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Avengers #50: Review

Dec 2021

Jason Aaron, ?

::: click cover to ENLARGE it :::

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An Earth unlike any other (just like all the rest)

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Avengers #50 Review by Rob Johnson (December 4, 2021)

This very long (nearly 3 times normal size) anniversary issue is #50 and Legacy #750.

The main story art is by Javier Garron, Aaron Kuder, Ed McGuinness and Carlos Pacheco. The colours are by David Curiel, Matt Hollingsworth, Rachelle Rosenberg and Alex Sinclair.

Orb was a minor villain from Ghost Rider (2006) #26 until the Original Sin series when he stole 1 of the Watcher's eyes. At the end of that series he became obsessed with watching, but wasn't really a replacement for the dead Watcher. That 'honour' fell to Nick Fury as the Unseen.

Phoenix wonders if Odin would be mellowed by another child. I assume that she knows about his 1stborn Angela, and that the couple haven't produced Thor yet. Unless they've already got Thor tucked away somewhere.

The heroes Ka-Zar sees on his time journey are Spirit Rider, the Samoan Shark Rider, Reno Phoenix and the Starbrand Kid of the Wild West, Sgt Szardos (Soldier Supreme of the Secret Invaders), Wong Fei-Hung (master of the Drunken Dragon Fist), young Thor with his axe Jarnbjorn, 3-D Man, Black Knight (Percy of Scandia), the dinosaur Starbrand, Mamadou Fall (a Black Panther), Musashi Miyampoto (the Samurai Of Vengeance), an unknown female Moon Knight, Iron Fist (Orson Randall) and Isaac Newton (leader of the Brotherhood Of The Shield).

Captain Marvel's list of recent events are the Intergalactic Empire Of Wakanda (the whole of the 2018-2021 Black Panther series), Captain America's stint in jail (#7-11 and beyond of his current series), Tony's space-hunt for Korvac (the current Iron Man series which hasn't ended yet) and Vox Supreme's assault on the Marvels (the current storyline in her own series).

The 1st cyborg Deathlok dates back to Astonishing Tales #25 in 1974. The current multidimensional army was introduced in Free Comic Book Day: Avengers/Hulk (2021) along with Doom Supreme and the Masters Of Evil.

We've seen the Earth-4111 Howard Stark before in #38. But it's probable that some visions/memories of Tony's father in earlier issue were of him as well.

Black Panther and Sub-Mariner have been at odds many times, eg in Avengers vs X-Men and during the Incursions that led up to Secret Wars

The main story continues next issue, but follow Ghost Rider into the Avengers Forever (mini?-)series which also seems to involve the Ant-Man Orb warned about.

There wasn't room for all the issue in the synopsis, so here's the rest:-

Chapter 9: The Orb is dead, many more will follow

Doom and co arrive at the North Pole on present day Earth-616. The Masters are confused because this isn't 1MBC, but Doom explains that they have to deal with a convergence of Deathloks here. Killmonger complains that he joined this gang to claim new Earths for himself, the 1-man nation of New Wakanda.

Orb arrives in a little boat. He says he's been watching this drama unfold and now he's here to view the climax. He's not here to stop them or help them with cryptic clues, though he does throw in "Beware the Ant-Man). He's not even here to remind them they're breaking Mephisto's 1 rule. He's just here to watch. Doom points out that he's not a Watcher, and Orb explains that the local Watcher died (in Original Sin) so he stole 1 of his Eyes and took over his responsibilities. He catalogues the Masters, giving us extra info such as that Killmonger conquered Wakanda and Asgard, and Ghost Goblin is Norman Osborn.

He's getting all excited about watching what's to come. But then Doom blasts through his chest and destroys the Eye. As the villains contemplate Avengers Mountain they leave Orb on the ice. He doesn't want to die without anyone watching. He tells his mother that he's finally dying as she wanted, but why is she still disappointed.

