Avengers (2023 series) #36

In the Kyln-2 Omega Core intergalactic prison Kang The Conqueror is incarcerated for attempted multiversal omnicide. When he explains to his 3 cellmates that means he tried to kill *everything* they deduce that they would have been part of everything so they beat him up. Kang accepts it while his inner monologue tells us that the Avengers defeated him yet again (last issue of course) and he can't stands no more. He's getting too old to try again.

In Wakanda Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) visits Black Panther (T'Challa). He's looking at his country's capital Birnin Zana and regretting that he's no longer its king. Carol reminds him that he's just regained the throne of the Intergalactic Empire Of Wakanda (in Imperial #4) and asks if that isn't enough for him. He replies that he was born and raised to be its king and that has made him what he is, without which he couldn't have done what was required of him, including what the Avengers needed from him. And he deduces that she's here because *she* is going to stand down as Avengers leader.

Next stop is Detroit where she helps Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) in her new role as Sorcerer Supreme (in the series of that title). They are fighting a tentacled monster that seems to have filled the whole of a multi-storey building, but CM is really here for advice and support in her decision. Wanda reminds her that the Avengers never end. Heroes join and leave and rejoin constantly but the mythic team continues.

In the flying Storm Sanctuary, currently over Biarritz, France, that she created (in the 2024 Storm series) as a refuge for those that need 1, Ororo Munroe seems to be operating it as a zoo. As she helps feed a hippopotamus Carol says that the team has completed the mission (that threaded through this whole series) to save the world from Kang. (Actually it was the multiverse and all its predecessors, and she hasn't yet come to terms with the idea that they wound up causing the whole lot to exist in the 1st place). But Storm says that she herself has never found that missions end. She's still pursuing Charles Xavier's dream of human/mutant co-operation, which is why she's an Avenger.

Next it's a snack in New York's Central Park with Captain America (Sam Wilson). He agrees that this team's always been on the trail of the Missing Moment (and the Grail it contained), even when they didn't realise it. So maybe it *is* time for a change. But he senses there's something more, and she ask him if she did a good job as leader? He replies that even when they do a successful job and save the world and its population some might still die, quite a lot in the case of the Blood Hunt. He doesn't think of it in terms of a 'good' job, just of 1 that he can be proud of. And she should be proud.

Vision's in the Amazon working on a reforestation project. He hovers in midair using his solar ray to mark out a grid on the bare earth and then he and Carol plant new trees. He feels kinship with the plants because he too gets his energy from sunlight. CM remembers the garden he and the ship's AI cultivated in the orbiting Impossible City. He's heard from Wanda that Carol has decided it's time for an Avengers roster change, but he reminds her that the roster is already changing because an Avenger is leaving.

The Avengers including Iron Man assemble to be teleportalled to Camelot, the spaceship that was the Impossible City. It's memory and higher-level functions have been restored and it remembers being Camelot, the home of the Twilight Court, before it was corrupted and constrained by the villainous Ashen Combine until the Avengers freed it. The TC greet our heroes and the ship says its going with them out into the universe to right wrongs and protect innocents wherever they may be.

When the Avengers have returned through the teleportal Mordred tells the AI that it's funny that Camelot and the Court were trying to live up to the example of the Avengers but then due to timetravel their ship *became* 1 of the Avengers they were emulating. Artur gives the order and back on Earth the Avengers see the ship departing.

Later in the Jarvis Lounge Carol is talking to the last of the Avengers, Tony Stark (Iron Man). She wants him to witness her formal decision to dissolve the current roster and authorise a vote on a new chairperson who can then build the new roster. Avengers will vote via their Identicards. Carol says she already knows who she's voting for, and Tony says he does too and so apparently do all the others. The votes pour in and the winner is ... (to be revealed in the next series by whoever its writer will be).

But for now we have an epilogue back in the Kyln. Kang is letting himself be beaten to death. But then he decides that's the easy way out and Kang The Conqueror doesn't do the easy way. So he fights back and defeats the other 3 convicts. He deserves to die fighting impossible odds at the head of an army of warriors sworn to his cause. And these 3 will be the start of that army, for 1 last throw of the dice.