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Time Out of Mind
This part of the Crossing crossover continues from AVENGERS #393.Malachi and Tobias and the girl who controls the time portal have brought Iron Man to the citadel of Kang and Mantis, as seen in Avengers #393. Iron Man remembers the things he did in blackouts controlled by Kang and Mantis. The two halves of his mind have combined, and the dark side is dominant. But he still feels guilt, especially over his latest crime where he thinks he killed Janet Van Dyne while fully conscious.The girl, who still hasn't been revealed as a teenage version of Crystal and Quicksilver's child Luna, won't meet Tony's eyes because she expects he knows she is a traitor. She has been paying temporal visits to various Avengers, trying to warn them all the while she has been ostensibly working for Kang.I don't think Kang realises that Stark feels remorse. I suspect he believes they have switched Tony permanently to his blackout persona. When Luna appeared to Stark in Iron Man #322 she said she was trying to awaken him to what he was doing. Possibly the survival of his good side was her intention. But now she is worried because his bad side will remember her visits.Tobias says they had to retrieve Stark because his cover was blown. Kang blames Mantis for this, for using Iron Man for personal vengeance. But it seems to me Kang sent for Stark because he wanted him for the task he now sets him.Kang says the (still unrevealed) enemy is at the gates earlier than expected, and so Stark must go to Force Works HQ immediately and complete the job Kang designed him for.The only people left in Force Works HQ are Amanda Chaney, Cybermancer, and Spider-Woman's daughter Rachel. Amanda has found a hidden sub-basement with a separate computer system from the future. Iron Man arrives via temporal portal and attacks her because she's seen too much. She flees into another part of the basement where she finds some freezer units. One of them contains Suzi Endo, who is supposed to be Cybermancer. Iron Man kills Amanda, but Rachel overhears through Amanda's communicator.Iron Man orders the computer to start enacting program Siege Perilous.Black Widow, U.S.Agent and War Machine get an update from Hawkeye on the events of Iron Man #323 and Avengers #393. That Iron Man is confirmed as the killer of Marilla and Rita DeMara, and that he blasted Jan before escaping. We saw the other end of Hawkeye's call in Avengers #393.The trio are heading for Force Works HQ in a road vehicle salvaged from the wreck of their Hex ship in War Machine #21. Jim Rhodes uses his alien Warwear armour, gained in War Machine #18, to fly ahead. The armour springs into existence on mental command.Iron Man and Cybermancer are searching for Rachel when Century returns. Century has been away discovering his extraterrestrial origins in the Century: Distant Suns 1-shot, gone since #15 before the crossover started. Jim Rhodes finds Rachel. Century stops Iron Man shooting the unarmed pair, KO's Cybermancer, and teleports Rachel to safety. Rhodey dons the Warwear and faces Iron Man.Meanwhile, in the temple of Agaphaur in the displaced Vietnam, Scarlet Witch and Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) are trying to come to terms with Moonraker's claim that he is actually Gustav Brandt, the supposedly dead Libra of the villainous Zodiac. Julia is especially upset as she and Moonraker were lovers. Scarlet Witch sends her to look for Force Works' technician Fisher Todd.Gustav claims that he really did die. However the Priests of Pama, based in this temple, saved his spirit because he was the father of Mantis, the Celestial Madonna.He says that Kang has removed Vietnam as part of eradicating all trace of Mantis's past, including the Priests of Pama and the Cotati. The Priests foresaw this, and hid Libra in an alternate reality in Slade Truman, who as Moonraker *was* a member of Force Works and lover of Spider-Woman in that reality. They then transferred him across to the main Marvel reality to warn the Avengers. Dragging Moonraker's history with him. Gustav's memories would only surface when he came to Agaphaur.Moonraker claims that Kang intends to take over the whole planet as he has stolen Vietnam, by shifting it into this other reality. Because he is 'scared of something'.Spider-Woman and Fisher Todd arrive with the boy Kim that Fisher rescued last issue, who has mutated into a powerful winged being. Gustav tells them that some humans are given powers when they enter this realm, and Kang is recruiting them for his Anachronaut army. He also says that the Anachronauts they fought last issue were 'sent into this zone to hunt for recruits'. And he can use their technology to get Force Works home.The Crossing continues in WAR MACHINE (1994) #22.


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Goodbye Hong Kong
Story continues from IRON MAN #310.The Mandarin's Avatars are wreaking havoc in Hong Kong. They are Q'Wake (earthquake power), Deluge (water power), Butterfly (bad luck power), Foundry (fire power), and Lich (super-strength but he looks like a decaying corpse). Suzi Endo, head of Stark Enterprises Far-East Division, sends out a call for help that is picked up by Force Works. Meanwhile, Bethany Cabe is also calling FW about the sudden disappearances of Iron Man and War Machine (at the end of IRON MAN #310). The team scrambles for action: Scarlet Witch, Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter), U.S. Agent, and Century while their AI P.L.A.T.O. wonders why he didn't pick up the chaos alert. As they board their jet for Hong Kong, Recorder RE-404 insists on joining them....Meanwhile Iron Man and War Machine are prisoners of the Mandarin who has teleported them from Stark Enterprises to his lair in China. He reveals that he has created an aura around his castle within which all technology ceases to function, including the heroes' armors. The villain gloats and decides to start his revenge with WM, unmasking him first and then electrocuting him, non-lethally....Force Works arrives in Hong Kong and immediately attacks the Avatars, the two teams closely matched in power—until Century's staff Parallax detects something odd about Q'Wake's energy signature and he decides to follow it up, vanishing from the melee....At the Mandarin's lair, Iron Man pleads for mercy on Rhodey's behalf and the Mandarin refuses. Then Century teleports in, seeking the Ten Rings. As he goes to Rhodey's aid, Mandarin lashes out and disintegrates both of them, leaving only a pile of dust and Century's staff....Story continues in WAR MACHINE #9.


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Traitor's Gate
This part of the Crossing crossover continues from AVENGERS: THE CROSSING.Scarlet Witch and U.S.Agent fly back from the Avengers anniversary reunion in Avengers: The Crossing, where the Witch and Tony Stark came to an understanding about Iron Man undermining her leadership. U.S.Agent tells the Witch about the secret sub-basement he and Century found under Force Works HQ last issue, before Century returned to space. Scarlet Witch has one of the headaches she's been getting since #13.Iron Man goes home from the party under his own steam. He hires Suzi Endo, a cybernetics expert first seen in #6 during the latest (crossover) fight with Mandarin, away from the Hong Kong office of Stark Enterprises to come work for him in Los Angeles. He wipes many other messages waiting for him.Century is heading home on the Broker's spaceship. He keeps the freed slaves from killing the Broker because they need him to fly the ship. This story will continue in the Century: Distant Sons 1-shot. Force Works have a member we've never seen before, Moonraker (Slade Truman), who inflicts corposant fire with his hands. Everyone acts as though he has been a member for a long time. He is Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter)'s lover. Except Julia's daughter Rachel doesn't recognise him.Several little things that Julia does, like getting orange juice out of the fridge, appear to undo themselves.The Crossing continues in AVENGERS #391.


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Cybermancy
This part of the Crossing crossover continues from IRON MAN #321.A Priest of Pama materialises in Vietnam and collides with a boy, Kim. They both disappear, and Kim's friends lose all memory of him. Kim reappears in another reality, in pain, and is located by a group who call him a 'positive'. They will reveal themselves next issue as Apocryphus and the team who attacked Gilgamesh in Avengers #391.Iron Man introduces Suzi Endo from Iron Man #321 to Force Works as their new member Cybermancer, to replace Century who took leave of absence in #15. The team have met Suzi before in #6-7 during the Mandarin crossover. But now she has adopted the Cybermancer suit, which gives her various cybernetic powers. Stark tells them she has been working on this suit for 3 years in the Hong Kong office of Stark Enterprises.The team, especially Scarlet Witch, are unhappy with the way Iron Man imposed Cybermancer on them. During this issue Suzi also causes offence, especially to U.S.Agent. She seems to be Iron Man's pawn, and not to care about the others.Iron Man informs them of the discovery in Avengers #392 that Marilla and Yellowjacket (Rita DeMara) were murdered during the reunion in Avengers: The Crossing. He also tells them of the security tape he viewed in Iron Man #321. The image he shows them indicates that Hawkeye was the murderer. He also claims that his lab has found traces of Hawkeye's incendiary arrows in tissue remains he sent them.U.S.Agent refuses to believe Hawkeye is guilty. U.S.Agent and Hawkeye were the opposite of friends in Avengers West Coast. But in their frequent meetings since Hawkeye went solo (e.g. Marvel Comics Presents #159-161) they have become buddies.Team leader Scarlet Witch insists that the Agent be given a chance to bring Hawkeye in peacefully. But Iron Man and Cybermancer follow him and knock Hawkeye out.There's been continuous friction between Iron Man and Scarlet Witch in Force Works, and this is the last straw. Scarlet Witch throws Iron Man off the team when they bring unconscious Hawkeye back (but strangely keeps Cybermancer).The mystery team member Moonraker (who was first seen last issue, but the team act as if he's been with them a long time) is more than shocked to find that Vietnam has vanished from Force Works database, especially when his teammates claim never to have heard of the country. Leaving U.S.Agent to watch Hawkeye and Cybermancer, Scarlet Witch takes Moonraker, Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) and their technician Fisher Todd (as pilot instead of U.S.Agent) to investigate the area, where they break through an energy barrier.U.S.Agent starts to phone War Machine.The Crossing continues in WAR MACHINE (1994) #20.


