Story
continues from GIANT-SIZE DEFENDERS #5.
At
the Palisades, Jack Norriss will still not accept the fact that Valkyrie is not
his wife Barbara but a new person inhabiting Barbara’s body. He even forces a
kiss on her which she highly resents. Suddenly there is an earthquake and Jack
is hurled over the edge of a cliff. Val quickly mounts Aragorn and snatches him
to safety…but there are no earthquake faults in New Jersey….
Back
at the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Defenders are picking up reports of crazy weather
all over the world and Doctor Strange attributes it to the temporal
displacement caused by their visitors from the future, the Guardians of the Galaxy
(Vance Astro, Charlie-27, Yondu, Martinex). There’s another factor too:
Vance Astro exists in this timeline as a child as well, causing time trouble….
The
Guardians’ ship, the U.S.S Captain America, has been discovered and is
surrounded by the military and the media. Martinex exits with young Vance Astro
and a violent confrontation seems imminent but Dr. Strange casts a spell that
(apparently) teleports the ship to another location. The team makes the
necessary repairs while Vance Astro gives young Vance (and the Defenders) a
history of the world up until his era—of course omitting that he is talking
about Earth and keeping his identity secret from the boy. Short version: In the
late 20th century there was an ecological crisis then a cyborg
uprising, then a world federation, followed by an invasion from Mars, leading
to barbarism for 500 years. Then the world federation was revived, the planets
were colonized, and the Badoon conquered (in AD 3007), wiping out much of the
population but with the rise of a revolutionary underground the Guardians are
part of. Strange then wipes the kid’s memory of all this and teleports him
home. Valkyrie and Jack Norris arrive and are filled in on the situation. The
Defenders (Dr. Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk) join the Guardians aboard
their ship with a view to joining them in their battle with the evil Badoon. The
ship takes off for the future….