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Avengers #173

Jul 1978

David Michelinie, Unknown

Story Name:

Threshold of Oblivion!

Synopsis

Avengers #173 synopsis by Peter Silvestro

Rating:

At Avengers Mansion, Iron Man explains the mystery of the vanishing heroes to Black Panther, Captain Marvel and the Whizzer. Black Widow and Hercules arrive soon after. Iron Man tries to contact SHIELD but their privileges have been revoked and access to their communication frequencies is denied. Elsewhere, the enigmatic Michael watches with approval the Guardians of the Galaxy and their efforts to protect young Vance Astrovik, unaware they are serving his will. Michael probes the universe and discovers that the Watcher, Odin, Zeus, Mephisto and even Eternity himself are as yet unaware of him. He detects a disturbance in the next room but it is only his lover Carina, who is coming to believe Michael is the god and rightful owner of the universe he claims to be. As the Avengers settle down to business, several odd things transpire: an old man carves a wooden image of Scarlet Witch and Thor insists he has never before met Wonder Man or participated in the Avengers’ most recent adventures. Suddenly Black Panther and Yellowjacket become the next heroes to vanish. Iron Man contacts Vance Astro on the Guardians’ ship and the future hero has traced a radiation trail to a small orbiting construct. Astro manages to teleport the last remaining Avengers onto this craft where they come face-to-face with their old nemesis, the Collector!

Review / Commentaries

Avengers #173 Review by Peter Silvestro (March 20, 2010)

Hercules is mistaken for Steve Reeves; IMDb will tell you why.

Avengers #173 Review by Rob Johnson (November 3, 2014)

Thor returns from Marvel Team-Up #70 and claims not to know who Wonder Man is, nor anything of their fights against Graviton and Count Nefaria. As we'll learn in #175, all Thor's interactions with the Avengers since he left them in #151 have been under the control of the Collector, and Thor has no memory of them. And Wonder Man wasn't revived from his long-time 'death' (since #9) until #152. Hawkeye and Thor report that Scarlet Witch and WM have been abducted behind the scenes. The Collector's small orbiting construct is the size of a phone booth, but much bigger on the inside. TARDIS anyone? The only Avengers left free are Hawkeye, Iron Man, Thor and Wasp.

Captain Marvel is sent to survey the Earth with his cosmic senses, but we see at the end of the issue that Collector has captured *him* too. Black Widow and Hercules go to the airport to find their luggage, and get collected off-screen, but on-cover, as well. Whizzer leaves the Avengers to it, saying he's definitely retiring. He'll be back for 1 final huzzah in Vision & Scarlet Witch #2, where he'll die fighting his WWII foe Isbisa. The old man is Django Maximoff, previously seen in #166. He'll contact Wanda in #181.

Jim Shooter has been promoted to editor-in-chief, so he relinquishes the editorship of this title to Roger Stern. He continues plotting the Korvac saga to the end, with David Michelinie writing this issue and #175-176, and Bill Mantlo doing #174. Shooter will then write the conclusion in #177. Hercules arrives with Black Widow after the end of their California team Champions. (The last issue was #17, and there was a final adventure in Spectacular Spider-Man #17-18.) The disturbance Michael felt was Carina trying to mentally contact someone (we'll discover next issue that it was the Collector). But she has become conflicted.

> Avengers comic book info and issue index

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Main/1st Story Full Credits

David Michelinie

Unknown

Joe Staton

George Perez (Cover Penciler)
Terry Austin (Cover Inker)

Additional Credits

Layouts: Sal Buscema.

All stories. Listed in alphabetical order.

Avengers

Beast
(Henry Phillip McCoy)

Black Panther
(T'Challa)

Black Widow
(Natasha Romanoff)

Captain America
(Steven Rogers)

Captain Marvel
(Mar-Vell)

Guardians of the Galaxy

Hercules
(Heracles)

Iron Man
(Anthony Stark)

Mephisto

Odin

Scarlet Witch
(Wanda Maximoff)

Thor
(Odinson)

Wasp
(Janet Van Dyne)

Watcher
(Uatu)

Wonder Man
(Simon Williams)

Yellowjacket
(Hank Pym)

Zeus

Collector
(Taneleer Tivan)

Plus: Vance Astro (Vance Astrovik), Whizzer (Robert Frank).

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