AVENGERS #366

"THE FIRST RULE!"
An adventure of the mighty Avengers brought to you by:
Bob Harras/Steve Epting/Tom Palmer
Letterer: Rick Parker | Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: At Avengers Mansion, Sersi warns Black Widow and Captain America that the Black Knight and his team are being tortured. Vision arrives to confirm the story, explaining that he witnessed his teammates' capture and watched as a Kree ship rose from beneath Galen Kor's farmhouse headquarters. The ship left, ferrying the nega-bomb, and Vision was unable to keep up with it, so he returned to the Mansion. Sersi immediately flies off, her mental bond with the Black Knight leading her to him. Leaving the injured Vision behind to coordinate operations, Captain America, Black Widow, Giant-Man, and Magdalene follow.

On an island in the South Pacific, Galen Kor's soldiers finish torturing the Black Knight and Crystal, then turn their attention to Deathcry while a captive Hercules watches helplessly. Galen Kor speaks with someone over a comlink about delivering the captive Avengers to a mysterious benefactor. Meanwhile, Black Knight continues to try to reach Sersi. The Avengers approach the island and are intercepted by two Kree Sentries. Sersi takes one out while Giant-Man defeats the other. Vision informs the group that the nega-bomb will soon detonate. Inside the Kree ship, Galen Kor orders his troops to execute Deathcry -- but Hercules finally breaks free of his bonds and attacks, at the same time the rest of the Avengers burst into the ship.

The nega-bomb's final ignition begins, allowing Kor and his men to beam away. The Avengers move to the bomb, where Vision directs Sersi to transmute its energies. She manages to to mostly do so, but Vision realizes the bomb will detonate before she can finish. The Avengers retreat, and the bomb takes out two hundred square miles of uninhabited ocean. Elsewhere, Kor apologizes to his benefactor for his failure to deliver the Avengers, and the mystery man is revealed as the Collector, who vows that he will someday capture the Avengers.

Continuity Notes: The splash page features a dramatic appearance by Vison, which seems to be an homage to the famous "three cows shot me down" sequence by Neal Adams and Roy Thomas in another classic AVENGERS tale focused on the Kree. (And which, perhaps not coincidentally, was also inked by Tom Palmer, over twenty years earlier!)

Hank Pym joins the Avengers for this mission, and will remain with the team going forward. Cap questions whether he should be using his powers due to the strain they place on his heart, but Pym brushes off the concern, given the stakes at hand.

Rather than using a Quinjet, for reasons unknown, our heroes travel to the island in Deathcry's Shi'ar "skimmer" (and in a touch I absolutely love, Black Widow goes full "Top Gun" to pilot the ship, donning a pair of shades along with her bomber jacket as she sits at the controls).

Captain America confronts Galen Kor one-on-one during the battle. When Kor comments on the Avengers' "savagery," Cap surprisingly says that perhaps it's time for "a new type of Avenger." We haven't really seen it at all yet, but I think Harras is trying to give us a little friction between Captain America's values and the tactics of the current team. Time will tell whether this becomes more overt, but I do recall Mark Gruenwald getting some mileage from the idea in Cap's solo series around this time, at least.

Assemble: At the beginning of the issue, in a shot featuring three "classic" (i.e., Silver Age era) Avengers -- the most we've seen on the page at once in quite some time -- Captain America rallies the team to action with the legendary cry. And later, Sersi gives a play on the phrase as well, warning the Kree that they're up against "the Avengers assembled." ("Avengers Assemble!" count: 7 in 34 issues to date.)

My Thoughts: As mentioned a few times recently, 1993 was a year-long celebration of the Avengers' thirtieth anniversary, with no fewer than four extra-sized, foil-covered issues throughout the year -- one each quarter. But this issue is the actual, official thirtieth anniversay installment, cover-dated exactly three decades to the month after the group's September 1963 debut.

And I gotta say, this really feels like an anniversary extravaganza. 1993's first double-sized issue, 360, began the saga of the alternate Vision replacing the genuine article, but was a fairly low-key affair overall. three months later, issue 363 brought that story to an end, and while it featured the Avengers' first face-to-face meeting with Proctor and an all-out battle between our heroes and the Gatherers, it somehow felt like just another monthly issue. Perhaps because the story was relatively small in scope; the Avengers were fighting to rescue Vision and learn about the Gatherers, but beyond that, nothing much was at stake.

