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Avengers #37

Feb 2001
Kurt Busiek, Steve Epting

Story Name:

Scorched earth


Synopsis

Avengers #37 synopsis by Rob Johnson
Rating: 4.5 stars
Captain America has called for Avengers help in the devastated country of Slorenia. Wasp sent Iron Man and Scarlet Witch plus reservists Photon and Wonder Man. They are facing the giant ethereal form of Bloodwraith. IM has brought a big harmonic disruptor gun he's built which should affect whatever energy he's made of. But the bolts pass right through the immaterial foe. However his giant sword seems very material when it strikes. The spectre blames the Avengers for the state of the land because they failed to save it and its people (from Ultron in #19-22). Now he's going to carry the pain of its dead to the rest of the World.

The rest of the team are in Avengers Mansion trying to save *it* from Lord Templar and Pagan. Suddenly Jack Of Hearts and Warbird emerge from the East River battling Pagan in midair. They got there via the access tunnel for the Avengers' submarine, starting from the caved-in sub-basement at the end of last issue. Now Triathlon and Wasp dig themselves out of the rubble there to face Templar. But it is Vision who phases his hand through the villain's chest while the other 2 make it to the surface. As Janet Van Dyne leads the conflict towards Central Park she wonders why her lover Henry Pym (Goliath) hasn't answered the call to arms.

Photon and Wonder Man are trying their luck against Bloodwraith, but Monica Rambeau's EM-energy form is powerless against him. His blade is intangible when it passes through her this time, but it leaves her human and curled up from intense cold. And the now-solid blade easily swats Simon Williams' ionic energy body away.

Cap tells Wanda Maximoff that the foe has killed hundreds of SHIELD Agents and civilian volunteers who were here to bury the dead Slorenians after Ultron's massacre, and rebuild the country to make it habitable again. They've got to stop Bloodwraith before he kills even more. 1 of the volunteers is Sean Dolan who currently has Black Knight's cursed Ebony Blade, which if he draws turns him into Bloodwraith and compels him to use it to steal souls. When last seen in Av Unplugged #6 he promised them he'd keep it sheathed. But something made him draw the sword here and it drank the souls of Slorenia's recent dead, and they empowered him into this new form with no evident trace of Dolan.

Steve Rogers had hoped that Iron Man could use science to turn the Wraith back to Dolan. Now he hopes that Scarlet Witch can use her Chaos Magic to break the link between Sean and the Slorenian souls. She says she can but try.

Meanwhile Pagan has brought his attackers down to Earth in Central Park where he has more advantage. Lord Templar and the other Avengers are also there, and now Templar unleashes his 6 Avatars. While everyone else fights, Templar takes time to speak to the Press to espouse his stated goal of peace and universal law (under him). Vision reminds his compatriots that each Avatar is specialised in a different power, such as strength, but this makes them vulnerable in other ways. But Pagan says *he* just specialises in being unbeatable.

Jonathan Tremont and the Council of the Triune Understanding are watching the battle which we now get confirmed as being Tremont's plan. The Council agree that the fight is making the Avengers look bad, but wasn't it also supposed to make their follower Triathlon look good. Tremont urges them to have faith.

2 Avatars have Triathlon pinned for a killing blow by Pagan. But then a large hand lifts the big villain up and throws him a long way away. Goliath has at last joined the fray. But his speech patterns such as calling Wasp 'babe' clue us in to the fact that this is the *other* Henry Pym (magically split off in #28) who's been secretly lurking around in Hank's old identity Yellowjacket, and who last issue waylaid the 'real' HP.

Bloodwraith is trying to cross the border to get out of Slorenia, presumably as part of bringing the country's pain to the outside World. Iron Man, Photon and Wonder Man are managing to slow him down. Meanwhile Wanda is concentrating her Witchy power to contact the Slorenian dead in their graves. She tries to persuade them to abandon the Wraith and their rage and go rest in peace. Bloodwraith senses what she's doing and turns to head back into Slorenia. Cap tells IM and WM to keep slowing him down to give Wanda a chance. Then he gets an urgent call from Goliath asking for Photon back in New York. Trusting his comrade CA sends her there ...

... where we find that Pagan's back and Photon's energy form streaks through him. Jack Of Hearts takes the opportunity to strike with the power of his Zero Energy. And Pagan falls. Lord Templar senses the tide has changed and calls his Avatars back to him. But Triathlon bounds among them using his own multiple powers to defeat their specialities. And finally a well-aimed kick to the jaw downs the Lord himself.

