But in the air they see
Scarlet Witch casting spells. The ex-Avenger who in
Avengers Disassembled destroyed the previous Vision and killed Cassie's father
Ant-Man/
Scott Lang, and who's not been seen (by all but possibly
Beast and
Hawkeye (Clint Barton)) since she temporarily rewrote reality in
House of M. They immediately assume she's responsible for the problem. And the sea of blood that is now inundating New York. Then
Wanda magics them away.
Iron Patriot (
Norman Osborn) arrives with some of his
Dark Avengers:-
Ms Marvel (really
Moonstone),
Sentry and
Spider-Man (really
Venom/
Mac Gargan). He directs the other 3 to help the citizens while he gives an interview to TV reporter
Trish Tilby. He wants to assure people that everything will be alright.
But the problems are worldwide. San Francisco is encased in amber. The Atlantic is boiling over
Atlantis. There are pillars of fire in
Wakanda, a rain of frogs in Alexandria and plague in Milan.
Meanwhile Avengers' butler Edwin
Jarvis is driving an old jalopy to find
Thor to do something about all this. But as he drives across the southern border of Kansas he finds himself unexpectedly in Texas. Checking his satnav he finds that the state of Oklahoma has been written out of reality. And therefore
Asgard, currently located near Broxton in that state, is no longer accessible.
He is hailed by a flying craft containing
Hercules and young
Amadeus Cho, the 7th smartest brain on the planet. Cho has been studying what he calls the
Chaos Cascade and figures a real Avengers team is needed in this crisis. He tracked Jarvis through his GPS because he's the only person who's been in every incarnation of the Avengers. Hercules claims he's the rock upon which the team is based. So Jarvis suggests they go find the 1 man to lead the team.
In Philadelphia some of the
New Avengers (
Captain America (
Bucky Barnes),
Ms. Marvel (
Carol Danvers),
Ronin (
Clint Barton),
Spider-Man (
Peter Parker) and
Wolverine are battling an invasion of plants. The plants are winning and are killing the heroes. SW appears overhead but says she's too late, Cap is dead. She departs empty-handed ...
... to appear next in Toronto where some of
Omega Flight (
Arachne,
Guardian (
Michael Pointer),
Sasquatch and
U.S. Agent) and the civilian populace are being consumed by a swarm of insects. She grabs USA saying he'll have to do instead.
Stark Aerospace Labs near Cape Canaveral is now surrounded by volcanoes, and
Iron Man is digging trenches to hold back lava. But it's not good enough so he orders all staff into the test bunker where they'll be safe.
Tony Stark is at a low ebb. His
Extremis tech stopped working because of the
Skrull virus in
Secret Invasion. It seems he's wearing the Extremis armour but he can't control it very well. Osborn has taken over
SHIELD and the Avengers. And this is 1 of the few Stark facilities
Ezekiel Stane didn't destroy before SI (in
IM(2008)#1-6).
Shellhead attaches himself to a system with 2 parallel giant booster rockets. And he gets his staff to launch him into space. Communications are scrambled so he's going up to see the big picture. The Witch arrives after he's gone, disappointed to have missed another of her targets.
Her next destination is Canyon de Chelly in the Arizona desert which is currently and very unusually in the middle of a violent snowstorm. Wanda arrives to find
Hulk has been buried under a mass of ice. She's about to give up on him when he bursts free. And she takes him with her.
Cho, Herc and Jarvis have reached Chicago where Jarvis expects to find
Henry Pym. Amadeus is confused because he's hacked into Pym's files and they don't mention a base here. Jarvis leads them into a
Jan Van Dyne boutique and to a door marked maintenance in the back. An artificial voice declines the Greek demi-god's request for admittance, but
Jocasta is overjoyed to let Jarvis in.
Behind the door is an enormous lab space. The female robot explains that Dr Pym has designed what he calls a
Pym Pocket, a region of space that's larger on the inside than on the outside. (Cho makes the obvious TARDIS reference.) But Pym isn't so happy for even Jarvis to interrupt his work.
Pym explains his new uniform as belonging to his new super-id
Wasp. Cho is introduced as a really smart kid. They butt brains for a while until Amadeus impresses him by working out the still centre of the Chaos Cascade storm. It's in Eastern Europe, and Pym correctly guesses he means the place in
Transia called
Mount Wundagore.
On a Stark satellite Tony has zeroed in on the same place. He can't contact any other Avengers so he goes back to his double-booster and heads there alone.
We get there 1st and see
Modred the Mystic chanting from the
Book of Darkhold which is held open by
Bova the cow-woman in chains. She pleads with the man she nursed back to health to stop. As he reads the words of the book become etched in letters of fire on his body. He is *becoming* the Darkhold in service of its lord.
We see corpses of many
New Men/Knights of Wundagore. And there is someone else who Modred continues to torture, and refers to as a child of
Magda - ie 1 of the twins we know as
Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.
Back in Chicago the visitors are trying to persuade Pym to lead an Avengers team. The
X-Men are trapped in ambered San Francisco and we see the
Fantastic Four (actually only
Mr. Fantastic and
Thing) trapped in TV transmissions. Thor is unavailable. Nobody has to mention that the original Wasp is dead. And nobody says that Iron Man isn't in a good position. And Hulk doesn't count. So that makes him the only founding member in line for the job. Hank asks Hercules why *he* doesn't do it. Herc responds by suggesting that Pym is *afraid* to lead the team. And Henry agrees.
He explains that it dates back to the early days of the Avengers. When they 1st got together to fight
Loki in
Av#1 he worried why the strong guys (Hulk, IM and Thor) needed
Ant-Man (& Wasp). But it was he who worked out how to defeat Loki in the end, so he figured his role was being the 'smartest man in the room' - and he'd secretly be the team leader. Becoming
Giant-Man in
#1½ was decisive in defeating
Dr Doom. But being GM made him clumsy (we see him in
#3 on top of a train being hit by a bridge) and he started to lose confidence. He says that later he was ant-size in Avengers Mansion and happened to see IM unmask as Tony Stark. Suddenly he realised he wasn't even the cleverest guy on the team. After that he had no pretensions about being leader.
But Cho and Herc point out that Stark isn't *that* smart - he did some stupid things while Pym was replaced by a Skrull. He and the other
Illuminati exiled Hulk to space (
Planet Hulk), and they should have known he would come back to bite them on the butt (
World War Hulk). He caused the
Civil War that killed
Bill Foster and
Steve Rogers. Even faithful Jarvis has to add that it was the Illuminati's attack on the Skrull empire and their capture (in the 1st issue of their limited series) that gave the aliens info to launch their Secret Invasion.
Henry finally accepts their election as leader. He says "Toolbot" and a device expands into his hand, which he says contains his top 900 tools miniaturised. (He's improved the tech he used as
Dr Pym in
West Coast Avengers.) Moreover a smart chip automatically presents him with the right tool for the job. In this case a key which unlocks the exit. Also his Pym Pocket is even more TARDIS-like in that the door will open to wherever in space (and he says time?) he wants to go - in this case Mount Wundagore ...
... and outside they are greeted by Scarlet Witch. Hank immediately asks if *she* is causing the Chaos (she'd done Avengers Disassembled before he was abducted by the Skrulls). She denies it and says she's assembled a team of Avengers for him. But he must summon them. He thinks she means a magic spell, but Jarvis prompts him to shout "Avengers assemble" ...
... and SW makes Hulk, Stature, US Agent and Vision appear.
Up on the mountain Modred detects the force arrayed against him. He has completely absorbed the Darkhold and now summons its master
Chthon to occupy the body of
Quicksilver.