Avengers Anew

Avengers Underground # 4

2005-03-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

Previously: During an investigation into a series of murders committed by the supernatural Bonewalker, the Black Knight (Dane Whitman), Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff), and his wife Crystal were caught in a huge explosion at York University's particle physics lab. The Vision (Victor Shade) was also at the scene, while the Black Panther (King T'Challa of the Wakandas) pursued other leads elsewhere.

Avengers: Underground #4

“…reporting live from the historic city of York, England, where firefighters are still combating the apparent gas explosion that has wrecked the Particle Physics building on the university campus and cost the lives of three Avengers…”
“…speculation about super-villain attack given structural damage to the site before the explosion went off , leading bystanders to speculate…”
“…noted physicist and adventurer Sir Dane Whitman was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, but went on to become one of England’s greatest heroes after…”
“…firefighters dragged the three bodies from the wreckage about half an hour ago, but sources say the corpses were unburned enough to enable positive identification of former Avengers Quicksilver, Crystal, and the Black Knight…”
“…princess of the mysterious genetic sub-race the Inhumans, who are now thought to be off-planet, first came to prominence as an associate and later member of the Fantastic Four…”
“…will investigate the possibility that some equipment in the Particle Physics laboratory was responsible for the magnitude of the explosion, which shattered…”
“…gained notoriety after it was revealed that Pietro Leinsherr was actually the biological son of mutant terrorist Magneto, leading many to speculate on his reasons for joining the Avengers in the first place, especially after incidents where Leinsherr apparently co-operated with US and East German government initiatives to capture the Avengers…”
“…cost of replacing the buildings is minimal compared to the equipment inside them, with an estimated destruction of seventy million dollars’ worth of…”
“…what some are calling the Avengers’ curse, since these three heroes are only the latest in a recent string of tragedies including…”
“…Edwin Jarvis, who said that the loss of these three good people is another sad blow, but that their valour and courage would always stand as a testimony to the best that humanity has to offer…”
“…back to the studio for Julio and a look at the weather. Julio?”

“Idiots,” scowled Pietro Maximoff. “The media is run by fools for fools.”
His angry snort woke Crystal, who opened her eyes and looked around her blearily. “Pietro?” she called. “Why aren’t I dead?”
Quicksilver was at his wife’s bedside in an instant. “You passed out from shielding us from the heat,” he reminded her. “Before I ran you to safety under cover of the smoke.”
“I distinctly heard that my body had been found in the wreckage,” the Inhuman princess pointed out.
“A ruse, although how our host gained the genetic material to perpetrate so comprehensive a hoax is something I look forward to discussing with him.”
“Our host?” Crystal struggled painfully to her elbows. “Ouch.”
“Gently, my love,” Quicksilver chided her. “The treatments that corrected minor harm caused to you by Bonewalker’s possession will make you sore for a few days.”
Crystal remembered the minutes of stark terror as the monster’s puppet. “You saved me! And Dane.”
“Yes,” agreed Pietro. “But more of this when you are well. You must take time to recover.”
“I’ll recover better when I know where I am and what’s going on,” Crystal pointed out irritably.
“Very well,” sighed Quicksilver. “We are in Wakanda, Crystal, and we are guests of the Black Panther. He has arranged so the world thinks we are dead by perpetrating the hoax at the university after we overcame the Bonewalker.”
“But why?”

“So you’re not the Vision any more?” the Black Knight asked his taciturn companion.
“That is a designation that I have outgrown,” replied Victor Shade. “The nomenclature was given me when the Wasp first saw me emerging through her apartment wall: ‘It’s some kind of unearthly inhuman vision’. At the time that name seemed better than having none as my creator Ultron had intended. I share the distinction with the Hulk and the Thing of being named by the small-minded outcry of one terrified by what they beheld.”
“I never thought of it like that, V… Victor,” Dane Whitman admitted. “I don’t think any of us did.”
“I have gone beyond the need for human recognition or validation,” the synthezoid replied.
“Is this about the Avengers’ reaction to you being ripped apart when She-Hulk went berserk?” the Black Knight worried. “Look, you have to understand that things were terribly pressured…”
“For weeks a mindless automaton had replaced me in the team’s ranks while I secretly aided T’Challa in his investigation,” Shade replied, with just an undertone of irritation in his modulated tones. “Nobody noticed. Even my own former wife didn’t notice.”
“Things weren’t right those last few weeks,” Dane argued. “Everybody says so. Folks were acting all out of character, things were getting weird. Maybe Wanda was…”
“The Scarlet Witch is supposed to have gone insane at the loss of her children,” Victor Shade cut in. “She reshaped reality to create Thomas and William, then the chaos magics drove her mad as she tried to cope with losing them, and from then on she altered the world around her to a greater or lesser degree to cope with her madness. I do not accept this.”
“But Viz…. Victor, there’s a big hole in Avengers Mansion right now that…”
“Three points for you to consider,” interrupted the synthezoid coldly. “The first, that when Wanda was possessed by the Serpent Crown, and again when she was controlled by Chthon, she struggled and overcame her slavery, by the power of her love. Secondly, that the Scarlet Witch’s apparent attacks against the Avengers in her latter madness were focussed on those who loved her and whom she loved the most, and for some reason upon Scott Lang, as if those who knew her best had to be eliminated.” Victor Stone glowered with red pinprick eyes at the Black Knight. “And thirdly, Thomas and William were my children too. Good day.”

The beam of light seared down from the skies, a rainbow cylinder that flashed to coherent white light and then became a young black woman in a black and white silk costume with a pinkish sheen. Monica Rambeau looked around her at the devastated university site and sought somebody in authority.
“I’m George Gallowglass,” the tired looking police inspector told her, recognising the former Chairwoman of Earth’s mightiest heroes. “But I guess I’m not in charge here since the Men from UNCLE got here.” He nodded his head sideways to the blue jumpsuited SHIELD technicians that were crawling over the wreckage.
“I heard you recovered three bodies,” Photon said. “Of the Black Knight, Quicksilver, and Crystal.”
“I’m sorry,” Gallowglass told her. “Initial findings suggest they were overcome by the fumes when the site caught fire in combat with an unidentified superhuman.”
“You’re sure it’s them?”
“One of them was carrying a big black sword,” the Inspector pointed out. “But really I guess you’d need to talk to James Bond over there.”
Monica picked her way past the SHIELD agents bagging and logging the death scene and found the officer in charge. “Special Agent Sitwell?”
“Oh, Photon. Are you here on official business?”
“There isn’t any official Avengers business now, is there Agent Sitwell?” Photon answered bluntly. “But when the story about Dane and the others broke Jan asked me to come over and take a look.”
“You’re willing to identify the bodies?” Jasper Sitwell checked. “They’re not a pretty sight, and there’s not that much left to recognise.”
“I’ll do it,” agreed Photon. She’d worked for the New Orleans Harbour Police for eight years. She was used to gristly corpses.
Agent Sitwell led her to a pitched tent guarded by a serious looking young man with a futuristic rifle. He led her inside, to where three black body bags lay on metal trestles. “You can take a look,” he told Monica. “We’ve already taken the samples we need for DNA matching. But don’t expect much.”
Photon took her time inspecting the corpses, but she couldn’t tell from the charred remains whether they were her former comrades or not. “Where’s the Ebony Blade?” she asked.
“Shipped back to the helicarrier,” Sitwell told her. “That’s one dangerous doohickey.” He checked something off on a clipboard then said, “Look, I don’t wish to be insensitive but we have a lot to do here. Is there anything else you need before you go?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Photon assured him. “Three Avengers are dead, and the villain who caused it is at large. Whether we’re officially bust or not, we take care of our own.”
“Ah,” sighed Jasper Sitwell. “I suspected as much.” He lifted open the tent flap and called in the guard. “Agent Porter?”
Photon’s brow furrowed. “Mr Sitwell? I know I no longer have an official clearance, but in a case like this…”
“Remove her,” Sitwell told Porter.
Then there was a brief flash and Agent Porter was gone.
“Completely satisfied?” Sitwell asked Photon.
“I’ll tell as much to any others who want to snoop,” Photon assured the SHIELD agent. “Count on it.”

The sun was especially good on the Cote d’Azur at this time of year, but the news on the TV at the beach bar brought a chill to one woman who watched it. She gestured and the sound of the set turned up so she could hear about the tragedy in England.
She unclipped a tiny mobile phone from the string of her micro-bikini and thumbed a speed-dial number. “Jaques? A change of plans. Book me on the next flight to Manchester. Yes, I know, dear, but something’s come up. Business before pleasure. Old business. Something I have to do.”
Then Sersi placed her drink on the bartop, shifted her clothing into something suitable for a taxi ride to the airport, and strode away.

“I trust you’ve all recovered from your exertions,” the Black Panther told his guests as he made them welcome in the Wakandan palace beneath the solemn gaze of the Panther God statue.
“We’re fine thanks, T’Challa,” Dane Whitman answered, “but we’re all a little bit puzzled as to why we suddenly have to be dead.”
“Given recent events it’s not in the best possible taste,” Crystal pointed out.
“I can see why you’d be puzzled,” the Panther admitted. “But Victor and I felt there was no other way to extricate you from the situation you’d stumbled into.”
“A murder investigation,” Quicksilver noted, “which seems to have become something rather more.”
“Did you have to blow up the Particle Physics building?” the Black Knight complained. “Bystanders could have been hurt.”
“Bystanders were kept well clear by the damage caused by the Bonewalker,” the Vision replied. “There were also operatives of the Wakandan intelligence services amongst the crowd ensuring people stayed away.”
“York University will be receiving some generous bequests from private donors to repair the damage,” T’Challa promised. “But when you see what we’re up against I hope you’ll feel Victor and I were justified.”
Taku, the Wakandan security chief brought a slim black laptop over to his King. T’Challa flicked it open and quickly briefed Dane, Crystal, and Pietro on the incidents in Vienna.
“I can’t wait to hear what links US Government papers from sixty years ago with a mediaeval witch trial,” Quicksilver observed.
“Or with that creature that claims he was slain by my ancestor,” the Black Knight added.
“You have got the Bonewalker secure?” Crystal worried.
“He is confined in my technological jungle,” the Panther assured her. “So far he has declined to communicate since Victor captured him.”
Crystal smiled across at the dour synthezoid. “Did we thank you for saving us?” she asked a little uncertainly.
“Thanks are not necessary,” replied Shade.
But Crystal rather thought they were.
“The documents the Bonewalker absconded with purport to detail secret conspiracies to shut down the slew of American wartime heroes after 1945,” T’Challa told them. “I suggest it was these documents’ theft and subsequent auctioning that triggered off the current round of violence.”
“We still don’t know where they ended up yet, right?” Dane checked.
“But we do know that the Bonewalker was somehow raised up from his confinement on Wundagore Mountain to retrieve the papers,” Quicksilver noted. “And also that he felt for some reason he had to destroy copies of documents being authenticated by Canon Cheyney.”
“The documents were accounts of the suppression of witches,” Victor Shade contributed. “In it’s own way, and if some of the people destroyed had genuine gifts, was that not also shutting down a generation of metahumans?”
“You’re saying this wasn’t the first time somebody conspired to wipe out superheroes?” Dane asked.
“I’m saying it has happened before and it may be happening again now,” T’Challa suggested. “I further posit that when you stumbled across Cheyney’s murder there were very specific reasons why you had to die.”
“Stumbled across the murder?” frowned Crystal. The pretty Inhuman shook her head. “That Bonewalker had specific links to Dane and to Pietro. That’s too big a coincidence to be a coincidence.”
“A telling point,” conceded the Vision.
“I need people I can trust,” the Panther admitted. “I suspect, but do not know, that one or more of the Avengers may have been compromised, and may be working with those who seek a holocaust of superheroes. Other high-profile heroes are being watched too closely to contact, and informing them of our suspicions would be to give them a death sentence.”
“So just phoning Cap up is out,” sighed Crystal.
“I need people willing to go underground for a while,” King T’Challa continued. “To follow this through quietly and secretly, while the enemy thinks they are dead.”
“And you chose us without consulting us,” Pietro objected. “Suppose we decide to simply leave? Not to play your paranoid games?”
“Then you may leave,” the Black Panther told him. He didn’t say anything about what might happen next.
“I just hate unsolved mysteries,” Dane Whitman admitted. “And I really need to know how I got the Ebony Blade back. I thought the link between us was broken, the curse lifted. I need to know what happened to Sean and the Bloodwraith, and what happened with Sir Percy of Scandia and this Bonewalker. And if somebody was behind that incident recently with Wanda…”
“They will be found and dealt with,” answered Victor Shade, in tones as hollow as a tomb.
“I guess you have your team,” Crystal told the Panther.

