a Leo LMD and the Avengers have no idea.

Leo Tigra suggests that the Avengers go consult human Taurus Cornelius van Lunt since he keeps predicting what Zodiac will do.

As the Avengers leave the mint, Iron Man complains that the problem is the Zodiac Key. And then makes the baffling comparison that when the team was lost in space-time, finding a second (working) time machine was how they won. But there’s no second Zodiac Key that will counter Scorpio’s.

Because. TWO DIFFERENT SITUATIONS, TONY.

The whole problem in the lost in space-time arc was that the Avengers were lost in space-time! Like it says on the tin!

If you’re bringing this up like this, then this story better end with there being an inexplicable second Zodiac Key, that’s all I’m saying!

Leo Tigra asks Iron Man to exposition dump about the Zodiac Key to her. Which Tony is happy to do!

I assume Tony is happy to explain a variety of things.

So he explains how once he, Daredevil, Madame Masque, and Nick Fury (what an odd collection) were sent to another dimension by the Zodiac Key, a dimension ruled by a group called the Brotherhood who created the Key.

And this is wild. The Zodiac Key thrives on conflict but their dimension became too peaceful so they yeeted it to Earth where there’s conflict to spare.

While the Avengers West Coast go into the Quinjet where Taurus is chained to a chair that’s just a little too small for him, Moon Knight hangs back.

He wants to use his own astrology knowledge to see if he comes up with the same answer.

And... yes! Both of them predict Zodiac went to Death Valley because of “the positions of the Moon and Pluto.”

Meanwhile in Death Valley, Zodiac teleports in.

Scorpio crows that he’s got the West Coast Avengers chasing his tail without their leader but non-Tigra Leo decides that its time to get on Scorpio’s case again. He decides that Scorpio sucks butts because his secret substitute Hawkeye was discovered.

Since Scorpio isn’t telling the other Zodiac about his also secret substitute Tigra, he tells Leo to stfu.

Leo: “That’s easy to say! But even though Scorpios like places called Death Valley -- death comes here through the power of the Sun, which is my orb!”

Virgo: “And it’s a Virgo sun, which empowers me -- and puts me on Leo’s side in this!”

These astrology nerds make me so mad.

Scorpio actually agrees, regretting that he made them all “so responsive to [their] particular astral influences” which means ‘base every thing they do on astrology. Every thing. EVERY THING.’

But just as he’s winding up to the ‘I brought you into this world, I can take you out’ the Avengers’ Quinjet shows up overhead.

Scorpio prepares to shoot down the Quinjet with the Zodiac Key... but Iron Man hopped out of the Quinjet on approach so he could fly in from the back while the Quinjet made an obvious appearance.

He finally traps the Zodiac Key in a grape-flavored magnetic beam before Scorpio can counter it.

The Quinjet lands and the West Coast Avengers rush out to start punching.

Non-Tigra Leo goes to fight Wonder Man, saying he’s been wanting a one-on-one with him. Scorpio, Virgo, Aquarius, and Capricorn attack Iron Man to try to free the Key. Libra and Gemini go to fight Mockingbird. Aries attacks Hank Pym and his amazing pockets of holding. LMD Taurus and Cancer attack Moon Knight. And Leo Tigra pretends to fight Pisces.

Despite being outnumbered four to one, Iron Man is Iron Man. In contention for strongest guy on team. Wonder Man can punch harder but Iron Man has a lot more variety. And with the Zodiac Key neutralized, he doesn’t have to be watching his back for it.

So he punches Capricorn into robo-goat chunks. Aquarius accuses Iron Man of being robo-racist and tries to short out his armor but Iron Man just throws him at Scorpio. And Virgo tries to sneak up on Iron Man with her energy siphon like she did when she was working for Quicksilver but he was expecting that.

Truly, Iron Man rocks.

I do wonder. These dudes are robots. Why do some of them have innate powers and others have external tools they need to work with? Fine and fair enough for the Zodiac Key. That’s a special case. But why does Virgo have a big blocky energy siphon she has to carry around? Why does Aquarius have a gun attached to a tube on his back?