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Lost & found
This prelude to the Crossing continues from IRON MAN #319.US Agent returns from visiting his parents' graves to find a large spacecraft hovering over Force Works HQ, and no signs of life or electric power inside. Then he sees aliens carrying Fisher Todd in a stasis-pod, and reporting to someone that they now have everyone.Jack manages to reboot part of the base's computer system, and scans the latest available video logs. He sees Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) training, Scarlet Witch and Iron Man arguing, and the alien Century meditating. Wanda was angry that Tony keeps taking over despite putting her in charge of Force Works. And Century recognised the attackers, which fuels US Agent's distrust of him.Jack fights off one of the aliens, and then finds more of them, all different species, surrounding pods containing his team-mates (except Century), Julia's daughter Rachel, and the support team Fisher Todd and Amanda Cheney. Now US Agent has to fight off all the aliens, under their team leader Skewer, until Century teleports in and rescues him.Century ports them to a secret sub-basement he has just discovered while hiding from the aliens. US Agent is surprised to find equipment built by Timely, Wisconsin rather than Stark Enterprises. Century believes there are no entrances to this level, and only a teleporter like himself could get in.Century tells Jack that the aliens are led by one called the Broker, who used to own him. Now the Broker has come to reclaim his property.Later US Agent calls down the Broker and makes a deal, Century in exchange for the return of his friends. In the process Broker explains how a jewel on his hand controls brain-stem parasites that keep his alien horde 'loyal'. But when Century is handed over he turns out to be a hologram.Jack and Century had got Plato the computer system running, on low power. Plato produced the hologram. Now in the confusion the real Century ports in and severs Broker's hand, sending it and the jewel into another dimension.Broker's freed alien crew turn on him, but Century stops them from killing him. He decides to leave with them. They will fly each of the aliens to their homeworld. Meanwhile Century will try to get Broker to tell him of his own forgotten past.This strand of the Crossing preludes leads to the first official crossover issue AVENGERS: THE CROSSING.


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Heart of Darkness
Story continues from IRON MAN #311.Having crashed the Pegasus into the Mandarin's castle, U.S. Agent, believing his teammates are dead, hurls himself at the villain's army; suddenly Spider-Woman appears by his side and together they overcome the larger force and head off in search of Scarlet Witch who is searching for the abducted Tony Stark......who is literally in the clutches of the Mandarin: the villain holds him by the throat with one dragon claw and about to deal the death blow with the other. Wanda arrives and hurls a hex at the baddie, knocking him through a wall which collapses on him. Mandarin is not so easily defeated and he rises in a burst of flame....Nearby, US Agent encounters the Avatar Old Woman who enchants the stone floor into rising up to swallow the hero. Spider-Woman pulls him free (and hurling him into the foe) and they face Sickle (wielding a scythe), Warfist (superstrong), and Ancestor (who draws on his ancestors' power to increase in size and strength)....Out in the nearby village, War Machine negotiates with the local warlord Chu Lo Yan who claims to be a descendant of the last Chinese emperor, Pu-Yi; they agree to join forces against their common enemy the Mandarin. Rhodey checks up on Century who, without his staff Parallax, is coming unhinged, his mind cycling through jumbled and chaotic memories....Back at the castle, Scarlet Witch is engaged in a battle of magics with the Mandarin and manages to keep him distracted until Tony can conk him on the head from behind. Spider-Woman and US Agent arrive at this point and the Mandarin smiles, seeing that he can destroy all of his enemies at once. Scarlet Witch releases an unprecedented burst of hex power that knocks the villain down and unleashes all the power of his rings at once, threatening to destroy the castle. The heroes flee and Mandarin, quickly recovering, orders his Avatars not to pursue them as there is nothing they can do now to stop him......which is realized by the heroes as they regather outside the castle. And suddenly there is a mounted army heading straight toward them....And the Mandarin wielding Parallax appears in Hong Kong, commanding his Avatars to take the city which will becomes the center of the anti-technology field, spreading to the world....Story continues in WAR MACHINE #10.


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Red heat
In Slorenia Black Brigade and his robot Drones attack an unlawful gathering of the Dudak ethnic minority, actually a Red Cross food distribution. Some fight back but he hits them with concussion grenades so they can be taken for interrogation. Disguised in the crowd Scarlet Witch stops U.S. Agent from interfering.At the parliament building Tony Stark has arrived by helicopter with his assistant (Spider-Woman in mufti) to discuss a trade agreement. After public pleasantries are over Stark distracts their escort Councillor Boshlovor with a gift of a hi-tech watch/TV while Julia Carpenter discretely contacts Century who is keeping track of the team from the hex-ship Pegasus above, watched by Recorder RE-404. Century confirms he is receiving surveillance data from the watch.In their guest suite Tony activates a portable scrambler to defeat any bugs. He remembers Force Works' previous foray into this Balkan state (#4-5) where they witnessed a Civil War between Dudaks and Slorenes. The Slorenes had Black Brigade and an army, while the Dudaks had their mystical champion Ember. Who turned out to be a man possessed by the spirit of Ember from an ancient Triptytch. The team left when Ember and the Triptych were seemingly destroyed. But while while Tony was in Russia (IM#315-317 plus #318 which immediately followed it) Wanda Maximoff received a call from James Rhodes (in War Machine #14) who had just been in Slorenia. There he witnessed the Slorenes massacring Dudaks using mutated people referred to as Targoths. The team voted to go there, and Stark was forced to comply when he rejoined them. They're here undercover to find out what's really going on before they make a move.Stark heads down for a banquet while his 'jet-lagged' assistant stays behind and changes to Spider-Woman. She goes clambering over the stone walls of the ancient building (as on the cover).In a deep basement equipped like a mad scientist's lab the hidden Supreme Commander of the ruling Tabissara meets with Boshlovor. They talk about the Program which they hope to make more efficient with Stark's tech. (In WM#14 we learned that the Program is the source of Commander's power. The SC examines Stark's watch-gift but them goes weak and drops it. Boshlovor helps him into the 'receptor' to recharge, and Black Brigade is sent to round up more Dudaks to keep the Program going.Meanwhile Wanda and USA are talking to Dr Renko who runs the international aid mission in Tblunka. She has seen atrocities committed by both sides of the conflict. Ember massacring innocent Slorenes, and the Targoth taking away Dudaks. She also mentions that the conflict is very old, and the Slorenes also have a mythical champion Volkvhy. Suddenly Targoth led by Dark Brigade invade the camp, and USA and the Witch allow themselves to be rounded up with the Dudaks and also Dr Renko.Spider-Woman has reached the basement and found the dropped bugged watch. No-one seems to be about, but then a door creaks open and in walks the Commander now clad in armour with glowing eyes and a glowing sword. Julia calls Century for help, but the Recorder has knocked him out with a wrench. He releases a horde of video drones from the hex-ship - all the better to record things with. And notes that the Chaos Computer has detected a massive probability spike near US Agent and Scarlet Witch. Stark returns from the banquet and also notices the Chaos Spike. He armours up as Iron Man and heads out to deal with it. But he's brought down by Black Brigade and his Drones.The trucks carrying the Dudaks are rocked by an explosion. USA realises they are being 'rescued' by the supposedly-dead Ember (see WM#14 again for his resurrection).


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The fires of sunrise
Last issue Recorder RE-404 tried to free Kree prisoners from the Vault. The Chaos Computer alerted Force Works soon enough that they dealt with the problem before the Avengers responded to the Warden's call for help. However it wasn't all over. 4 of the Kree Starstealth had escaped. And a delegation of Skrulls wanted all the Starstealth handed over to answer for Galactic War Crimes.FWers Iron Man and U.S. Agent are taking Avengers Crystal, Hercules and Quicksilver in their hex-ship Pegasus to track the Kree energy signature. But the Kree have located a backup stash of weaponry and they shoot the ship down. Bo'sun Stug Bar and 2 others have armour and weapons. The 4th named Zamsed is piloting half a Kree Sentry's head mounted on strangely-jointed legs.Meanwhile Century, Scarlet Witch and Spider-Woman of Force Works accompany Black Widow and Giant-Man of the Avengers to the Skrull Tribunal Ship. The 2 Quo Modari diplomats take them to meet delegates of other races who were attacked by the Starstealth. Century and Giant-Man talk to a Rigellian who is examining the Recorder and learn that someone has modified its Rigellian computer system, which explains why it has been plotting against FW.The 3 females see that the ship is packed with refugees. A Quo Modari explains that after the Kree-Shi'ar War (in the Operation Galactic Storm event) the Kree Empire fell to the Shi'ar. The Starstealth brigade sought 'revenge' by committing genocide on random other worlds. Black Widow explains to the FW 2 that this is why the Avengers agreed to extradition for the Kree soldiers.Wanda Maximoff then gets a call from US Agent advising her that they have engaged the enemy. Major Hokk Algol, the Skrull in charge, receives a report about it and orders an elite Skrull team into the battle.Hercules tackles 1 armoured Kree who has downed Iron Man. He crushes the alien's weapon, but the Kree self-destructs his armour taking the Greek Demi-God down with him. Crystal's elemental powers deal with another unnamed armoured foe. Zamsed's giant robot vehicle can't hit the swiftly dodging Quicksilver but Pietro gets buried in debris.Then Major Algol and the Strike-Elite tele-mat down from their ship to take over. Stug Bar and Zamsed fight back but then are tele-matted away. And Algol loses contact with his ship.On board the ship the Skrulls are concerned that they can't contact the Strike team. And the ship's controls have stopped working. Wanda and Julia Carpenter recognise the handiwork of the Recorder, who did something similar in the Vault last issue. Century and Hank Pym rush to the lab where they find the Rigellian dead and the Recorder gone. And then they discover they are locked in.Scarlet Witch gets another of the migraines she was suffering last issue, as the Recorder appears on all screens in the ship saying he's taken control. He demands the security codes to release the Kree prisoners (ie the other Kree from the Vault who have obviously been handed over to the Skrulls). He intends to give them the ship to replace the 1 that was destroyed in #1. Wanda tries to reason with him but he claims he's following the modified directives given him by the Kree ...... and he t-mats Stug Bar and Zamsed into the Skrulls' midst to implement his plan. The Quo Modaris try to diplomat an agreement but Stug shoots 1 of them dead. Then he threatens Scarlet Witch. Wanda dares him to kill her. He pulls the trigger and his gun explodes in his hand - due to her hexing it. Century teleports from the lab and lands on Zamsed's Sentry-head. He cuts his way in with his Parallax axe and extracts the Kree.Century then teleports himself and the Witch to where Recorder is plugged into the ship's system. Wanda fights off another headache to ask Recorder again why he's doing this. The robot explains that the Starstealth found him orbiting their devastated capital planet/homeworld Hala. He was damaged but someone had given him a directive for the Starstealth to locate and destroy Vision and Wonder Man, supposedly the beings behind the destruction of Hala (see #1). But Scarlet Witch casts another hex which causes Recorder RE-404 to age rapidly and crumble to pieces. And her headache goes away.Everyone gets together to lick their wounds and exchange brags. Wanda now agrees with Natasha Romanoff that the Starstealth should be handed over to the Skrull-led coalition to face trial for genocidal war crimes. But she's still unhappy that Black Widow didn't consult them before she agreed to that, given that they were also responsible for Wonder Man's death.And the giant starship we saw last issue destroys a planet on the way to our Solar System.


