"SHATTERED VOWS!"
Writers: Tom Brevoort & Mike Kanterovich | Artist: Mike Gustovich
Letterer: Bill Oakley | Colorists: Kevin Somers & Marie Javins
Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Mark Gruenwald
The Plot: At the former site of the Inhuman city, Attilan, in the Himalayas, a being of energy appears, startling the local Alpha Primitives. Seeing that Attilan is gone, he leaves and next appears at Avengers Mansion, where he attacks and kidnaps Crystal, who recognizes him as an old enemy of the Inhumans; a Kree warrior named Shatterstar. Shatterstar next travels with the unconscious Crystal to the headquarters of the Fantastic Force in SoHo. Shatterstar kidnaps a member of the Force, an Inhuman named Devlor. The Avengers -- Giant-Man, Vision, Thunderstrike, and Deathcry -- arrive a moment later and team up with Fantastic Force leader, Psi-Lord, to search for Shatterstar.
Elsewhere, at an abandoned Kree facility in Florida, Shatterstar attempts to contact the Kree Empire but receives no response. The Avengers and Psi-Lord arrive and attack, but Shatterstar seem sto have the upper hand until Deathcry informs him that the Kree Empire was conquered and annexed by the Shi'ar. Vision furthers Shatterstar's distraction by informing the warrior that he is permanently trapped in his energy form. When Shatterstar tries to prove Vision wrong, he finds that he cannot revert to normal. Enraged, he flies off into space toward the Kree homeworld.
Continuity Notes: Narration informs us that the Inhumans emancipated the Alpha Primitives "years ago," though I have no idea when it actually happened.
Per Crystal, the Inhumans last battled Shatterstar in issues 4 - 6 of their 1970s comic. Shatterstar tells her that he's not worthy to use that name at the moment, which is quite prescient of him, since while he was out of circulation, a much more popular character named Shatterstar joined X-Force.
FANTASTIC FORCE was a spinoff, as you might imagine, of FANTASTIC FOUR, in the nineties. This issues writers, Tom Brevoort and Mike Kanterovich, were the regular writers of FORCE, which starred Psi-Lord, an adult version of Franklin Richards, leading his own super-team.
When Shatterstar appears in Fantastic Force headquarters, Franklin asks Devlor if this is the "Seeker" he had mentioned in issue 3 of their own series. Later, Franklin introduces himself to Quicksilver by noting that he attended the latter's wedding to Crystal in FANTASTIC FOUR #150.
Quicksilver laments his sub-optimal battle performance, attributing it to injuries sustained in AVENGERS #369.
Assemble: Yes -- as usual, guest-writers seize their chance to script the Avengers' battlecry, as this time Thunderstrike shouts it when the heroes show up for their final battle against Shatterstar. ("Avengers Assemble!" count: 11 in 50 issues to date.)
My Thoughts: Well. It's a fill-in issue, and it's the first fill-in during this run that we can't pair with another issue, since it sits between two Bob Harras-written installments (and further, between two limited series outside of the AVENGERS series proper). So we're forced, whether we want to or not, to examine this one on its own merits. And I'll say this -- it's not horrible. It's by no means
good either, but as far as fill-in issue go, it's fine. It makes no offensive continuity errors, and it features some mildly amusing fights -- plus, I'm a sucker for stories where the antagonist has been out of action for a while, and shows up fighting a war he doesn't know is over. And I like that Deathcry is (logically) the one to get Shatterstar to stand down.
I suppose the best I can say about this one is... it could've been worse!
Next week, we're going to look at the VISION limited series, written by regular AVENGERS scribe Bob Harras (and with covers from his "Gatherers" collaborator, Steve Epting)!
It was in Fantastic Four #132 where the Alpha Primitives were first freed.
ReplyDeleteMaximus built a robot named Omega which was powered by the resentment of the Alpha Primitives and the guilt of the Inhumans over keeping a slave population. The only way to stop Omega was for Black Bolt and Medusa to free the Alpha Primitives.
I'd forgotten all about this issue but I guess that's the nature of the fill-in beast. The decent continuity makes sense given Brevoort was co-writing it and would go on to become Mark Gruenwald's successor. Fantastic Force was a team I barely noticed and long term would be utterly forgotten, especially when Franklin's age was reset.
ReplyDeleteShatterstar's name suggests that even in 1991 Marvel did not have a name control system in place to prevent names being reused that would then be a problem with the original character was revived. Which is odd given that the first Nova had been revived just over a year earlier and suffered the indignity of having "Kid" attached to his name. (Alternatively, perhaps the X-books were more out of control than realised.)
DeletePotential conflicts definitely arose but I’m sure the reuse of dormant names over the years was at least sometimes intentional for the purposes of trademark protection and, hey, whether Liefeld or anyone else paying attention at Marvel actually knew about the earlier Shatterstar or not, a character unseen for 15 years shouldn’t have kept the moniker under wraps just in case he was ever brought out of mothballs.
ReplyDeleteI think it was an editorial note, rather than Crystal, explaining that Arides/Shatterstar was last seen in #4-6 of the ’70s Inhumans… 8^)
You’ll never believe it but one of my earliest and favoritest comics, Superboy [and the Legion of Super-Heroes] #210, provided my first exposure to the (ideally/potentially) gripping, heartbreaking trope of “soldier doesn’t understand his war is over” — and this is no that, on many levels, although I suppose it could have been for some young reader in 1995. I did enjoy the presumably unintentional laugh of Vision reacting to his inability to pull his shtick of partially solidifying in Shatterstar’s body at the very moment Shatterstar declares his adversaries’ efforts “immaterial”.
I looked up Arides/Shatterstar’s ’70s Inhumans appearance, by the way, and he sports a truly awesome getup that answers the question “What if the Rocketeer wore a suit made by Tony Stark with Doctor Fate’s helmet and used Apple’s Spinning Color Wheel of Death for an insignia?”