AVENGERS #345

Plus CAPTAIN AMERICA #398, AVENGERS WEST COAST #80, QUASAR #32, WONDER MAN #7, IRON MAN #278, and THOR #445.

Note: While I am summarizing the entire "Operation: Galactic Storm" crossover in the "The Plot" section, the "Contiuity Notes" reflect only AVENGERS #345 unless otherwise indicated

"STORM GATHERINGS"
Writer: Bob Harras | Penciler: Steve Epting | Colorist/Inker: Tom Palmer
Letterer: Bill Oakley | Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot:
CAPTAIN AMERICA #398: "IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE" by Mark Gruenwald, Rik Levins, and Danny Bulandi -- Rick Jones dreams that the Kree homeworld is annihilated, and sees Captain America, with the head of the Kree Supreme Intelligence, walking through the ruins. Rick calls the Avengers, and Cap flies to Arizona to meet him. But as the two talk in a diner, they are attacked by Warstar of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. Warstar tries to abduct Rick, but Cap stops the alien as Rick escapes. However, Rick is subsequently mind-controlled by Imperial Guardsma Oracle, and is captured anyway. Elsewhere, the Supreme Intelligence activates a physical body to house its consciousness. Christening this being Supremor, the Intelligence declares it will be the first member of the Kree Starforce.

AVENGERS WEST COAST #80: "TURN OF THE SENTRY" by Roy & Dann Thomas, David Ross, and Tim Dzon -- Aboard a Shi'ar ship, Oracle telepathically interrogates Rick Jones for information on Captain Mar-Vell and the Kree. Meanwhile, the West Coast Avengers (Iron Man, Hawkeye, U.S. Agent, Scarlet Witch, Wonder Man, Living Lightning, Spider-Woman, and reservist Mockingbird) are about to begin a meeting when Captain America calls from a payphone. The Avengers pick Cap up at the Arizon diner, while Oracle and her Imperial Guard teammates, Electron and Tempest, enter the "lost Kree outpost" with Rick. Their arrival activates a Kree Sentry, which attacks. The Avengers arrive a moment later, as does Warstar. Rick is rescued and the Sentry is beaten, but the outpost is destroyed as the Imperial Guardsmen escape with a psyche-magnetron stolen from the base. Captain America calls Quasar to pursue the Guard into space, but their ship vanishes into a stargate before he can follow.

QUASAR #32: "THE TOMB OF MAR-VELL" by Mark Gruenwald, Greg Capullo, and Harry Candelario -- In search of the Shi'ar ship, Quasar visits the Starcore space station and learns that the sun is erupting with an unusual number of solar flares. Aboard Starcore, he receives a call from Peggy Carter on Earth, informing him that former Avenger Starfox of Titan has detected someone breaking into Captain Mar-Vell's tomb. Quasar flies to Titan and enters the tomb with Starfox, where they find Kree operatives Doctor Minerva and Captain Atlas. As the Avengers question the duo, the full Shi'ar Imperial Guard arrives and attacks. Meanwhile, on Earth, Captain America assigns Wonder Man to act as Rick's bodyguard for the time being. Back on Titan, Quasar and company quickly realize something is amiss, eventually determining that only three of the Guardsmen are real: Manta, Impluse, and Magique, who create illusions of the rest of her teammates. The Guard trio is defeated, but Minerva and Atlas escape back into the tomb. Elsewhere, a Kree scientsit transforms himself into a super-being called Korath the Pursuer. On Titan Quasar follows Atlas and Minerve into the tomb, to find Atlas donning Captain Marvel's nega-bands. Atlas slams the bands together, and Rick Jones appears in place of Atlas, and immediately begins to succumb to Titan's lack of oxygen.