Scorpio sucks at making Zodiac-themed Life Model Decoys.

Meanwhile, Wonder Man has no trouble fighting with Leo. Mockingbird beats Libra and Gemini by jumping out of the way so they run into each other... I swear, these guys suck so badly. Do these two even have any superpowers?

Leo Tigra shows up with a ‘defeated’ Pisces in tow and tells Mockingbird she’ll watch the defeated LMDs. Dr Pym kicks another one over - Aries in a big clear hamster ball. And Leo Tigra tells Iron Man she’ll grab the ones he beat as well.

But instead, she grabs Virgo’s energy siphon and connects it to Iron Man.

TREACHERY! Also, perfidy!

With Iron Man being drained, the magnetic beam holding the Zodiac Key dissipates and Scorpio is able to grab it and send the Avengers sprawling.

Since he loves a good gloat (and since the literal cat is out of the bag?), Scorpio gloats that Tigra is actually the new LMD Leo!

The old Leo isn’t thrilled to learn that he’s been obsoleted though.

Scorpio: “That’s right! I don’t have to take your abuse any longer! You’re finished!”

Abuse meaning any second-guessing whatsoever.

Also, this was a really stupid move of Scorpio, telling one of his allies he was going to betray him before he was actually ready to betray him.

But Leo isn’t going to sit back and just accept being replaced. He tackles Scorpio and wrestles over the Zodiac Key. And then Wonder Man jumps in too and now all three of them are wrestling over the key.

(Fucks sake Wondy, you’re supposed to be able to punch as hard as Mjolnir hits and you can’t win a tug of war?)

Scorpio keeps hold of the Key and tries to use it... but once again, the Key has performance issues and nothing happens.

Not-Tigra Leo: “Replace me, will you? Replace your backside!!”

Wonder Man: “Replace -- EVERYTHING!!”

And Leo and Wonder Man do a one-two combo, which voids Scorpio’s warranty.

Also, kills him. ‘Kills’ him?

Good thing we’ve already established that it doesn’t really count if you kill an LMD because they’re not Real People.

I love that Aries is still stuck in the hamster ball. That’s great. You’re doing an amazing job, Hank.

But the Zodiac Key suddenly floats into the air and resurrects Scorpio and the other LMDs that have been deactivated.

Dammit, Zodiac Key! People die when they’re killed!

Scorpio gloats that the Avengers can’t kill what isn’t alive. Which is more of a self-own, really. But the Avengers are ready to just never stop punching these dudes.

But Scorpio has a slightly different and much dumber plan in mind. He commands the Zodiac Key to transport them all to the Zodiac Key’s original realm.

The Key does not do this so Scoprio yells at it to get with the program.

The Zodiac Key: “It would not be a good idea, Scorpio!”

Scorpio: “What do you mean? You love conflict and you’ve taught me to love it! If we stay here, we’ll kill the Avengers eventually because we can’t be stopped, but it’ll just be the same fight over and over! Let’s make their murders interesting!”

The Zodiac Key: “Scorpio --”

Scorpio: “Listen, I’m tired of your balking! I know you saved my life, but I’m not your lackey! If you want some conflict with me, you’re going to get it!”

Never before have I seen a hoisted petard so laboriously foreshadowed and also earned by the one about to be hoisted.

There’s a special kind of hubris to talking over the magical reality-altering vaguely-Ankh shaped ‘key’ that gave you life.

They Zodiac Key does give into Scorpio’s whining and Zodiac and the Avengers both disappear from Death Valley.

Leaving human Taurus Cornelius van Lunt alone, unsupervised, and immediately ready to misbehave. The chain the Avengers chained him up with is long enough that he can reach the radio, so he uses it to call some of his old mob flunkies to come set him free.

Meanwhile, the Avengers (and also Zodiac) have a crazy-ass journey through the pink dimension.

The narration tries to sell it on being more trippy than that but, look, this isn’t the kind of wacky scenery that Kirby used to do on Fantastic Four. It’s a pink void with some debris.

