Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Last issue somebody caused the inhabitants of a small Greek town Kalkhimithia to turn into Hulks in mindless violence mode. The army's not doing much good holding them back. But now the Avengers arrive in a quinjet:- Captain America, Goliath, Iron Man, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Thor, Vision, Warbird and Wasp. SHIELD satellite intel informs them that some of the Hulks are leaving town in 3 groups, so Wasp splits our team up to head them off and try to drive them back into town until a permanent solution can be found.
Each team will include 1 'powerhouse'. Vision is included in 1 team with Quicksilver led by Scarlet Witch. Thor is with Warbird led by Cap. Those 2 teams head off in different directions. The 3rd team stays with the Hulks they've already met, Wasp leading powerhouse Iron Man and Goliath. Henry Pym pretends to be hurt that his lover Jan Van Dyne doesn't class him as a powerhouse, but she mollifies him by saying she wants him to use his science brain to figure out how this happened. So he enlarges a miniaturised scanner from 1 of his 90's style superhero pockets and gets to it.
Elsewhere synthezoid Vision in superdense mode tempts a load of Hulks to attack him, and then goes intangible to phase through their bodies and knock them out. Wanda Maximoff tries to use Chaos Magic to reverse whatever has been done to another bunch but fails because there's some component of the transmutation she can't figure out. She's about to fall back on defensive hex spheres when her brother Pietro zooms in to lure them into chasing him.
The 3rd group just knocks enough Hulks down (including Cap tricking them into KOing each other) to block the road and convince the rest to go back where they came from.
Wonder Man and Triathlon weren't in Avengers Mansion when the call came in - actor Simon Williams was giving Delroy Garrett more tips for their undercover work (locating Taskmaster's mercenary schools as last issue). Now they're following along in another quinjet. Delroy senses Simon's edgy today. Simon explains about the 2nd Chances Foundation he set up with money from his old movies, which helps people turn their lives around. But now he's being pressured to return to LA to promote the Foundation, and do more films to support it. But he doesn't know how he can leave his lover Wanda when she literally brought him back from the dead (#11) with her love.
Even more elsewhere the 2 guys from last issue are continuing to monitor the Avengers' actions. The son thinks they should strike now while the heroes are occupied. The father, sparring with robots, says short-term gains need to be balanced against long-term strategy, and 1 should strike only when the time is right - as he decapitates another 'bot with his bladed polearm. The son is eager for his 1st campaign, but the father reminds him they have time on their side.
Henry Pym has detected strange dust on the Hulks' skin, with traces of gamma and other unidentifiable energies, and signs of extreme chemical transmutation. He sends his data to a local SHIELD office for more detailed analysis. But while he's waiting he wants to try something else, and he's too impatient to explain it to Jan (who's getting worried about his recent impetuosity after a period of hyper-rationality - we know that Henry got magically split into staid Goliath and fun-loving Yellowjacket, and now Yellowjacket has kidnapped Goliath and taken his place). He kicks 1 Hulk into another and they start to merge together!
Hank explains that the gamma-dust has made their cells chemically unstable, gradually turning their bodies into identical copies. Now the process has gone far enough that if they are slammed together hard enough they'll become 1 bigger Hulk. He proposes to Iron Man and Wasp that they repeat the process to get 1 really big Hulk which he can then shrink down with Pym particles to a manageable size. He suits his actions to his words, ignoring the others' words of caution. IM asks why he doesn't shrink *all* the Hulks down while they're still individually weaker, but Pym asks him to consider the problem of a horde of insect-sized Hulks. Jan reluctantly passes the idea to the other teams.
In Avengers Mansion Edwin Jarvis is watching the battle on TV with his ward Lupe who wants to go help as Silverclaw. Edwin reminds her she doesn't know how to fly a quinjet, so they fall back on small talk until there's a very loud noise across the street. And they rush out to investigate.
Bruce Banner and Angela Lipscombe are also watching the events on TV as the Avengers continue their Hulk-merging. Angela assures Bruce this isn't his fault. He reminds her that the airliner crash (Hulk (1999) #4) wasn't his fault either but he still got blamed for it. He expects to be held responsible for this, and fears that somehow he is.
In Greece the merging continues. Goliath gets a call from SHIELD to say the gamma-dust came from Middletown, Arizona, the place the Leader destroyed with a gamma bomb (Hulk #345). The place is cordoned off but samples of dust were taken by SHIELD for testing. And some of those samples have now been discovered missing. But that doesn't explain everything.
Back in NY Lupe races ahead of Jarvis into a wrecked building. She senses an attack and shapeshifts into her cheetah form to dodge a blast. Her foe announces himself as Diablo and says he thought he'd made sure no Avengers would be at home. And he cracks a vial that he says will kill her.
The Hulk mob has been reduced to less than a dozen mega-Hulks. And now they don't need to be pushed together, instead they head towards a central meeting place of their own accord. Pym enlarges a portable lab and whips up a concoction which he loads into a spraygun. Warbird grabs it off him and flies over the Hulks spraying them because she wants their agony over as soon as possible. Goliath scans them to check for particle-bonding and then concentrates to shrink them ...
... but it doesn't work. The Hulks start their final merging. The scientist has figured out the problem and rushes to his lab to create a modified solution. But a giant green foot crushes it. There is now 1 super-giant Hulk, and Hank left his spare lab in his other suit.