Synopsis
Avengers, The (1963 series) #326 synopsis by
T Vernon
Rating:
The Avengers (Captain America, Thor, She-Hulk, Sersi, and a visiting Iron Man) are working on the new Avengers Complex while chatting about the new assembly table, and Sersi using her powers to recreate Cap’s scrapbook which was destroyed with the Hydrobase. A huge Black man, muscled and masked, pushes past Jarvis to demand to be admitted to the Avengers. Cap comes over to see what’s happening and the big guy, called Rage, wants to know why there are no African Americans on the team….
Across town, a Russian, Lt. Illarion Pavlovich Ramskov, is being brought into the hospital in a containment suit for an emergency bone marrow transplant, accompanied by a Soviet official, Galina Nikolavenia Zhukova, and American Liaison Raymond Sikorski. The hematologist, Dr. Deidre Estivez, objects to all that she wasn’t told about her patient with Zhukova trying to shame her for not treating a hero of Chernobyl. Meanwhile, barely conscious, Ramskov is reliving the disaster at Chernobyl in his mind….
Back with the Avengers, Cap reminds Rage of the Black Panther and the Falcon, both Avengers. Rage dismisses them as T’Challa was a foreign millionaire and Falcon was just a token to fill out a quota. Rage then shows off his qualifications: strength (as he bends a girder into a circle), invulnerability, and a dedication to “truth, justice, and the dignity of man.”
At the hospital, Dr. Estivez discovers that the containment suit has him hooked up to medications that they won’t identify for her. She angrily tries to remove the suit as the Russians panic and Ramskov rises from the table, hallucinating that he is back descending into the reactor—and he burns a hole through the floor and disappears. Sikorski puts in a call to the Avengers….
Rage accuses Cap of being a racist and thinking Rage is an overly violent man; with this he gestures with a fist which Sersi mistakes for an attack on Cap and she blasts the big guy with eye beams. Thor and She-Hulk attack Rage who manages to hold his own until Cap orders them to stop. As Cap tries to deliver a needed lesson about perceptions, a disgusted Rage departs, saying he didn’t want to be an Avenger anyway, complaining that they only fought cosmic menaces and never do anything that helps ordinary people and he wants to help people like that. Then Iron Man relays the message from Sikorski….
The Avengers arrive at the hospital and size up the situation, looking at the hole in the ground and deducing that Ramskov has the ability to transmute matter by manipulating quarks. A nasty Zhukova warns the heroes against killing Ramskov who is a Soviet hero. Dr. Estivez tells the Avengers that the Soviets were likely aware of Ramskov’s powers so they were keeping him drugged; Zhukova denies everything, accusing Estivez of incompetence. Then a seismic tremor strikes and the floor collapses beneath them. She-Hulk, Zhukova, and Estivez plunge into the chasm. Iron Man and Thor leap into the pit and catch the two women civilians while Shulkie goes all the way down to land in a wet sub-basement. She spots tracks in the mud and goes off in search of Ramskov; Estivez and Zhukova ask to be taken to the bottom as well, out of concern for Ramskov. She-Hulk and Thor discover Ramskov who is mentally unstable, thinking he is back in Chernobyl where he caught two scavengers removing critical portions of the damper elements; he pursued them and now he thinks Thor and She-Hulk are the villains and fights them. Back in the tunnel, Iron Man has deduced that Zhukova is a high-ranking intelligence agent and asks if Ramskov was part of a weapons program. They hear the fighting ahead and dash to the spot to see Thor and She-Hulk unconscious as Ramskov is emitting deadly amounts of radiation. He then starts to rip open his containment suit….
In Brooklyn, Rage approaches a drug house belonging to the notorious pusher L.D. 50; two thugs, Tiny and Roach, shoot Rage but seeing the bullets bounce off, they run in to warn their boss. L.D. 50 tells them to deal with it when the building starts shaking: Rage is tearing the drug house down….
Characters:
Plus: Powersurge (
Illarion Pavlovich Ramskov), Rage (
Elvin Daryl Haliday), Raymond Sikorski.