“The Bonewalker is fallen, destroyed or captured.”
“This was hardly the swift clean operation we envisaged. His revival was an error.”
“We are committed now. We will have to accelerate the timetable before one of the remaining heroes understands what is to come.”
“Whom do you suggest we appoint to undertake any necessary conclusions?”
“Why not the one who co-ordinated things for us in ’45? If things need to be dealt with in such macabre grand guinol fashion, who better to undertake the slaughter than Wexford the Dissected Man?”
“Who indeed? Set him loose then, and let the slaughter begin.

Continued…

Footnotes for the Continuity Maven:

Quicksilver co-operated to have the Avengers arrested by Freedom Force in Avengers Annual #15, and with East German security forces and half of Hank Pym’s rogues’ gallery in West Coast Avengers around #38 or so. These gross betrayals, along with Quicksilver leading the robotic incarnation of the Zodiac against the Avengers in West Coast Avengers Annual #1, were later attributed to the mind-control of Inhuman Prince Maximus the Mad.

Edwin Jarvis was first Tony Stark’s butler, and then became the long serving butler at Avengers Mansion. He has previously been shown to have befriending Pietro, and especially the Vision.

The Vision was so named in Avengers #57. He was apparently ripped apart in Avengers #401.

The Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff, seemed to lose control of chaos magics that Dr Strange claimed didn’t exist in Avengers #400-403, and may have been responsible for a number of anomalous incidents before that. She overcame the siren call of the Serpent Crown in #147, which also features one of the most romantic moments in comics when Wanda worried because Vision is now carrying the dark object. The synthezoid doubts it can affect his electronic brain, but concludes to his wife that if he is affected, “then I too shall be redeemed by the power of love.” Chthon’s possession of the Scarlet Witch in Avengers #187 ends differently. Despite the vision’s assertion in the story above, it was her step-father Django Maximoff’s love and sacrifice that saved her from the Elder God. Twins Thomas and William were conceived and born in the second Vision and the Scarlet Witch limited series, and were retconned to have been shards of demon-lord Mephisto’s soul around Avengers West Coast #55 or so.

Photon, (Monica Rambeau), formerly known as Captain Marvel, gained the ability to change herself into any form of energy after an accident with one of those weird science machines that so many villains have sitting around their headquarters ships in the Marvel Universe. She went on to become an Avenger, and her eventual promising stint as Chair of Earth’s Mightiest heroes was cut short by the mind-manipulations of Dr Druid, himself being influenced by the villainess Nebula. She rejoined the Avengers on a part-time basis just before Kang’s largest attempt at world conquest (The Kang Dynasty), but was another of the heroes who was strangely ineffectual during the events of #400-403.

Jasper Sitwell is a second generation SHIELD agent, one of Nick Fury’s most trusted operatives, and was once known for his boy-scout attitude and his overuse of the phrase “Don’t yield – back SHIELD!” At one point he seemed to have been murdered (along with most of the interesting SHIELD cast) by rebel Life Model Decoy robots, but was eventually discovered in stasis and returned to duty.

Sersi is another former Avenger, the foremost matter manipulator of the Eternals, an offshoot race of humanity. We’ll footnote her more thoroughly another time.

Avengers Anew #4-- "The Future's So Bright..."

2005-03-01T22:12:00.000-08:00

Previously: The Avengers have finally rebuilt their headquarters, although it’s only limited to a few rooms beneath the grounds of their former Mansion.

Avengers Anew #4 – a Ficlet

Dr. Strange casts a spell high in the air. Below, the New Avengers (Hawkeye, Volcana, Black Cat, Yankee Clipper, Beta Ray Bill, the Guardsman) stand beside more veteran members (Captain America, Iron Man.) His spell complete, Dr. Strange joins the assemblage. The spell will protect the entire grounds of the Avengers Park, so that none desiring the Avengers harm may enter. Hawkeye thanks Dr. Strange for his help, mentioning that this is just one part of his hopes to tighten the network of heroes. He offers Strange his vision that if any hero faces a menace he can’t handle alone, the Avengers will be there. Dr. Strange remarks somewhat aloofly that the menaces he faces probably wouldn’t be solved with a few trick arrows, or armors or mutants for that matter. Hawkeye nods, thinks, and mentions that if he knows any magic users, applications may be available . . .

Captain America and Iron Man say goodbye to the remaining Avengers, telling them they’re in good hands with Hawkeye. Cap also adds that he’ll be around, that the team is raw and needs to be more coordinated. He’ll call for more training soon, unless, of course, he calls for back-up in the field! The Guardsman thanks Iron Man personally for choosing to continue funding so the Avengers could rebuild. Iron Man mentions that’s not entirely true. The financial strain would have been too much, so they had to reach out to . . . additional benefactors. “You’ll meet him soon, I’m sure, he’s very . . . hands-on,” he says. But he and Cap excuse themselves. Besides, the Avengers have been asked back to Project: Pegasus, where Bill Foster promised “something important.”

Bill Foster looks back on all his past achievements. He promises himself that the future will be better. After all, that’s what he was told as a kid. His parents, his church. If he wanted to get out of the ghetto, he’d have to work hard. So he did. And the future was better, for a while. But there was always that drive, that drive to do better, to seek further, to reach a greater distance. He got out of the ghetto and into a top college, only to find himself saddled with a ballooning loan debt. He graduated top of his class, but couldn’t land any project, suffering from one assistant position to the next. He finally became assistant to the top biochemist in the world, Hank Pym, but saw his wife file for divorce. When he saw his ex-wife with “super hero” Luke Cage, Bill stole Pym’s research to become a new Giant-Man. Never got the girl again, but he did become a superhero. The only thing that got him was cancer from battling radioactive supervillains. He got cured, but gave up heroing, going back to the string of assistant labwork ever since.

So where things looking up? He ended up heading dimensional research at the energy research complex Project: Pegasus. Ended up discovering the “Fosteron” particle so that he could increase or decrease ambient energies like Pym did for mass. Heck, it virtually ensured the success of the rescue operation of the Avengers when they went missing. Maybe things were looking up after all. Maybe the future will be better.

Once his demonstration was over, everyone would understand . . .

to be continued...

Avengers Anew #3 -- Legacies

2005-02-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

Previously: Hawkeye and his New Avengers helped take down an AIM terrorist cell, but failed to realize a mysterious mastermind slipped in to steal the experimental equipment as it was taken away. Elsewhere, Bill Foster and Hank Pym had a heated discussion of the implications for Foster’s new energy particle, and somewhere else Beta Ray Bill mourned the passing of Asgard.

Avengers Anew #3 – a Ficlet

The issues starts out with Captain America vaulting over a large metal box in a white-paneled room, carrying a briefcase under the arm with his signature shield. Hawkeye shouts from behind to “stop him! He’s getting away!” What’s this? It isn’t an imposter—it’s the real Captain America who seems to be escaping! Volcana tries to take him down with a plasma blast, but Cap ducks behind his shield, obscured in its wake. Cap comments that her hesitation will cost her—he knows she’s not firing at full power, too concerned for his safety. Hawkeye fires a volley of arrows, but Captain America laughs it off, claiming that there’s nothing Hawkeye or the Avengers can do to stop him as he nears a big set of doors labeled “exit.” That’s when the Black Cat slides out from behind a series of miscellaneous tech equipment. She tackles his legs, sending the fighting American to the floor. Cap recovers well, but leaves an opening for Hawkeye’s putty arrow. The briefcase is snatched as the arrow retracts on its line. Success!

Captain America congratulates the team on its training session. But he chides them on still thinking as individuals, not as a team. Hawkeye beams like a proud father—he noticed that Cap referred to them as “Avengers” during the take-down. That’s something. He then goes on to express his appreciation that Tony Stark will be finishing this new “Play Room” with the rest of the Avengers headquarters soon.

Hawkeye, Captain America, and Black Cat and Volcana move through the construction site of the base. Hawkeye explains that the underground headquarters is all they really need rebuilt, with the area above ground converted to a private park. And Tony Stark doesn’t have to foot the bill himself—there are plenty of other heroes with additional resources. 357 Fifth Avenue will be the new home of the Avengers Park, a place where heroes can hang with other heroes, rest, research, train, or whatever. The Avengers needn’t be a chartered team with an Embassy. It just needs to be a place where heroes can band together to fight those battles no single hero can face.

Cut to: the Guardsman patrolling the city. He flies overhead, wondering if he commands the same respect and awe from the gawkers below that Iron Man might get. He remembers the presence he commanded as the head Guardsman for the Vault, a superhuman prison, but that was based out of fear more than respect. He is contacted by the Yankee Clipper, who is also patrolling but has to use his time-shifting belt to move at hyper-speed, dropping him out of contact every time. The two are proud to patrol, but the Clipper shares that he feels a little awkward doing this again after so many years of other heroes getting along just fine without him. They are about to return when Beta Ray Bill drops from the sky to talk to the Guardsman. The alien with the power of a Norse god has sensed arcane energies nearby, an overwhelming sense of evil. His teammates agree to follow his lead, but the Guardsman feels a little weirded out—not only by Beta Ray’s distant attitude but by the fact that Bill seems noticeably larger. Just slightly too “off” like TV set that has its colors set just a bit too hot maybe.

Elsewhere, Bill Foster is getting dressed. He looks back on his life as a scientist and a hero. He feels that, even after all of his successes, he has too often found himself in the role of a second-stringer. His research, his superhero identity of Goliath, none were really his own. Now, with the discovery of his Fosteron particle, perhaps he can stake his own claim. Bill Foster stands in his costume once used as Black Goliath. With the addition of a slim Fosteron storage pack on his pack and a bulky regulator at his side, his costume’s gloves crackle with Fosteron-augmented energy. He declares to the empty lab that he is Dynamo, defender of the common man, and he will bring his new technology to the world.

But these are the laboratories of Project: Pegasus, and two project leaders are looking in on Foster through the video surveillance, and they shake their heads.

Back to Beta Ray Bill, the Guardsman, and the Yankee Clipper. Beta Ray has discovered a coven of mystics using a pier-fronting warehouse. They are preparing to open a long crate, after having destroyed much of the warehouse trying to clear the area around it. Beta Ray intones that the box they might open would open a pathway to a powerful being, perhaps even unleash a god upon the world. The Clipper wonders if one man’s god is another man’s demon. Beta Ray also senses another, different, godly presence nearby, demanding he be known. It’s Moon Knight, who speaks abruptly to the Avengers. He doesn’t know if he’s more annoyed that they have crashed in on the case he’s been following for months or the fact that Beta Ray Bill’s presence isn’t sitting well with him. It’s not that he’s alien. The Guardsman suggests that with Moon Knight’s empowerment by the Egyptian god Khonshu, perhaps there’s just too many gods in the room.

The cult below is trying to create for themselves an avatar of the African god Eshu. In a ceremony reminiscent of the one Moon Knight received to become the avatar of Khonshu, their leader, an old and decrepit man, pleads with Eshu to enable him to be a go-between between man and the gods, just as Eshu is a go-between for the realm of gods and man.

At the height of the ceremony, the Avengers and Moon Knight come crashing in. But it’s too late! With blinding lights and fog, the ceremony succeeds! The leader is now the costumed Shaggy Man! A large blood-red cape is draped over his shoulders, flowing to the ground and appearing as if composed of strips of thousands of rags, matching his belt-sash. Although hidden by the massive cape, his chest and arms are bare and lined with white square dots that mimic the pattern on his black leggings, which are also lined with fringe. His face is twisted with a grin and painted to appear like an African tribal mask; his cowl is one of layered red feathers. The color pattern is split down the middle—each half of the Shaggy Man a mirrored scheme of the other. Once old and now youthful and solidly built, the man leans on a thick staff, which is slightly bulbous at the top.

The Shaggy Man laughs, causing the heroes to stop in their tracks. He explains how he sees everything so clearly now, as Eshu, the god of the crossroads and fortune, needs the chaos of the world to bring the hearts of men to their gods as before. And as Eshu’s avatar, he will gladly follow such orders, even if it brings the worlds to its knees and the streets run red with blood!

Moon Knight doesn’t say anything, but leads the charge for the heroes. The Guardsman obliges that someone should be making a quip right about now. He and the Yankee Clipper take on a legion of cult members in African colors and dress, while Moon Knight and Beta Ray confront the Shaggy Man. They fight, and the Shaggy Man displays superhuman agility and strength. He notes that Beta Ray Bill seems “puffy,” and that Moon Knight seems somewhat offended by Beta Ray, who he refers to as “half-Assgardian.” Moon Knight finally corners the Shaggy Man, the two locked anhk-to-staff. But the Shaggy Man throws off Moon Knight and readies a killing blow. He is stopped by Beta Ray, who grips the Shaggy Man’s head with one massive paw. Magical energies seem to whip around both, and the Shaggy Man, now returned to his old self, slumps to the ground. The those of the cult who haven’t been defeated by the Guardsman and the Yankee Clipper beat a hasty retreat.

