Synopsis
Avengers (2023 series) #24 synopsis by
Rob Johnson
Rating:
The Avengers (Captain America (Sam Wilson), Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Storm and Vision) came to Grandmaster's Speculatorium space casino to steal a maguffin (a repository of knowledge about the Missing Moment that used to belong to Kang The Conqueror). But Kang himself beat them to it with the help of Black Cat and a young version of her deceased father Walter Hardy. And now he's called in a war fleet to help them escape. But neither side know that they're really pawns in a game staged by GM and Kang's foe Myrddin. GM has wagered on the Avengers and, strangely, Myrddin has bet on Kang.
Grandmaster starts to get worried as Kang's fleet starts blasting chunks off his casino. He prepares to use his Power Primordial (as an Elder Of The Universe) to destroy them, but Myrddin reminds him that personally interfering in the 'game' would be cheating. And En Dwi Gast prides himself on never doing that.
The attack by Kang's forces threatens the lives of the thousands of beings in the casino, but all he's waiting for is the teleport shielding to fail. And when it does he ports himself and his 2 allies to his command ship (which seems staffed by people possibly genetically related to him). Behind him the Avengers hear the Speculatorium's system announcing also the failure of warp drives, gravimetric drives and temporal drives and an imminent space-time cataclysm. CapA tries to contact their base the Impossible City but Kang's voice tells him he's jamming comms. We see that 3 large space-time anomalies (wormholes? black holes?) have opened up and the casino breaks up as it falls into the largest of them.
Thieves-for-fun-and-profit Black Cat and Walter Hardy are aghast at Kang's mass murder. Felicia Hardy never really expected the Avengers to lose and now she protests loudly. But Kang imprisons them behind a wall of force bubbles (as seen on the cover of his 1st app in the original Av#8). BC warns him that crossing her usually leads to bad luck ...
... and his ship is suddenly 'invaded' by all the staff and guests of the Speculatorium. Then a computer malfunction stops the ship from warping away. And finally the Avengers teleport in. And his 2 'prisoners' have escape from the force bubbles.
We backtrack a few moments to see CapM asking her team for a miracle. And Vision provides 1. The android overclocks his brain to greatly increase his subjective time rate. And seconds later when he returns to normal he's had several subjective weeks to run simulations of plans and pick the only 1 that will work. He tells energy absorber Carol Danvers to use the gravimetric power of the cataclysm to create a shield for them. He tells Ororo to use the power of the cosmic storm surrounding them to gather the remaining air to keep the people alive. And he tells Wanda Maximoff to magic those people and the Avengers to Kang's flagship.
Now CapM has Kang in a stranglehold. Black Cat tosses the maguffin to CapA. And Grandmaster and Myrddin make their entrance into the warship to let them know it was a game which GM has now won although he lost his casino. And he sends the Avengers, BC and dad home, and even banishes Kang and his men from their warship. He then turns to Myrddin for his payment and Myrddin promises to deliver (but we don't know what it is). But Myrddin suggests that he was really playing a different game for different stakes, and the following panel suggests that the 3 wormholes/black holes have something to do with it.
Black Cat and Walter Hardy have been sent to New York 20 years ago, where BC and Kang came to collect Walter. He hasn't been told Cat's identity, or that she's his daughter. But he guesses that she had something to do with Kang's bad luck turn. She pretends innocence. But then he reveals that he's guessed who she is as well. He says she looks like his wife Lydia but she has his white hair. She admits it and crying they hug. He then also guesses that he won't be allowed to remember any of this, to avoid a time paradox. But he tells her he's proud of her.
The Avengers arrive back in their orbiting Impossible City to find that while they've been gone Dr Doom has taken over the world.
CharactersGood (or All)Plus: Walter Hardy.