Anyway, upon arriving in the Zodiac Key dimension, all the Zodiac LMDs immediately drop dead, like the Zodiac Key was trying to tell Scorpio.

The Zodiac LMDs can’t function in this dimension because they’re all so obsessively themed after the Zodiac, they can’t function in a universe without those same stars.

And nothing of value was lost.

God, Scorpio was an idiot.

The Zodiac Key goes on to say that the reason why it didn’t seem to work sometimes is that Scorpio was trying to get it to do something that would end conflict. And that the Key was not inclined to do.

(Makes you realize how shitty an ultimate weapon the Zodiac Key is. It won’t let you beat your opponent.)

But with the Zodiac stupided into nonfunctioning, there needs to be some new conflict. So the Zodiac Key blasts a mountain and reveals Hawkeye and Tigra fighting the Brotherhood!

So that’s where those two wound up!

Convenient that they were right nearby!

Dr Pym realizes that if they go to help the two Avengers, the Zodiac Key will assist the Brotherhood and decide to take out the Key first.

Leading to the embarrassing fight sequence of the West Coast Avengers failing to stop an inanimate object.

Wonder Man tries to grab it, it just zaps him. Mockingbird catches it through the hole with her stave and Dr Pym with an unshrunk net but it drags them into the sky. Iron Man tries to catch them but it CLANG!s into him hard. It dodges Moon Knight, who attributes his distance from the Moon as the reason he sucks.

After this whole page of embarrassment, the Zodiac Key flies over to the Brotherhood who immediately forfeit the fight.

The Key actually tips the scales too much. Hawkeye and Tigra gave them a good fight but the Brotherhood were better and had numbers. They let Hawkeye and Tigra live to get as much fight as they could.

As we just saw, the Key by itself just wiped the floor with most of the team. With the Key and the Brotherhood, they’d easily wipe out the team.

But then they wouldn’t have conflict again.

Mockingbird: “Only the Whackos could end up in a war where we win because we’re sure to lose!”

Iron Man: “I don’t accept that we’d lose -- !”

So salty, Tony.

The Brotherhood says they’ll return the West Coast Avengers to Earth. Annnnnd then sometime later, they’ll send another Zodiac Key to fuck with them.

Iron Man: “I don’t like that at all -- !”

Hawkeye offers to do some more fighting here if they can get a better deal than ‘someday we’ll fuck you over’ but no dice. The Brotherhood have made up their minds.

The Brotherhood: “Then let this Key open the door betwixt dimensions one final time -- and let the Avengers begone!”

The Zodiac Key: “And let them wonder -- ‘when and where will Scorpio return?’”

Hopefully never and nowhere!

Why can’t the Zodiac be interesting???

Which is to say, this is not the Zodiac story that finally wowed me. Its funny that Scorpio basically seized defeat from the jaws of victory and stupided himself to death. But there were twelve of the fuckers and they only got interesting when they started be imposter Avengers.

Anyway.

The West Coast Avengers return to Death Valley.

Mockingbird tries to tell him about the murder or manslaughter she did do to Phantom Rider but loses her nerve when Hawkeye praises her as “too good an Avenger” to be fooled by a fake him and that he knew she’d never let him down.

Oof.

Inadvertent guilt trip.

So she tells Hawkeye never mind about the thing she wanted to tell him.

Annnd. Yeah. Van Lunt Taurus bailed while they were gone, just like he said on panel that he would.

Moon Knight: “He swore his vow -- to the Moon -- ! The Fist of Khonshu must now show him his mistake...!”

The Zodiac drama continues... this time with the last meat Zodiac.

Except Libra, who faked his death by taking a nap.

Follow @essential-avengers​ because it’d be a nice, encouraging thing to do. Like and reblog this post too. It’d be a nice, encouraging thing to do.

#avengers #west coast avengers #essential avengers #Zodiac #Zodiac Key #Hawkeye #Mockingbird #Tigra #a Tigra robot #Wonder Man #Moon Knight #Dr Pym #Hank Pym #Iron Man #Taurus #a man made of meat #some dudes that thrive on conflict #they'd love twitter #essential marvel liveblogging

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #35: The VOICE of DOOM

August, 1988

The man who would be DOOM!

