AVENGERS #338 & #339

"INFECTIOUS COMPULSIONS" | "FINAL REDEMPTION"
A tale of loss and endings by
Writer: Bob Harras | Penciler: Steve Epting | Inker: Tom Palmer
Letterers: Bill Oakley w/Rick Parker (issue 338)
Colorists (issue 338): Witterstaetter, Mossoff & Tinsley
Colorists (issue 339): Tinsley, Mossoff, Scott & Skolnik
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: (Issue 338) Within the Bretrhen's habitat, Beast, Black Panther, Quasar, and the Collector bury Naka. But no sooner have they completed this task and begun to anaylze the area, than another being bursts from the ground: Olar, oldest of the Brethren. On Earth, in Thane Ector's citadel, the fool visits Sybyl Dorn as she prepares to challenge and kill Thane Ector for betrying his people. At Avengers Mansion, Vision, Crystal, and Lockjaw return from a trip to the moon with Hank Pym, Beast, Black Panther, Quasar, the Collector, and Olar in tow. Beast reveals that the Brethren are little more than evolved germs, and the Avengere prepare to study Olar, with his permission, for more data.

The fool, however, has been spying on the Avengers and collects a recording of the group making their plans. Just as Sybyl Dorn has roused the Brethren against Than Ector, the fool appears and shows all present that the Avengers have captured Olar and are consorting with the Collector. Now believing the Avengers to be no better than the Collector himself, Ector turns on Sersi and orders his people to attack Avengers Mansion. After they leave, Sersi confesses to the fool that she knows the Brethren's secret. Meanwhile, Pym and Beast are studying Olar when someone knocks them out and kills the oldest Brethren. The Brethren then arrive and attack. Thane Ector gets past the heroes and begins beating the Collector, until the Collector reveals a new, stronger form and says that it was he who released the Brethren and sent them to Earth.

(Issue 339) The Avengers attack the Collector, but are repulsed. He then explains that he allowed the Brethren to go free in order that they would decimate Earth, leaving only a small pool of survivors for the Collector to add to his exhibits. Meanwhile, Sersi and the fool have left the citadel. Sersi knocks the fool out and moves to join the Avengers. At the same time, the Collector explains the cosmic origins of the Brethren, and then when they attack him, he reverts all of them to their original germ forms and sends them to infect and cull the city and then the world.

The Avengers fight back against the germs, as Sersi arrives. She seeks out Ector and convinces him and his fool to attempt to link their minds in the same fashion as the Eternals. Ector and the fool, guided by Sersi, do so -- and then join with the minds of all the Brethren to create a uni-mind. The uni-mind absorbs the Collector, and he and all the germ-reverted Brethren are destroyed. Ector and the fool die as well in the process. Later, Sersi and Captain America, joined by the Watcher, who has been on hand for the entire battle, mourn Thane Ector and his people on the roof of Avengers Mansion.

Continuity Notes: The spelling of Sybyl Dorn's name keeps changing. In the first chapter, it was "Sybyl". Subsequently it became "Sybil" for a while. Now, with these final two installments, it's back to the original spelling -- so I have to assume that was what Bob Harras had intended as the correct version. Perhaps editors or letterers were correcting it without realizing it wasn't a typo.

The Collector's plan in a nutshell: he wanted to add the last remnants of humanity to his collection, so he loosed the Brethren, letting think they had escaped, and, and allowed them to destroy certain parts of his collection that he had deemed redundant in order to sell the ruse. Subsequently, the Collector goes into detail about the Brethren's origins at the hands of the Celestials:

Assemble: Yes! In issue 338, when Jarvis sounds "Priority Alarm One Alpha" to signal the Avengers that the Brethren are attacking, Captain America assembles the team with their rallying cry. ("Avengers Assemble!" count: 1 in 6 issues to date.)

My Thoughts: Thus ends the Avengers' summer of '91 bi-weekly extravaganza. And honestly, I think I said all I had to say about it last week! These final two chapters are basically a wrap-up of everything that came before, as our heroes learn what we readers already knew about the Brethren, followed by one more last-minute reveal -- the Collector was behind all of it! -- followed by the obligatory big fight to wrap it all up.

And everything I said last week still holds. This is a very well-plotted story, the early chapters doing a good job of building the threat of the Brethren, the middle chapters trickling out enough clues and tidbits to give readers an idea of where things are headed, and the final chapters pulling back the curtain explain all, and redeeming the characters we originaly thought were the bad guys. I know it's a very small sample size, one story arc across six issues, but if "The Collection Obsession" is a precursor of the full upcoming Harras/Epting run, then I'm looking forward to it!

But first we have three fill-in issues to get out of the way, which we'll examine next week in one fell swoop!