Synopsis
Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders #1 synopsis by
Rob Johnson
Rating:
Years ago on an alternate Earth Tony Stark and Ho Yinsen have built a suit of armour to escape from terrorists. The armour was also meant to keep Tony from dying due to shrapnel dangerously near his heart. But things happen differently in this timeline. Stark has knocked Yinsen out. When he awakes Ho finds himself in the armour, and Stark sacrifices himself to gain time for the armour to fully charge.
Yinsen goes on to improve the armour and become the superhero Rescue, and form the supergroup Defenders. He ushers in an era of world peace and prosperity. Then the presence of another Earth in the sky signals the onset of an incursion, and their world is doomed.
Now Baron Ho Yinsen wakes up in the fragment of that Earth he rules on Battleworld. He'd fallen asleep at his desk, and has been woken by She-Hulk, the local representative of Dr Doom's police, the Thor Corps. (The symbol of her office is a gavel - she doesn't need a hammer because she has her fists.)
Yinsen has a recurring dream of the history above. Which makes no sense because everyone knows there was nothing before Battleworld. And Tony Stark is alive and President of the next-door Warzone. But then he has no other memory of where his Rescue armour came from. Jennifer Walters gives him a friendly warning that she'll pretend she didn't hear him talk about such things, or she'd have to arrest him for heresy.
But when she leaves Yinsen we learn that she too has been having strange dreams. She meets up with Spider Hero (Hobie Brown in this reality, who wants to be called Spider-Man) who reports there's something going on behind the wall that separates them from Mondo City. The law-obsessed bosses of Mondo City put up that concrete wall to keep out the more free-thinking inhabitants of Yinsen City.
Hobie says "If I had a Spider-Sense, it'd be tingling". She-Hulk asks him what a Spider-Sense is - he admits he doesn't know. When she asks if he's had any strange dreams, Spider Hero says he has but they seem more like memories. We see him in a dream as the Prowler witnessing the death of Spider-Man, and taking on his name.
She-Hulk and Spider Hero are part of the Defenders. Another Defender, the armoured Kid Rescue (Antonia Yinsen daughter of Ho), calls them over to the more conventional see-thru wall between Yinsen City and the Warzone. (This is 1 of Doom's official barriers between zones. The wall between here and Mondo City is a private affair - as far as Doom is concerned they're part of the same zone.) They go to join White Tiger (Ava Ayala).
They see a woman walking towards them through a desert. White Tiger wants to let her in, She-Hulk says it's against Doom's law, Kid Rescue is undecided and Spider Hero keeps quiet. The woman solves the problem for them by breaking through the wall with a sword.
She introduces herself as Dr Faiza Hussain, Captain Britain. The others don't even know what Britain is. Faiza says her dreams tell her it's her home, and she's determined to find it. The dreams also say her healing sword is Excalibur, and a male Captain Britain passed the title to her before he died defending the world.
Ho Yinsen joins them, unusually in his Rescue armour. She-Hulk points out that CB broke the law of their god Dr Doom by breaking the wall and crossing zones without authorisation. Faiza makes things worse by protesting that Doom isn't god. Ho agrees this is heresy - but it's also correct. They all know from their dream memories that there were worlds before Battleworld. Jennifer the Thor is finally compelled to admit that she knows this too.
Then a hologram of Doom appears. He cancels She-Hulk's Thorhood, and her gavel falls lifeless. To punish them all he will allow Mondo City to invade. And then he vanishes.
A loud noise heralds the destruction of the concrete wall, as a giant tank with multiple guns breaks through. Daddy Rescue holds it back with a forcefield as the Defenders usher civilians out of the way. Boss Magniconte and Boss (Emma) Frost exit the tank. Frost detects that the forcefield is simple electromagnetism. Magniconte chooses a phaser round for his Overseer gun, which punches through the forcefield and through Yinsen's brain. Ho dies in his daughter's arms.
Captain Britain retaliates. A whirling Excalibur's magic deflects all Magniconte's shots. But Frost uses her psi-powers to warp Faiza's perceptions and render her unconscious.
She wakes to find herself facing Boss (Luke) Cage in the Boss's HQ in Mondo City.