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Siege Perilous
This part of the Crossing crossover continues from WAR MACHINE (1994) #22.From the basement of Force Works HQ, Cybermancer and Stark's secret computer Virgil, in the holographic guise of Tony Stark, have taken over the building from the nice computer Plato. Scarlet Witch, U.S.Agent and War Machine try to break in, but have to fight holographic Iron Men. Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) comforts her daughter Rachel, while Fisher Todd tries unsuccessfully to overcome the damage caused by War Machine and Iron Man's fight in War Machine #22.Iron Man has been a secret puppet of Kang and Mantis. Strictly speaking no-one knows this yet, but they now have enough pieces to more-or-less figure it out. Cybermancer is Iron Man's agent within Force Works.We learned in War Machine #22 that Virgil is running a program designed to fire Stark's chronographic weapon in a few hours time. The weapon will flood the Earth with temporal energy. As revealed in #19 this will shift it to join the vanished Vietnam, and provide Kang with a mutated army.Most of the team have been in a reality-displaced Vietnam since #17, where they encountered Kang's Anachronauts, and Moonraker recovered his memories as Libra (Gustav Brandt), and his knowledge of the plot of Kang with Libra's daughter Mantis.The team break off the fight to reconsider and plan. Black Widow calls to say that Century has teleported her and Moonraker to the Avengers at Janet Van Dyne's house. They left in War Machine #22 to take details of Kang's plot to the Avengers. The other end of the phonecall with Black Widow is seen in Iron Man #324.War Machine and Spider-Woman are sent to infiltrate the basement via a heat-exchanger duct that Virgil can't see inside, while the others keep Cybermancer and Virgil distracted. Cybermancer detects that the heat-exchanger isn't working properly. This gives her an idea. She gets Virgil to mess with the environmental support for the rest of the building, while she investigates the heat-exchanger.Spider-Woman and War Machine fight Cybermancer until Spi KO's her. Plato surfaces enough to help Fisher recalibrate the Anachronaut's temporal device (that Moonraker used to get the team home in Force Works #19/War Machine #22) to teleport Scarlet Witch and U.S.Agent past the defences and into the basement.Scarlet Witch scrambles Virgil with a hex, halting the countdown for Stark's chronographic weapon. But the weapon itself is up in Stark's Starcore satellite. Stark won the contract for the Starcore satellite in the Crossing prologue in Iron Man #319. We learned to be suspicious of his plans for the satellite in Iron Man #320.War Machine flies up to the satellite. Scarlet Witch, Spider-Woman and U.S.Agent take a Hex ship to join the Avengers.This leg of the Crossing continues in WAR MACHINE (1994) #23.


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Welcome to Nowhere
This part of the Crossing crossover continues from IRON MAN #322.Scarlet Witch, Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter), Moonraker and technician/pilot Fisher Todd have crashed their jet while investigating why Vietnam has disappeared. The country has more than just vanished, as only Moonraker remembers it existed. Now they are here, all contact with the outside world has been cut.The team explore, including heavily-armed Fisher. This place is different from Moonraker's memories of Vietnam, and they detect temporal energy. But they find the temple of Agaphaur, which belongs in Vietnam.They are attacked by Apocryphus, and the attack squad from Avengers #391. Fisher gets separated from the rest, and comes across the Vietnamese boy Kim who fell into this place last issue. Kim mutates into a superbeing, and his guard describes him as an 'alpha-level candidate'.Moonraker reveals himself as Gustav Brandt, saying that Slade Truman/Moonraker was a protective disguise woven by the Priests (of Pama).Meanwhile Force Works' public relations officer Amanda Chaney is holding the fort with new recruit Cybermancer, and Julia's daughter Rachel. She takes Cybermancer to task for letting U.S.Agent and an unknown armoured helper make off with Hawkeye's unconscious body in War Machine #20. (No-one knows U.S.Agent's ally was War Machine in his new Warwear armour.) She also can't understand why the rest of the team flew to a non-existent country called Vietnam.Cybermancer contacts Iron Man.Rachel says Vietnam is real, but then can't find it in her reference books. She tries to convince Amanda that strange things are happening, similar to those we saw happening to her mother in #16. Also that Moonraker only existed since #16, while everyone else acts as though he's been around for months. Amanda realises that she can't really remember him from earlier either. (My timeline means I have to ignore Rachel's comment that Moonraker only appeared 'yesterday'. It was about a week ago.)While searching the system for other irregularities, Amanda finds temporal radiation, and also the existence of the sub-basement that U.S.Agent and Century discovered in #15. She goes to this basement, and finds that it has its own computer system Virgil, separate from the one Plato that runs the rest of the HQ. Virgil tells her he has chronography manipulation technology from Timely Industries, founded in Wisconsin by Tony Stark in 2009 (which at this point was in the future).Meanwhile also, Hawkeye, U.S.Agent and War Machine have a meeting with Black Widow, arranged in Iron Man #322, to discuss why Iron Man seemingly framed Hawkeye last issue for the murders of Marilla and Rita DeMara in Avengers: The Crossing.A man in a technological retreat has located Hawkeye and friends. He gets permission to send Strike Team Decimal Four to kill them, despite this revealing things prematurely.The Crossing continues in WAR MACHINE (1994) #21.


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[Assistant]
Deathblow
Last issue Century saw that the Scatter's transmat chamber was set to invade Earth and he estimates that they will be here in 72 hours. His memories are patchy but Force Works were told last issue that the aliens follow where Century goes, and he is willing to accept that his unplanned arrival here in #1 has led them here.Tony Stark introduces his newest invention the Chaos Computer which needs Scarlet Witch to help it function perfectly. It has been designed to monitor world data and predict crises so the team can get there before they happen. It's pretty good at its job on its own, but if Wanda Maximoff adds her probability power then it could achieve perfect predictions. We leave her trying unsuccessfully to determine where the Scatter will strike (because she can't stop thinking about Wonder Man's death in #1).U.S. Agent spends the time waiting by practising fighting with his new photon shield in the Vroom Room. Spider-Woman watches him and says the psychic feedback she got from using her psi-webs on the aliens last issue gave her a terrifying glimpse into their minds. The AI P.L.A.T.O. shows Century to his assigned quarters but they are interrupted by the sudden appearance of the Rigellian Recorder RE-404 who is cloaked from PLATO's senses. It is fascinated by Century. But then they all rush to hear that Wanda has pinpointed the Scatter landing site as Houston.As their hex-ship approaches the city they detect an abnormal weather vortex with an electrostatic focus in the downtown centre. And as they come in to land they meet folks fleeing from that area, where they find the advance guard of Scatter setting up equipment to generate the space-time rift the invasion force will come through. They battle the aliens until Spider-Woman overcomes her revulsion to bind the foe together in a psi-web so that Iron Man can blast them all in 1 go. But Century discovers the rift generator is sheathed in a forcefield even his spacetime-ripping staff Parallax can't pierce.The generator emits a beam which rips a hole in the sky at the centre of the weather system. And large rocks start to fall through it. Iron Man detects that the Scatter are breaking up the planet that they had finished with last issue and are funnelling it through the hole. And conveniently as usual Century remembers that's what they do. He says they'll need to go back to that world and stop it there.Scarlet Witch tells Century to use Parallax to take her there. Iron Man wants to come with but Wanda pulls rank (Tony made her team leader) and tells US Agent to accompany them. Century whirls his staff and they're away. IM and Spi are left to deal with the falling rocks. And Stark says he has a plan.As Century brings the other 2 to their destination they see the planet being sucked in pieces into the wormhole. He then takes them to the Scatter base where they must reach the power core. The area is filled with pods (like the ones which delivered some Scatter to Earth last issue) which Century says contain the Scatter Elite in stasis waiting for transit. He warns Witch and Agent not to wake them, but the pods open anyway. Agent stays behind to hold them off while his companions try to disrupt the flow of energy - try and fail.Back in Houston Julia Carpenter has spun the biggest psi-web she's ever done, and it's holding all the debris to come through the wormhole so far. Each time an area of webbing is about to fail she patches it with more psi-stuff. But she knows eventually it's bound to break.Back on the Scatter planet Wanda asks Century how the aliens control where the wormhole goes to. And again Century plucks more info out of his head. Their navigation system is programmed to follow a route that he has forged with Parallax. So she tells him to get Parallax to plan another route, and she'll hex the control system to follow *that*. And he does and she does and it works. The whole planet disappears down a hole to nowhere.On Earth Tony and Julia see their end of the wormhole implode. And the other 3 arrive home via Parallax so Scarlet Witch can explain what they did. I don't know what happened to the psi-web full of rocks, but they talk about cleaning up and imprisoning any Scatter remaining on Earth.Meanwhile in FW HQ the Chaos Computer predicts a crisis in the Baltic State of Slorenia. But Recorder cancels the alert.