The watching crowd go wild and carry Delroy Garrett and Jack Hart on their shoulders. No-one notices that the villains fade away. But Triathlon is suspicious of his success. They say even Thor was unable to defeat Templar, so how did *he* do it with 1 kick? That and last issue's revelation about the 3-D Man mean he's got a lot to ask questions about.

In Slorenia Wanda Maximoff is still pleading with the Slorenian dead and Bloodwraith is almost upon her. Then she suddenly expels a load of energy, and then tells Cap to get everyone our of the country fast. And there's a barrier keeping Bloodwraith in. She explains to Cap that she couldn't break the foe's link to the dead, so instead she strengthened it to bind him to the country itself. Now he's trapped in there, but Cap points out that no-one can enter without him killing them.

They fly their quinjet back to NY and the other half of the team. Wasp announces that Jarvis is arranging for the Mansion to be repaired and that SHIELD will keep Slorenia quarantined until they figure out a solution for Bloodwraith. But Cap is angry about him and Slorenia and Templar because they were all problems that the Avengers failed to deal with properly earlier. He immediately apologises for his outburst but leader Wasp agrees with him. She suggests it's time for him to return to the fold and for another reorganisation.


 

Review / Commentaries


Avengers #37 Review by (July 3, 2020)
Albert Deschesne is part-letterer again.

Slorenia was created in Force Works #4 for a Civil War in that title with a crossover into War Machine. The country was then destroyed by Ultron in our #19-22.

The modern hero Black Knight inherited the Ebony Blade from his ancestor the 1st BK in Arthurian times where it acquired its blood curse. Dane Whitman gave up the Blade in the 1990 Black Knight mini-series, where we also met his squire Sean Dolan.
Sean took up the sword in Avengers Annual #21 but it turned him into the Bloodwraith. After giving up the Blade, finding an alternate universe copy and then getting the original back Dolan wound up here.

Black Knight and Firebird will monitor Bloodwraith and Slorenia next issue and #40 but after that he'll be forgotten about, by writers as well as Avengers. But the situation must be resolved somehow because in AV: Endless Wartime GN the country has been rebuilt and the old Civil War resurges.
The Ebony Blade itself will have a busier future, starting in the 2005 Black Panther series in the hands of another Black Knight (Augustine du Lac, a descendant of Sir Lancelot). Eventually Whitman will get it back (Captain Britain & MI-13 #10) after unknowingly using a duplicate for a while.

Next issue will have the new Avengers organisation already up and running, but various members will have several adventures before then:-
Captain America, Scarlet Witch, Warbird and Wasp cameo in Black Panther (1998) #27 as Wakanda prepares for war.
Cap, Iron Man, Warbird, Triathlon and Vision get involved in the Sentry event.
Cap, Scarlet Witch and Wonder Man show up for the Hellcat (2000) mini-series.
ScW, Triathlon and the Yellowjacket version of Goliath cameo in Fantastic Four (1998) #39 helping tidy up after a fight with Grey Gargoyle.
Cap cameos in a tale in the Indomitable Iron Man 1-shot, and then he fights Protocide and Cache in his own #37-39.
He continues his app-streak by cameoing with ScW and Vision in Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #36 reacting to the destruction of the World Trade Center, then doing his own CA Theater Of War: Ghosts Of My Country 1-shot and finishing up in the Wolverine: Son Of Canada Doritos giveaway!



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(The Boy Wonder)

Steve Epting
Al Vey
Tom Smith
Steve Epting (Cover Penciler)
Al Vey (Cover Inker)
Tom Smith (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Letterer: Richard Starkings.
Editor: Tom Brevoort. Editor-in-chief: Joe Quesada.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Captain America
Captain America

(Steven Rogers)
Iron Man
Iron Man

(Anthony Stark)
Jack of Hearts
Jack of Hearts

(Jonathan Hart)
Scarlet Witch
Scarlet Witch

(Wanda Maximoff)
Wasp
Wasp

(Janet Van Dyne)
Wonder Man
Wonder Man

(Simon Williams)

Plus: Bloodwraith (Sean Dolan), Jonathan Tremont, Lord Templar, Pagan, Photon (Monica Rambeau), Triathlon (Delroy Garrett Jr.), Warbird (Carol Danvers).