Avengers (1998 series) #502

Disaster has struck the Avengers. Ant-Man is dead and Vision is destroyed. Wasp and the new Captain Britain are on the critical list and Yellowjacket is watching over his ex-wife's bedside. She-Hulk went berserk (again) and is in SHIELD custody. Their Mansion is wrecked. Tony Stark appeared drunk while addressing the UN, and as a result he's no longer US Secretary Of Defence and the team is likely to lose their UN charter. Tony swears he hasn't had a drink but not all the Avengers believe him. Now a great crowd of (mainly) ex-Avengers have shown up outside the Mansion.

Now Nick Fury orders them to disperse because they're tainting a crime scene. And until SHIELD figures out exactly what happened they can hold their gathering in Central Park. Carol Danvers (now back in her type-2 Ms Marvel outfit but still apparently using the Warbird id) commiserates with Captain America over Scott Lang's death. But then Fury learns that the UN have announced that they *are* dropping the team. Hawkeye as usual is angry while Cap tries to calm things down. And then the next shoe drops ...

... as an alien spaceship appears overhead. Fury contacts his helicarrier for info but they can't detect anything. Several flying chars (including Falcon and Warbird) head up to it, but suddenly the sky is full of craft, including a big battleship. Fury somehow works out they're Kree ships and asks the SHIELD 'carrier for info on Kree defence systems and attack patterns. The flying heroes bring some of the small craft down. Hercules drags a soldier out of 1 of them, and it *is* a Kree uniform. Spider-Man stops him escaping and delivers him to Cap. The Kree claims the Supreme Intelligence predicted this day would come and now they are here to take revenge for unspecified 'insults'. Then he is teleported away, just as loads more Kree warriors teleport down.

As the battle continues Fury tells Steve Rogers there's something wrong. The superior Kree firepower could have easily just levelled New York, so why are they wasting time with a ground assault. The Avengers keep on fighting. Hawkeye in particular is taking down the enemy left, right and centre until a blast sets his back and quiver of arrows on fire. But he grabs a Kree with a jetpack and launches them both up to the mothership, where he flies them into an engine and brings the whole thing down.

The enraged Avengers just fight harder, but the their foes are teleported away and the smaller spaceships leave. Cap finds Clint Barton's bow. SHIELD can't tell their boss what just happened here. Someone (possibly Rick Jones?) discovers that the crashed spaceship isn't made from metal and is flimsy. But then Dr Strange drops in and apologises for being late, and wonders why they haven't realised the attacks are magic-based. And Cap works out who's behind them - the 1 Avenger who's been conspicuously absent.