AVENGERS #379

"THE LEGENDS AND THE LOST"
Writer: Bob Harras | Pencilers: Stewart Johnson & Tom Grindberg
Inkers: Tom Palmer & Rich Rankin | Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorists: Karl Bollers, John Kalisz, & Mike Marts Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

Note: AVENGERS #379 - 382 were published as "Double Features" with a GIANT-MAN limited series included as a "flipbook" within those issues. I will cover the GIANT-MAN serial in one post after issue 382.

The Plot: Deathcry and Alabar watch as a Kree ship arrives at the Isle of Crail. Admiral Galen Kor and two of his troops disembark, revealing to the Butcher that they brought his ship to Earth and freed him. Meanwhile, Black Widow, Thunderstrike, Hercules, and Crystal race toward Crail aboard a Quinjet. Deathcry and Alabar are found by Dylon Cir, one of Kor's men. Meanwhile, Kor and the Butcher speak with Vision, who is under the guard of the enthralled Swordsman and Magdalene. Alabar stops Deathcry from killing Cir, instead using the contents of a vial to ensnare Cir's will. Moments later, the Shi'ar duo is escorted by Cir to the Butcher's base, a pub in town. The Butcher is away with Kor, so the group enters the pub, knocks out Swordsman and Magdalene, and frees Vision.

The Butcher and Kor arrive and attack, but Alabar refuses to fight. He reveals that during the war between the Shi'ar and Mephistoids, he and his men were taken in by a Mephistoid abbey run by several females of the species. There, Alabar learned of the Mephisitoids' phermonal powers. He and his men killed all the women in the abbey and Alabar distilled their pheromones into a potion he used to control his men and win the war. The Butcher then kills Alabar, leading Deathrcy to grab Magdalene's weapon and kill the Butcher. Galen Kor and his people escape. Soon, the Avengers arrive and verify the town is back to normal, while Deathcry stands by herself under the full moon.

Continuity Notes: Black Widow says that the Quinjet the Avengers are using is one of the few things left over from their old mansion after Ute the Watcher restored it to its previous form. A footnote references issue 375. The Avengers have also discovered that the restored mansion is proving more trouble than it is worth.

In the same scene, Hercules recalls being tortured by Galen Kor in issue 366.

Vision notes that he's held captive in stasis fields often, and plans to test his intangibility powers to hopefully correct the issue. This would be reference to Proctor holding him captive in issues 360 - 363, though there is no footnote.

Alabar's story reveals that both male and female Mephisitoids possess the pheromonal power, but the females only use it for their mating ritual. It's also explained by Galen Kor that the Shi'ar keep all Mephisitoids under quarantine on the planet Tryl'sart, with all of the race -- especially males -- forbidden to leave. This seems slightly incongruous with Hepzibah's backstory, which I believe holds that her entire race was enslaved by the Shi'ar -- though it's possible that by this point in time, perhaps under Lilandra's rule, the enslavement had ended. Though confining an innocent population to never leave a planet, whether slaves or not, still seems like a pretty crummy thing to do!

The townspeople are colored blue throughout the issue, making it appear as if Kor has a huge contingent of troops with him, rather than the two warriors explicitly shown to arrive with him in the opening pages.

Assemble: Nothing this issue. ("Avengers Assemble!" count: 10 in 46 issues to date.)

My Thoughts: Dating back to his very first story arc, "The Collection Obsession", Bob Harras has displayed a fondness for last-minute reveals to turn entire storylines on their heads. And forunately, he's good at it. Whether it's the Brethren exposed as nothing more than mutated bacteria, Proctor's identity as a parallel Black Knight, or Alabar turning out to be a mass murderer, his twists all play fair with the reader. True, they often come at you with no clues (aside from the Brethren), but there's no rule that says a story twist needs to be telegraphed. Indeed, some of the best twists work because you absolutely don't see them coming, but if you go back and look, you'll find that they make sense with what came before.

Such is the case here, as Vision quickly deduces that Alabar was not sent into space to guard the Butcher, but was exiled with him for his war crimes. Vision even expressed some skepticism about Alabar's story in the previous issue, but it read more along the lines of him finding the Shi'ar's decision odd rather than questioning the story itself. So there were perhaps some minor seeds planted, but nothing to make a reader suspect anything amiss until the dramatic reveal.

In other news, this marks the final appearance of Galen Kor under Bob Harras. Though I was shocked to see him appear as often as he did in the first place! In terms of villains, Kor is second to Proctor and the Gatherers for most apperances in these stories, with his debut appearance in issue 350, where he operated behind the scenes, to his big multi-issue arc in 364 - 366, to this sendoff in 378 and 379 (not to mention being part of the framing sequence in AVENGERS STRIKEFILE). That's more or less once a year for Kor appearances, and I assume Harras would've planned to keep bringing him back, had he remained writing the series. But Harras will be gone in a little over a year, and the Avengers will be sent off to a year of "Heroes Reborn" stories not long after. Kor will eventually return, but it will be during the Kurt Busiek/George Pérez "Heroes Return" era in 1998, in the "Live Kree or Die" crossover which will also return the Supreme Intelligence to the land of the living.

So for now, we bid farewell to the second most recurring villain in the Harras run. Now, who do you suppose is the third most recurring? Nearly every other villain Harras has written -- and there have been very few, considering, as mentioned last week, he has focused nearly all of his story arcs around the Kree or the Gatherers -- featured in, at most, one story arc. But coming up in the next story arc (albeit not in the very first chapter), one of those one-off villains will make a second appearance. Be there!