AVENGERS #365

"FOR AN EMPIRE LOST..."
A Harras/Epting/Palmer Production
Letterer: Bill Oakley | Editor: Ralf Macchio
Assistant Editor: Pat Garrahy | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: The Avengers review recordings of a recent attack by the Kree in China, the latest in a string of similar assaults where a wall of energy appears and destroys everyone in its path. Every such occurrence has been followed by a recording from Admiral Galen Kor. But this time, Vision has tracked Kor's signal to a community in upstate New York called Owl's Head. Black Widow orders Vision, Black Knight, Hercules, and Crystal to investigate, and Deathcry insists on accompanying them. Meanwhile, in Owl's Head, Kor and his men discuss the fact that he deliberately uncloaked his signal so the Avengers would find him.

Later, as the Avengers approach Owl's Head, an electromagnetic pulse knocks them out of the sky and cripples Vision. Emerging from their Quinjet, the Avengers find that Galen Kor has created a new nega-bomb. Then, Kor fells all of the Avengers and takes them prisoner -- except for Vision, who was separated from the group during the EMP.

Continuity Notes: This is a standard-size issue, but the story is only fifteen pages long, with the remainder of the issue dedicated to pinups. You may recall that last issue featured two stories. There, the lead tale was also fifteen pages. Presumably this is all to minimize artistic fill-ins as Steve Epting and Tom Palmer must draw several double-sized issues throughout the Avengers' thirtieth anniversary year. (As mentioned a while back, next issue will be the third of four double-sized, foil-covered installments during 1993.)

When Black Widow dispatches Black Knight and the others to Owl's Head, she says that she and Captain America will remain behind to call in the reserves. Which seems like a flimsy way to write Cap out of the story. It was made clear several issues back that the Widow perfers to be more of a "behind-the-scenes" chairperson, so I have no issue with her hanging back -- but why wouldn't you send the team's best tactician into the field if there's a chance the group will find Galen Kor and his unit? (Also, the excuse becomes even flimsier when we see next issue that only one reservist show up, and it's a guy who is already at the mansion.)

Galen Kor wields a Kree Universal Weapon, the hammer-type devices used by Ronan and the other Kree Accusers.

Sersi wants to come to Owl's Head as well, but Black Knight talks her into staying behind to continue her therapy sessions with Hank Pym. During the scene, Sersi rages over the Knight's affair with Crystal, but he calms her down via their mindlink.

Meanwhile, Crystal confides in Vision that she is falling in love with the Black Knight, rendering the synthezoid breifly speechless. A moment later, Deathcry flirts with Vision, but later, Vision ruminates on how Crystal's revelation triggered unexpected emotion in him.

Black Knight wonders if the Avengers made the right choice in killing the Supreme Intelligence, but Hercules remains firm that it had to be done.

When the EMP hits the Quinjet, Black Knight refers to it as "...the biggest electromagnetic pulse this side of Magneto!" I'm not sure if this is meant to be a bit of prescience on the part of the Knight or what, as this issue is cover-dated August 1993, while the "Fatal Attractions" event would see Magneto unleashing a world-shattering EMP two months later, in the October '93 issue of X-MEN.

Assemble: No. ("Avengers Assemble!" count: 6 in 33 issues to date.)

My Thoughts: As noted above, this is an exceptionally short story, clocking in at a mere fifteen pages -- and unlike last month's installment, there is no backup story here; just some pinups. So it's a really fast read, and somehow feels a little incomplete. It's reminiscent of reading a Marvel comic from the seventies, but even those were seventeen pages long. Harras crams a lot into this story, hitting on all his major soap opera plots in the middle -- but even so, it seems as if something is missing.

That said, I think I still prefer this over a full-length story drawn by a fill-in art team. I mentioned a while back that Harras's writing seems to rise or fall to the level of his artistic collaborators. And rather than take a chance at a sub-par or merely serviceable chapter, depending on on the penciler, I much prefer a quality installment from the usual creative team, even if it does read as if a few pages got lost on the way to the printer.

In any case, I appreciate the concept behind this saga. Plotwise, Harras's run seems to be defined, at least through issue 375, by two main throughlines: the Kree/Shi'ar war and its fallout, and the Gatherers. Post "Collection Obsession", the run began with the two-part introduction of Swordsman and Magdalane (Gatherers). Then we went into three months of "Operation: Galactic Storm" (the Kree/Shi'ar war). We then had the two-part Starjammers story (Kree/Shi'ar war), followed by roughly eight out of ten issues dedicated to the dark Vision and Proctor (Gatherers). Now it's the arrival of Galen Kor for three issues (Kree/Shi'ar war). Of course, in between were some one- or two-offs and a fill-in three-parter -- but out of twenty-one issue written by Harras (as of next week), that will be eighteen dedicated to either the Gatherers or the Kree/Shi'ar material!

Looking ahead the rest of the way to 375, it appears at a glance that we will have another one-off, two issues dedicated to the "Bloodties" crossover with X-MEN, two fill-ins, and then four more issues with the Gatherers. So it sounds like, in total, issues 343 through 375 feature twenty-eight issues written by Harras, of which twenty-two will be dedicated to these two major plots.

Mind you, I'm not certain what point I'm trying to make here, other than that it almost feels like Harras was ahead of his time in his sensibilities as a writer. Circa the 00s and twenty-teens, it would not be uncommon for writers to come onto ongoing series with a very specific arc in mind, and to spend most of their run building that arc. And while I generally don't love a lot of those comics, it's more for thier decompression and lack of thought balloons and omniscient narration than for anything else. When Harras does it here, with every issue still feeling like a full experience and still reading like a comic book, and with soap opera and other sub-plots cropping up every issue, it's much more palatable to me.

But somehow, if this makes sense -- strictly in terms of plotting style -- I almost feel like I'm reading the comic book equivalent of a season of "prestige television" rather than a normal "comic booky" comic book run.