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[Assistant]
Tidings of comfort and joy
It's the evening of Christmas Day and someone is watching Force Works HQ.Inside Century is watching A Christmas Carol on TV while Amanda Chaney, Julia Carpenter
 and her young daughter Rachel are decorating the Christmas Tree. (Is
Amanda's Native American getup supposed to indicate she has Native
ancestry?) Fisher Todd gives Rachel Carpenter a present of a hoverboard, which annoys Julia again (after nearly getting Rachel injured in the Vroom Room in #5). Recorder RE-404 wanders around trying to understand Earth customs, including John Walker/Jack Daniels
 making alcoholic eggnog. John/Jack makes him go away by suggesting he
take a cine-camera and record the party they're preparing for.Later as Wanda Maximoff surveys the decorations the AI P.L.A.T.O. informs them that many guests have arrived. (Erica Sondheim, Felix Alvarez, Abe Zimmer, Mrs. Arbogast, Happy Hogan, Pepper Hogan, Bethany Cabe and Philip Grant, ie the regular cast of Iron Man.) Wanda sends Amanda to greet them while she tries to find Tony Stark whose party this is. After dodging a speeding Rachel she finds him in the Chaos Vault where he's brooding over a message from James Rhodes which says he can't be here because he's got business 'back East'. (An editorial comment directs us to War Machine #12, but we aren't told that the 'business' is Rhodey taking his girlfriend Rae LaCoste to meet the parents.) Tony is upset because he thought Rhodey and he had mended fences (see the end of IM#312 and a flashback in IM#313) but now Jim seems to be snubbing him. Wanda drags him away to the party.And the mystery guy uses a grappling line to get to the roof.Jack Daniels seems to be expecting someone. More guests have turned up. Captain America, in the exoskeleton uniform that is keeping him alive during his Fighting Chance story arc, shakes hands with Jack, the man who once replaced him. Henry Pym is glad to see it and Tony says Jack has mellowed in this team. Hank expresses his regret over the death of Simon Williams (Wonder Man in #1), but is glad to see others of the West Coast Avengers have found a new home. But he's confused at to how Iron Man is at the party as well as Tony. Miguel Santos, another ex WCAer,
 is confused about that too but can't ask about it without giving
Stark's double life away. Tony explains to Henry that it's an armour
remote-controlled by PLATO. Julia introduces Miguel, 1 of the few guests
 in their hero costume, to Mrs A as Living Lightning. He explains that these days he's taking time off to go to college.The mystery man is inside the building where Rachel almost runs into *him*.Wanda's witchcraft mentor Agatha Harkness
 is here too. She's passing on some herbal lore to her pupil but doesn't
 take kindly to Recorder recording her. Tipsy Happy Hogan is quite happy
 about it. Julia isn't and guesses it was U.S. Agent who put him up to it. He catches Hank and Tony discussing Janet Van Dyne
 who they've both been romantically attached to. Bethany Cabe confesses
on record to being Iron Man, as does Felix Alvarez. (Beth has actually
worn the armour, IM#300, but Felix hasn't and doesn't know
 the secret.) Abe Zimmer is more interested in the robot behind the
camera. Jack is just learning from Cap about his illness (his body is breaking down after he had to get rid of the Super-Soldier serum in his blood) but Rachel drags him away urgently.She takes Jack to meet the gatecrasher - Hawkeye.Cap congratulates Wanda on the successes her team has notched up. They reminisce about when the Avengers was just they 2 plus her brother Quicksilver and Hawkeye. Wanda mentions that Tony keeps forgetting he put *her* in charge.It turns out US Agent invited Hawkeye here, and arranged for PLATO to let him through the security. Clint Barton still isn't sure about this - he still doesn't trust Tony Stark (after he let everyone believe he was dead in IM#284-289).
 Jack tells him that Rhodes and Stark have buried the hatchet, and Jim's
 beef was worse than Clint's. He says Tony's trying to make amends for
all the hurt he caused.After his wife Bobbi (Mockingbird) died (Avengers West Coast #100) archer Clint took to living in the woods hunting his own food. Jack tracked him down and talked him out of that in Marvel Comics Presents #159-161,
 and asked him to join Force Works. But Clint is still undecided. Jack
tells him Stark is going to have a private chat with the old West Coast
team later, and invites Clint to listen in so he can see for himself
that Tony has changed. Then he can come join the party. (Young Rachel is
 hanging around while the grownups argue.)Amanda tries to have a conversation with Century
 but his alien mindset makes it difficult, as does Recorder recording.
But something she says triggers another of his returning memory
fragments. When Mandarin temporarily took his staff Parallax away (during Hands Of The Mandarin)
 he began experiencing different personalities as well as bits of
memory. Now he recalls a life-mate and their child. But he assures
Amanda and Wanda that he's OK.Tony Stark has his meeting with the members of the old WCA:- Scarlet Witch, Spider-Woman
 and US Agent plus Henry Pym and Living Lightning. He apologises for his
 deception and abandoning the team. Clint his showing Rachel how she
could attach 1 of his special arrowheads to her hoverboard to make a
loud whistling noise. Then he notices the meeting has started and turns
the volume up on the monitor. He hears Stark announce a memorial service
 for Wonder Man (see #10). And then talks about Hawkeye the loud-mouthed joker. So Clint angrily switches him off ......
 and doesn't hear Tony go on to say that Clint grew into the backbone of
 the WCA, and his absence here today is felt deeply. Turning to Hank,
now back with the (East Coast) Avengers as Giant-Man, he says that although the break between the 2 Avengers teams (in AWC#102 leading to the formation of Force Works) was somewhat acrimonious he hopes they can get back on good terms again now.Then everyone goes back to the party where the FW
 staff Amanda and Fisher are asking 'Iron Man' why he's the only 1 who
hasn't told them his real identity. Cap promises to attend Simon's
memorial. He commends Tony's work with the new team but suggests he lets
 Wanda do her own thing. Rachel finds Jack and tells him Clint's gone
after listening to the meeting. Wanda tells Julia she hopes Tony means
what he said. And Century compulsively watches part of Recorder's
recording over and over - where he says he can't remember the names of
his family.


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[Assistant]
(No title given)
As
Galactus and his new herald Thor are on a mission to stop the Black Winter, the
Devourer of Worlds detects a source of power that draws him toward it to feed.
Thor moves ahead of him to warn the world in question and he finds an idyllic
grassland with strange looking people. As the planet’s inhabitants gather, Thor
suddenly loses all memory of who he is and why he is there. The inhabitants
start a fight with him and Thor holds his own even though he doesn’t know why
he is fighting. Seeing the arrival of Galactus restores Thor’s memory and he
sends his ravens Hugin and Munin to Asgard to call on Sif to send help—and she
does. Within seconds, Iron Man, Captain America, Storm, Wolverine, She-Hulk,
Doctor Doom, Mystique, and Groot arrive—but all of their minds have been wiped
as well….
Continued
in Fortnite Season 4!


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[Assistant]
Fred Hembeck Destroys The Marvel Universe
Cartoonist Fred Hembeck, sitting derelict in an alley, blames it on having accepted the assignment to write and draw a comic destroying the Marvel Universe; in the end it was revealed to be the scheme of a villain and Fred found himself unemployable. At least, he reasons, things couldn’t get any worse…. Then the Punisher shows up, preparing to execute him for his crime. As Fred pleads for mercy, Punisher begins to read the offending story….
Crackers, Crown Prince of Death, has been assigned to kill all the super-powered beings in the Marvel Universe. He starts alphabetically, popping Ant-Man in a microwave, destroying Asgard with Loki’s Ragnarok-and-roll band, visiting the Black Plague on all the black-themed characters (Panther, Widow, etc.), and absorbing Captain Marvel (Photon) into a rerun of THREE’S COMPANY. Daredevil is killed by a sai in a parody of an old Jack Benny sketch, and Dazzler is crushed by the petrified Thanos. At the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson is in a tizzy over the constant reports of the deaths of superheroes but stops to luxuriate in the moment when he hears that Spider-Man has met his end…. Spidey awakens in the Beyond, where Captain America tries to get him to accept his fate. Meanwhile, Crackers continues his mission, passing over the drunken Tony Stark since he is no longer Iron Man at this time (though he should be along soon enough), betraying Nightmare into killing Dr. Strange for him, and luring Juggernaut and Kingpin into canoes so that they sink in a lake and drown. He challenges Hulk to a fight and easily defeats him, has Doctor Doom reveal to the Fantastic Four that he is really Reed’s father—then drops a giant rock on the family (killing five birds with one literal stone). Back in the Beyond, as the Guardian Angels are being reassigned, the dead heroes all meet to decide on a plan; Reed Richards concludes that they must appeal to a Higher Power, namely the Cartoonist, and dispatches a special envoy…. Crackers X-ecutes the X-Men by sending in ninja Sentinels and switches the minds of Sub-Mariner and Zzzax so that they both die when they enter the other’s element. He ends his mission with a cute little song-and-dance….
Back in the alley, Punisher is interrupted by the dead heroes’ emissary, who turns out to be Peter’s Uncle Ben—the first death in the Marvel Universe. Uncle Ben converts Fred to his view that meaningless deaths should not occur in comics, and asks the Punisher to show mercy. Fred admits that the villainous executive who hired him had been punished and that he was paid a "kill fee" for his unused work. Punisher unmasks as Stan Lee and reveals that he approached Fred in disguise to uncover the truth; now that he is assured that Fred’s heart was in the right place, he absolves him of all guilt, tossing the comic story in the trash. After they leave, Crackers fishes the discarded artwork out of the trash and carries it off to be published….


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[Assistant]
The all-new, all-different Avengers
The (All-New All-Different) Avengers are on their 1st case and the teen members (Ms Marvel, Nova and the ex-Ultimate Spider-Man) can hardly hold themselves back as MsM shouts "Avengers Assemble". The grown-ups (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and Vision) are pleased too.But they aren't 10 minutes later when they take the teens to task for disobeying an order.Back 10 minutes ago the team face a fire-breathing green Chinese-style dragon in front of the Federal Reserve Bank. Iron Man figures this is a distraction to keep them from seeing what's going on inside. So while the adults deal with it Sam Wilson sends the kids in to investigate, with orders not to let any villains escape.Inside the bank the youngsters find dead bodies and Radioactive Man who says his aim is the collapse of the Western economy in the service of the Qeng Dynasty. Ms Marvel (Kamala Khan) attacks him with an enlarged hand, but just gets radiation burns. Nova (Sam Alexander) rockets in because his uniform will protect him from radiation. But RM switches his radiation output to ultraviolet, which renders him invisible. So Spider-Man sprays the area with webbing to outline the villain's body. We end the scene with MsM shouting "There! Get him!"Outside the bank the dragon is impervious to the female Thor's hammer. Iron Man boosts Vision's energy so he can get inside the beast. But the dragon disappears. As does the villain inside the bank.Now the team are reunited inside and Cap seems angry that the 3 juniors let Radioactive Man escape. Spidey explains that Ms Marvel saw a man falling from a great height, and he and Nova rushed to the rescue. Meanwhile the villain vanished. Cap clarifies that they allowed RM to get away just to save 1 man, not considering how many more lives that might put at risk.But then he commends them for their decision, and says they'll make good Avengers. Iron Man adds that the name doesn't mean they should have chased the villain to avenge those he had killed. Their primary purpose is always to protect civilians.The Golden Avenger detects that both foes were removed by transtemporal teleportation. And another burst of such energy suggests another incident is taking place nearby. So they rush off to deal with that.


