Avengers (2023 series) #29

The Avengers are back in their Impossible City orbiting HQ after it got taken over by 1 bunch of Masters Of Evil (during the One World Under Doom event). Now it's time to get back to the central problem of this series - Kang, Myrddin and their contest for the mysterious Missing Moment.

Vision announces to the rest of the team (Black Panther, Captain America (Sam Wilson), Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch and Storm) that he has decrypted the data they got from Kang. He knows what the Missing Moment is, and they have to talk to Reed Richards.

But we instead go to the Glasshouse, Myrddin's base in Null-Time, where he addresses his Twilight Court. He reminds them that he created them to be heroes to match the current Avengers with a King, a Star, an Engineer, a Construct, an Icon, a God and a Witch (but also based on the Arthurian legends with himself as the Wizard).

By now our team have reached the current base of the Fantastic Four (Ben Grimm's Aunt Petunia's farmhouse in Benson, Arizona). They're explaining to Reed about the Missing Moment which they learned about when Kang, mortally wounded by Myrddin, came to them for help (in #2). It is a single second in time inaccessible to any time-traveller. Kang claimed that it could only be accessed by heroes, but only after they'd overcome a list of Tribulation Events. They believe 2 have so far happened:- the Ashen Combine (#3-6) and the Blood Hunt event (including our #14-16).

Myrddin continues explaining things to his Court (and us). In line with his Arthurian obsession he calls the Missing Moment a Grail. Artur the King parallels BP. (Female) Lancelot the Star matches CM. (Female) Galehaut the God was for Thor and now Storm. Bedivere the Engineer is his Iron Man. Bercilak is a Construct like Vision. Parsifal the Icon goes with Captain America and (female) Mordred the Witch lines up with Wanda Maximoff. They are all Knights on his Grail Quest. But he has never told them what the Grail is.

The Avengers *are* telling Reed what it is. Kang had compiled a lot of information about the Missing Moment which they are now also referring to as the Grail. However Myrddin deleted all that info from his brain (#10). But the team learned of data archive of Kang's with the info in it (which was being auctioned by the Grandmaster in his outer space base) and they went and stole it (#22-24). It is that which Vision has decoded. They now know that the MM is a flaw in the structure of the universe which leads from this universe to the next, in the way that Galactus came from his own cosmos to the next. But just as Galactus came from the death of his universe then the possessor of the Grail will use the death of this universe to power his transition. SW says Nightmare showed them this in a vision (#7) but they didn't know what it meant. Mr Fantastic says they must have plenty of time to solve the problem because there are more Tribulation Events to come. But Vision says that Kang's data indicates that Myrddin has cheated.

Myrddin tells his Knights that he originally expected to use them to win through the Tribulation Events. But he now reveals that they have tried and failed and died many times. They don't remember this because from Null-Time he has kept rewinding time. So he tried using the Avengers but they are proving to be a problem in themselves. So he chose more direct action by using the primordial power of an Elder Of The Universe, the Grandmaster.

The Avengers describe how at the end of their 'space-heist' the Grandmaster's Speculatorium was destroyed (#24) causing a 3-lobed rent in the fabric of space-time. They figure that Myrddin has given up trying to unlock the Missing Moment and has instead 'kicked the door down'.

Reed Richards wants to know where the flaw in the universe came from, and they tell him they think *he* caused it! They ask him about how the 7th Cosmos was destroyed (in the lead-up to the 2015 Secret Wars event) and how he (and we see also Sue, Franklin and Valeria Richards, the Molecule Man and various members of the Future Foundation) recreated it as the new 8th Cosmos (Secret Wars #9).

Myrddin tells his lot about this too. The universe died when 1 Earth collided with another. (We see a bit of that, and a bit of Dr Doom vs Mr Fantastic in the Doom-run Battleworld which survived (in the Secret Wars event). Then MrF recreated the universe (actually the multiverse) with god-like power (which actually resided in his son Franklin Richards and Molecule Man). Galehaut asked how 1 man could do such a thing, and Myrddin says "Imperfectly".

Reed is devastated to think that he made a mistake when recreating the universe and it's led to the current problem. T'Challa, as the only other person in the room who was with him on Battleworld (most people there were from other timelines), consoles him because he knows what they went through. But he also suggests that he created the Missing Moment deliberately (which is surely going to make Reed feel worse!) because it was something to strive for. But like the Grail it was only meant to be sought but never achieved. And the Avengers rally round and say they'll do what they always do - save the world(s).

But Myrddin plays the last card. He hands his Twilight Court over to the Grandmaster in payment for the wager he 'lost' (#24) when Grandmaster's Avengers beat Myrddin's Kang to the data archive. (But of course we know that his real aim at the time was the creation of the new tear in the universe.) However En Dwi Gast thinks the way to increase Myrddin's loss is to now destroy the Knights by hurling them into a cosmic vortex. But on the way down the Witch lays a curse on the wizard. The Elder leaves and Myrddin plans a journey.