Mighty Avengers, The #11: Review

Mar 2008

Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley

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Mighty Avengers, The #11 Review by Rob Johnson (May 11, 2015)

Marko Djurdjevic does the Morgan Le Fey pages again. This is the 2nd issue this month as they continue to catch up after several missed months. I'm not absolutely clear on what Dr Doom's plan is meant to include. He says, or rather thinks, that he just returned in time 30 mins before Iron Man and Sentry, and set up the Doomstadt Neural Energy Swarm Drain trap. But when I 1st read the story I assumed that he'd also gone back in time to Morgan to create the magic blobs army, with which he captured the Avengers, and so on. But after re-reading this issue and #9 it seemed more as if he returned from the reversed 2-issue flashback with Morgan to find his castle under attack in #9. He was thrown into last issue's accidental time trip before he could make use of the blobs. Then he came back from there this issue, unleashed the blobs, etc. But I can also imagine even more options than that. The attack on Iron Man confuses me too. Has it overloaded his system with energy or Drained it out of him? Ms Marvel tries to save him by absorbing energy from him. But then Sentry restarts his system by hitting him with the power of a thousand exploding suns. Which must surely be more than what Doom could muster. Not to mention certainly not survivable! But what the hey, this is comics! These suspicions about how Spider-Woman did what she did are of course leading up to the revelation in Secret Invasion that she's a Skrull replacement. But the Official Index has a lot of stuff before that, including World War Hulk.

Dr Doom is imprisoned by SHIELD at the end of this issue. He'll be freed from the Raft by the New Defenders in Fantastic Four #557-562, but he'll be reinterred at the end of that adventure. Then he'll be freed permanently, either in the general breakout in Secret Invasion #1 or by Norman Osborn in Dark Reign. However he makes appearances in the Sub-Mariner: Revolution and the Penance: Relentless miniseries and Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man #24 which the Marvel Chronology Project can't easily remove from between this issue and FF#557. They are left with 2 choices:- It's a Doombot, or Doom himself has an undocumented escape and recapture. I have proposed an alternative solution to them whereby the SubRev and PenRel limited series get moved to before #1-11 of this series. Doom is in SubRev as an ally of Namor and gives the Atlanteans refuge at the end. This includes their prisoner Nitro, and Penance comes to Latveria to claim Nitro in PenRel. These 2 series have apps by Iron Man. A preceding limited series Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel is dragged back with them, and this involves the whole Mighty Avengers as well as Shellhead. I've left FNSM#24 where it is because it's hardwired into One More Day. DrD is only in 1 panel without dialogue, as part of a collage of characters that Dr Strange sends Spidey to see about saving Aunt May's life. They all can't or won't help. That *could* easily be a Doombot, or Dr Strange's spell correctly sends SM to Doom's prison cell. Moving SubRev and PenRel does have effects on the timelines of Invisible Woman and Mr Fantastic which I addressed in #6.

#12-19 are part of Secret Invasion and are mainly flashbacks showing what the Skrulls have been doing behind the scenes of recent comics. They don't involve the MAv much and especially not Iron Man, so they won't be synopsised in these Libraries. However I intend to summarise them in comments on Secret Invasion itself. The exception is #14 which does include some current pages of Iron Man and MAv. I'll detail MAv's SecInv apps there. But before then lots of stuff will happen to our merry gang. I'll discuss that here, missing out Iron Man-only apps which are covered in comments to his own title. Black Widow tries to stop Winter Soldier stealing Captain America's shield in CA#27. There she discovers who he is, and we learn about their old relationship. Meanwhile Ms Marvel, Wonder Man and the SHIELD Lightning Storm team tackle AIM and MODOK in MsM#15-17, and Daisy Johnson recruits Ares' son for Nick Fury's Secret Warriors in our #13. Then at last Avengers: The Initiative starts, and team members get sporadically involved. A:I#1-2 and the 1st part of #3 happen in quick succession. Ares, Ms Marvel, Wasp and Wonder Man are fighting Ultimo when Armory volunteers to join the Initiative in #1. In #2 MsM and WM join in a fight with Hydra. Then Black Widow shows up briefly as an instructor in #3. The whole MAv team cameos in #2 of the new New Warriors series (about a team of M-Day-depowered mutants using technology to give them other powers), and Ms Marvel is in some other early issues with Tony Stark. Then Ares has a cameo in the opening issue of the Intiative team The Order's title. Meanwhile Black Widow, Ms Marvel and Wasp have a get together in Giant-Size Avengers #1 and swap stories of other Avengers. Then the team get involved in the war with the Inhumans in Silent War. SHIELD send Sentry to negotiate with the Inhumans in #2. The whole team except Spider-Woman fight the Inhumans in #5.

