Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Warlock and the Infinity Watch #18 Synopsis by
Rob Johnson
The Infinity Watch are testing their guest Maxam's strength. Moondragon is monitoring as he holds a metal plate over his head (Infinity Crusade #1 will show that the plate is very thick and Drax is on top of it). She measures him in the Hulk class. Gamora and Pip are still suspicious of the new guy and his supposed amnesia. But Adam Warlock ignores them all and walks out. Gamora can't understand why Adam isn't more concerned about Maxam given that she saw him in a time vision standing over Warlock's apparently dead body (#12). But she objects violently to Pip referring to Adam as her boyfriend.
Moondragon also leaves to rest after telepathically controlling the computers. She's still worried about Drax regaining his memory that he was her father in a past life, and that she herself killed him for the 2nd time with a mind-blast (Avengers #220). His later re-resurrection (Silver Surfer #35) left him brain-damaged and amnesiac.
Gamora is running another strength test as Drax and Maxam arm-wrestle, with Pip egging Drax on. She annoys the Troll by stopping him lighting a cigar. But then the Goddess (see IC#1) appears to her to recruit Gamora into her army of good. The others can't see her but they do notice when their seemingly-entranced comrade walks through a glowing portal and disappears.
Pip rushes to Moondragon's room but finds her gone too. And when he opens Adam's door he finds that room replaced by a white void containing only the Orb Of Eternity. He now decides this is a good time to make his play for leadership of the Watch. He dashes to his own room and re-emerges as Pip Man in a thrown-together supercostume, which smells, and declares himself the new leader.
Drax asks why *he* can't be leader but Pip reminds him he's brain-damaged. Maxam throws *his* hat in the ring but Pip points out he's so amnesiac he doesn't even know his own name (they call him Maxam because it's written on his belt). Drax suggests a vote. Maxam and Pip vote for themselves so Drax has the decider (Pip reminds him about the brain-damage disqualification). Maxam points out to Drax he would be the strongest leader but Pip reminds Drax that Maxam punched him into the ocean (last issue), so Drax votes for Pip.
Pip Man figures they need to get more info about what's happening, but none of them know how to work the computers. So he teleports off to get someone who can, and returns with Mr Fantastic. (Pip's suspicions are increased when amnesiac Maxam recognises him as the leader of the Fantastic Four.) Reed Richards wants to get back home to investigate his wife's disappearance (IC#1 again) but he pauses when he hears that Gamora, Moondragon and Warlock have gone too.
Reed detects the same wavelengths where Gamora went through a portal as he did when Invisible Woman did the same, and he finds something familiar about them. Then he encounters the same wavelengths in Adam's void room, but mixed with mystical forces. He tries to get the Orb to do something but it shocks them all. However they do get a result as it shows an image of the Goddess surrounded by her Cosmic Containment Units. He now recognises the wavelengths he's been detecting as those of the Cosmic Cubes Magus had in the Infinity War event, and this woman has many more of them. He believes such things operate telepathically, and because Gamora and his wife went through the portals voluntarily he deduces that they are now under the mental control of the mystery woman.
Pip now feels that Richards is challenging his leadership so he pulls a stick of metal off a piece of machinery and teleports to hit Mr F from behind. But Stretcho bends out of the way and Maxam grabs the little guy. Everyone apart from Pip now votes for Reed as leader (including Drax once he's assured that Mr F has never done anything to harm him). Reed now informs them that the Avengers have called a big meeting of every hero who *hasn't* vanished, so Pip teleports them into the middle of it (early in IC#2).