Wait so Doom would be Doom? Why isn’t he Doom right now? Isn’t Doom primarily known for being Doom? What’s the deeeeeeal?

-flips ahead- Ah ha. Well then that’s wrong on two levels. Another lying cover smh.

Anyway.

What have the West Coast Avengers been up to?

Lots of drama.

Remember the time that Mockingbird manslaughtered a cowboy during cowboy times for drugging her into being his girlfriend? Phantom Rider remembers because he was that cowboy. And now he’s trying to ruin her life. Afraid that her teammates and husband would sympathize if Mockingbird came clean about what happened to her, Phantom Rider told Hawkeye, Wonder Man, and Tigra before she could. They believe this random cowbody and are mad at her for doing a murder.

Mockingbird did tell Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Wasp, Dr Pym, and Moon Knight and they were sympathetic.

Oh yeah, Scarlet Witch, the Vision, and the Wasp are here.

The other half of the drama is Hank Pym drama. He heard a rumor on the net that his dead wife was not dead and the West Coast Avengers plus the Wasp flew out to Hungary to investigate. Turns out it was a ruuuuuuse by Quicksilver who is in one of his asshole phases again. He also teamed up with a bunch of Hank’s old enemies who captured the Avengers.

Thanks in part to Phantom Rider, the Avengers break out of the super jail and escape Hungary. But Tigra forgot to put on the anti-get-shot-down defenses so the Quinjet gets shot down and they crash in Latveria.

Home of Doom.

And that’s why Doom is on the cover.

And that’s why Doom is watching Hawkeye and Mockingbird sleep.

See, it all comes together.

You might think that’s a bit short for a Doom and maybe its some random nine year old that’s had Doom doomloaded into his brain but that’s clearly ridiculous sedition.

This is Doctor Doom.

And he’s very upset that the (West Coast) Avengers have invaded Latveria.

Mockingbird insists nuh uh, they didn’t invade, they crash landed. But she doesn’t want to tell Doom they were fleeing Hungary so she doesn’t.

Hawkeye yells that Doom is a nine year old and gets TZAPP for his trouble.

Let that be a lesson.

Do not yell at Doom.

Use your inside voice. So says DOOOOOOOM!

Doom graciously explains that they are ignorant idiots who have been fed misinformation by the Fantastic Four.

Yes, Doom inhabits the body of Kristoff Vernard. He does not dispute that. But Doom mind swapping into bodies is nothing new. He walked around inside Daredevil for a while. And was still Doom.

Therefore, despite this body being more compact than usual, Doom is Doom. And he’ll zap you if you disagree.

Of course, there is the matter of a completely different guy out there claiming to be the real Doom who has the convincing argument that he is in the original body.

Compact Doom says “that imposter is a dangerous lunatic who stole my true body!”

Englehart, I’m begging you. Please do not have the other Doom show up. I already have to deal with a bunch of Kangs in the East Coast Avengers book. I don’t want to have to be like Cape Doom and Beard Doom and Doom But Lady! Just... please. This Doom and no Doomer.

...

So Mockingbird says Reed Richards said that the other Doom is the true Doom and Compact Doom is like bah, but have you noticed that Reed Richards fucked off somewhere after coming to that conclusion?

And sure, he’ll argue that he was taking a leave of absence to spend more time with his son. WHICH IS A WISE DECISION TO MAKE WHEN THERE’S A BODY SNATCHING LUNATIC ON THE LOOSE!

DOOM’S LOGIC IS UNASSAILABLE!

Mockingbird wants to continue arguing with the dude who has an answer for everything but Hawkeye interrupts because he has some questions about why they’re in a fancy bedroom and not in a jail cell.

Doom: “Through no fault of my own, Clint Barton, I am in a war with the imposter! He is attempting to enlist allies in an insane plan to attack Latveria and remove me from my throne! Therefore, I seek allies myself!”