Moon Knight refuses Beta Ray’s offer to help him to his feet. He points out that Beta Ray exudes so much Asgardain magic, that any other arcane being is being pushed away. Even now, Moon Knight can barely feel his connection to the Egyptian god Khonshu. The Guardsman tries to extend an offer to rekindle ties with the Avengers under their new organization, but Moon Knight refuses, all the while staring down Beta Ray Bill. He leaves, and the awkward silence is broken by the Yankee Clipper. He is standing in the middle of the wreckage and unconscious cult members. “So,” he wonders, “what are we supposed to do with these guys?”

Back at the Avengers HQ, Marsha Rosenberg (Volcana) and Felicia Hardy (the Black Cat) have returned to their civilian guises as they prepare to leave. Marsha wonders if she can make it as a hero since, after all, she just barely started her new life at her desk job. Felicia waves it off, saying that’s why she never bothered with a double identity. But she stops when she overhears Hawkeye and Captain America in the next room.

They come into the conversation, “untrained, individual, unestablished,” Captain America seems to be taking Hawkeye to task over his choice of a new roster. “And look at your choices—an armored hero, a god among men, a hero from the past whose returned to the present, a former size-changer . . . do you see a pattern here?”

Felicia repeated the pattern, “Someone with bad luck, someone with super-speed. Huh, I wonder if Hawkeye even realized he was doing that?” She pulled Marsha long the hall with her, away from the conversation, although Marsha failed to realize what was going on. Felicia tried to explain—Hawkeye’s “new” Avengers were anything but. No matter which angle you took it from, it all added up the same. A league of substitute Avengers, pinch hitters when the “real” ones were unavailable. Marsha doesn’t believe it, but Felicia turns to leave through the entry way which was filled with objects of construction, even the personal affects of many of the workers.

“Oh, he’ll learn just how unique we really are,” Felicia agrees. And no one, not even Felicia herself, realizes that she happened to slip a tiny silver lighter from one of the worker’s benches into her coat pocket.

Coming up-- Bill Foster makes an announcement to the world; another guest star crashes at Avengers Park, bringing ideas to either annoy or help Hawkeye; and Beta Ray Bill’s subplot continues to expand, literally!

For more information on the African god Eshu, see http://www.carnaval.com/sf00/trickster.htm

Avengers Underground # 3

2005-02-01T17:57:00.000-08:00

Previously: Two different murder investigations, one of a mediaeval scholar in York, England and one of auction house staff in Vienna, Austria, are both linked by the same macabre bone-twisting, the work of the sinister Bonewalker. While Quicksilver researches legends about the villain and discovers links with his own origins and the Black Knight conducts analysis on fragments of affected bone and uncovers links with Henry (Ant-Man) Pym’s size-changing particles, Crystal learns of correspondence between the murdered academic Cheyney and Baroness Astrid Mordo. But as she hurries back to tell Dane (Black Knight) Whitman of this she too falls prey to the Bonewalker!

“Terrifying, isn’t it?” a voice asked inside Crystal’s head. “That knowledge that your own skeleton is no longer yours, to feel your bones move independent of the muscles that guide them? Try not to resist, because I can certainly exert enough force to shred your tendons if you do. Your body will move as well for me dead as alive, as this carriage driver has demonstrated.”
The princess of the Inhumans sat in the back seat of the taxi and was more terrified than at any time in her young, terrifying life.
“You will die eventually, of course. You and your companions have stumbled into things that are forbidden to know, and people are taking that very seriously. So seriously that I have been awoken to deal with it.”
“You murdered the Canon,” Crystal accused, thinking rather than speaking since her jaw would not co-operate.
“And others. Many others,” boasted the Bonewalker. “But I will ask the questions, mortal of flesh.”
“I won’t tell you anything.”
“No? Not when I extend talons of your own bone through your most sensitive nerve clusters? When I have your eye-sockets grow shut and send a spike to puncture each of your eyeballs? I can leave you blind, deaf, dumb, maimed so grotesquely that you will never move again.”
Crystal shuddered and clung on to her courage. “No matter what.”
“I’m keen to try,” the Bonewalker confided. “I have always enjoyed torturing pretty women, even back before my little mishap with the Darkhold. But for now you are more useful to me as bait for the one who wields the Ebony Sword. That was a surprise.”

“Dane destroyed your trap,” Crystal declared loyally. “He… you recognised the Ebony Blade?”
“It killed me when I was mortal,” replied the Bonewalker. “I shall not quickly forget it.” Crystal found herself being forced out of the cab. “Make any noise to warn of your possession and I shall puncture your larynx,” her enemy warned.
It was a short walk from where the taxi was illegally parked to the ivy-covered Particle Physics building. The Bonewalker didn’t have to ask for directions. He could already feel where the Ebony Blade was.
Now all he had to do was kill the man who carried it.

Wolfgang Strucker sat reading a Times newspaper and sipping his coffee outside a small café across the road from the Eglise St-Michel. He didn’t like the coffee, he despised the heat in Gabon’s capital city of Libreville, and he wasn’t in a good mood.

When he saw the man he was meeting walking down the road looking cool and collected in a black suit and dark shades he was even less happy. T’Challa, King of the Wakandas, slid into the chair opposite him and ordered a black coffee in perfect French.
“Well?” Struker demanded, folding his paper and glaring at the Black Panther. “Why have you called me to meet with you in this godforsaken place, Avenger?”
“You wouldn’t have met anywhere that had an extradition treaty with the US,” T’Challa pointed out to the head of the right-wing terrorist group HYDRA. “And there are things we must discuss.” He sipped his coffee, and gave no indication that he had previously checked its composition with the Kimoyo Card in his pocket. “As for the Avengers, I am not currently affiliated with that team.”
“Unless you’ve reconsidered your unwise position on not selling your vibranium stocks I see little for us to discuss.”
The Panther laid the autopsy report on Soon Lo Choi on the table. “We are both interested in the murder of your Section Leader,” he suggested.
Struker snorted. “I am not interested in committing suicide today, Panther. Had I understood the nature of the lot for which I was bidding I would never have sought it.”
“And now you know its nature?”
“Let’s say I’ve had it drawn to my attention how unwise it might be for HYDRA to pursues this particular matter. My long term goals will be better achieved by leaving others to unwisely chase that chimera.” Von Struker looked at T’Challa. “You, for example. Tell me, if you die unexpectedly what are the arrangements for succession in Wakanda? I’ve never been terribly clear on that.”
“So you’ve been scared off the stolen package,” the Panther noted. “By whom?”
“By people who can help me in exchange for my forbearance, or harm me if I persist in asking dangerous questions,” the Supreme HYDRA warned.
“I can’t get myself killed if you don’t give me some kind of lead,” T’Challa pointed out.
Wolfang Struker considered that. “There were a number of your old foes who could have told you,” he answered at last, rising and folding his paper under his arm. “But eleven of them are silent now, and the twelfth is unlikely to see you. Good day, Avenger.”
He walked away sticking T’Challa with the bill.

“Crystal, you’ve got to see this!” Dane called enthusiastically as the Inhuman entered the particle analysis lab. “I’ve isolated the medium through which those bones grow and distend so rapidly, and its exactly the same way that Hank Pym gains extra mass when he…”
Crystal stood silently inside the doorway, her throat constricted, but Dane realised that tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Crys, what’s wrong?” he demanded, dropping the clipboard and scanner he’d been waving and rushing over to the lady.
Crystal seemed to slump forward into his arms, wrapping her own arms around his neck.
“Crystal? What is… I don’t know if this is…”
A sharp tine of bone jabbed from Crystal’s finger into his spine; and then the Bonewalker was in him too.
“I’m sorry Dane,” the Inhuman princess sobbed, able to speak again now but not move. “It’s the Bonewalker. He’s in us.”
“I knew she was your weakness,” the villain crowed in their minds. “I saw the way you protected her in the Minster vault. You love her!”
“No!” Dane shouted, although his jaw wouldn’t hinge to accommodate his speech. Suddenly the Ebony Blade was there in his palm, but his fingers wouldn’t close and it clattered uselessly to the floor.
“You have no idea how long I’ve yearned for this moment,” the Bonewalker confided in Dane Whitman. “Ever since my original deformities earned me death at the hands of Sir Percy of Scandia I’ve wanted to take my vengeance on the Black Knight.”
He twisted Dane and Crystal round cruelly and laughed in their minds. “And now I can.”

It was a meeting in shadow, somewhere on the rooftops in eastern Berlin.
“Can I trust you?” asked the Black Panther.
“No. But you can trust my information.”
“Very well. What was in Lot Nine that caused such a strong reaction to the possibility of it being discovered?”
“It was minutes, of meetings that never happened in the final years of the Great Patriotic War.”
“About sanctuary for war criminals in exchange for technology?”
T’Challa’s informant snorted. “That’s old news. No, these were rather more dangerous, and rather more apposite to the current day, my friend.”
“Then what were they?” the Panther persisted.
“Do you remember what happened when the Avengers vanished during the Onslaught and were assumed dead?”
“Of course. It was a difficult time,” the Panther admitted. “Nothing made any sense. We weren’t even certain who was lost and who was still around.”
“And the Avengers reformed, of course. Quicksilver, Hercules, Living Lightning and the others, because once an Avenger, always an Avenger, yes?”
“That’s what we used to say,” conceded the king of the Wakandas.
“And then… nothing. The team was quietly dissolved, went their separate ways. The Mansion was turned over to SHIELD and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes were no more!”
“When Captain America returned they reformed,” the Panther pointed out.
“Nobody expected Steve to return. Nobody expected the Avengers to come back. They never should have.”
“What do you mean?”
“If the Avengers had disbanded then they wouldn’t have had to be dismantled a second time, more violently still. Or as many times as it takes. T’Challa, what do you think those meetings were about in 1945?”
The Black Panther considered. “Did they concern the Invaders? The All-Winners’ Squad? The Liberty Legion?”
“Tell me this, T’Challa… five years after the war, of all the heroes who had served to fight the Axis, how many were still publicly active? And how many were dead, or insane, or de-powered, or lost, or gone? How many?”
The Panther frowned. “You hinted at this before, when you set me on this quest.”
“The minutes detail how the superheroes of the 40s were systematically eliminated, T’Challa. Shut down, hard. Just like they’re doing again right now with the heroes of today.”
“They?” noted the Black Panther. “And who is this they?”
“If I knew I’d be too frightened to tell you. I only came to you because it’ll take extreme measures and the resources only a nation can command to uncover the truth here, and even now I fear I may have set you to your death.” The Black Widow laid a hand on the Panther’s chest. “Be careful, my friend. You have never faced a deadlier foe than this.”

Then there was a blur of colour as Quicksilver sped back from his mission and discovered his wife locked in the arms of the Black Knight. Again. “Whitman!” Pietro Maximoff snarled and slammed into Dane at high speed. The Knight and Crystal, locked together, tumbled onto the floor.
Then both of them levitated to hang immobile in the centre of the room.
“What?” demanded Quicksilver, skidding to a halt. Crystal could manipulate winds to lift herself but the air here was still. “What is this?”
“This is the Bonewalker,” came an old, cruel voice in his head. “I am in your wife and her lover. I can do whatever I wish with them.” He illustrated by jolting Crystal and Dane’s pelvises back and forth in crude mockery of copulation. “I can disfigure them or kill them.”
“Don’t,” begged Pietro. “What do you want?”
“It’s very simple,” the Bonewalker replied. “Just pick up the Ebony Blade there and kill this Black Knight with it.”
Quicksilver hesitated. “And then you will release my wife?”
“I promise.”
“Then I shall.”
“Noo!” Crystal screamed. “Pietro, you can’t! You mustn’t.”
And suddenly the winds were there. The room shook as the ground beneath it trembled, and Crystal and the Black Knight were tumbled across the floor as the Bonewalker’s levitation failed.
“What is this?” demanded the horror, who had no knowledge of Crystal’s Inhuman elemental gifts, not that she could use them without any movement whatsoever.
Quicksilver moved faster than the eye could see, separating his wife from the fallen Knight, hurling a handful of dust into her face. She coughed and choked and then squirmed as the Bonewalker screamed and departed from her.
“What?” the horror hissed, scrambling the Black Knight up and preparing to burst from his flesh into another forest of deadly osseous thorns. “What was that?”
“A little piece of home,” Quicksilver told him, whipping Crystal to the other side of the still shaking room. “Dirt from Wundagore Mountain, where you were buried and bound. I picked it up on my way back. I thought it might have some effect.”
Before the Bonewalker could react the mutant speedster was in close again, opening his other fist to hurl more of the dirt into the Black Knight’s face.
The Bonewalker was cast out again, and took refuge in the osseous fragment that Dane had been examining. The shard twisted and grew rapidly, forming into a complicated ribbed tangle of bony limbs and flailing spines.
Crystal unleashed all her horror and terror into one blast of flame that seared a three foot hole in the monster of bone. It still kept coming.
Tendrils of bone dug into floors and walls, starting to collapse the building. The long white feelers formed a cage around the room, preventing Quicksilver from dragging Crystal to freedom.
“There is no escape,” the Bonewalker promised them.
“We do not wish to escape, villain!” Crystal called up the earth, great waves of pounding rock to smash through the puny bone prison that surrounded them. Her copper hair whipped behind her as she unleashed her power, driving at the Bonewalker in raging surges.
The Black Knight hesitated only a moment before picking up his Ebony Blade.
It felt right to hold the cold hilt in his fist.
That seemed to drive the Bonewalker over the edge. The Particle Physics building exploded in a confusion of calcium growths, as tree-sized pillars of bone twisted and replicated to crush the heroes that resisted it. A toppling wall caught Pietro and Crystal unawares, stunning them both and leaving them pinned as the bone-strands closed on them. Dane stood over their bodies, striking with lightning precision with the weapon that felt like part of him, but it was only a matter of time before he faltered.