Then World War Hulk begins. Iron Man tries to persuade Sentry to join the fight in WWH#1, while Spider-Woman cameos there and Ms Marvel in Heroes For Hire #11/2. Then MsM and Wonder Man watch as Hulk beats IM in WWH#1 and his #19. Ares and Spider-Woman join MsM and WM to be captured by Hulk and his Warbound in WWH#3 and Avengers: Initiative #4, while Sentry still hangs back. He's still sitting on the sidelines in WWH#3, while we see the MAv among the captives in Hulk #109 and then in WWH#4, which ends with Sentry finally making his move (and in WWH: Front Line #5). The MAv 4 see the Hulk/Sentry fight in WWH#5, which is also seen in WWH:FL#6 and Hu#111. Wasp sat this 1 out, but she joins Ares, MsM and Sentry in the Aftersmash period to help rebuild Manhattan in WWH Aftersmash: Damage Control #2 - but she leaves the other 3 to it in #3. Black Widow was also conspicuous by her absence in this event, but she joins Ares and WM in chasing Amadeus Cho and Hercules in Incredible Hercules #112-115. (IncHerc#112 was still labelled Incredible Hulk but didn't have the Green One in it.) I'll add stuff between WWH and SecInv later.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Mighty Avengers, The #11 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

Last issue, after the Mighty Avengers invaded Dr Doom's Latverian castle, Victor Von Doom fell through his malfunctioning time machine with Iron Man and Sentry. They wound up in New York much earlier in the Marvel Age, and used the Fantastic Four's time machine to get back. IM and Sentry arrived back where they wanted to be, but Doom tricked them and went somewhen else.

Now we see Doom visiting Morgan Le Fey in the 13th Century, in a time that appears to me to be earlier than the 1 in #9. He asks her to teach him how to create a demonic army. She agrees, again apparently to me in return for him becoming her lover. (In the #9 scene he left her after learning what he wanted, promising to return with something from the future for her. He came back to the present at the beginning of the MAv attack.)

Now we see the remaining MAv (Ares, Black Widow, Ms Marvel, Spider-Woman, Wasp and Wonder Man) in a shattered part of Doom's castle after Iron Man and Sentry disappeared. Dr Doom assaults them with an army of protoplasmic blobs as seen on the cover. The team are quickly overwhelmed.

They awake to find themselves suspended in force fields elsewhere. Von Doom ignores them while he watches his castle through a scanner and counts down (to the return of IM and Sentry). Ms Marvel tries to rile him into the usual villain rant that reveals his plan. Instead he just insults them all individually, while thinking his plan for our benefit.

1st he recaps that his Venom virus was accidentally released during Ultron's attack on the world in #1-6. The MAv dealt with that in #7-8, and then came to arrest him for it in #9. He and the 2 heroes fell back in time, and returned last issue. He didn't want to leave IM&S back in time because they would damage his past. But he arranged for them to get back half an hour after he did. During which time he captured the other heroes and set up a trap.

As the countdown nears completion, Spider-Woman suddenly starts explosively emitting an energy Doom doesn't recognise. It frees the others and seems to dissolve the blobs. Ares attacks Doom and others start dismantling Doombots, while Ms Marvel flies to the castle to warn the returning IM&S.

We now see a replay of the last pages of last issue, but with the added bonus of knowing that something called the Doomstadt Neural Energy Swarm Drain is about to go off. Sentry flies to meet Carol Danvers as she shouts to them to escape. But the whatever-it-is explodes, presumably destroying the castle, and the Golden Avenger is caught in the blast. Which is where we left things.

Sentry gets Shellhead out of the blast area, but his armour has overloaded. MsM drains a lot of energy off, but they think Tony Stark is dead. Until he speaks to them and asks Bob Reynolds to hit him with his 'power of a thousand exploding suns' to recharge the armour. And it works.

Dr Doom is successfully fighting the rest of the team with magic, until the other 3 arrive and Sentry rips his mask off. The resulting magical(?) feedback(?) knocks Doom out, and Iron Man arrests him. He's taken into custody by SHIELD.

Epilogues:-

Stark tells Maria Hill he'll have to rebuild his armour from scratch. They wonder how Spider-Woman saved the day.

Natasha Romanoff asks Jessica Drew how she did it - it doesn't match the abilities in her SHIELD files. Jess tries to shrug it off.

Back in the 13th Century Morgan waits in vain for Victor's return.

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