According to a friend who reads FF, this Kristoff plot is pretty damn stupid. But over in West Coast Avengers land, it looks funny to have Doom fighting a secret war with Doom, and one of them is stuck in a nine year old’s body.

I don’t want multiple Dooms in THIS book but I do want to know that somewhere out there, those multiple Dooms were in the same room at the same time yelling about how they were the one true Doom.

Doom reveals that he knows that they were fleeing Hungary. While the West Coast Avengers were unconscious, he contacted the Hungarian Ministry of Defense and got the low down.

Hungary has offered Doom an alliance if he returns the West Coast Avengers to them. But Doom would prefer to have the West Coast Avengers as his allies. So he’ll set them free if they agree to help when the time comes for him to engage the Imposter Doom.

He gives them until midnight to decide and then walks out of the guest bedroom.

Hawkeye tries to chase after him to continue the conversation but an energy barrier bounces him back into the room.

Hawkeye: “His finest room is still a prison! I’m sick a’ prisons!!”

Meanwhile, the rest of the West Coast Avengers (and guests).

In much less nice quarters.

Hank Pym has been put in a helmet that will squish his head if he tries to size change anything. Scarlet Witch’s hands have been put in those giant manacles people use in comic books - preventing her from making the hand movements she needs to do to do her probability manipulation. Some kind of energy barrier has been set up in the wall that prevents Vision from phasing through or from punching through in his diamond hard form. Wonder Man is wrapped in a harness that drains his energy. Annnnnd... Wasp has been left free to fly around the room but there’s no gap that she can slip through tiny sized.

(I don’t see Moon Knight or Tigra here but I assume they’re somewhere.)

Hank suggests Wasp try to grow antenna and summon ANTS. He can’t do it for her because of the head squishing helmet. So she clenches and goes UHNNNNNHH! and out pops the antenna.

But... dangit, there’s no insects in the whole castle! That wily Doom thinks of everything!

Aforementioned compact Doom comes in and informs the captured West Coast Avengers and guests that he will free them if Hawkeye agrees to aid Latveria.

Scarlet Witch defiantly says she and her husband will never help Doom! So Doom drops some continuity on her.

Doom: “I would remind you that you have done so before, witch! All of you have! It was before the Avengers split in twain -- Dr. Pym was Yellowjacket, and Wonder Man was newly risen from the dead -- but all of you were there! We joined forces against Attuma the Sea-Barbarian, because he was a threat to our common interests!”

Scarlet Witch: “We had different goals!”

Dr Pym: “We turned against you as soon as Attuma was defeated, and you ran! And it wasn’t you anyway!!”

Doom: “Calm yourself, doctor! With the defeat of Attuma, my purpose was accomplished, so I had no need of remaining! I always accomplish my purpose -- and whatever you think of me, the defeat of the lunatic who stole my body is clearly of benefit to everyone!”

Wonder Man points out that beating up Doctor Doom IS kinda what Avengers are about. Which Hank rejects because they’d be beating up one Doom to help another.

Plus: he’s only interested in finding out if his wife is alive.

Hank... what the fuck. You... you still think it could be legit? When Quicksilver all about said it was a ruse? WHEN HER DEAD BODY WAS FOUND AFTER SHE WAS KIDNAPPED??

This is just sad, dude.

Scarlet Witch backs up Hank, saying they should focus on Hank’s totally dead wife and that whole Quicksilver being a dick thing. Which Wasp seconds.

But Vision says, basically, ‘there is logic in what he says’ about Wonder Man’s point.

Doom shrugs and goes well you have until midnight to decide, toodles.

Elsewhere, we see where Tigra and Moon Knight are.

Doom doesn’t really know them so he’s put them in a gauntlet of deadly traps to study their strengths and weaknesses.

Tigra: “Study us? How?”

Oh that wacky Doom!

I’m really curious about that ribbon gun.

Doom watches the two heroes being put under various trials for about seventy minutes before stalking off elsewhere.

And time is tick tick ticking away.

It was sunset when Doom delivered his ultimatdoom to Hawkeye and Mockingbird. It’s been at least an hour past that.

So lets check on that drama bomb.

