Avengers, The (1963 series) #352

The Grim Reaper summons the elder god Lloigoroth and asks for power which the monster grants him as the adopted son of the abyss. Reaper then materializes aboard a plane in flight and uses his scythe to slash open the fuselage, sending the plane crashing to the ground….

The Avengers (Black Knight, Crystal, Hercules, Sersi, Vision) are summoned to the scene by the Pentagon where they are shocked to see the carnage with a huge stone skull looming over it. Sersi and Herc ponder the fragility of human life, Vision declares the crash was no accident, Black Knight discovers some glowing material. They find the plane’s black box and, with the permission of the authorities, take the box back to Avengers Mansion to see if they can retrieve the data….

In a Manhattan subway tunnel, Grim Reaper suddenly appears before a moving train and opens a vortex that swallows the train whole….

Back at the Mansion, BK and Vision are examining the black box when the Grim Reaper materializes from the box and announces that the time has come for his revenge against the Avengers who murdered him. He directs them to the caverns in which they killed him and he vanishes. They call a team meeting, Vision filling the newer members (and the reader) in on Grim Reaper’s history. Unable to reach the West Coast Avengers for advice, they jet out to the caves. Descending, they are attacked by a horde of rats, bats, snakes, and spiders, created out of some arcane form of energy, making them deadlier than mere animals. Crystal reconizes that her fire powers are affecting the monsters so Vision shields the vulnerable Black Knight with his cloak and Crystal unleashes a fire blast that destroys all of the vermin. Then Grim Reaper appears, his scythe rotating, causing tremors in the ground and a vortex that sucks all of the heroes in….