Synopsis
Avengers (2023 series) #27 synopsis by
Rob Johnson
Rating:
The Avengers have the Ashen Combine prisoners in their orbiting Impossible City base and 1 of them, Meridian Diadem, has a tesseract space inside her which itself contains lots of prisoners. Black Panther went in there in #19 to help them. He found most of them were oppressed by Loyalists, so he organised the Free Gangs to overthrow their masters. At the end of last issue he was extracted back to the City where he found Captain America (Sam Wilson) being beaten by Mr Hyde.
This issue begins by going back a step to show that the Free Gangs have won their war and so T'Challa can arrange to leave. And then we return to Panther raking Mr Hyde's back with his claws. He notes Cap's new armoured costume and is surprised when it as well as Sam thanks him for the intervention. (We know that the suit is actually the last bit of the City's AI that hasn't been taken over by the Masters Of Evil.) Cap throws his shield but MrH catches it and uses it to defend himself against BP's bloody talons. But then he discards it and Panther slashes his chest. The foe rips off his tattered jacket and shirt to attack unencumbered and grabs Cap to hurl him out of the City's force dome into space.
The King of Wakanda now attacks with ferocity and daggers but it takes more than that to bring Hyde down. The villain comments that he's never killed a King before. But then a voice comments that America and Kings don't normally mix well, but this one's his friend. It's Sam returning with the plastoid suit's wings and space helmet, which of course is how he survived the vacuum. But he's also made a detour on the way back. He tells T'Challa, in Wakandan, to close his eyes and then brandishes the still-alive head of Madcap of the MOE. The head makes eye-contact with Hyde and suddenly Calvin Zabo is asking himself why he likes hurting people. The 2 heroes take the opportunity to jointly KO him.
BP retrieves Cap's shield and Sam suggests using the head to pacify the rest of the Masters. But a gun shoots it through the brain as Exterminatrix (Oubliette Midas sitting on a throne carried by and surrounded by the City's plastoid robots) ruins that plan. The heroes recognise her from the Original Sin series. She reminds them that her 2 6-guns fire Midas rounds that turn things to gold. But 1st she sends the plastoids at them. The heroes fight them while the foe shoots at them, but her bullets only succeed in turning plastoids into inert 'goldoids'. However the weight of the gold robots itself brings Cap to his knees and Exterminatrix is about to shoot him. But this was a ploy to let Panther sneak up behind her and knock her out. And without her to control them the plastoids stop moving.
There's just time for Sam to tell T'Challa that the rest of the Avengers are locked out of the City. (He doesn't have time to explain about the One World Under Doom event that this is a loose tie-in to.) He mentions that Madcap, Dreadknight, Mr Hyde and Exterminatrix out of action means that the only Master Of Evil left is the Mad Thinker (and his AI Quasimodo that has taken over the City).
Thinker has been watching everything that has happened. Quasi is worried that the others have fallen but MT expected it because he knew they wouldn't work as a team. He plans to cement his leadership of the MOE by being the 1 to defeat the Avengers. He explains the reason for his choice of villains. He will now combine Hyde's strength, Dreadknight's tech and Madcap's psychotropic gaze into his own Super-Adaptoid tech to give himself the power to succeed.
EnemiesPlus: Exterminatrix, Madcap, Mr. Hyde (
Calvin Zabo), Quasimodo.