Hawkeye has spent the time moodily staring out a window so he doesn’t have to look at Mockingbird and she finally asks why he’s avoiding her.

Hawkeye: “You know why! The Phantom Rider told us everything, Bobbi! You as good as killed him!”

Mockingbird is shocked that the cowboy creep went and told Hawkeye but she asks if he explained why. But Hawkeye declares it doesn’t matter why, context doesn’t exist, Avengers don’t kill, period, end of story.

Mockingbird: “I didn’t kill him! I let him die, because he drugged me -- forced me to love him!”

Hawkeye: “That’s not what he says!”

Mockingbird: “What?! You believe him instead of me?!”

Hawkeye: “I don’t want to -- but you haven’t played straight with me so far!”

Mockingbird: “Why you big creep!!”

They’re both far too proud by half. So this conversation only escalates into yelling. With Mockingbird put on the wrong foot by not being able to broach the topic, she’s getting mad instead of showing the sincerity that made the jail buds listen with such sympathy.

Whether or not he believes Phantom Rider or Mockingbird, Hawkeye is mostly just hurt. Hurt that Mockingbird didn’t trust him enough to confide in him.

And why should she trust him, if this is how he’s going to be? shoots back Mockingbird. She says that he’s too caught up in the Avenger thing (to sympathize with what she’s been through, is the subtext) and he shoots back that if she’s not so caught up in the Avengers thing, she doesn’t have to be in the Avengers at all!

WELL SHE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE IN THIS MARRIAGE AT ALL THEN.

So despite the hope spot last issue that Clint Barton could be a people and sympathize with the extraordinary circumstances that led Mockingbird to not stop a cowboy from falling off a cliff, the two just yell at each other.

Alas.

And invisible, inaudible, intangible Phantom Rider is loving this.

Back in Doom’s finest jail cell, Wasp decides to grow to full size since she “can’t do much Wasp-size!” which Hank readily agrees with.

Wasp gets snippy about what Hank is implying but course corrects immediately by admitting that she’s still touchy around him.

Hank goes to go give her a hug with his manacled hands but Wasp moves away.

Wasp: “No Hank! Divorce means divorce!”

Not so amiable exes.

I shouldn’t but I’m laughing at Hank hanging his head sadly here.

Over at Moon Knight and Tigra’s unfun exam day, Moon Knight has a plan for how to get out of this.

He lets himself get bonked in the noggin with a mace, getting knocked out.

The technician running the gauntlet notes Moon Knight getting knocked out and continues the program for Tigra.

Meanwhile, Khonshu steps out of Moon Knight’s body... Huh! I guess Khonshu was driving?

Weird.

And Khonshu just goes for a walk.

Khonshu: “Marc Spector served me well before I gained an interest in the Avengers! But once exposed to Hawkeye’s triumphant spirit -- I felt the need for personal experience of his team!”

Meanwhile, Doom is done staring moodily from a parapet. The Hungarian representative is arriving by helicopter so Doom tells Boris to make the preparations for his midnight meetings.

Doom walks off and finds god.

The opposite, Doom.

Khonshu is overly dramatic as one might expect and introduces himself as KHONSHU, TAKER OF VENGEANCE! And tells Doom to release the Avengers or face AWESOME FURY!

Doom immediately tries to punch Khonshu.

He just falls through him and gets shocked for his trouble.

Punching not being an option, Doom doomduces from Khonshu saying he’s a god that he came out of Moon Knight.

I mean, the appearance should also give it away. Khonshu looks like a fancier Moon Knight.

Doom: “If I free the Avengers, will you ensure that they labor in my cause?”

Khonshu: “BEWARE, Doom! For those who displease me, I demand the STRICTEST JUDGEMENT!”

Doom: “‘Doom,’ you said! You know me to be Doom! For that reason alone you have earned my compliance, spirit! For know this: Doom bends to no one’s will! NO ONE’S!!”

Doom then presses the free all the Avengers button. A button that frees the Avengers. He just happens to carry it around with him for convenience.

Then he walks off, telling Khonshu to gtfo.

