AVENGERS STRIKEFILE

"GALACTIC MOURNING"
Writers: Bob Harras & Cefn Ridout | Penciler: Jeff Moore | Inker: Mike Sellers
Letterer: Michael Higgins | Colorist: Nel Yomtov | Editor: Richard Ashford
Group Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The Plot: In their hidden compound on the moon, Galen Kor and his troops monitor the nearby crash-landing of a capsule from Kree space. The warriors retrieve and activate the device, which is revealed as the final recording of a Kree historian. He recaps the events of the Kree/Shi'ar war for Galen Kor and his followers, explaining to them the Avengers' complicity in the detonation of the nega-bomb, as well as their assassination of the Supreme Intelligence. Kor vows to make the Avengers pay. Meanwhile, on Earth, Vision monitors the arrival of the capsule as well, and wonders what it could mean.

Continuity Notes: This is apparently a hard issue to place in continuity, though I can't figure out why it should be. The AVENGERS: THE GATHERING OMNIBUS places it before AVENGERS ANNUAL #22, and thus directly between AVENGERS #364 and 365 -- so it's set just prior to the Avengers' battle with Galen Kor. But the AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: THE GATHERERS STRIKE! volume has it at the very end, after all the issues in the book -- therefore putting it between AVENGERS nos. 366 and 367, after the encounter with Kor but before "Bloodties". And the good people at the Marvel Chronology Project list Galen Kor as appearing here after his last appearance in AVENGERS #366 as well, but there's no way to know exactly where they would stick it, since his next appearance is a year later in the upcoming in issue 378 (spolier alert).

Yet I'm not sure why Marvel's official order-determiners (if that's not a word, I just made it one) think this should be set anywhere other than exactly when it was published -- between the "Bloodties" finale in AVENGERS #369 and next regular issue, #370. First, while it can be argued the Omnibus placement is correct, it doesn't have to be. In this story, Kor learns the full extent of the Avengers' involvement in the war, and vows to destroy them. But as long ago as his first appearance in issue 350, Kor already knew the Avengers -- specifically the Black Knight -- had killed the Supreme Intelligence, for he hired Raza and Hepizbah then to kill the Knight in retaliation.

I think what's actually happening here is that Kor and his people are licking their wounds following AVENGERS 366 when they find this thing and learn way more about the war than they knew -- though they knew plenty. And so Kor redoubles his vow to kill the Avengers specifically. Remember, in issues 364-366 he was trying to destroy the entire Earth, not just the Avengers, though they were on his rader. But now he's redirecting his rage toward the Avengers and the Avengers alone.

So STRIKEFILE does not explicitly need to be set before the Avengers' first encouner with Kor. But I also don't see how it belongs where the Epic Collection puts it. Unless they're just viewing it as "bonus material" to the Kor story in that volume, from a continuity perspective, it does not need to happen before "Bloodties". And when there's no continuity concern, and when the one-shot was published between two issues (369 and 370) with a clean stop and start between them (370 is, in fact, a fill-in by a different creative time), then any chronological placement should defer to publication order. This issue is cover-dated January 1994. AVENGERS 369 was cover-dated December 1994. The argument could be made that maybe this issue was released a week or two after issue 370 -- I didn't check that -- but if they're both cover-dated for the same month, I say, just place this one directly before it and be done!

Anyway, I just spent longer trying to figure out this issue's chronological placement (or Marvel's confusion on the subject) than I'm going to spend talking about its plot, but that's okay -- it really doesn't have a plot, and the space needed to be filled somehow!

Assemble: As this is an ancillary one-shot rather than an issue of the core title, we won't count it toward our tally. Thus the total remains: "Avengers Assemble!" count: 8 in 37 issues to date.

My Thoughts: Well, if nothing else, I learned something today -- "Cefn" is not a weird made-up anagram name or something. It is, in fact, a Welsh name, and Cefn Ridout is an actual, honest-to-goodness real person! As soon as I saw his unusual name, coupled with the fact that this is the only comic book credit I've ever seen assigned to him, I assumed he was a nom de plume. So my apologies for that, Mister Ridout! Per the Marvel Wiki, I see you worked, apparently quite breifly, as an editor at Marvel U.K. in the eighties, and wrote three comics for Marvel U.S. in the nineties.

In this case, Ridout handles the bulk of the issue, which is simply a text-and-clipart summary of "Operation: Galactic Storm" told from the Kree perspective, while Bob Harras scripts a framing sequence featuring Galen Kor at the start and Crystal and the Vision at the end. Beyond those segments, the book also features pinups of everyone the Kree want revenge upon: Vision, Crystal, Giant-Man, Deathcry, Black Widow, Hercules, the Black Knight, Sersi, Iron Man & Captain America, Thor & Thunderstrike (yes, since last we saw Thor in these pages, Eric Masterson apparently gave up the identity and adopted a new one), Force Works (who don't quite techincally exist yet; the final issue of AVENGERS WEST COAST was published this month), the X-Men, the Fantastic Four & Inhumans, and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard.

It's just one of those little random sourcebooks Marvel would put out in the nineties, and indeed it borrows its subtitle from an X-Men book that had been published a year or two earlier, STRYFE's STRIKE FILE. Though why Marvel decided the best way to go with this book would be to recap an event that ended a year-and-a-half earlier and set up villains who just finished their first big story in the ongoing series and won't return for another year, I can't imagine. I feel like centering this book on the Gatherers (AVENGERS: PROCTOR'S STRIKE FILE) would've made a lot more sense!

Next week we'll tackle two issues in one post as we cover a fill-in story by a guest creative team, before moving along to the multi-part grand finale of the Gatherers saga a week later.