Epilogue: Ka-Zar, the Savage Herald

Ka-Zar is swinging through an alien forest. He's still trying to get back to the present and Earth to tell the Avengers what he's learned. But his method is to have become the Herald of Galactus. He leads his boss away from this inhabited world by falsely claiming it's not suitable. But Big G is hungry.

That's the end of the main story. It's followed by a diagram of the Avengers Mountain Celestial. And then a 2nd tale.

The 2 worthies

Writer: Christopher Ruocchio. Artist: Steve McNiven. Colours: Frank D'Armata. Editor Darren Shan.

In late 5th Century Britain a young lad is on the run from aliens we recognise as Brood. He comes across a standing stone in the forest and decides to make a stand with his back to it. He knocks an arrow and prays to the Christian God, but neither do any good against the armour-scaled foes. He prepares to die with his knife in his hand. But them Mjolnir smashes through the aliens and Thor is beside him.

Thor detects that these are young Broodlings so their Queen must already have made her 'nest' and hatched them. More Brood arrive and Thor invokes Odin as he tears them apart. The boy realises he's in the presence of an old god of Asgard, but he rationalises that maybe *his* God made these other ones. A Brood creeps up and attacks him. His knife is nearly as useless as his arrows and gets stuck in the alien's hide. He tries to lift Thor's disgarded hammer and of course fails. Then Thor picks up the weapon and kills the last Brood with a lightning strike.

Thor tells the lad he fought bravely and prepares to go after the Queen. But the boy points to the monolith inscribed with runes and picturing a hammer. Thor confirms that it is Mjolnir which can only be wielded by 1 who is worthy. He laughs when the boy asks how he could become worthy. The lad says his name is Arthur, and we see an image of the Sword In The Stone.

From Our Blog:

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Gwen Stacy: Classic Beauty

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Avengers #50 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

Prologue 1: Wake up -- the Orb sees you

Oldish couple Ted and Mary Beth are awakened in the middle of the night by the presence of the Orb who says he's been watching their marriage (amongst many other things). Along the way he mentions how his mother used to lock him in the closet every night and was disappointed that he wasn't dead in the morning. But now he tells the couple that they'll probably have another of their slanging matches tomorrow and this 1 might well escalate into killing each other. But he's got something really important to witness tomorrow so would they mind killing each other now.

Prologue 2: Ka-Zar vs Kid Thanos at the dawn of it all

It's 1 Million BC and Ka-Zar is fighting robots with a knife, and they're led by young Thanos fresh from killing his mother. Apparently T'Challa sent Ka-Zar back in time to investigate the history of the 'legacy powers' (such as his own inherited Black Panther status). And it seems Thanos is here to correct the Celestials' mistake and stifle mankind at its birth. Then the 1MBC Avengers (minus the 1st Black Panther) join the fight.

Chapter 1: World War She-Hulk (coda)

She-Hulk has been imprisoned and brainwashed by Red Widow, turned into the Winter Hulk and sent to assassinate Sub-Mariner. But Jennifer Walters wasn't really brainwashed and it was all a secret Avengers' plan to discover and stop Widow's plot. However the now-Hulked-up Widow had a gamma bomb as backup which Shulkie is trying to defuse. Now read on ...

Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes) is in his Hell Charger near Atlantis and reports back to the Avengers that the gamma bomb has gone off, and that he's retrieved the badly wounded traitor Gorilla-Man. He then sees a decisively beaten RW-Hulk, and a huge She-Hulk who has absorbed all the gamma radiation.

GR gets G-M and Shulk back to Avengers Mountain HQ (the dead body of a Celestial at the North Pole) to be greeted by Panther, Captain America, Captain Marvel and Iron Man. They need to find a way to siphon the excess radiation from She-Hulk but the Mountain's systems are down, sabotaged by Gorilla-Man who let Red Widow and the Winter Guard abduct Shulk (#46). Meanwhile Jen Walters is remembering how she was transformed into the recent (more conventionally Hulk-like) version of her She-Hulk identity by the Celestial Eson (#2). And her body throws off restraining team-mates to head for a huge room deep in the dead Celestial that is new to them. And there she expels the energy.

