Avengers (1998 series) #500

Brian Michael Bendis takes over writing the next 4 issues, breaking up the current team in preparation for his New Avengers series. This is numbered as #500 of the original series, but also as #85 of vol 3.

Albert Deschesne is Richard Starkings wingman on the inking as usual.

Kelsey Leigh is at the meal in her civilian id. Which means that Captain Britain must have revealed her id (and that she's not dead) to the Avengers. Either that or it's a mistake. But later apps of the character will make it plain that she's still not revealed herself to her family (because she's under a geas not to).

A scene in #503 will suggest that the voices in the epilogue belong to Scarlet Witch's 2 'dead' children Billy and Tommy.

Ant-Man will remain dead through the whole of New Avengers vol 1 and half of vol 2 (all the way through House Of M the Fear Itself). During that time his daughter Cassie Lang will join the Young Avengers as the size-changing Stature and graduate to the the Mighty Avengers. Then she'll rejoin the YAv for Avengers: Children's Crusade at the end of which she'll use time-travel to rescue her dad from within the explosion here. (But then she herself will die in that mini-series, killed by Dr Doom. Later the Axis event will temporarily turn Doom good and he'll use Scarlet Witch's power to resurrect her - to even later become Stinger.)
This does raise the problem of Ant-Man's skeleton seen near the beginning of this issue. A partial solution has been to consign that little bit of the issue to an alternate reality.

There's also a question of whether this is the real Jack Of Hearts or a simulation. The Marvel Chronology Project treats him as real, the Marvel Fandom Wiki votes for a fake. The MCP treats the Ultrons here as real too, but then it doesn't distinguish between the various versions of the robot, some of which have appeared simultaneously.
Be that as it may the next app of the real JOH will be seen dead in Incredible Hercules #129 and resurrected in the Marvel Zombies Supreme mini-series. And the Ultrons are here between Iron Man (1998) #48 where he took over IM's armour and the Runaways (2005) series introducing his new 'son' Victor Mancha.

Vision too 'dies' here for about the same period as Ant-Man. In the interim a 2nd Vision (Jonas) is created as part of the Young Avengers, and it too dies in Av: Children's Crusade. The original Vision will appear 'dead' in the Chaos War: Dead Avengers mini-series, and will be re-created by Tony Stark in Av(2010)#19.

There are Avengers Disassembled tie-in runs in 6 series of 3 or 4 issues each which were published in parallel with this main 4, and 3 of them with 2 other issues labelled Prologue to Av Disassembled but only because they were published before the main run. All the tie-ins actually have little or nothing to do with this Avengers run itself. The Marvel Chronology Project only places the prologue and the main tie-in issues on opposite sides of Av#500-503 for Iron Man. Thor has all 6 issues before Av#500 and Spectacular Spider-Man's 6 issues all happen after #503. Captain America has his #29-32 split by the main event.

I'll summarise the after tie-ins in #503, and do the befores now in the order the MCP have them.
Iron Man #84-85 (Prologue). Tony Stark's role as US Secretary Of Defence and his membership of the UN Avengers clash when the US Government want Iron Man to extract a secret US doomsday robot from beneath Avengers Mansion without telling the team.
Thor #80-81 (Prologue). Loki leads the forces of evil against Asgard for the last battle. Thor goes to Earth to recruit Cap and IM but when they return Asgard is already fallen and many Asgardians dead. He sends the Avengers back and prepares for Ragnarok.
Thor #82-85. Thor learns of the repeating Asgardian cycle which ends each time in the apocalypse of Ragnarok but then begins a new cycle. However he finds a way to stop the cycle restarting, and then he himself sleeps the sleep of the Gods.
CA & Falcon #5-7. Cap suffers hallucinations, including thinking he's starting an affair with Scarlet Witch.
(CA&F#8, not in Disassembled. Cap thinks his hallucinations were caused by his enemies in this series.)
CA#29. Cap is tricked into setting up a Red Skull stooge in a Presidential bid. Then he gets the Avengers alert which begins this issue.