WONDER MAN #7: "SHARED SPACE" by ______ _____, Jeff Johnson, and Dan Panosian -- Captain Atlas attacks Wonder Man, while Quasar keeps Rick safe inside an energy bubble. Atlas soon learns that banging the nega-bands together will let him trade places with Rick, and uses this tactic to his advantage in battle, constantly swapping back and forth to keep Wonder Man confused. But Wonder Man eventually figures out Atlas's timing, and knocks him out after a switch. Meanwhile, in deep space, the Supreme Intelligence appears before Ultimus the Demon Druid, a super-powered Kree, and summons him home. Quasar, Starfox, and Rick arrive at the Avengers West compound with Doctor Minerva their prisoner, while Wonder Man arrives with Atlas. Captain America calls an all-hands Avengers meeting in New York. Wonder Man puts his affairs in order and departs to join his teammates. In space, a massive solar flare bursts from the sun toward Starcore station.

AVENGERS #345 -- Quasar, Thor, Vision, and Sersi arrive in space to rescue to the Starcore crew following the destruction of their station. But the operation is interrupted by the arrival of an immense Shi'ar fleet via stargate. When the lead ship in the fleet attacks the Avengers, they move the Starcore escape pod to a safe distance and fight back. The heroes take out the ship and return with it to Earth, where Hank Pym shrinks it and its crew, along with Atlas and Minverva, to keep them imprisoned. Captain America decides to split the Avengers, creating one envoy to approach the Kree, one to approach the Shi'ar, and a third group to remain on Earth as a rear guard. Hawkeye, chagrined at being assigned Earth dury, takes some of Hank Pym's particles to re-adopt the identity of Goliath, which he had used during the original Kree/Skrull war years earlier. Soon, the Avengers depart Earth. Meanwhile, on the Shi'ar homeworld, Majestrix Lilandra is approached by her sister, Deathbird, who offers help in the war effort.

IRON MAN #278: "DECISIONS IN A VACUUM" by Len Kaminski, Paul Ryan, and Bob Wiacek -- The Avengers' Kree contingent emerges from the stargate to fin a massive space station waiting. The heroes dock their Quinjet and board the station. Meanwhile, on the Kree homeworld of Hala, the Supreme Intelligence activates a new super-warrior, Shatterax, and dispatches him to deal with the Avengers. Aboard the station, Iron Man interfaces with the main computer, while his teammates are attacked by Shi'ar warriors. But the Shi'ar all disintegrate when beaten. Linked to the computer, Iron Man receives a warning from a Kree scientist, then detects Shatterax incoming. He flies outside and battles the Kree agent and his army. But the Golden Avenger is outgunned, and ultimtaely surrenders on behalf of the Avengers. Aboard the station, the rest of the group finishes off the Shi'ar commandoes, just as Iron Man arrives with Shatterax and informs the team of their surrender, to Captain America's irritation.

THE MIGHTY THOR #445: "THE WAR AND THE WARRIOR!" by Tom DeFalco, Patrick Oliffe, and Al Milgrom -- The Avengers' Shi'ar contingent arrives in Shi'ar space to find one of the imperium's outposts under attack by a Kree warship. At the same time, Shi'ar Imperial Guard leader Gladiator, on a humanitarian mission in a nearby system, receives a distress call from the outpost. The Shi'ar shoot down the Kree ship and Captain Marvel and Living Lightning go to search for survivors. Gladiator arrives and Wonder Man heads out to attempt to reason with him, but the Shi'ar Preator believes Wonder Man to be a Kree agent and attacks, easily defeating him. Thor then leaps into the fray. Meanwhile, Captain Marvel and Living Lightning find several piles of ashes where the Kree ship's crew should have been, as well as a Skrull survivor who triggers the ship's self-destruct mechanism. The heroes reatreat from the exploding vessel. Thor manages to defeat Gladiator, but only briefly. He grabs the alien warrior and flies him into space, hurling him into the stargate and then sealing it forever, thus earning the ire of his fellow Avengers. But the group soldiers on, arriving at the Shi'ar throneworld, where their Quinjet is immediately surrounded by a massive armada.