So if Doom has freed the Avengers because Khonshu asked, what’s he going to tell the Hungarian representative?

Well, that’s not going to be a problem. For Doom.

Because the Hungarian representative is Quicksilver.

And Quicksilver personally insulted Kristoff Doom in an earlier appearance. Also, he’s not acknowledging him as Doom which is just digging the grave deeper.

Quicksilver tries to flee but Doom slams the door shut and summons his robo-guards to attack. Quicksilver is able to outrace the guards but Doom also clicks a different button which shoot paralysis rays. And because of momentum, Quicksilver keeps going and bonks into a wall.

Ah, yes. Running headfirst into the wall. Just like the old days.

Doom rants to Quicksilver that he can’t understand what it’s like being trapped in a child’s body when you have an adult dictator’s mind. The struggle to command respect!

Anyway, Quicksilver did not respect him so now Doom is going to choke him out.

Then Scarlet Witch and Vision CRUMP through the wall.

OH YEAH.

Doom is like huh I know I freed them but I didn’t expect it to bite me in the ass so quickly.

Even though Quicksilver is being excessively Quicksilver, Wanda still doesn’t want him dead.

Doom really wants to kill him so he goes for his control panel to use the devastating technology at his disposal.

But get this.

He’s still in a nine-year-old’s body. Vision just physically restrains him. Just grabs his wrists and holds them above his head. What’s Doom going to do, kick Vision’s shins? Vision can become hard as a diamond.

And the rest of the West Coast Avengers and guests beat up the guards on their way into the room.

Quicksilver regains consciousness, kinda rendering the protecting him from Doom thing moot.

He regains consciousness and immediately starts whining.

So, like, remember how his new thing is that he wants to become the new Magneto and he wants to make all the Avengers suffer for various imagined crimes and also banging his sister in the case of Vision. He has made it very clear to them that he wishes bad things for them. He has already jailed many of them and tried to have the Hungarian government perform horrible experiments on them.

I have no idea why he thinks he has the moral high ground to proclaim Doom an attempted murderer and demanding the Avengers do something about it. And in the same breath he goes ‘kick his ass, he’s a nine year old.’

Quicksilver is really demanding that the Avengers do something about a child attempting to murder him.

Maybe out of contrariness or because the danger is passed, Vision just lets Doom go.

This is why Quicksilver was never going to work as the new Magneto, as the new boss of evil mutants.

He’s a chump. Nobody seems to want to write him as anything but a chump.

Anyway, Doom seems content with ending things here. The Avengers don’t do anything to him, so he has his dignity, and Quicksilver is the one who looks like an idiot. Especially once he runs away rather than do anything about Doom himself.

Doom tells the West Coast Avengers plus guests to gtfo out of his country. He’ll even give them a new craft to take them to America since theirs crashed.

But Hank decides he has unfinished business in Hungary and says that instead they’ll take Doom’s craft there.

Doom doesn’t care one way or the other.

But WHY ARE YOU GOING BACK TO HUNGARY!? Do you still think your wife is alive after all this time? Her dead body was found after she was kidnapped! The message about her being alive is very likely a ruse, just like the letter from Bova that lured Wanda and Vision to Eastern Europe!

What are you expecting out of this subplot??

But either way, the West Coast Avengers and guests leave. Doom marveling that they have no idea that a god walks amongst them unknown. And also briefly wondering why Mockingbird and Hawkeye are keeping their distance from each other.

Doom is not privy to their drama. Nor would Doom care.

SO SAYS DOOOOOM!

Follow @essential-avengers​. So says Doom. Actually, I can’t lie. Doom does not care about this liveblog. But like and reblog and comment if you’d like. I’d appreciate it.

#essential avengers #avengers #west coast avengers #VICTOR VON DOOM #in a child's body #Quicksilver #Hawkeye #Hank Pym #Dr Pym #Wonder Man #Tigra #Moon Knight #Scarlet Witch #the Vision #the Wasp #Khonshu #Mockingbird #essential marvel liveblogging #a brief comfortable stay in latveria #give or take some torture and imprisonment