“You will die, Black Knight!,” screamed the Bonewalker in his head. “Die! Die! Die! Give me back my soul!”
Victor Shade ghosted up through the shattered building and became solid behind the main nexus of the Bonewalker’s structure. He formed a fist with the density of titanium, then made it harder. Then he punched into the osseous monster before him with bone-shattering force.
The Bonewalker acted by instinct, hammering a dozen shards of bone into the newcomer. All but one of them broke on Victor’s flesh. One passed insubstantially through him until it found the bone inside.
The Bonewalker hissed in triumph as it leaped into the fragment beneath this enemy’s skin. But then he found out some very strange things.
This was not part of Victor Shade’s skeleton, for that was a thing of complex polycarbides and osmium steel. This was a shard from the body of murdered security guard Hugo Muller. And it was encased now in super-dense matter that all his growth-abilities could not penetrate.
And then the scrambling frequency was released, the one that confused the Pym Particles used to draw growth matter from the Kosmos dimension, the one specifically tuned to the resonance Dane Whitman’s computers had discerned earlier. It was the one that left the Bonewalker with nowhere to go but that small, captured fragment contained within an implacable Vision.
Dane looked up in amazement to find the bone structures around him crumbling. He didn’t recognise the trenchcoated man who had walked into save him.
“Beware,” said Victor Shade, “this isn’t over yet.”
Crystal shifted painfully beneath the rubble. “Ouch,” she complained. “I’d forgotten how painful supervillains were.” She instinctively reached out and too control of the fires and crumbling stonework around her. Then she sensed the trouble. “Oh no!”
And then the entire Particle Physics building exploded as the gas main ignited.

Inspector Gallowglass couldn’t get into the red-hot rubble for twelve hours after the fire was doused, and it took his diggers another two hours to get through the charred remains of the building to find the missing people. But then the three corpses were found, one of them still tightly gripping a shining black sword.
The press went into a feeding frenzy at the news that three more Avengers were dead.

Continued…

Footnotes for the Bereaved Fan:

The Darkhold, or the Book of Sins, is a volume of parchments transcribed eons ago by the demonic Elder God, to serve as his touchstone with the Earthly dimension. Since Atlantean times it has brought many curses to the world, including creating Varnae, the first vampire. It was first bound in book form by Morgana le Fey shortly before it corrupted Mordred the Mystic to be its servant. It was later sought or held by Cagliostro and Dracula, and cursed the Rusoff family to become werewolves by night. A full history of the dark volume and the trouble it has caused can be found at The Marvel Directory: The Darkhold.

Baron Wolfgang von Struker was a Nazi serving Hitler during the second World War and a recurring foe of Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos. Receiving age-retarding treatments similar to those Fury got, Strucker survived the war and re-formed many of the escaped Nazis as the terrorist agency HYDRA. Struker is currently the Supreme Leader of this organisation. He’s not a nice man. Again, more details at The Marvel Directory: Baron Struker.

The Black Widow (Natalia Alianovna Romanova, a.k.a. Natasha Romanoff) is a former Soviet spy who now works freelance for SHIELD (the Strategic Hazard, International Espionage and Logistics Directorate). She was Chairwoman of the Avengers for a lengthy period of time, up to the Onslaught “event” that ended the first volume of the series with #403. The Widow’s inexplicable closure of the team thereafter was partially addressed in Avengers Annual 2001. More on Natasha also at The Marvel Directory: Black Widow.

The Widow’s History Lesson: The Invaders were a wartime superhero unit based around Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, and the original Human Torch. The team later became the All-Winners Squadron. The Liberty Legion was an informal association of homefront heroes. At the end of the war many of these superhumans dropped out of sight. Captain America was lost in the Arctic, the Sub-Mariner became amnesiac after a battle with the telepath Destiny, the Human Torch was deactivated (and later became the Vision), and many other heroes retired, died, or went mad. Suspicious, eh?

The Bonewalker hasn’t appeared anywhere before, but we now know of him that he encountered the original Black Knight, Sir Percy of Scandia, died on the Ebony Blade, and was buried and bound beneath Wundagore mountain in Transia. His encounter with the Darkhold or the Ebony Blade seems somehow responsible for his undead condition and his ability to possess and twist bone.

Avengers Anew #2 -- Part 2, "Begin Again"

2005-01-24T22:50:00.000-08:00

PREVIOUSLY-- Hawkeye and several of his Avengers teamed up with Iron Man to help crack down on the terrorists of AIM-- Advanced Idea Mechanics. In the meantime, Beta Ray Bill mourned the loss of Thor and all of Asgard . . .

***

“Is this what you came for?” Hawkeye’s voice sounded hallow as it echoed in the dimly-lit corridor. The facility on this level was forced to rely on back-up power due to the battle raging below between the forces of AIM and the Black Cat and the Guardsman.

“They almost got away with it, too,” Iron Man’s voice was doubly hollow coming form his helmet. “But Tony Stark was able to notice several flagged items on recent shipping orders, put 2 and 2 together, and spelled out 'Danger’.”

The Yankee Clipper nodded in understanding as he approached the device that Iron Man wanted to make sure AIM would not create. Iron Man would have rushed in on his own, if Hawkeye hadn’t wanted to track him down and talk to him about the newest incarnation of the Avengers. This must be Hawkeye’s strange idea of networking. “An energy containment unit?” The Clipper asked as more of a statement than a question. “But more sophisticated than I’ve seen designed.”

“Looks to me like a souped-up phone booth,” Hawkeye tried his best to keep the feeling light. The device was indeed roughly shaped as a man-sized rectangle of metal and glass. Three long arms with corrugated flares and diodes leaned towards it-- each arm aiming a sphere at its center.

“Good observation, Clipper. I’d imagine technology has changed very significantly since your day and age,” Iron Man had rocketed to a control panel, easily navigating through a series of buttons and dials to initiate a diagnostic sequence. “Nice, they have only begun a series of initial test runs-- nothing more serious than an overgrown light night right now.”

“But containment?” asked the Clipper, “Containment for what/” He tried to disregard Iron Man’s comment. He certainly didn’t mean any disrespect, I’m sure. But he’s right. Perhaps my leap into the future has brought with it too big of a learning curve?

Hawkeye shrugged, arrow still knocked and bow still drawn to cover his friends. “Does it matter? A power source, a battery, a trap for energized heroes, whatever. Let’s shut it down.”

“NO, HEROES,” a voice boomed through the darkness, “YOU WILL NOT!”

Large elephant doors slid open on the other end of the room-- the giant mutated form of MODOK glided inward. Little more than a grotesque head striding atop a hover platform, he barely cleared the large door frame. His freakish frown rippled and slid upward as he sneered, the red emergency lights casting a pulsating, hellish glow on him.

“I thought you said this was going to be HARD,” Hawkeye smiled in Iron Man’s direction.

***

“Well, what do you think?” Foster asked, casting a furtive, expectant glance at Dr. Henry Pym.

Hank Pym, the world’s foremost biochemist and roboticist, looked appreciatively at the experimental chamber, at the whirling and burbling energies inside.

“It’s fascinating. Presumably the particles draw upon an extradimenisional source analogous to the Kosmos dimension?”

“That’s my hypothesis. In the same manner that your Pym Particles allow you to add to your own mass . . .”

“Right, you can energize your target to a highly ionized state.” Hank Pym straintented, still looking at the seething energies. “Have you considered the possibilities?”

“I know! It’s amazing,” Foster beamed with pride. “Think of the way we can solve energy crises, or pollution, or provide a cheap renewable energy for third-world nations . . .”

Pym looked suddenly at Foster, as if for the first time. “Oh. Yes. But . . . that’s not what I’m talking about. This . . . this is huge. We thought nuclear forces were bad, but this could magnify that destruction a hundredfold. Or the opposite-- to use these Fosterons to diminish all the energy of an area, crippling even hospitals and emergency services, not to mention the private sector.”

“I don’t understand,” Foster gaped. “This is a breakthrough.”

“Just . . . you need to be careful how this is disseminated to the world.”

“Be careful? You would hold this back when the potentialities are so momentous,” Foster nearly snorted a chuckle. “Is this why you haven’t offered Pym Particles to the world? To use ‘em to help, I dunno, increase the world’s food supply for one? A single particle on something as small as a tomato could help save a child’s life!”

Hank Pym looked pained. He sighed. “Remember Somalia? Remember warlords carving factions of a nation? Do you know what helped solidify these warmongers grip of power? Pym Particles. Do you know what the UN engineers were looking for in Iraq, with the same diligence as nuclear weapons? Pym Particles. You may be flushed with the elation of this discovery. But think. Just . . . think.”

Foster and Pym turned to stare once more into the chamber of Fosteron-fueled energies. Both stared, both thought. But both had very different thoughts.

***

MODOK’s brain blast had nearly overwhelmed Iron Man, bowling him over into a wall of machinery, denting it nearly three feet deep. The Yankee Clipper used his belt-powered strength to lift a lab cabinet and used his time-slipping speed to batter-ram MODOK’s chair-- only to find the cabinet shatter against an invisible force field. Hawkeye shouted at Iron Man to rouse him, and drew MODOK’s notice away from the others with several well-placed blunt arrows. The arrows couldn’t pass MODOK’s force field, but Hawkeye dived behind a bank of computers to avoid the oncoming mental bolt.

“YOU HAVE ENTERED OUR VERY SANCTUM, YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO PROCEED.”

MODOK turned its attention to the Yankee Clipper, a mental bolt sending waves of heat ripping towards him, trailing bits of machinery and the floor in its wake. The Clipper neatly sidestepped the oncoming wave, slipping between the moments of time. Instead of finding himself on the other side of the room, the Clipper ran directly into Iron Man. Hawkeye rose up from his cover, sending an explosive-tipped arrow toward MODOK. Instead of finding its mark, however, the arrow hit Iron Man, too, and the explosion send Iron Man and the Clipper flying.

“YOUR MINDS ARE BUT TOYS, EASILY SWAYED, YOUR PERCEPTIONS ALTERED, YOUR MIN--”

MODOK’s gloating was cut short by a million volts of electricity coursing through its body. The Black Cat stood behind him, gripping a snapped wire with both hands and thrusting it into the back of MODOK’s hoverchair.

“Perceptions?” she taunted, “And you didn’t see THAT one coming?”

The Guardsman had brought her to the scene and was now helping Iron Man to his feet. Iron Man nodded his thanks, reminding the Guardsman of the psychic barriers hardwired into their helmets with a quip from a recent marketing campaign: “Stark technology, Stark solutions.”

Hawkeye continued to draw MODOK’s fire to buy the armored heroes some time. “Hey, Egghead,” another arrow was loosed, “Big head like that, I’d hate to see your recommended dosage of ibuprofen,” another arrow, “’cause you’re gonna have a big headache after tonight!” Another arrow.

MODOK was pushed back by the onslaught, only to face two armored heroes, their systems on automatic and operating on a level that was little more than pure instinct. MODOK’s mental powers were reduced to virtually nothing, and his force fields began to weaken against the relentless onlsaught . . .

***

“So I assume you’re here to ask me about restarting the funding for the Avengers,” offered Iron Man.

Hawkeye and his team, the Black Cat, Yankee Clipper, and the Guardsman, stood with Iron Man atop the building as they had at the start of their adventure. Below them, a joint operation of SWAT and NYPD Code: Blue were clearing the neighboring building of the remaining AIM agents and various AIM technology.

“I’m afraid conditions haven’t improved,” Iron Man remarked, folding his arms against his armored chest. He was an imposing figure, cold and dispassionate. “The financial strain upon the Maria Stark Foundation is too much. We’d be basically taking something that had developed over 10 years but re-creating it from scratch. We’d be . . .”

Hawkeye cut him off. His characteristic swagger was gone. Instead, he bent near Iron Man, taking him into a rare moment of confidence.