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[Assistant]
There’s an Ape for That!
Learning that the Red Ghost has escaped from prison, Iron Man
and Nova head to the zoo, assuming the villain will go there to rescue his
three super-apes: Mikhlo the gorilla has super strength, Peotr the orangutan
has magnetic powers, and Igor the baboon is a shapeshifter. Iron Man has
brought a stasis field generator to trap the Red Ghost when he arrives but
instead the baddie sends a drone commanding the apes to escape and meet him
elsewhere. Mikhlo and Peotr break out of their cage, defeat the heroes, and fly
off, courtesy of the latter’s gravitational abilities but Igor wants to be
friends with the two Avengers and sticks close to them as they pursue the
others. They catch up to the Red Ghost and two apes on a nearby rooftop where
the heroes have a lot of trouble contending with them. Nova drops Mikhlo into a
lake, Igor turns into a tuning fork to interfere with Peotr’s signals, and Iron
Man reveals he has a second stasis field generator nearby, disguised as a pigeon
to trap Red Ghost.
“The Fixit!”
Writer: Todd Dezago. Art: Leonel Castellani. Colors:
Sotocolor. Letters: Dave Sharpe.
Synopsis: Hulk breaks a narrow doorway at Avengers Mansion
and Iron Man reveals his latest invention: the Fixit-Widget, designed to follow
the Hulk and repair anything he breaks. Hulk runs around smashing things to
find something the machine can’t fix, finally settling for the Fixit Widget
itself. Hulk has the last laugh and Captain America and Ms. Marvel laugh with
him.


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[Assistant]
Fair Weather
Thor is in Thailand trying to stop a tsunami—and he fails. In
fact, he can’t do anything to control weather events around the world….
Tony Stark gets a visit from the heads of a company
terraforming the moon to create luxury residences for the wealthy. But they
aren’t there to ask for money, only to know if Stark had ever tried to turn
weather into a weapon. Tony says no so they leave. Tony confides in Pepper Potts
that he had created a device to weaponize weather and these guys must
have found it and were shaking him down. As Iron Man, he heads into space and
encounters Thor on the same mission. They stop by Tony’s space station where he
explains to Thor how he created a weather weapon as a step toward creating the
reverse, a device to easily terraform a planet. The two Avengers go to the moon
where the executives order the construction robots to attack the heroes. While
Iron Man faces them, Thor battles the weather machine head on. They are
victorious and address the people of the Luna base on the terrible effects on
Earth’s environment but the executives don’t care: they are rich and powerful
and are creating a better home for themselves, abandoning the Earth to the
poor. Tony transfers the residents to Stark’s space station where they will
subsist on artificial food until they grow tired of it. Meanwhile, Thor and
Iron Man try to clean up the damage caused to the Earth and the Moon….


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[Assistant]
(No title given)
The heroes waited in Washington D.C. to
face the forces of Hydra. The battle was on and the heroes were
confident of coming out on top. Then the enemy leaders arrived and
they were all shocked to see Captain America step from the aircraft.
He offers them the choice of being his allies or his enemies. They
tried to stop him but failed and Captain America was left standing
with Thor's hammer over his head....

2. “...Time Flies”
Writer: Chip Zdarsky  Penciler: Paulo
Siqueira. Inkers: Walden Wong, Cam Smith, Jay Leisten, Paulo
Siqueira. Colors: Frank D''Armata.

Synopsis: Peter Parker and Mary Jane
Watson are at a sidewalk cafe, unable to talk comfortably together.
An explosion interrupts them and Pete dashes off to change into
Spider-Man and pursue the Vulture. Spidey and his foe battle in the
air, Pete keeping up a steady barrage of “old man” jokes at
Vulture's expense and discovering that the upgraded Vulture costume
is much more high-tech and formidable than it used to be. When they
come down on a rooftop, a huge glob of paste sticks them both to the
wall. The new Trapster, a young woman, mocks both of them for being
old guys and makes off with the villain's loot. Vulture gets a dig of
his own at Spider-Man.
Epilogue: Two youthful SHIELD Agents
witness this encounter on a viewer and dash off to find some help....


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[Assistant]
(multiple stories)
This issue is divide into 2 parts:- Avengers and Savage Avengers. They are given tongue-in-cheek titles on the last page.Avengers: Make mine AvengersWriter Jason Aaron. Artist Stefano Caselli. Colours Erick Arciniega. Letters Cory Petit.Iron Man finds himself in a snowy wilderness with sabretooth tigers and no wi-fi. He deduces this isn't the Savage Land but the deep past. More on this at the end of the story. But somehow his voiceover commentary continues in the more present-day segments of this tale.In the near future a Roxxon heliderrick in the Gulf Of Mexico is attacked by Sub-Mariner and his Defenders Of The Deep.  The Squadron Supreme Of America take them on. The voiceover mentions recent Avengers stuff:- The creation of the latest team to fight the Final Host of the Celestials. The Atlanteans declaring war on the surface world. The Vampire Civil War. The War Of the Realms. The American Government sponsoring the Squadron in competition to the independent Avengers.In the Avengers Mountain HQ Black Panther, Blade and Ghost Rider face Robbie Reyes' Hell Charger car gone wild.In Shi'ar space lies the Ravenstar Maximum Security Prison Galaxy(?). The Imperium has sent a group of Avengers in to rescue their Majestor Gladiator/Kallark. But these aren't the Avengers we know. She-Hulk looks like the pre-Civil War II version, but she has a version of Cr'reee (of the Starjammers) on her shoulder. Captain Marvel appears to have her Binary powers. Thor is possessed by the Brood. Their leader is called Captain Corsair. And their destination planet has a giant Starbrand on it.Back in the far past Iron Man is saved from the cats by the hammer Mjolnir. But it is wielded by Odin with the Avengers (1MBC).Savage Avengers: Vs Free Comic Book DayEriter Gerry Duggan. Artist Mike Deodato. Colours Frank Martin. Letters Travis Lanham.Wolverine remembers how the popular opera singer Saviano regularly helped him smuggle hunted mutants to safety in his private jet. Now Logan is investigating his disappearance. His sense of smell tells him the Hand were involved, which is confirmed when some of their ninjas attack him. He keeps 1 alive to question, who gives him a potion to drink which will allegedly take him to his friend. But Wolvie has detected the smell of the Savage Land on the ninjas clothes, and says he'll make his own way there.In a ruin near Cairo another Hand ninja delivers a wrapped body to an Egyptian cultist. As they unwrap the body the ninja asks about progress. The cultist says the bait for the warriors their master needs is being gathered. This body turns out to be Stick of the Chaste, bait for his finest student Daredevil. We also see someone holding the 3rd Eye Of Agamotto, a jar containing a Klyntar symbiote, and Saviano kneeling next to 3 coffins, 1 large and 2 small.The cultist asks the ninja why Stick wasn't taken to the City Of Sickles in the Savage Land like the others. Stick sits up and says they wanted to know where to go. And the ninja kills the cultist with a sai, adding that Stick's finest student isn't Matt Murdock but herself, Elektra. She sets out for the Savage Land, but not before agreeing with Stick that this whole thing might have been a trap for *her*.


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[Assistant]
The Tower at the Center of Everything
Inside a black hole lies the God Quarry, location of Avengers
Tower. Avenger Prime receives messages of a complete chronal collapse and
dispatches his agents, all Deathloks, across the multiverse. One Deathlok is
sent to Earth 10222 where Atlantis never sank and ushered in a golden age.
Deathlok enters this reality and is attacked by a Wolverine in the sky which he
kills before landing on the planet. Unlike the expected paradise, this world is
a desolate ruin, the timeline rewritten. The severed head of Ghost Rider from
Earth-1719 rolls by giving a warning, then Deathlok is destroyed. And the new
Masters of Evil arrive….
Continued in AVENGERS (2018) #50.
“Ignition”Writer: Donny Cates. Art: Ryan Ottley. Colors: Frank Martin.Synopsis: MODOK is rallying the troops of A.I.M. for his
new scheme when a train comes crashing through his lair, followed by the Hulk.
As Ol’ Greenskin lays into them, MODOK activates Project G.O.D.O.S., Giant
Organism Designed Only for Smashing, fitting his head into a massive armored
body. After getting batted around a little, Hulk uses the train to impale the
giant machine body right through the center. So Hulk, tired of being a hero,
tired of being a monster, recalls his youthful desire to be an astronaut and so
picks up a visor and some machinery, heads into space to explore…and he’s never
coming back….
Continued in HULK (2021) #1.


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[Assistant]
(various)
This issue contains 3 prologue stories.The 3rd story leads in to the X-Men's 2nd Hellfire Gala which I believe precedes ...... Judgement Day starring Avengers, Eternals and X-Men which is previewed in the 1st story.The 2nd story introduces us the the daughter of Blade who will feature in something called Bloodline which hasn't appeared in Marvel solicitations yet.Story 1:- Of deviation and mutationThe Great Machine of the Eternals (which to some extent *is* the Earth) provides a voiceover. It tells us of the Eternals who protect the Machine/Earth and 'correct' excess deviation in the Deviants. To the Eternals the Avengers are any non-Eternals who are powerful enough to cause them concern. And then there are the mutants who the Eternals have been worried about for millennia.We see an encounter of the Eternals Uranos and Druig with Odin of the 1 Million BC Avengers. The duo show him a species of monkeys who have mutated to get rudimentary telepathy and telekinesis, and are also able to join in a hive mind. The Eternals are compelled by the nature the Celestials gave them to prevent excess deviancy in the Deviants, and to Uranos this mutation smacks of excess deviancy. But he gives Odin the courtesy of informing him that he intends to wipe the species out. To avoid an Avengers/Eternals war Odin reluctantly agrees to it.The next scene is recent where the Avengers (Black Panther, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man and Thor) are fighting a giant monster they don't realise is a Deviant gone 'excess'. They're not doing too well when Ikaris and Sersi of the Eternals turn up and kill it. Sersi explains that dealing with Deviants that have out-of-control mutation is a duty that the Celestials programmed into them (as indicated by the duo's glazed/glowing eyes when they arrived) - a duty they can't ignore.On the mutant island Krakoa we see the secret that the new mutant nation is keeping from the world as the dead Cyclops is resurrected. The completely cloaked Eternal Jack Of Knives watches and confirms that the X-Men can and do resurrect their own, a process that the Eternals thought was exclusively theirs. He reports back to Druig who says that if this is excess deviation then it must be stamped out. (We see that he's been considering the group of Eternals known as the Hex about whom we know little so far.)The Machine foresees a 3-way war.Story 2:- BloodlineTeens Brielle and Jayden are attending an Atlanta games tournament. Jayden has just beaten a vampire named Eturnal who's a sore loser. Brielle steps between them and her silver bracelet burns the vamp's hand. She 'borrows' Jayden's custom-controller and attaches the bracelet to it. Whirling the controller by its cord she uses the combination as a weapon when Eturnal attacks again, unfortunately wrecking the device.Brielle gets home to her mother just before an imposed curfew. Mom bids her good night and then looks inside a large box under her own bed. Inside are many silver weapons and a picture of her and Blade The Vampire Slayer. It's Safron Caulder and Brielle is their daughter. I think Safron sensed Brielle had been in contact with a vamp, and she now thinks they need Blade's help.Story 3:- Let's talk about KrakoaThis story is voiceovered by Moira MacTaggert. Despite being a prime mover behind the creation of the mutant nation of Krakoa, subsequent events have made her lose faith in a safe future for mutants. And in the Inferno mini-series we learned that she intends to save them by depowering them all.The story begins with Mary Jane Watson and her Aunt Anna Watson giving an interview about how medecine from Krakoa delays Anna's incipient dementia. They are apparently ambassadors for Krakoa Pharma which sells its cures for the same (cheap) price to everyone regardless of lack of health insurance.Moira believes that when the world learns of the mutant nation's deepest secret, that they can resurrect any fallen mutant, the war with humans will begin again. They will again clash with the Avengers, and this time she intends to see that there will be deaths on both sides.Now she comes to MJ and renders her unconscious. She plans to impersonate her at the 2nd Hellfire Gala.