Throughout the preceding paragraphs we've seen a voiceover court case exchange between a green voice and a red voice. The green defence lawyer voice asks why no-one died in Atlantis when the bomb went off. The red witness voice says it was because of the Avengers, in particular the defendant She-Hulk/Jennifer Walters. He also claims that the charges that the Russian government brought against her of wrecking Red Square (#44) are baseless. She was fighting to save Russia and the rest of the world from the then-Phoenix-powered Sub-Mariner. And now she's saved Namor and his people from Russia and the rest of the world.

The scene now moves to that court case where Dmitri Bukharin, the current Crimson Dynamo, is giving evidence in casts and metal bracing supports due to his fight with Winter Hulk in #47. But instead of blaming her he blames Red Widow for her plot.

Back at the Mountain Iron Man declares that Shulk's energy has burned out the infection Gorilla-Man created and the system's are back online. Jennifer Walters emerges in statuesque (and naked) female Hulk form (a la the John Byrne era).

And then we discover that the court case is later and She-Hulk the lawyer is successfully defending herself from all charges.

Chapter 2: The true purpose of the prehistoric Avengers

In 1MBC the Avengers have defeated Kid Thanos. Lady Phoenix (not the Ghost Rider) has him in fiery chains. Agamotto opens a mystic portal and Odin hurls him through it. The mastodon-riding Ghost Rider and the 1st Iron Fist comment on all the time-travellers who keep coming back here. (The caveman Starbrand isn't in evidence in this section.) Odin despairs of future humanity. Phoenix incinerates the robots and mentally apologises to hiding Ka-Zar for Odin's views. She wishes him well in his future, and KZ tells his Time-Knife to take him home. Odin and Phoenix find some privacy to continue their love affair.

We now see that a Dr Doom has been watching all this while Mephisto as a snake flatters him. The snake asks Doom if he's here to prevent the rise of the pesky superheroes too, and admits that *he* tried to stop the 1MBC Avengers forming but failed. (But in #38 he said he sent young Thanos against them.) Mephisto claims that many Dr Doom's have tried and failed but this Doom claims to be Doom Supreme, master of the darkest arts. The snake admires his armour made from enchanted girlfriend skin and proposes that they gather a team of their own.

Chapter 3: The Lord of the Savage Land, lost in time

As Ka-Zar swims back along the timestream he sees more heroes, many of them part of the lineage of the 1MBC Avengers, before being attacked by time-seeking missiles which drag him to another time and place and 'fry' his Time-Knife. There he is confronted by an armoured being who says KZ has been prying into history's dark secrets and the secrets have noticed.

Chapter 4: The last will and testament of Robbie Reyes

In present day Avengers Mountain Tony Stark is addressing a meeting of T'Challa, Captains America and Marvel, and Robbie Reyes. He says they've got a Celestial for an HQ and a large support staff in General Okoye and the Agents Of Wakanda, and they had the most powerful team ever. But it's slipping away when they most need it. Panther agrees that Blade's occupied as sheriff of the Vampire Nation, and Jen has taken time off to get her new act together. No-one's seen Thor since he fought the Russian gods Chernobog and Perun last issue, who are in the Wakandan prison hospital along with the traitorous head of security Gorilla-Man. Tony says Thor's got family problems and he's going to Asgard to talk to him.

Carol Danvers lists some of the things individual members have been going through lately and suggests it's time for a recruitment drive. T'Challa suggests Echo/Phoenix but Steve Rogers is still unsure about her. Tony is for her because he thinks they've got bigger powers to worry about. Carol thinks he means the very young Starbrand, but he actually means Mephisto. Panther mentions he's used Celestial tech to send Agent Of Wakanda Ka-Zar on a time-mission to discover the importance of the 1MBC Avengers, but he's late back. CapA is about to put forward some other candidates when ...