But here, we have Galen Kor ready to detonate a nega-bomb and destroy the Earth. Kor and his Kree followers may not be as menacing a threat as the Gatherers, but with the bomb come stakes that Proctor's band has so far not equaled (which is fine, by the way -- the Gatherers are meant to be a more personal challenge to the Avengers, while the Kree are after revenge on the entire planet Earth).

So, to give us a story equal to those stakes, Harras and Epting deliver something of a rarity for AVENGERS at this point -- an all out, wall-to-wall action story. The various soap opera plots all sit this one out. There's scarcely a mention of the love triangle, no one is thinking about the Gatherers or the still comatose Swordsman. It's just the Avengers leaping into action to save the day. It's almost refreshing -- or perhaps reassuring -- in a way, to see our heroes engaged in something that used to be their bread-and-butter: risking life and limb to protect the world from imminent destruction.

Of course it's all filtered through the same "nineties lens" Harras and Epting have employed, quite successfully, during their run to date. Captain America and Vision are the only Avengers here who look relatively traditional. Though Black Knight, Sersi, and Crystal all eschew their bomber jackets in this one, they still have their long hair and stubble (for the Knight) and their new costumes (for the women) -- while Hercules goes shirtless, Black Widow wears the above-mentioned jacket and shades, and even Giant-Man has a new costume replete with pouches and lots of little techie-greebles on the harness (plus the maskless, hair-revealing cowl which was all the rage, popularized by Gambit, around this time).

In a way, this feels like the comic book equivalent of a blockbuster action movie -- and once in a while, that's all I want from a comic (though I will be quite happy to see the soap opera material return next issue).

But wait -- that's not all! This issue also features a backup story, a sequel to the year's annual which we covered a couple weeks ago, titled...

"SWORDPLAY 3"
Writer: Glenn Herdling | Penciler: Mike Gustovich
Ink & Colors: Ariane Lenshoek | Letters: Janice Chiang
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: Two would-be super-criminals, Flame and Foam -- collectively called the Plug-Uglies -- attack a bank in Washington, D.C. in search of a safety desposit box belonging to the recently deceased Mister Tolliver. The men get the contents of the box -- several computer discs -- and leave. But Sean Dolan happens by and attempts to stop the duo by drawing the Ebony Blade and transforming into Blood Wraith. He kills both of the Plug-Uglies, but is interrupted from examining their prize by the arrival of Deadpool. Meanwhile, Black Knight is at his castle outside D.C., apologizing to its caretaker, Victoria Bentley, for not telling her about his feelings for Sersi and Crystal. But when Crystal calls to inform the Knight that Sean recently accessed an ATM at the bank, he departs to find his former squire.

The Knight arrives and a three-way battle breaks out between him, Blood Wraith, and Deadpool. Victoria shows up, and Blood Wraith accidentally kills her. Deadpool teleports away with the Ebony Blade, and Blood Wraith follows, while Black Knight vows that the next time he meets Sean, he will kill him. In Yugoslavia, Deadpool is in a safehouse examining the sword when Blood Wraith arrives, having found him via a mental link with the weapon. He reclaims his sword, but finds that thanks to Victoria's death, the blade's blood curse is stated... for now. Blood Wraith flies off into the night on Valinor.

Continuity Notes: As this is a direct sequel to its events, there are two footnotes to AVENGERS ANNUAL #22 in this story. We also get one reference to the DEADPOOL limited series. Also, at one point Victoria says that she used to hang around with Doctor Strange. (And for more on that, see the comments to my ANNUAL 22 post, where I learned that Victoria is actually a Silver Age creation of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee!)

My Thoughts: After the AVENGERS ANNUAL cleared the decks, so to speak, with regards to the Ebony Blade and Valinor, now we have the untimely demise of one of the Black Knight's (formerly Doctor Strange's) supporting cast members. And with Victoria Bentley gone, I guess all the more overt links to Dane Whitman's past have been written out at this point. He still owns the castle, but the romantic interest that came with it is out of the picture, giving him little reason to return there at this point.

I have to say, using the then-current DEADPOOL limited series, of all things, as the springboard to a story about the Black Knight comes straight out of left field -- but I kind of love it! At the risk of getting over-nerdy yet again, this is exactly the sort of thing I used to do when I game mastered the Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game for my friends in middle school, high school, and college -- find some kind of story where the characters could be dropped in and then pulled back out without mucking with the plot of the story itself (I was a stickler about adhering to the actual Marvel continuity in those games, to make our sessions feel more like things that could really be happening in the Marvel Universe).

Plus, I'm always up for a guest apperance from the Merc With a Mouth in the nineties, before he become a supremely overexposed comedy character, and thus way less interesting, during the 00s.