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Nick Fury relates the early history of SHIELD. Strangely his story includes lots of stuff he wasn't actually there for. But this provides the opportunity to tie in some other bits of Marvel history.His story starts in 1944 where he and the Howling Commandos were trying to stop Baron Strucker from destroying a French town and killing all its inhabitants. Strucker's pride had made him accept a challenge of single combat from Sgt Fury, while the town blew up around them, and the Howlers helped the townsfolk escape. They were both buried in rubble, but Fury dug himself out and joined his men. Strucker also survived, but having disobeyed Adolf Hitler's orders to wipe the town out he was now on the run.When they return to England, Fury is hauled over the coals by Col Rick Stoner of Army Intelligence for his usual maverick attitude (and disrespect for superior officers). He is imprisoned for striking Stoner, but then pardoned. We see Nick's young brother Jake in the army reading about this, and complaining that Nick always gets the breaks.Later Hitler visits his bio-geneticist Arnim Zola, who is giving the Red Skull a suspended animation potion for use if necessary. Zola has also created a clone of Hitler, to which Adolf's mind will be transferred if he dies.After Hitler leaves, Baron Strucker comes out of hiding. Red Skull has started up Hydra as a secret society in Japan, to carry on if Nazi Germany fails. He agrees to send Strucker there to lead it, while he himself remains in Germany. Zola thinks they are traitors at first, but Skull convinces him that Germany is losing the war, and he agrees to join forces with the other 2.After some activity during the end of WWII, Hydra goes underground until the Marvel Age.They resurface in a low-key manner, sending non-uniformed operatives to steal hi-tech info. At one point this brings them into conflict with the early Iron Man in his bulky golden armour. Worried about the increase in industrial espionage, and rumours of Hydra, Tony Stark proposes SHIELD to the President. But it is vetoed for now.At the same time Jake Fury is working as a scientist for Stark, trying to tap into an energy source. He sees the shape of the Zodiac Key in the energy field, which makes him think of a scorpion.Then Hydra makes a strike (in costume) at a joint US/Canadian research base, and steals the prototype armour designed by James Hudson (later Guardian of Alpha Flight). Agent Logan of Canadian Special Services and Col Rick Stoner, now of the CIA, are sent to retrieve it. They succeed, but the incident changes the President's mind about SHIELD.SHIELD will have an inner council of businessmen and world leaders. Stark will get the businessmen involved, including their contributing to the agency's funding. The choice of leader of SHIELD is between 2 CIA Colonels, Nick Fury and Stoner. Stoner gets the job. He also gets his pick of agents from other intelligence agencies, and trains them personally.One bunch he does turn down is ex-Howlers Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones and Eric Koenig.During one raid on Hydra in America, Stoner finds a Roxxon business card, but keeps the information to himself for now.Meanwhile Stark is busy designing and building SHIELD stuff like the helicarrier and the flying cars. With help from Reed Richards and Forge, and Jake Fury who shares Stoner's dislike of his brother Nick. A test of the flying car prototype goes wrong, and Stark suspects sabotage. He asks Stoner to investigate.Rick suspects Roxxon involvement, and sneaks aboard a Roxxon ship where he finds Hydra soldiers and a shipment of weapons. And then he sees Jake Fury bringing SHIELD blueprints to Hydra. Rather than slip away with his discovery, Stoner attacks the enemy, and then flees, wounded, in a non-flying car. He makes it to Stark's mansion, but dies before he can divulge what he's learned.Back in Japan, Arnim Zola reveals some of his inventions to Strucker. The Deltite is an android, based on the Life Model Decoys Stark developed for SHIELD, with Strucker's brain patterns. They will infiltrate it into SHIELD. There is an 'alien queen'. And there is a survival mechanism for Strucker, to rival that for Hitler and the Red Skull.Stark and the President attend the launch of the SHIELD helicarrier. Which blows up. The President wants Nick Fury to find the saboteur within SHIELD.Fury is then in action with the Fantastic Four against the Hate-Monger in South America. When he is killed they discover he's Hitler's clone. When Fury gets back the President and Stark put him on the case. But they don't actually tell him about SHIELD, just that there's a traitor in Stark's organisation.Nick first goes to see his brother Jake, just missing seeing him on a video call telling Strucker that the Deltite LMD is in place. But Jake's overreaction to Nick's presence tips him off that Jake's up to something. He tails Jake to the waterfront and photographs him handing over more blueprints. But Nick is spotted and captured.Jake is about to shoot Nick in the head, but Nick moves his head aside at the last minute. The muzzle flash reactivates an old eye injury, as the bullet hits one of the guys holding him. But Nick is still able to use the confusion to break free, grab a gun and shoot everyone but Jake.The brothers fight, as Jake spews out the inferiority complex-fueled hate for Nick that led him to seek power via Hydra. But even with one eye blinded Nick beats his younger brother, as he always did when they were kids. Nick retrieves the gun and prepares to take Jake in. But Jake says he won't be taken alive, and Nick just can't shoot him. Jake promises he'll be back to kill Nick, and dives into the river. Nick takes the evidence against his brother to Stark.Narrator Fury remarks that Jake's hatred will lead him to complete the experiment that leads to the Zodiac Key, and he will return to harass SHIELD as Scorpio.Nick's eye injury doesn't get better, and from now on he wears an eye-patch. The SHIELD helicarrier is launched without any more sabotage. And Stark and the President decide to call on Fury to be the new boss.Nick at last learns about SHIELD and Hydra. He is taken to the helicarrier where he is greeted by Tony Stark and the SHIELD council, and offered the job as Director. He also discovers a bomb in the meeting room, and throws it out of the ship. Fury takes the job, and recruits some of his Howlers.His narration tells how Stark gradually stops involving himself in SHIELD business, and later an inner council is set up to oversee Fury. The Deltite LMD starts replacing SHIELD agents with LMDs loyal to it, including some of the inner council. They use an LMD of Fury to try to take over Stark's company because Tony had stopped supplying them with weapons.When Nick works out what's going on, the Deltite LMDs turn SHIELD against him. They won't kill him because they want the Infinity Formula that keeps him young. But Fury 'kills' the original Deltite LMD, ending the menace. But SHIELD is ruined.However before long they're back, with Fury in charge again. Nick gets Tony Stark to investigate the remains of the Deltite LMD. He finds a microchip which displays a holographic message from Strucker. Strucker says that the whole Deltite affair was a smokescreen to hide his resurrection. The story about aliens supplying the tech for both SHIELD and Hydra was disinformation. And then the remains of the LMD self-destruct.Then Nick persuades Tony to take a bigger role with SHIELD again.