... Robbie interrupts with some personal business. He's been having some nightmares lately which have him thinking about his death. He's the only family his young brother Gabe has left, and he wants to know that the Avengers will look after the kid if anything happens to him. The other 4 each in their own way swear to it and Robbie is grateful.

Chapter 5: New recruits

In Atlantis Namor is bemoaning then fact that his people have abandoned the place and him to return to their wild nomadic ways. She-Hulk (in a breathing mask) is with him and says it's the result of his own recent actions (as aired last issue). Sub-Mariner doesn't disagree but says he's been wondering why she and the Avengers saved him and Atlantis after all he's done against them recently. And he's reached the conclusion that it's because she has the warrior's honour that he himself has lost. So he pledges to do whatever she asks of him.

Red Widow is in a shack in the Ural Mountains talking to someone locked away, seemingly brainwashing him. They used to be enemies but his American masters lied to him. Then Blur, Dr Spectrum and Power Princess of the Squadron Supreme Of America break in and Spectrum's Power Prism imprisons RW in the name of the US Government. However PP punches a hole through his chest to grab the Prism for her own purposes. Blur asks if he can kill Widow now but Zarda says they no longer have to do what the Government (or Mephisto) want. And she tells RW to keep brainwashing Hyperion (of the Squadron too).

In the McCarthy Medical Institute in New York Dr Jane Foster is called to the morgue to look at a dead body found in front of the old Avengers Mansion. But morgue guy Rudy Gillespie thinks this is a job for Jane's alter ego Valkyrie. The not-so-dead guy is a Deathlok who says he's an interuniversal agent of the Avenger Prime who's come to warn the Avengers of multiversal massacre and the Infinity Requiem. He recognises Val as an Avenger which she denies. But he says "Not yet".

In the Wakandan nature preserve and wildlife rehabilitation centre Gorilla-Man is recovering from his wounds. He mentions that She-Hulk dropped by to thank him for helping her in Atlantis, but he thanked *her* for turning his life around. He's been sober since then for the 1st time since WWII and he's been reviewing his deeds, good and bad. This immortal has wanted to die for so long but now he wants to live. Then we see that he's been talking to Ursa Major lying in a coma after the severe wounds he got for betraying the Winter Guard (#46 again).

Chapter 6: The Devil and Howard Stark

Now it's back to Ka-Zar. The armoured guy tells him he's not going to kill him because time-travellers killing each other attracts the attention of the Deathlocks which his master wants to avoid. So he's going to leave him on an alien world in the past for someone else to kill him. KZ's response is to use the now not-a-Time-Knife as just a knife which knocks the foe's helmet off. And we recognise a Howard Stark. And now we get his history.

He founded Stark Industries and became the richest man in history. He created SHIELD and saved the world a few times. He foresaw the coming world of mutants, immortals and superhumans but knew he wouldn't live to see it. So he went to a crossroads (actually a very unbusy intersection) and met with Mephisto (in the guise of a man down on his luck) and made the usual deal. He stopped ageing. But the price was the death of his young son Tony. (A caption says this is Earth-4111.) Then he says he lost everything else as well, leaving him an immortal slave of Mephisto as Hell's armourer and the armoured Iron Inquisitor - chief security officer of the Council Of Red, the Devils who want to turn the multiverse into Hell.

Now he defeats Ka-Zar and leaves him to die here today. He should be thankful that he won't live to see what will happen to the multiverse. Then Ka-Zar turns and sees that this world is about to be eaten by Galactus. But then he reminds himself he's spent his life in the Savage Land fighting things that want to eat him with only his knife. So what's new, and he leaps off a cliff onto Big G.