“Look. Wanda’s breakdown hit us all hard. Her accusations, the implications of it all. It’s hard, man, I know. You believed in us, the team. To have it swept away, and worse, to be treated so indifferently by the United Nations, by the government . . .

“And you know what, maybe they’re right.”

Iron Man was brought up short by Hawkeye’s bluntness. “Wha--?”

But he was cut off. “We grew into something that we weren’t! Special National Security liaisons and government quotas? The Avengers Embassy? Special lapdogs to the UN? You want to know what the Avengers are? Take a look at them.” Hawkeye pointed at the heroes behind him. “Heroes who band together to fight those threats we can’t handle by ourselves. We don’t need a mansion headquarters for that. We don’t need a charter.

Hawkeye bent near Iron Man to drive it home in a whisper. “Tony, a charter’s cool and all, but the Avengers aren’t a business.”

Iron Man visibly softened, as much as an armored man could do. “So what do you want from me, if you don’t want a mansion?”

“Hey, I didn’t say we wouldn’t need resources!”

Iron Man laughed in spite of himself. “Alright. Well, you got me interested . . .”

Hawkeye slung his arm around Iron Man’s shoulders as they turned back to join the other heroes. “It’s like a wise man once said, ‘With great financial wealth, comes a great responsibility to share it with your friends.”

***

The SWAT team finished loading AIM’s energy containment unit into the transport truck. The field leader signed for the transfer, and got into the back with others of his squad. The doors were closed, and two sharp slaps on the back of the truck sent it off into the city.

Moments later, the driver turned to give the field leader a nod. After a nod in return, the leader opened a palm-sized communicator to check in to his true master. The image of a hooded figure, only his white eyes visible, crackled into view. “Did you get the device?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Iron Man took longer to identify the ECU device than I had hoped, and the Avengers appearance was surprising. But it was simple enough to take the place of the police to calmly and quietly take the next step in my plans.

And soon, not even the Avengers will be able to stop me! This, I curse! This, I swear!

Avengers Underground #2

2005-01-18T17:28:00.000-08:00

Previously: Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, investigated the murder of a scholar of medieval literature with the help of former Avengers colleagues Crystal and Pietro (Quicksilver) Maximoff. They blundered in a macabre trap of animated bone that they only escapde when Dane mysteriously found he had reacquired his cursed Ebony Blade. Meanwhile, Victor Shade (the synthezoid formerly known as the Vision) traced stolen World War II government papers to a European auction house but arrived too late to prevent the murder of their purchaser and the theft of the documents.

The thirty giant plasma screens showed video footage from the murder scene at the Galleria Zwiasku. One auction house accountant, two security flunkies, and a HYDRA terrorist section leader lay sprawled over the expensive carpet in odd twisted positions. The only trickle of blood ran from the Hydra leader’s eye like a crimson tear.
Other images showed the same scene with a variety of different imaging techniques, from enhanced spectrum analysis to microscopic studies of the skin cells on the corpses. Computer screed ran down the margins of the imagery offering information about body temperate, flesh morbidity, and discolouration patterns.
Victor Shade stood impassively in the midst of the playback from his internal monitors and watched his host scan through the vast amounts of data with remarkable celerity for a human. Had any outsider been able to glimpse into the shadowed labyrinth that was Wakanda’s underground technical jungle they would have hardly remarked on the tall gaunt individual with the light brown trenchcoat and the greying temples. They would have been far more fascinated by the muscular black man in the coal-black sacred garb of Wakanda’s national religious icon: the Black Panther.
T’Challa son of T’Chaka crouched forward over his data panels, studying the wealth of clues his synthezoid guest had brought him. But even at so mundane a task he seemed like a cat coiled to spring, sleek and deadly.
“You’ve done very well,” the King of the Wakandas admitted, collating his findings.
“'Well' would have been retrieval of the stolen sealed wartime papers that the US Commission for Superhuman Affairs seems so intent of recovering,” Shade noted in carefully modulated human tones. “Or at least the tracing of the missing security guard who appears to have murdered three humans and disappeared with the package.”
“I fear that would not have been simple,” The Panther admitted. “I’ve just pulled up the classified autopsy reports on Klaus Schick, Peter Schrammel, and Hydra Section Leader Soon Choi. The cause of death was internal damage caused by rapid mutative growth of their rib cages and other major skeletal components. In other words, their bones grew inwards through their internal organs. Their cranial cavities were pierced by their own skulls sprouting spikes.”
“The slight discolouration of their epidermal layers suggested an internal trauma,” agreed Shade impassively. “The super-villain Scramble is documented as having body-modification abilities. The mutant Masque…”
“This wasn’t a body modification,” T’Challa noted. “It was specific to the bone deposits. And it’s not the only recent incident of this kind. The other episode was rather more grand guinol, but the basic method appears to be the same.”
He thumbed a key and more data for a very different murder scrolled across the screens, regarding the death of Canon Albert Cheyney.
“And it looks like some old allies of ours are already involved,” the Black Panther said.

Sunlight streamed through the mullioned windows of the University of York’s Particle Physics building. A dozen or more eager post and under-graduates clustered round hoping to be helpful as the famous scientist powered up several million pounds’ worth of analytical equipment.
Pietro Maximoff watched the circus with a mild look of disdain. “Dane Whitman has his own fan club?”
“Sir Dane is very well known in the field,” Professor Barker offered, straining his neck to see what the Black Knight might be doing with the atomic spectral analyser. “His work on faster-than-light particles and magnetism, his calculations on sub-space warp coil formation, his interpretation of the Richards harmonic vectors in relation to…”
“I get the idea,” Quicksilver said impatiently. “He’s world famous amongst particle physicists.”
“Sir Dane?” Crystal asked.
“Oh,” Professor Barker worried. “Does he prefer Dr Whitman? I thought…”
“Dane’s just fine,” the Black Knight called without ever taking his eyes from the viewing scope of the equipment he was using to scan mutated bone fragments from York Minster’s crime scene. “I have a few doctorates but most of them are honorary so I don’t usually bother. And over here in England I was knighted by Her Majesty after Galactic Storm, which is kind of ironic when you think about my main contribution to that event.”
“So you’re a genuine knight of the realm, too?” Crystal observed.
“I’ve been knighted four times now,” Dane replied, changing over slides and checking some hard-copy readouts on mutant gene analysis. “But for some reason Burke’s Peerage and Debrett’s Who’s Who don’t seem to count the times my ghostly ancestor Sir Percy did it, or King Richard the Lionheart, or King Brian of Otherworld.”
“Fascinating,” noted Quicksilver ascerbicly. “Have you discovered anything about that bone-thing yet? Anything at all?”
“It’ll take some time,” the Black Knight pointed out. “Science is an exact discipline.” His adoring spectators seemed to take this as the word from the mountaintops.
“Right,” Pietro declared through gritted teeth. “Crystal and I shall see if we can’t do something useful. My wife, will you speak again with the Archbishop and try to discover more on the nature of Canon Cheyney’s research?”
“Of course,” agreed the elemental. “Where are you going?”
“I have other contacts,” Quicksilver replied. “Experts in other fields.” And then he was gone.

The king of Wakanda looked up from his analysis. “The missing security guard has been located.” He diverted a data stream to the computer where Victor Stone was plugged in to the sophisticated Wakandan intelligence systems.
The synthezoid absorbed the contents of police reports and press articles. He noted that the involvement of the Panther’s foster-brother the White Wolf in the discovery of the corpse had not been documented.
Hugo Muller had been retrieved from the Danube where it meandered through the Wienerwald hills north of the city. His neck was snapped so badly that his head was facing backwards.
“There are some interesting features to this report,” Shade conceded. “The contusions on the head suggest that he twisted it round himself. That is beyond usual human capacity.”
If T’Challa noted the distinction the creature formerly called the Vision kept making between himself and the flesh beings whose world he inhabited he did not remark it. “The bizarre patterns of flesh bruising and muscle damage are equally concerning,” he noted. “It’s as if Muller’s muscles were trying to fight against being forced to move. As if his skeleton walked off and he tried to resist it.”
“An adversary with the ability to manipulate bone,” Shade surmised. “It is possible that Muller was effectively possessed as a means of extracting the documents from the Auction House.”
“Possibly,” agreed the Panther. “But who sent him? AIM? SHIELD? The new Invaders? The Commission for Superhuman Affairs?”
“SHIELD and the Commission are unlikely to use a metahuman agent to commit murder,” Shade argued.
The Panther snorted. “What world have you been living in, my friend? Didn’t all of those and thirty other nations and agencies conspire to kidnap and dismantle you a while back?”
“Yes,” agreed Shade bleakly. “In their defence I had previously been affected by the malfunction of a limiting control crystal built into my hardware, after an unwise interface with the Titanian computer system ISAAC. I had attempted to use ISAAC’s technology to take command of all computer systems on Earth to engender an age of peace and harmony.”
“Ages of peace and harmony can’t be engendered,” T’Challa replied. “But that new ability of yours to do that, however briefly, scared the leaders of this planet very badly. Including me. Wakanda also contributed technology to your brain wipe.”
“You knew I was to be murdered?” the Vision declared. His dark eyes had red-glowing pinpricks burning in their core.
“No. I believed you would simply have that part of your memory erased that had allowed you to seize computer control of the world. So did Mockingbird, who contributed secure Avengers data to the operational concept. Neither of us realised that other agreements had been made with other powers who wished to see you utterly demolished; such as Victor von Doom.”
The unexpected turn of the conversation had shaken Shade from his aloof poise. “Von Doom? He was behind my murder?”
The Panther shook his head. “He might have suggested your destruction – he once swore revenge on you for thwarting his plans with Hydrobase and he always keeps his word – but it was many frightened nations who banded together to destroy you, Victor. And the United States of America was one of those nations. So do not believe that the Commission on Superhuman Affairs is above playing dirty when it suits them.”
Shade glowered again. “What is in the stolen package that makes it so important to them? And to you? What makes you believe it is related to your rumoured plot to eliminate all super-heroes?”
“For that we’re going to have to find some more information,” suggested the Black Panther. “And for that we’re going to need to recruit some more help.”

It took Pietro a little under quarter of an hour to reach the Carpathian mountains and another ten minutes to locate the tangle of gypsy wagons he was seeking out. Unlike many modern Romanies who had eschewed the traditional carved wooden vardos for camper/trailers, this little group remained true to their heritage, with five ringed “readers’ wagons” with their huge cart wheels and elaborately carved sidings.
Pietro Maximoff felt a twinge of homesickness. For the first sixteen years of his life sights and smells like these had meant home.
An alert dog noted his presence and set up an alarm. Half a dozen men appeared from the wagons and woodland and glared at the intruder.
“I’ve come to see the Grandmother,” Pietro told them in Romany. “I have the right.”
“You have the right,” the leader of the gypsies admitted. “What family are you?”
“I’m Django Maximoff’s son,” Quicksilver answered. “And I need to talk to the Grandmother of the Winding Way.”
The door to the oldest, smallest, and most decorated of the vardos opened. “Send him in,” said Margali. “He has the right.”

The Inhuman princess had never seen the point of the outside world’s custom of boiling bits of dead tree. She politely sipped the English tea the Archbishop's wife had made when Crystal had arrived at the Archbishop's Palace to ask her questions. “What was Canon Cheyney working on at the time of his death?” Crystal enquired, swallowing the weak brew down.
“Albert?” snorted the Archbishop. “Many things, as usual. He had an enquiring mind and he always had a half-dozen papers on the go.” The churchman looked mournful. “I’m really going to miss him.”
“But was he working on anything new or special?” Crystal persisted. “You said you were going to look through his papers.”
“It’s going to take a while,” the prelate noted. “Albert had an awful lot of papers. And he’d just received a new shipment of facsimile documents from one of his correspondents in Europe too.”
Crystal perked up. “He had? Was he by any chance working on them the night he was murdered?”
The Archbishop considered this. “I imagine he might have been trying to see if he could verify their authenticity by matching some of the content with the old proceedings books he was examining in the aumbrey. He was looking at the transcripts of those rather grisly witchcraft trials under James I, and the copies he got from his correspondence purport to be all about the European witch persecutions of the same period.”
“Purport to be?”
“It’s a sad world and these kind of documents are sometimes forgeries,” the clergyman regretted. “Canon Cheyney was a world expert in his field. He was often sent material to authenticate.”
“But he was working on accounts of mediaeval witch trials, and he had received new information from his overseas correspondent?” Crystal remarked. “Who did he receive these papers from, your… you grace?”
It took ten minutes of hunting to track down the name of Baroness Astrid Mordo.