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[Assistant]
Mistaken identity crisis
Big Bertha joins Squirrel Girl and Monkey Joe in the prologue page to complain about the depiction and treatment of women in comics.She also does this issue's (partial) voiceover.Once again the issue opens with a glimpse of the End Of Everything scheduled for 5:30 in the afternoon, July 13th. As well as Flatman being sucked into a white hole and letting go of Bertha so she wouldn't go too we see Batroc, Machete and Zaran being attacked by SG and her squirrels. Then BB grabs hold of FM's elastic 2D head and digs her feet in. (We *don't* see Mr Immortal about to blow his own brains out.)It turns out that the main part of the issue's story starts early on the same day. Bertha stops a truck from flattening a bunch of young kids on a school crossing, then sneaks into the studio where she's expected as super-model Ashley Crawford. We then learn how she gets rid of all the excess fat she generated (somehow) to be BB - she vomits it all up (mostly) into a toilet. After her photoshoot she gets pressurised again by her agent to take higher-paying jobs in bigger cities. And she hears her colleagues laughing at a TV report on the Great Lakes Avengers, specifically Doorman (last issue) in New York desperately trying to persuade Captain Ultra to join the team. And how the only person they got to say yes was Squirrel Girl.Someone who looks something like Dr Doom sees the report too and angrily smashes a photo of SG.Doorman and Flatman return from NY with Squirrel Girl and her squirrel sidekick Monkey Joe and show them the GLA HQ. Doorman adds a picture of Grasshopper to the array of fallen members on the wall. (He joined last issue but was killed immediately. The other fallen are Dinah Soar (#1) and old mentors Hawkeye and Mockingbird). FM wants to introduce Squirrel Girl to their other (living) female member, but Doorman says Bertha left a message saying she's thinking of quitting.Then she meets the team captain Mr Immortal who's drunk, wearing his dead girlfriend Dinah Soar's costume with a giant pair of scissors through his chest. (The scissors are a team 'trophy', a memento of when they opened a Mall.) Then he falls flat on his face, pushing the scissors further through and dying. SG is aghast but Flatman assures her that Mr I always gets better.Deathurge looks at Craig Hollis through the window and chides him for 'calling' him again. He should know by now that D'urge can't take him, and he'll soon understand why. Then he skis off through the air and down to the underwater lair of Maelstrom. He invisibly passes Batroc and Machete playing Fish. (1 of the little jokes peppering this series is French Batroc asking Machete if he has any Jacques.) He locates their boss who he used to work for when Maelstrom like him was a servant of Oblivion. Oblivion has sent him to tell Maelstrom not to do what he's planning.The big bad's response is to tell us the plan and his recent history. He says he's a seeker of knowledge about the motion of the universe and the destiny of his ancestors the Inhumans, the Eternals and mankind. (Actually he's an Inhuman/Deviant crossbreed.) He's says that recently that quest spread his consciousness across all reality. (A somewhat biased retelling of Avengers #250 where 1 of his schemes was thwarted when the Avengers overloaded the machine feeding him energy so that he expanded and thinned out uncontrollably.) (In this state he got involved in Quasar #19-25.) But eventually his minions shrank him back to Earthly life (Fantastic Four Unlimited #10) but his shrinking continued 'beyond the infinitesimal'. He claims he was transmuted into proto-natural force, the fabric of creation (but somehow he got back to his normal state). That whole journey has shown him the purpose of the universe, it is a machine to 'unlock the 1 great secret' at the end. And he is now creating a device to cause that to happen now.Deathurge warns him that this would cause the end of everything, including his master Oblivion. Maelstrom doesn't care. Deathurge admits that he can't stop him, but someone else will.Deputy leader Flatman runs the GLA in Mr I's depressed/drunken/dead state. He suggests they try to understand Maelstrom's plan by learning about the machinery that he (#1 when Dinah died) and Batroc's Brigade (#2 when Grasshopper died) stole (the bracketed comments are courtesy of Doorman). FM proposes the he and Doorman go do that leaving newbie Squirrel Girl on monitor duty. SG says she wants a superhero's task and Monkey Joe can do monitor duty. Doorman objects but she replies that MJ once defeated Dr Doom (an only slightly biased reference to their debut in Marvel Super-Heroes #8 where a hoard of squirrels did it). (1 of the squirrel's 'editorial' comments says that it was the real thing, not a Doombot.) SG insists that they agree that Monkey Joe is a full member of the team, and the other 2 go along with it to shut her up. But as they leave we see the Dr Doom figure lurking in the bushes.Back at the finished photo-shoot Ashley overhears comments about her model-slim body. She muses that they don't know about her Big Bertha id, and how her super-control of her fat enables her to create the Ashley-form as well as the Bertha-body. She also admits to herself that the GLA haven't exactly saved the world but they've done good things. Her model earnings fund the team. And she remembers how they once saved Christmas for a suburb of Muskego by defeating Dr Tannenbaum's Giant Robot Snowman (whose head is their other trophy which she knocked off with 1 punch).As the fateful End Of Everything day wears on the 3 currently active human GLAers go to the University Of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where Doorman shows Doreen Green where Dinah died while Flatman learns that the machine Maelstrom stole was a chronal accelerator which can speed up or slow down time (but not reverse it of course). After they leave we see that the head scientist is glowing with pride that Reed Richards came to him for help, until someone tells him it was only Flatman.Then at the Roxxon Energy Corporation FM is stalled by the receptionist while DM apologises to SG about going on about the deaths of Dinah and Grasshopper (the last of which he feels responsible for), but he doesn't want any more members to die. She offers him a nut from 1 of her nutsacks (cue hilarity). But FM grabs DM and forces him to become a door to let him pass through into the boss's office. He demands to know what the Brigade stole from their New York plant, but the boss tells him he could have just looked it up online.We see Monkey Joe doing exactly that and learning that it is an atomic inverter when he hears a noise in the building. The Dr Doom figure, who wears what looks like leather armour held together with straps, finds Mr Immortal alive but still drunk and kills him again by breaking his neck. Then he grabs the squirrel who he calls by name and angrily kills him.A happy Ashley Crawford drives her flash sportscar the GLA HQ. She's decided that the GLA is where she wants to be and resolves to be there more often. When she gets there she finds signs of the break-in and the dead body of Monkey Joe.We end with another glimpse of the imminent End Of Everything as Flatman slips from Big Bertha's grasp into the white hole. And MJ's final editorial comment is nothing because he's dead.


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Countdown to a miscount
This issue's prologue page has Squirrel Girl mourning the loss of her squirrel sidekick Monkey Joe while Flatman examines the body and describes how brutally he was killed. And MJ's ghost starts doing the editorial comments.Doorman's doing this issue's (very partial) voiceover ...... which starts with him in darkness on July 13th 5:27 PM - The End Of Everything. And he says he's dead.An hour earlier he's driving Flatman and Squirrel Girl back to Great Lakes Avengers HQ. Flatman theorises that with the chronal accelerator and the atomic inverter Maelstrom stole and enough power he could end the universe by rapidly taking it through the point of maximum expansion and down to the Big Crunch. SG is enthused by the idea that *they* could save the universe.But when they get home they see that someone's broken in. And inside they find Big Bertha sitting on Dr Doom in leather armour, which FM isn't surprised by due to recent events in Fantastic Four. But Bertha unmasks him as Gene Lorrene (Leather Boy from #1) who was apparently upset that they didn't ask him to join during their membership drive in #2, so he killed Mr Immortal (who has of course recovered and gone back to drinking) and then did unspeakable things to Monkey Joe.Doreen Green is devastated.  Flatman asks Gene why he dressed up as DrD, and Gene explains that ever since Doom dressed like this in his latest battle with the FF it's become all the rage in the S&M community. (So it's got *nothing* to do with Doom wanting revenge for being defeated by Monkey Joe and a horde of other squirrels in SG's debut in Marvel Super-Heroes #8.)Then Deathurge appears in the form of a squirrel (as usual all-black with skis and a white cloak) to take the soul of MJ away. Mr I is the only human who can as usual see him, and Craig Hollis grabs him and starts beating him up. The other long-time GLAers are oblivious by now to Craig's strange antics as he appears to fight no-one. DM assumes Gene is gay, but FM informs him that the S&M and gay communities may overlap but are *not* identical. DM apologises but asks if FM was offended because he himself is ... And Val Ventura confirms that he's gay, and that it's a relief to say it out loud at last.Meanwhile Craig has the squirrel Deathurge tied up and wants to know why he's been messing up his life. D'urge tells him that he is destined to outlive everyone, even the gods. He will be the last living thing in the universe, and at the end will learn the One Great Secret (which Maelstrom seeks). All the deaths that he has witnessed so far have been preparing him for the role, and DU admits that he tampered a bit to accelerate the process because he feared someone like Maelstrom would interfere. Craig asks for the 'gift' of immortality to be taken from him, but Deathurge says he didn't give the gift it was fate who made him more than homo sapiens and homo superior (mutants). He is homo supreme.Flatman is telling Doorman how he was inspired to come out of the closet by Living Lightning coming out to him in #2 (which is not quite what happened). Then a now-happy Mr Immortal declares that he's just found out he's homo superior (which Ventura takes as trying to upstage him). Anyway, Mr I calls "Avengers assemble" and tells them they have 36 minutes to stop Maelstrom from destroying the universe. His imaginary childhood friend has just told him that his base is in Lake Michigan. Squirrel Girl is too despondent to respond until he points out that saving the universe includes saving the squirrels. So she sends out a call to all such nearby.With only 16 minutes to go Maelstrom's base emerges from the lake. Batroc asks for he and his mercenary Brigade to get paid, but the big bad offers them triple pay to fend off the approaching GLA in their quinjetta car. Of course he doesn't expect to have to pay up after the universe ends. Battle with the Brigade ensues while Mr I runs to confront Maelstrom, who creates a dome of proto-natural force which burns the hero's foot to the bone when he tries to step through it. A horde of squirrels engulf Machete to save Squirrel Girl from him, and make him drop his handgun which Mr I picks up. He fires at the dome but achieves nothing but shooting himself in the other foot.Maelstrom pushes the fateful button but Craig says he can still stop him if he can get through the dome. So Doorman picks him up and leans back against the forcefield allowing Mr I to pass though him and it. But of course DeMarr Davis dies (keeping up the run of 1 team member dying each issue). Inside the dome Maelstrom ignores Mr I's gun and starts to explain his masterplan. But Hollis cuts him short by saying that Deathurge already told him. The villain is intrigued that the hero knows his old servant and suggests they talk in the remaining minutes. (We see lots of spacefaring beings and cosmic entities already being pulled towards the centre of the effect here.)Outside the dome has become a 'white hole' sucking things like the quinjetta in. Batroc finally realises that he's going to have nowhere to spend his money. Squirrel Girl is more concerned about the squirrels who are falling in, some of whom she knows by name, and she manages to save 1 of them. As we have seen in the earlier issues Big Bertha is trying to stop a very stretched Flatman from following them.Going back a few seconds we find Doorman in the blackness we saw at the beginning of the issue, wondering where all the other dead people are. Then a light picks out other dead GLAers (Dinah Soar, Grasshopper, Mockingbird and Monkey Joe) playing poker, and MJ's winning. DeMarr asks Bobbi Barton why Hawkeye isn't with them. She replies that she read on the Internet that he's alive and posing as the Swordsman (an in-joke ref to #2). Just then Oblivion takes Doorman away because he senses that Davis has access to the same Darkforce Dimension that Deathurge does, and offers him a job (if the universe survives).Meanwhile Craig Hollis is still talking to Maelstrom while pointing a gun at him. The villain as usual whines that the universe deserves to die for what it's put him though, but of course the mortal wouldn't understand. Craig says it must be lonely (quoting from the 'One is the loneliest number' song he was addicted to in #2). Maelstrom is impressed by his insight. Craig points out that when the universe is gone Maelstrom will understand true loneliness and maybe that's the Great Secret, that in the end we're alone. But without others everything will be meaningless and he'll be left just with his loneliness. This appals the villain, and when Mr I says he dosen't intend to stick around for that, Maelstrom begs to know how they can escape. Craig says "Simple" and points the gun at his own head. "I'll go 1st, you can follow". He blows his own brains out. As Maelstrom is engulphed by the maelstrom he shrugs his shoulders and follows suit. And dying (or recovering) Mr I reaches out an arm to switch the machine off.As in previous flashforwards Big Bertha has lost her grip on Flatman and we see him sucked into the white hole. The force dome collapses and recovered Mr Immortal joins the survivors. Batroc demands that *someone* should pay him but Machete and Zaran persuade him to leave with them before any real superheroes show up. Squirrel Girl comforts herself with the surviving female squirrel who she decides to name Tippy-Toe. Ashley Crawford is wracked with guilt that she wasn't strong enough to save Val. But then the 2D Ventura turns so that they can see him - naked because only his costume got sucked into the hole. The 3 original GLAers have a group hug until Squirrel Girl points out that Doorman is missing. But then DeMarr appears with Deathurge's skis and cloak. They can all see him in his new role because they're his friends. He promises to join them in the HQ, but 1st he has to take Maelstrom's soul away. But his voiceover ominously says that this is the end of the GLA.Whatever, the 6 (including Tippy-Toe) current GLA reconvene at their HQ. The near-catastrophe seems to have been wiped from existence, or just not noticed. The Maria Stark Foundation is threatening to sue if they don't stop calling themselves Avengers. The 5 humans happen to reveal to each other that they're all mutants. Which gives Craig an idea. The last page announces the debut of the GLX, Great Lakes X-Men, dressed somewhat like Grant Morrison's New X-Men.