Continuity Notes (again, please note that these, uhh, notes apply only to AVENGERS #345): Captain America is at Avengers Mansion when the issue opens, but Hawkeye and the rest of the West Coast team have not yet left their compound -- despite Cap being with them when he declared he was calling an inter-branch meeting in WONDER MAN #7. Now it's always possible Cap flew on ahead to New York in a Quinjet -- we do see Wonder Man getting packed and putting some affairs in order before he departs, suggesting there's a bit of time between Cap calling the meeting and the West Coasters leaving for it -- but this still seems worth noting.

Also notable is that Hawkeye tells Cap the West Coasters will be there in two hours, suggesting a Quinjet can cross the United States in that amount of time.

The Shi'ar ship attacks the Avengers at the urging of its first officer, who later secretly reveals himself as Hobgoblin of the Imperial Guard. He refers to "his people" suspecting the Avengers could be present in space. Why he is working against the Shi'ar when he serves their empress, however, is unexplained here.

Sersi is unusually bloodthirsty during the space battle, and Captain America chews her out for threatening the Shi'ar with destruction if they did not surrender.

The Avengers (and/or Starcore) have determined that the recent solar flares are caused by the Shi'ar and Kree using wormholes close to the sun to travel between their respective star systems. This is destablizing the sun, and is the Avengers' main reason for approaching both powers to try and stop their war.

The Avengers are split as follows: the envoy to the Kree consists of Captain America, Iron Man, Crystal, Hercules, Black Knight, Sersi, and Hawkeye (who replaces the originally assigned U.S. Agent after he becomes Goliath). The Shi'ar envoy is Thor, Wonder Man, Vision, Captain Marvel, Starfox, Living Lightning, and the Scarlet Witch, who is concerned about being on a team with her two ex-lovers, Vision and Wonder Man. The Earth guard is She-Hulk, Falcon, Mockingbird, Spider-Woman, Hank Pym, Wasp, Gilgamesh, and U.S. Agent. And Quasar remains in space to guard the stargate. He is joined in this task by Her, a supporting character in his series around this time. Starngely, even though she is standing right beside Captain America as he makes the assignment -- and she name-checked as having helped come up with the teams -- Black Widow is not named in any of the groups (though for the record, she remains with the Earth team).

Assemble: No battle cry, but this two-page spread of all the East and West Coast Avengers, plus their active reservists, makes up for that! ("Avengers Assemble!" count: 3 in 12 issues to date.)

My Thoughts: We're only just getting into "Galactic Storm" here, but my first thoughts are that this is a surprisingly organized crossover event, given its size. I mean, we're talking about nineteen chapters (plus an epilogue) weaved through six titles, written by five writers, and edited by multiple editors, as well! Though speaking of editors, it's notable that unlike a lot of other crossovers of the era, this one is written in large part by guys who were Marvel editors at the time: Bob Harras handles AVENGERS, Mark Gruenwald writes both CAPTAIN AMERICA and QUASAR, and Tom DeFalco handles THOR. So from that perspective, maybe it makes sense. Rather than organizing conference calls and such to plot a lot of this stuff out, those three could just walk down the hall to one another's office to talk it over, and then loop in the three non-editors involved in the event.

But regardless of how they did it, this group has managed -- thus far, at least, to put together a massive event with very few continuity hiccups. I mean, when the most egregious thing thus far is Captain America being in New York ahead of the West Coast team, as mentioned above -- and that's something that can be explained, again as above -- then things are looking pretty good for the event's inter-series continuity.

But what of the story itself? So far, I really like it. I have read it before, maybe about twelve or more years ago, but I remember very little about it. So a lot of this feels "new" to me, and it's all very good. Building on the Avengers' history with the Kree is always a fine idea, but bringing in the Shi'ar to mix it up a bit is inspired. The Shi'ar, to this point, had been pretty much exclusive to the X-Men comics. Readers knew they were one of the major powers among Marvel's spacefaring civilizations, but that had rarely been shown before this point. So getting them some mainstream exposure in an Avengers crossover is a great idea, and so far they've been handled well.

But there's a lot more to go! Next week we'll examine the second month of the event and see if it continues to hold up.