Dane punched the final figures into the mainframe and waited while it processed the results. Professor Barker almost applauded. “Watching you had been a real education Sir D… I mean Dane. The way you used the latent mutant genome as a register marker to trace vestigial atypical particles was absolutely brilliant.”
“After a while with the Avengers you start to know what to look for,” the scientist shrugged diffidently. “This was something I worked up with Hank McCoy a few years back when I was trying to avoid losing any more to him at cards. But it should tell us what was powering that grotesque rapid bone growth and how it was…”
The computer pinged to indicate its work was done. Dane looked at the output. “Oh.”
“Oh what?” Professor Barker asked. “Don’t make me go get my Richards on Spectral Trandimensional Particles. What is it?”
“The rapid growth was caused by drawing in copied matter from the Kosmos sub-plane via Pym particles,” the Black Knight announced. “This just got bad.”

“This is a piece of what attacked us,” Pietro told Margali of the Winding Path. It was dark and stuffy inside the caravan, and the bundles of hanging herbs made the young mutant sleepy and dreamy. “We weren’t able to stop it. When we broke it each piece continued to grow. Until the Black Knight summoned his Ebony Blade. Then the bones stopped expanding.”
“Interesting,” the old gypsy woman answered.
“So I concluded that since Whitman has a magical sword, these things might well be magical too. Some kind of possession or…” His voice petered out. “Before I’d have just asked my sister, or her mentor Miss Harkness. Now…”
Margali held out a wrinkled hand. “Cross my palm with silver.”
Quicksilver took out the 1837 silver guinea issued for Queen Victoria’s coronation that he had purchased at Covent Garden Market en route and laid in on the gypsy’s hand. She brought her other palm down to clasp coin and mutant alike. “If I answer this, Pietro, your life will be changed forever,” she warned him.
“Tell me,” answered Quicksilver. “I am not afraid.”
“Then you should be,” Margali told him. “Your adversary is the Bonewalker, an ancient creature that can shift from skeleton to skeleton, controlling, twisting, growing. It has slept for many years but has now been awoken.”
“It’s a demon of some sort?”
“It was a man once,” Margali replied. “But he transgressed. The story is not mine to tell.” She looked up at Quicksilver’s face and her eyes locked onto his. “He was buried on Wundagore Mountain.”
Pietro blinked. “But… Wanda and I were born on Wundagore.”
“Yes.”
“The demon Chthon altered Wanda, her powers and her destiny because she was born on Wundagore.”
“Yes.” Margali of the Winding path leaned forward. “Tell me, Django’s son, Magnus’ son, do you believe that Chthon touched only one of the twin children in your mother’s womb?”

Crystal hurried from the Bishop’s Palace and hailed a taxi to get her back to Dane. “The university,” she instructed, hefting the thick stacks of photocopied documents she’d borrowed from the late Canon’s collection onto the seat beside her.
The Inhuman princess was woefully ignorant of human history, but she knew it included many periods where minorities had been persecuted for their appearance, culture, skin colour, or beliefs. It seemed that some four hundred years ago the first joint King of England and Scotland had instituted a Witchcraft Act that authorised the destruction of heretics and conjurors, ushering in another dark chapter of bloodshed and violence. At the same time on the continent the Inquisition had destroyed many accused of working magics. It all seemed very alien to a woman brought up in the sciences and mysteries of the Great Refuge of Attilan.
Crystal was in a grim mood when the cab pulled up outside the Particle Physics building. “Thanks,” she told the cabbie, holding out an unfamiliar large brown ten pound note. “Is this enough.”
“No,” the driver told her, brushing against her fingers. She felt a small stab as a needle of bone jerked from his thumb and stabbed the back of her hand. “I demand your life.”
And then the Inhuman couldn’t move her skeleton. It was under the control of another.
“Now,” the Bonewalker told her, “Let’s destroy you.”

Continued…

Footnotes for the Anxious Historian:

The Vision’s destruction took place in the “Better a Widow” storyline beginning in Avengers West Coast #46. His previous attempted takeover of the planet for its own good was depicted in Avengers #254, “Absolute Vision”. Dr Doom swore revenge upon the synthezoid in Avengers #156.

The White Wolf (Hunter) is T’Challa’s adopted brother, and chieftain of the Hatut Zeraze (pronounced hah-TOO sir-AH-say), the former Wakandan Secret Police. He’s not entirely nice, but is fanatically loyal to Wakanda. His intelligence-gathering capabilities make him an ideal man to send to find a missing body.

The Commission for Superhuman Affairs is a powerful government institution with a number of divisions (administrative and in terms of ethics). Its most famous former member is probably Henry Gyrich. In the past the Commission has forced Steve Rogers to give up the mantle of Captain America and has pressured the West Coast Avengers to accept USAgent into their ranks. Some of its shadier moments have been when the it was under outside manipulation from villains such as the Red Skull.

Margali Szardos of the Winding Path is a gypsy sorceress, formerly a circus-owner, the foster mother of Nightcrawler and mother of Jimane. She’s had a complicated history including a time she claimed to be “sorceress supreme” and had to be expunged of the evil possessing her by Dr Strange, a period as Red Queen of an occult-based Hellfire Club, and as a member of the seldom-seen Shadow Hunters team. Her appearance is likewise mutable, from blue-skinned ram-horned mystic to blonde hottie to here true shape of an elderly gypsy witch. Here she’s depicted back at her roots.

Baroness Astrid Mordo is the daughter of Dr Strange’s original (and deceased) enemy. She’s an accomplished and very nasty sorceress, last seen in Dr Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #79 in a mystic extraplanar sleep.

Hank McCoy is better known as ex-Avenger and X-Man geneticist, the Beast.

Pym Particles, named after their discoverer Dr Henry Pym, are the medium through which various heroes and villains transform their sizes, shunting or replicating mass to and from the sub-atomic dimension of Kosmos. Kosmos was last seen in Thunderbolts being threatened with conquest by Kang.

Wundagore Mountain is the prison of primal elder entity Cthon, who seeks freedom to bring terror and plague across the world. In recent years it was the location of the High Evolutionary’s science citadel, to which Magda Lehnsherr fled from her husband Magneto to birth her twins Pietro and Wanda. Cthon is known to have adapted Wanda’s mutant powers to grant her control over probabilities and magic, and he once possessed the Scarlet Witch in an attempt to break free from captivity.

Who's Who in Avengers Anew?

2005-01-14T17:48:00.000-08:00

Here are the main characters in the current series, Avengers Anew.

Hawkeye (Clint Barton)
Archer extraordinarie, this marksman is ready for anything with his quick wit and arsenal of trick arrows. His troubled youth led him to the circus, where he developed his near-superhuman talents and more than a few rough edges. A wrong turn early in his career branded him a criminal, but he fought back and earned Iron Man’s trust and a membership slot on the hero team Avengers. He’s been a regular presence on the team ever since and, despite his often brash behavior, is often considered the heart and soul of the team!

When the Avengers appeared missing, Hawkeye used the cover of his supposed “death” to investigate, rounding up various heroes to help him rescue his teammates. It’s just like him to look around, notice something important is missing, and, by sheer force of will, single-handedly make sure that it’s put right. He may have flashy mutant powers or anything, but his determination and willpower are definitely (sometimes defiantly) superhuman.

Volcana (Marsha Rosenberg)
She and her friend (who is now Titania) were conscripted by Doctor Doom to become part of his supervillain army, but even with the power to project plasma-energy on the level of a rampaging volcano Marsha had second thoughts. She found herself drawn to her teammate, the powerful (albeit quite mousy) Owen Reese, the Molecule Man, and a romance quickly followed. The two retired to settle into a life together, but after seeing Owen resort to mere bullying in a fight with the alien Beyonder, Marsha left him to start over.

Marsha moved to New York City to try to start a new life for herself. She thought she had turned her back on the superhuman circles she once ran in, but Hawkeye persuaded her to try her luck again, this time for the side of the white hats. She’s not quite sure if she fits in.

Black Cat (Felicia Hardy)
Born to cat burglar, Felicia followed in her father’s footsteps, which matched her vibrant and adrenaline-junky personality perfectly. An encounter with Spider-Man changed all that, however, and the two became lovers and crime-fighting partners. They later broke up over an argument on whether or not she should have genuine super-powers, but, really, she couldn’t deal with Spider-Man’s relatively mild-mannered alter ego, Peter Parker. A supremely athletic and accomplished thief, gymnast, and martial artist, Felicia still helps her old flame out every once in a while.

Always seeking bigger and better thrills, Felicia accepted Hawkeye’s offer to join him in a new version of the Avengers. The question isn’t if Felicia can handle it, it’s whether or not even the Avengers’ predicaments can satiate her appetite for something “new.”

Guardsman (Michael O’Brien)
The brother of the original Guardsman, O’Brien mistakenly held Iron Man responsible for his brother’s death. He stole the Guardsman armor, a somewhat less-tricked-out version of Iron Man’s own, to battle him, but Iron Man convinced O’Brien of the truth and allowed him to continue to use the armor as a crime-fighter. O’Brien is best known as the chief of security for the supervillain detainment facility, the Vault, although it has since closed its doors, making O’Brien a freelance security consultant.
O’Brien is an easy-enough guy to throw himself into any job he’s given. But has he accepted Hawkeye’s offer to be an Avenger because he truly believes he can be one? Or is it simply the latest job with no other gig lined up soon?

Bill Foster
A low-income urban success story, Foster used his genius to climb his way into the company of the Marvel Universe’s premier scientists and engineers, including Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Hank Pym (Giant-Man). It was working with Pym that Foster refined the “Pym Particle” formula to give himself growth powers, calling himself Goliath. He had a brief heroic career until he was injured in the line of duty and lost the use of his super-powers, returning to laboratory work.

Foster has been working with the energy-research program, Project: Pegasus, and has recently discovered a new particle, which he dubbed the Fosteron. Whereas the Pym Particle allows one to accumulate or dissipate mass from another dimension, the Fosteron allows one to accumulate or dissipate energy. What excites Foster most about his discovery is the fact that maybe he can finally make a name for himself, not merely be forced to be a second-stringer to some predecessor.

Yankee Clipper (Patrick Carney)
As a major league baseball player, he became a national figure. As an engineer working for the State department, he became a top-secret government contractor. When he encountered a dying time-traveler and was handed her high-tech belt, he became a hero. And all of this happened before 1963. He met the same time-traveler years later, and the presence of the two belts propelled him into the present day. He found his legacy more effective than his continued crime-fighting, so Patrick took the opportunity to retire.

Patrick has had enough of retirement. He’s been tinkering. His belt used to just give him superhuman strength. After using the “advanced” technology of today, he’s made a breakthrough in its time-traveling capabilities. Now he can briefly slip in and out of synch with time, although to many it just looks like superhuman speed. But what to do with it? Perhaps he’s had enough time to finally become accelerated to the new world he found himself in. He’s not one to go asking for help, so the opportunity Hawkeye gave him to join the Avengers was a happy circumstance.

Beta Ray Bill
An alien hailing from the Burning Galaxy, Bill was declared the champion of his people, converted to a super-cyborg, and given the starship Skuttlebutt. With the help of the thunder god Thor, he saved his race from Asgardian demons who coveted their sun. During this battle, Bill unwittingly picked up the god’s magical hammer, finding himself worthy in the eyes of Odin to be granted the power of Thor. Odin then commissioned a duplicate hammer to be made so that Bill could continue to battle evil alongside Thor. Bill was present when Thor and Asgard succumbed to Ragnarok-- the end of the world. Before its worlds were destroyed, Thor cast Bill back into Earth’s dimension.

Bill raced to Earth to find Thor’s friends, the Avengers. What he found instead was Hawkeye’s group of heroes. Bill’s capture by the alien Collector, though, helped the rest of the Avengers be rescued from his clutches. Returned to Earth, Bill is torn as to where his subsequent responsibilities lies, and whether there really are options to that question.

Avengers Anew #2 -- Part 1, "Begin Again"

2005-01-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

NOW
Hawkeye waded through the army of yellow jumpsuits. He threw a left hook to bowl over a nearby AIM flunky, and then used his bow like a baseball bat to swat a few more out of his way. With his path now somewhat cleared, he took a few giant leaps forward and grasped a thin step for a ladder. A few more climbs and a body-swing later, he stood on a catwalk that latticed the expansive complex, overlooking the skirmish below with a smile.

The Black Cat was using the bucket-like helmets of the AIM techies as perfect platforms, hopping and flipping across the sea of underlings. She dropped in among a group, clearing the area with a kick-sweep of her foot. The Guardsman rocketed to another corner, coming to a hovering stop on an immediate dime. Throwing his arms to his side, he cleared the area below him like a leaf blower with his repulsor rays. The Yankee Clipper was nothing more than a blue and white blur as he slipped in and out of time, scattering AIM technicians in his wake.

That’s when Iron Man descended to interrupt Hawkeye’s overview.

***

THEN
Iron Man stood facing the city, high above the twinkling lights. Looking upward, you would almost think his figure was an extension of the metal and glass framework of the skyscraper. Whites, yellows, reds—all the colors of the lighted cityscape swirled in the building facade and then whirled up and into the Golden Avenger’s armor.