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Great Lakes Avengers misassembled
In the 1st page Squirrel Girl (with her squirrel sidekick Monkey Joe) and Grasshopper address the 'audience' in front of a curtain as though they're on a stage to say that they're not in this issue but they'll be in #2. Squirrel Girl also tells any kids reading not to imitate what chars inside do, especially Mr Immortal. Grasshopper says it's not kids who read these comics anymore. Monkey Joe will pop up occasionally with extra messages.The rest of the issue has a voiceover from Mr I (Craig Hollis) telling us the tale of his life and that of the Great Lakes Avengers. But it starts with a future scene labelled July 13th, 5:28 PM - the end of everything, where Mr I shoots himself in the head while the elastic Flatman hangs on to Big Bertha to stop himself being sucked into a hole in space.Craig Hollis was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and his mother died in childbirth. The baby vaguely saw Deathurge ski in to take her soul away, but 1st he promised to look after the child. D'urge, as Craig called him, became the child's 'imaginary' friend, repeatedly leading him into dangerous situations without harm. When the kid became fascinated with fire D'urge advised him not to let his father see. So he played with it under the house until he eventually burned it down, killing his father who Deathurge then took away too.The next phase in Craig's life was to be an orphan 'looked after' by abusive Mr O'Doughan. But on the bright side young daughter Terri became his 1st friend, then his girlfriend, then his wife. He forgot about D'urge. The happy couple settled down in Milwaukee where Craig got a job at a fast-food joint where they let him take home leftovers. Until 1 day he got home to find a goodbye note. Distraught Craig committed suicide by jumping out of a high window ...... and that's when he discovered he couldn't die. Temporarily very mangled possibly, but not dead. He used several other tried and trusted methods but none of them took. Until he realised there was an upside to his condition ...... he created a spandex costume and the catchy name Mr Immortal (or as the costume say Mr I) and became a superhero. His 1st task was stopping a jewellery store robbery. But the armed thieves just shot him in the head. He recovered obviously but the thieves got away. He worked out what was the flaw in his strategy ...... he didn't have a team to take up the slack when he got killed. So he put out an ad inviting other costumed characters to get together. He was lucky enough to immediately get the other GLA members Big Bertha, Dinah Soar, Doorman and Flatman. (Plus S&M aficionado Leather Boy who misunderstood the ad.) Given that the Avengers was now a franchise (with East and West Coast branches) he suggested they set themselves up as a 3rd branch. The Milwaukee or Wisconsin Avengers was suggested but Mr I was thinking bigger - and the Great Lakes Avengers was born.We see some early solo exploits. A woman accidentally locks her dog in her car and Doorman makes himself a portal into it and reaches through himself to retrieve the pooch. A man can't get a front door unlocked so Flatman slides his 2-D arm under the door and unlocks it from within. As the somewhat dim hero walks away the man enters and robs the house. Big Bertha holds up a falling girder until workmen can get out of the way. A little girl admires her but her mom calls the extremely fat Bertha a freak. Flying dino Dinah Soar rescues a child's escaped balloon but everyone runs away when she tries to return it. Leather Boy seems to still be hanging around too.They have a wall in their base with pictures and cuttings of their greatest moments, and also some 'trophies'. They worked with Hawkeye and Mockingbird, and renamed themselves the Lightning Rods when the Thunderbolts replaced the missing Avengers, but reverted to GLA when the TBolts were revealed as villains. They foiled a Giant Robot Snowman and kept its head as a trophy. Their other trophy is a giant pair of scissors used to open a new mall.We now see them playing bridge without Big Bertha. Mr I has to relay Dinah Soar's bids (even though she's in the opposing pair) because he's the only 1 who can understand what she says. Then Dr Val Ventura (Flatman) takes a call from the model Ashley Crawford to say that her photo-shoot is being attacked by a new version of the Ani-Men protesting animal rights. She then turns into Big Bertha, bursting (literally) out of the phone booth. The rest of the team leap into their quin-jetta car and navigate traffic to the site. Only to find when they get there that the Avengers (Captain America, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Thor and Vision) are dealing with it. Hawkeye ignores Flatman's attempt to get his attention.Craig and Dinah get up from the bed they share and he tells her he thinks the team should disband. But at breakfast they learn that Ant-Man, Hawkeye and Vision have been killed and the rest of the Avengers have 'disassembled'. But Mr I realises that now *they* are the Avengers, and there's no-one to steal their thunder anymore.They go out on patrol and pick up news that a supervillain has broken into a research lab at the university. When they get there they see Maelstrom using his energy powers to steal a huge piece of machinery. An energy bolt fries Mr I but he starts to get better as Dinah consoles him. She reminds him that she like him is very long-lived and they will have centuries together. And then a Maelstrom-bolt kills her.The villain escapes with his prize. And Craig sees a dino-shaped Deathurge coming to collect Dinah's soul. Craig hasn't seen D'urge since he found Terri's farewell letter.  Which was a suicide note saying that she couldn't escape the memories of her abusive father. He found her in the bath with an empty pill bottle. And D'urge was there saying that Terri had called to him.Craig begged to be taken with her then, and he so begs now. But both times he's ignored by Deathurge. He's left to the comfort of the remains of the team.It's apparently 2 weeks later that on July 13th he blows his brains out while Big Bertha and Flatman are in trouble.And Monkey Joe tells us that another GLA member will die next issue.


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[Assistant]
Dismembership drive
Squirrel Girl and Monkey Joe do a 1-page contents warning again. As usual it's in front of a stage curtain which she pulls aside to show Mr Immortal moping in front of an Internet screen.The issue proper opens with another flash of the 'end of everything' coming up in 2 weeks time. This time we just see Flatman (Dr Val Ventura) still being sucked into a white hole. But he provides the (partial) voiceover for this issue.But the story really begins with the funeral of Dinah Soar, killed by Maelstrom last issue. Mr Immortal disrupts proceedings at the end because he (but no-one else) sees Deathurge who claims to just be here to check how Craig Hollis is holding up. Mr I angrily attacks D'urge, blaming him for taking his lover away but D points out he's just an abstract embodiment of Death. However he does fight back and the other Great Lakes Avengers see Craig flailing around in midair. They just assume that their colleague has gone crazy now Dinah is no longer around to calm him down.In his lair Maelstrom gloats over the piece of scientific equipment he stole last issue, and says he needs only 1 more component before he can cause the end of all things which he expects to leave him in control of a merged space and time. He muses on his life as a rejected crossbreed of Inhuman and Deviant. And he contacts Batroc The Leaper and his associates Machete and Zaran to get hold of the required object.GLA member Big Bertha in her slim secret id is model Ashley Crawford whose agent is trying to persuade her to leave Wisconsin for higher paying jobs. She can't tell him that she doesn't want to leave the GLA.Mr I spends all his time wading in misery to the song 'One is the loneliest number' so deputy leader Flatman takes charge and tells Doorman they need to recruit more members. And he suggests that go to New York because that's where most superheroes are, and there's always new ones springing up.We see 1 such newbie Grasshopper who as Doug Taggert works for Roxxon. He's in a good mood because they've just given him a raise and transferred him to work with Cindy Shelton whose affections he hopes to win. If he can get her off her crush on his super-id. As he bounds/springs through the city he spots Batroc's Brigade up to no good.FM and DM arrive in NY. Flatman heads straight for Thunderbolts HQ to try to recruit Swordsman who he believes is really Hawkeye, GLA's old team leader. SM denies being Hawkeye and even admits to being instead a supervillain mind-controlled by someone else, and he'll kill FM if he doesn't go away. Meanwhile Doorman tracks down Moon Knight who initially mistakes him for his old foe Midnight Man. When that's cleared up MK turns down the job offer saying he operates as a loner urban myth.Spider-Man, Wolverine and Daredevil also use the loner excuse. Energizer, the youngest of Power Pack, is rightly suspicious of Doorman asking her to come with him, even as she's just defeated several AIM troopers. Living Lightning is glad to join the GLA until he learns it's not the Gay/Lesbian Alliance.In swift succession the duo are also turned down by Wonder Man, Justice & Firestar, Monica Rambeau (currently Pulsar), Falcon, Hercules, Cloak & Dagger, Nightcrawler, Tigra, Shang-Chi, Black Bolt, Paladin, Sleepwalker, Prodigy, Captain Ultra, Ursa Major, Brother Voodoo, El Aguila, Awesome Andy (the android), Arana, Iron Fist and Luke Cage (plus KalAOL from the Marville series).Dispirited, they're sitting around in Central Park at night when 2 men attempt to mug them. But Squirrel Girl and Monkey Joe save them and hand the perps over to the police. So they ask *her* if she wants to join the Great Lakes Avengers (downplaying the Great Lakes part). She accepts as long as her squirrel sidekick MJ can join too. FM and DM are no longer picky.They hear an alarm going off and they spring into action with an "Avengers assemble". Grasshopper tripped the alarm deliberately as he fought Batroc & Co. He's doing well, even getting Batroc to admit that he's been outleaped. Then the GLA join the fight and they ask him to join the team even while the battle's still going. GH accepts the offer as Zaran hurls a sai at Doorman's head ... which passes harmlessly through and kills Grasshopper. (5.8 seconds, the shortest team membership ever, according to a Monkey Joe editorial caption.) And the bad guys get away with what they came for.The team (without Mr Immortal) don't see Deathurge come to take Doug's soul away. Squirrel Girl's beginning to doubt the wisdom of joining this team, but she's not a quitter.The issue ends with another peek at the End Of Everything in 2 weeks time. We see Flatman letting go of his grip on Big Bertha to save her as he's sucked into the white hole. And Monkey Joe tells us that another GLA member will die next issue, and he hopes it's not Squirrel Girl.