Chapter 7: The age of the Masters Of Evil

Dr Doom returns to the 1MBC Mephisto snake to tell him that he's chosen his team of the deadliest beings from different timelines. Mephisto will unleash them on all the multiple Earths but the Council Of Red have only 1 condition - Earth-616 must be left to last. Sorcerer Supreme Doom says he sees the spell they are casting and agrees to it. And the slaughter begins.

Earth-818 1MBC. A strange Odin mourns the death of Gorgilla Phoenix, Lady Starbrand and the Savage Iron Fist. He strikes back with his hammer but Doom engulfs him in blue flames. He survives but only because Kid Thanos has been promised personal revenge on all Odins. Which he exacts with a big gun. Ghost Goblin claims the skull of the local Ghost Rider. Black Skull (from the recent Heroes Reborn series) in his Venom suit kills the local Black Panther. We also see a Dark Phoenix and her Hound Logan. And King Killmonger in what I understand to be a Destroyer armour.

Chapter 8: Vengeance unbound

T'Challa and Robbie are in the Hell Charger where BP can ask GR privately about his nightmares. He sees Ghost Riders being killed. They are all cavemen riding dinosaurs and there are other heroes with them including Panthers and Odins. He can't really see who's killing them and then someone laughs and pulls his head off. And then he wakes up wreathed in Hellfire with a single thought.

But before he can tell T'Challa what that is they are interrupted by Namor claiming to come in peace. BP is rightly suspicious and Subby asks to talk to someone else because they have a history of bad blood between them. But he relents and tells them that She-Hulk sent him to make amends for his past deeds. And for a start he hands over a Deathlok they found in Atlantis. Deathlok scans them a declares he's found an Omni-Avenger. Robbie bursts into flame and tells Panther it's happening again. Deathlok declares that Multiversal Vengeance is happening. Then those 2 and the Hell Charger disappear.

BP tells Namor to go home and leave things to the Avengers. But then Valkyrie arrives on her flying horse with the other Deathlok who declares there are no Omni-Avengers here. (So GR *was* 1 such but BP isn't.)

The Hell Charger arrives on Earth-818 in the present day. Deathlok says that this world's 1st Rider was killed along with the rest of that Age Of Heroes. The timeline has been rewritten and what should be Manhattan is now a wilderness. He also explains that the villains responsible for this and the other GR deaths that Robbie sensed are Doom Supreme and his Multiversal Masters Of Evil. The Deathloks were sent to Earth-616 because it is an important nexus world because of the presence of ...

... but it's time for another interruption, this time by War Machines - soldiers of this world's ruler the Black Skull. Deathlok advises running away, but Ghost Rider leaps into battle with a blazing chainsaw. And Deathlok has to join in with his gun.

There's not enough room here for the rest of the synopsis of this ultra-long issue, so I've continued it at the end of my Comments.

::: click cover to ENLARGE it :::

Barberoids 1 cover original artwork on ebay

Jason Aaron

Ed McGuinness (Cover Penciler)
Ed McGuinness (Cover Inker)
Laura Martin (Cover Colorist)

Letterer: Cory Petit.
Editor: Tom Brevoort. Editor-in-chief: C. B. Cebulski.

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Avengers

Black Panther
(T'Challa)

Captain America
(Steve Rogers)

Captain Marvel
(Carol Danvers)

Galactus

Iron Man
(Tony Stark)

Ka-Zar

Mephisto

She-Hulk
(Jennifer Walters)

Sub-Mariner
(Namor)

Thor
(Odinson)

Valkyrie
(Jane Foster)

Plus: Avengers (1MBC) (1M BC Avengers), Blur (of SSOA), Crimson Dynamo (Dmitri Bukharin), Doom Supreme, Dr Spectrum (Squadron Supreme), Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes), Gorilla-Man (Ken Hale), Hyperion (Squadron Supreme), Iron Inquisitor, Multiversal Masters Of Evil, Power Princess (of SSOA), Red Widow, The Orb.

> Avengers: Book info and issue index

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