“Hey, Iron Man,” the call behind him sounded like a friendly invitation.

“Hawkeye,” he acknowledged, barely turning his helmet. He’d rather keep his eye on the neighboring building’s back alley. “And company,” he added.

Hawkeye dropped from a thin grappling line, landing with the Black Cat in his arms. The Guardsman, whose variegated green armor was nearly a match for Iron Man’s gold-and-red one, came to a soft landing, after the Yankee Clipper disengaged from his arm.

“You’re a hard guy to pin down, ya know?” Hawkeye walked over to Iron Man like greeting an old friend.

“I’ve been busy. Had to pick up from when I disappeared.”

“Heh. Sure, sure. Although you’d think we heroes would be used to that by now, right?”

“Right. You’d think my secretary would be used to it, too. ” Iron Man’s voice was always so modulated and tinny when coming out of his armor. Hard to really distinguish his state of mind

“Listen, I wanted to talk to you about the Avengers,” Hawkeye’s manner was casual and warm, but behind the gleam in his eye were dark thoughts. Tony won’t go for this. This was always his thing, even when he wasn’t on the front lines.

“I figured you probably would. And I never got to thank you all for saving us from the Collector. Thanks.”

“Psh, hey!” Hawkeye rolled his eyes and tossed off his hand with two fingers raised in the air, “Besides, Cap owed me 5 bucks anyway.” Why is it hard to ask? Why am I sixteen again asking dad to borrow the car and stay out late? “Seriously, though, I’m glad I caught up with you so we could talk, maybe take a fly-by of the city . . .”

“I’d rather flush out the AIM terrorist cell that’s formed in the building there,” Iron Man pointed.

Hawkeye cocked his head, “Even better.”

***

NOW
“What did I tell you?” Hawkeye yelled/asked Iron Man while firing a sonic arrow at a collection of AIM flunkies trying to make their way to a pile of equipment. Their beekeeper-like helmets may be proof against his various gas arrows, but the screaming sonics buzzed the AIM guys into unconsciousness. “Diversions, we can handle. Did you find your doohickey?”

“Plugged into their systems and as far as I can tell, it’s three levels up.”

Hawkeye nodded. “Take the Clipper and me with you. I got your back and the Clipster’s got the technical know-how.” Does he notice how well just the three of them can perform? They’re single-handedly holding back a legion of AIM! “Got that, Yankee Clipper?” Hawkeye called out over the intercom mic attached to his cowl.

He had little time to wait. The answer came from behind him as the Yankee Clipper suddenly appeared. “Got it!”

Hawkeye fired an arrow at the armored hero, its magnetic tip locking on with a resounding CHONK! The arrow trailed a line that carried the archer and the Clipper after Iron Man as he flew through a sizeable hole that had been blown out of the AIM’s cavernous ceiling.

”How rude!” the Black Cat chided with a wink, “Taking us to a party and then up and bouncin’” Like Hawkeye, her playful attitude was a front to darker thoughts behind. What is he thinking leaving us behind to face overwhelming odds! He must not care! Or maybe he is proud of us?

The Guardsman zipped through the air to make sure the Black Cat stayed covered. He complemented her physical blows with his repulsor blasts. “Reminds me of the prison breakouts we used to get at the Vault. Think we can handle it?”

“Just watch me, copper!”

“Don’t know about you, but I’m feeling kind of left out.”

“Don’t be silly! And miss this great workout? It’s better than Pilates!” That’s precisely what I’m feeling, G-Man, the Black Cat wanted to say as she chocked another fellow with the palm of her left wrist. Hawkeye thinks that just because he’s the leader that he gets to hang with Iron Man and be in the center of the action at all times. If he thinks that he can just sideline me with a task while HE finagles all the glory where the REAL action is, he’s got another thing coming!

***

Elsewhere
Beta Ray Bill stood in a wind-whipped grassy plain. According to his spaceship’s navigation, there was no name to his verdant field, only a few numbers that coordinated the place somewhere in Norway, Scandinavia. But something stirred within the equine alien. His connection to the gods of Asgard welled up within him. His feet on this very ground . . . belonged here. He looked over the plain and saw visions of men in ancient armor running to meet an ancient battle. Many entered the sacred halls of Valhalla that day.

With a whish of wind, the scene was gone. Beta Ray Bill fell to one knee. The world that these men belonged to was no more. Once, their lives connected them to something eternal, but even that eternity was denied them. No memory. No glory. No legend. Now there was only oblivion.

No, not true. Beta Ray Bill was here. He remembered. He gave them glory. He could sing of their legend.

And so with lifted head, grotesque by earthly standards, made regal by the raiment of gods, Beta Ray Bill sang. The wind blew about him as it remembered, too. The ground, the air, the clouds would listen to this song of this obliterated world. And somewhere, some small piece of the universe, too small to be perceived, stirred.

***

(To be concluded in Part #2)

Avengers Underground #1

2005-01-09T14:57:00.000-08:00

by Ian Watson

[Editor's Note: Ian Watson is expanding the Avengers Anew Universe by writing a brand-new series! Think of it as a Anew Marvel Knights imprint! Pull up a chair, draw your jacket tight, and fight off the chills as a contingent of Avengers face their creepiest challenge yet... ]

The tombstone was five hundred years old, and it was splintered to pieces by the tree of bone that had grown through it. Long spiked creepers of yellowed calcium formed a gruesome vine that had grown from the shattered sarcophagus-side, rising in twisted arcs to punch through the furniture of the room and shred the man who had sat there. The interior of the library vault was ribboned with the bizarre bone growths, as if some primeval thorn bush had been suddenly petrified.
“You see why I called you, Dane.” the Archbishop said.
Dane Whitman has seen crime scenes before now. Murder investigations were nothing new to him. But this one had to be the weirdest. “I see,” he agreed.
Scene of crime officers were picking their way through the debris. The underground chamber had been a repository of ancient books and manuscripts since the middle ages, and dozens of priceless tomes were scattered carelessly over the blood-stained floor. “Am I okay being here?” Dane asked the cleric, glancing at the investigators.
“If you can tell me what the hell to do with this flaming mess, you’re more than welcome, chummy,” called the phlegmatic police inspector squatting over the body while the pathologists took their measurements. “Pardon the language, your grace.”
“I hear worse than that in my staff meetings,” the Archbishop replied. “I said worse than that when they showed me what had happened here.”
Dane Whitman inspected the fascinating architecture of bonework now choking up the room. “Careful,” Inspector Gallowglass warned him. “Those spikes are razor sharp.”
“I might need a little background,” Dane admitted to the Archbishop. “What’s this place and who is the dead man, for starters.”
Dane’s old tutor nodded. “Canon Cheyney’s our resident scholar of medieval history. Or he was, poor fellow. And this is our aumbrey, York Minster’s document and treasure house. We haven’t stored treasure here for a couple of centuries, but it remains a secure cool dark place for our manuscripts and old ledgers.” The Archbishop glanced ruefully at the wreckage. “Well, it was,” he added.
Dane noticed the wreckage of an oil lamp in the part of the room that had suffered from fire. A tine of bone had grown right through the glass of the lantern, and it was the spilled fluid that had set the fire which had claimed dozens of priceless volumes. “No electric lights?” he puzzled.
“Not down here,” the Archbishop admitted. He waited until the police inspector was out of earshot before murmuring to Dane, “Tradition says it would affect the, um the wards protecting this place.”
The Black Knight began to realise why he’d been called in. “Wards as in… magic?”
“Ancient blessings,” the clergyman suggested.
“And you thought I’d understand when the police didn’t because…”
“Because you’re my only former scholar who went on to take a doctorate in astrophysics and who owns a magic sword.”
Dane shook his head. “Not any more. I haven’t had the Ebony Blade for some time, and I haven’t been able to summon the Sword of Light and Shield of Night since… well, you saw that tragedy at Avengers Mansion on Sky News, right?”
Few people with access to TVs in the world could have failed to witness the end of an era as Earth’s mightiest heroes had fallen amidst inexplicable strangeness. “Yes, I’m sorry about that,” the Archbishop condoled.
“Those fires at the mansion just seemed to go on forever,” contributed Gallowglass.
“I didn’t know who else to call about this, Dane,” the Archbishop admitted. “We have to discover what caused the death of my dear colleague Alfred Cheyney, and why it happened. Look at this place! Look at him!”
For the first time the scene of crime investigators moved aside and Dane saw the corpse. It too was a grotesque sculpture of bone, destroyed from within as its own skeleton had twisted and burst free from its body. Long tangled new spines stabbed out from beneath the Canon’s bloody carcass. Bone had pushed out through his face and chest.
Dane reached for his cellphone and dialled a number. “I know who to call,” he admitted.
But Dr Stephen Strange’s number was unavailable.
“Ah,” sighed Dane. He looked at the shattered stone, the burnt books, the grotesque bone carvings, the burst scholar, and he surrendered to fate. “Then I know who else to call.” He thumbed another number into his phone and added, “God help me.”
There was a pause as his call was connected, and then he took a deep breath and said, “Crystal? I need you.”

The Galeria Zwiasku auction house was one of the less well known establishments off Vienna’s Kärntner Ring, because it specialised. As the time for the latest sale approached a number of well dressed men and women in power-business suits arrived in limousines to attend. But along with them were other men in long trenchcoats and dark glasses, some of them with mysterious bulges under their overcoats.
It was all very discrete, and only those with the house’s engraved invitation got past the footmen on the door.
Victor Shade handed his card to the receptionist and stepped through the airport-style security arch before entering the baroque interior of the gallery. The device discerned no concealed weaponry, no hidden metal, no genetic abnormalities. It didn’t alert security to the plastic skin and synthetic organs of the world’s most sophisticated synthezoid.
Shade chose a seat by the outer aisle near the back, where he could watch the arrivals and match them with the Interpol database he was currently linked into.
Some were easy. The small man with a twitch in the pinstripe was buyer for Justine Hammer. The blonde twins sitting intimately entwined with each other had to be Fenris. The pale balding man in the store-ready grey suit was representing AIM. The woman in the green designer original was a HYDRA section leader. The intense fellow with the walrus moustaches was the Master of Art for the Kingdom of Latveria.
By the time the auction was set to start Shade had identified over half the attendees, from Mister Little to the Grey Gargoyle. But he was far more interested in exhibit nine.
This was a sale of rare exotic items not customarily available or strictly legal. There was an anti-gravity drive from a Skrull saucer, a kilo of antarctic anti-metal, the shell of a Brood drone, a DNA sample from Killgrave the Controller. Shade noted the patterns of bidding, and who was interested in what. He bided his time until the documents that formed lot nine came up.
“Something of an oddity here,” the auctioneer admitted. “These classified US Government notes date from the close of world war two and have been sealed in the Pentagon for the last sixty years. They were part of the information extracted by the Red Skull during his recent masquerade as Secretary of Defence Dell Rusk, and were retrieved unopened after his fall. They were diverted from custody and are offered here today sight unseen. Will anybody venture fifty thousand for then?”
Bidding was sporadic, but in the end the HYDRA woman acquired the documents for $322,000.
Victor Shade watched until the auction’s end, and as the various purchasers were guided away to conduct their transactions he glided after the Section Chief and her unctuous hosts, ignoring the security precautions intended to keep out intruders.
He flicked on a real-time connection to the Technological Jungle beneath the capital of the African nation-state that was sponsoring his trip and reported. “It appears as if Struker’s agent has acquired the documents, T’Challa. I shall pursue and determine whether your suspicions are founded, and whether somebody is planning the murder of every superhero on the planet.”

