Avengers #36: Review

Sub-Mariner took over from the other Illuminati the task of destroying incursion Earths in NAv#23, and formed a villainous Cabal (Black Swan, Corvus Glaive, Maximus, Proxima Midnight, Terrax and Thanos) to help him. Now he's worried that they enjoy the job too much. They have taken over Wakanda and so have the Illuminati's stock of anti-matter bombs to destroy worlds with. But before using a bomb they relish killing the world's superheroes. Corvus Glaive, Terrax and Thanos are away tormenting 1 such world. The Black Panthers (T'Challa and his sister Shuri) with the Dora Milaje and the Hatut Zeraze invade the ruined Wakandan capital in the mistaken belief that all the Cabal are absent. They intend to steal the remaining bombs. But Maximus and Proxima Midnight are there to stop them. The Panthers escape the trap. T'Challa arranges to translocate to the Illuminati's new secret base. But Shuri elects to stay behind to face their enemies' forces. Because Wakanda has been reduced to a city of the dead, T'Challa is now its rightful ruler. Meanwhile Namor goes to Dr Doom and Kristoff Vernard for help controlling the Cabal. But they turn him down. We learn that Doom has his own plans. The Thinker has examined the fragment of another Earth from NAv#6 and worked out that some group has been mapping the multiverse. (We know them as the Mapmakers, and that they are actually the Adaptoids from #27.) Thinker has recreated their map from the fragment, and has also created his own version of the Auger. Doom can now take the war to the enemy. And he'll use his secret weapon, Molecule Man.

I was wrong last issue about Pod being 1 of the zebra-kids. He looks like the being from the 7th Origin Bomb in #15-17. (Although he *could* be an Adaptoid that got left behind when the rest went into the no-space in #27) If he is the 'defence being' then AIM must have retrieved him with the Auger from where they sent him in #17. The Great Destroyer was the term Black Swan used in early issues of New Avengers to describe the cause of the incursions which are destroying the multiverse. Later she named him Rabum Alal. New Avengers #24 indicates that that series will show other aspects of this future world, concentrating on members of the Illuminati. But as indicated last issue Iron Man has gone into hiding even from them, so there are no characters in current NAv to justify including it in any of our Libraries. But to fill out the picture I'll briefly describe #24 here.

Stefano Caselli returns as penciller for a few issues. This issue and New Avengers #24 confirm the approach of last issue. They are all set 8 months in the future, and we'll only gradually learn what happened in between. This issue also confirms that (whether or not this storyline gets relegated to an alternate timeline) the events follow the big change in the recent Thor #1. Last issue I didn't notice that Thor has a metal left arm, to replace the 1 he loses in the later-published Th#1. And he now wields the axe Jarnbjorn rather then the hammer Mjolnir. The cast diagram this issue lists him as Odinson rather than Thor (which is presumably the title taken over by the new female version). And his musing about not being worthy reflects what happened in Original Sin. This is the 1st time the parallel universes of the multiverse have been specifically stated to form a linear spectrum, but the way they *have* been described has often betrayed that underlying assumption. Thus the concepts of us being at 1 end and there being a middle are new too. As is the naive expectation that the root cause of the multiversal decay will lie in the centre.