Crystalia Amaquelin Maximoff was a petite copper-headed beauty with a fresh heart-shaped face, and when she moved it was as if she was walking on air. The glowering man with the folded arms and swept-back silver hair behind her didn’t move at all, just fixed his angry gaze on Dane Whitman and never turned aside.
“Thanks for coming,” the Black Knight told his two former comrades. “Especially you Pietro. You didn’t need to come.”
“I think I did,” answered Quicksilver curtly. “I am caring for my wife.” He emphasised the word, and placed a protective hand on Crystal’s shoulder.
“Good. Great,” answered Dane. He wasn’t going to get into competitions with Pietro Maximoff again over the lovely elemental whose advice he needed, Dane told himself. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need an expert opinion.”
“You said it was urgent,” Crystal agreed. “That’s why I got here via the Pietro express.”
The Black Knight blinked. “Excuse me? Are you saying that Quicksilver ran you here? Between continents?”
“My speed and range have been increased considerably since last we worked closely, Dane Whitman,” Quicksilver answered.
“Good,” the Knight said again. “Well done.”
It was an awkward reunion. Crystal and Dane had both served as Avengers during a time when the Inhuman princess was estranged from her husband, and Pietro was well aware of the attraction between the swashbuckling scientist and his own wayward wife. But there was business at hand.
Dane gestured for his former team-mates to follow him down into the aumbrey “Crystal, I’m afraid this is a bit of a gory scene. They’ve moved the body but still…”
“I’ve fought beside my family in wars,” the elemental pointed out, “I saw Kree-Lar after the Nega Bomb. And you were with me when we entered the Grim Reaper’s hell dimension.”
Quicksilver glowered more.
“Still,” Dane told her, “This isn’t nice.”
Crystal ducked low under a ribbon of bone and looked around the room in grim fascination. “It’s not nice,” she agreed.
Pietro followed them into the barrel-roofed chamber. “What could cause this macabre devastation?” he wondered.
Crystal brushed her fingers over the broken stone, over the scorched books, over the gristly bone itself. “Something malignant,” she shuddered. “Something that controls bone. Dwells in it I think.”
“Be cautious,” Quicksilver warned her. “This smacks of the occult, and we are ill-prepared to protect ourselves against it.”
“Still no word from Wanda then?” Dane ventured.
Pietro turned upon him faster than he could see. “You will speak no word of my sister!” he hissed. “None!”
“Okay,” Dane backed off. “Look, I know it’s you I’m talking to, but… chill out a little, can’t you?”
“There was an intelligence behind this,” Crystal interrupted. Her Inhuman genetic gifts were around the control of the four primal elements, and she had a sensitivity to their use and abuse. “Behind that broken grave marker in the wall, there was – there is – a skeleton long entombed. Somehow the… whatever it was got into it, and its bones began to twist and grow.”
Dane shone his torch into the collapsed alcove. The Archbishop’s prohibition against electrical light had already been voided by the police forensics team. A dozen thick strands of bone merged into a clotted nexus that might once have been a conventional corpse.
“It pressed through the stone, shattered it,” Crystal sensed. “It was growing so fast, so urgently, pushed by something dark and horrible.”
“Be calm, my wife,” Quicksilver urged her. “Whatever evil did this is gone now. It did its murder and left.”
Dane looked around the gloomy ruined library and hoped that was so.
“It was aimed at the man,” Crystal went on. She pointed to the wrecked desk and the shattered lamp. “It wanted the man, and what he was reading. The bones pierced him, so sharp…”
“And then whatever was in them jumped,” Dane realised. “Transferred from the old corpse it was mutating into Canon Cheyney’s own skeleton. That’s it. That’s why he was so disfigured.”
“That is… most unpleasant,” Quicksilver admitted. “Is there a supervillain with powers of this kind?”
“I don’t know where it went then,” Crystal admitted. “I can’t really read bone, only the stone and the fire.”
There was a rattling behind them, and they realised the only exit to the aumbrey was now completely sealed with yellow-white osseous growths.
“It didn’t go anywhere,” the Black Knight realised. “It’s still here!”

The HYDRA Section Chief was led from the ornate coffered hallway into an elaborate gilded room, where mundane details such as transactions between discreet numbered Swiss accounts could be discussed in a civilised atmosphere.
Victor Shade checked that there was nobody in the hall, directed the video monitor to randomly switch to a different view of another part of the gallery, and faded to transparency. He gently ghosted himself into the thick stone wall, passing through solid matter like the Vision they had once called him.
He didn’t call himself the Vision now. That name belonged to his time when he’d been a member of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers, defending the world despite the personal cost. And first the world had hated him for being an artificial being, and then it had hated him for loving a human woman, and this it had conspired to dismantle him to a mindless robot. He had stood by unable to help as his children were destroyed, his wife driven insane.
But even then he had served, until the moment King T’Challa of the Wakandas has hinted at the truth. Unwilling to believe, he had agreed to the undercover mission, letting the Black Panther substitute a Life Model Decoy robot to fill his place with the Avengers.
That mindless automaton had fought beside the team for weeks, months, and none of those he called friends and team-mates had noticed the difference. Then it was destroyed, and few of his team-mates seemed to care.
So Victor Shade continued his mission, and now he was alone.
He pressed his intangible face forward, silently surfacing just an inch out of the wall to witness what was happening in the conference room.
The Section Leader and her hosts were all dead, and lot number nine was gone.

The forest of bones tangled and twisted, growing like a thing alive. It knotted itself forwards, sharp spear-point tips driving its three victims backwards away from the door.
“What is it?” Quicksilver demanded, his voice tense and shaken. No speed could get him or his wife past the bone thorns of that dense maze.
“We found out too much,” realised Crystal. “It can’t let us get away.” She spread one palm before her and a flare of fire engulfed the nearest feelers; but bone charred slowly and a dozen more tendrils quested out to replace those seared to nothing.
Dane Whitman reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a stubby metal cylinder. He thumbed a switch and a blade of coherent force seared out.
“Still suffering from Jedi envy, then,” Crystal observed, trying to stay calm as the clacking bone edges approached.
The Black Knight swung his blade and sliced a swathe of bone from the mass. It clattered to the floor but began to grow anew, spawning more sharp tendrils to menace the trapped trio.
“Don’t let these things scratch you,” Pietro warned urgently. “Remember what happened to the scholar here!”
Dane slashed again, trying to clear a path to freedom. “I can’t cut through it fast enough!” he warned. “It keeps growing back!”
“Speed,” Quicksilver pointed out, holding his hand imperiously to be given the photonic sword, “happens to be my forte.”
The Black Knight reluctantly gave up his only weapon and let the speedster mutant scythe into the mass of bone.
“Be careful!” Crystal shrieked as the osseous tendrils curved in behind her husband.
“Watch out!” Dane called, grabbing Crystal into his arms as the bone structures closed in on them too, gaining in strength and speed.
He knew then that Pietro wasn’t going to get them out. He knew that he was going to die here. They were all going to die here.
Crystal was going to die here.
“No,” the Black Knight growled his eyes narrowing to angry flint chips. “Not so!”
The warrior felt the fury come upon him, cold and deadly. Dane swung out, carving left and right by blind instinct, swathing through the bone jungle, hacking it to fragments. In his mind he was once again back in the Crusades, carving the heathen, in the Otherworld, battling demon-goblins, in Avalon aginst the seething Formorian hordes.
And the bones seemed to retreat before him.
Then Pietro had the way clear, and he was whizzing Crystal free and away. Dane raced after them, slamming the aumbrey’s metal vault door shut to contain the rattling menace within.
It was only then that he realised he had cut his way free and saw he was holding the Ebony Blade in his hand.

Continued…

Footnotes for the Baffled Neophyte:

The Black Knight (Dane Whitman) is descendant of a line of warriors linked to the Ebony Blade, a supernatural sword forged by Merlin from a mysterious meteor. The Ebony Blade has some unpleasant aspects such as draining life-force from its victims and cursing its owner for shedding blood. Most recently it possessed Dane’s friend, transforming him to the Bloodwraith that stalked the devastated ruins of an exterminated European nation . Dane used his scientific abilities to craft himself a non-lethal “neural sabre”, then later gained a “sword of light” and “shield of night” from “the Lady of the Lake”. This story reveals that those gifts have somehow vanished.

Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff) is a mutant gifted with immense speed that has recently been significantly increased. He and his sister Wanda are the children of mutant terrorist Magneto but were raised by gypsies by their foster-father Django Maximoff. Recently Wanda – the Scarlet Witch – lost control of her magics and precipitated the crisis that shattered the Avengers. She was rendered mindless, last seen being cared for by Magneto. Pietro has a troubled marriage with Crystal and is father to Luna.

Crystal (Princess Crystalia Amaquelin Maximoff) is an Inhuman, one of the genetically-modified offshoot nation of hidden superhumans. Her Inhuman gift is to control the four classical elements. Her marriage to Quicksilver has been a difficult one, leading to her infidelity with a human, her separation from her husband, and her subsequent romance with Dane Whitman. Crystal and Pietro have recently reconciled and seek to offer a stable home for their five-year old daughter.

The Vision (Victor Shade) is a synthezoid, an android built in 1939 to replicate the biological functions of a human, using technology not available at the time. The deactivated android was redesigned at the behest of robot villain Ultron to use as a weapon against the Avengers, gaining density-changing powers and drawing energy via a forehead solar gem, but broke his programming and became a long-serving mainstay of the team. He later fell in love and married the Scarlet Witch, but their relationship was sundered when he was temporarily mind-wiped and his twin children with Wanda Maximoff were revealed to be unreal. The Vision was apparently destroyed during the events leading to the disbanding of the Avengers, as explained in our text here.

The Black Panther (King T’Challa) is the hereditary ruler of the African nation-state of Wakanda, wearer of the sacred mantle of the Panther-Cult. He possessed enhances senses, reflexes, and other physical abilities from consumption of a sacred heart-shaped herb. Wakanda is a strange mix of the primitive and high-tech, a land in transition. T’Challa strives to be a proactive ruler, often initiating Byzantine political schemes to ensure the wellbeing of his subjects. He originally joined the Avengers to assess their threat capacity, but remained because he valued their fellowship.

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 10

2004-12-26T18:54:00.000-08:00

Previously: The Avengers are missing! Hawkeye, once believed dead, returned to assemble a new team to track them down-- but when they tried to recruit Beta Ray Bill, an alien granted the power of Thor, they were attacked and Beta Ray Bill was kidnapped! They managed to track Beta Ray Bill to his captor, the alien Collector. Of course, rather than let go of his new toys, the Collector unleashed the full force of the Avengers against the new team!

***

Volcana lowered her head as the Foster particles began to enter her body, in a rush, like small bubbles of carbonation that cling to the sides of your glass. She felt a surge of energy fill her very being, a crescendo of sensation. At the height of sound and fury, with a sudden thrust of her arms, her body erupted! Plasma leapt forth in a wide semicircle in front of her, blanketing the area, rolling through it with the chaos and force of a train let loose from its rails!

The people before her were tossed, mere leaves in the furious wind that bowled over them. Volcana’s allies in back of her were thrown backwards by the sheer recoil. The sensation subsided as quickly as it grew. Volcana was left spent, reverted to her human form, and she fell to her knees, breathing heavily.

“It’s over,” the Grandmaster slowly clapped his hands, the only sound in the cavernous ship. “The Avengers have been defeated. The Avengers have triumphed.

“Gather up your fallen playthings,” the Grandmaster told his comrade. “Before whatever thrall you have placed them in begins to wear too thinly.”

The Collector’s face was a mixture of disgust and anger. “Bah! They would never break free of an Ovoid mind machine. . . they simply. . .”

He was cut short by the nod of the Grandmaster’s head. “But you have lost. You wagered that you could collect all the Avengers. Obviously, you cannot.” The Grandmaster looked down at Hawkeye and the ragged crew he had assembled.

“They . . . were playing with us?” The Black Cat helped Marsha Rosenberg to her feet. The Yankee Clipper ran out to see to Beta Ray Bill, who was caught in Volcana’s final blast. “And at what cost?” The Guardsman added, flying over to those who were afforded no protection from Volcana unleashed. James Rhodes and Rick Jones were nearly

“Now. As they were. . .” the Grandmaster pressed.

As the Guardsman watched, tiny, virtually imperceptible machines began to crawl and swarm over Rhodes and Jones, and further down the scene, over the Falcon and Crystal, too. Where there was once burnt, disfigured skin, the miniscule robots cleared away to reveal the bodies, healed, knitted and unbroken.
One by one, the fallen Avengers began to rise and slowly shuffle back to the bank of containment tubes that were their prisons. Captain America, the Human Torch, Namor . . .

The Collector and the Grandmaster, however, seemed oblivious to the men and women below them.

“I will not concede!” the Collector spat. “The wager was, if I may quote, ‘to acquire all Avengers currently in existence.’ A task which I succeeded in doing! The archer had died, and was thus removed from the game.”

“Not true!” the Grandmaster spat back. “His injuries were healed, he returned. He was still in play. I cannot be held remiss due to YOUR careless oversight and mad dash to complete your obsession!”

The Collector’s eyes went wide. “YOU!? You had your hand in this! You . . . you cheated?!”

“Ha, ha! No more so than you!” The Grandmaster waved to the sidelines. A third figure could barely be discerned in the shadows. “You had inside knowledge. You had assistance, to which I availed myself of as well! Behold, your consultant!”

Out from the shadows stepped a wild-haired, hard-faced man. “I know him!” the Guardsman remarked. “It’s . . . the Mad Thinker!”

“What . . . what’s going on, Hawk?” the Clipper hushed, keeping his fists up and his stance ready.

“Shh!” Hawkeye looked at the triad above them, “I wanna see where this is going.”

The Mad Thinker, a mastermind among men, a strategic genius without peer. His hair was unkempt, his clothes a simple green jumpsuit. Both a tribute to a man whose brain was too busy to be bothered with trivial concerns of fashion. A man whose stratagems brought him into conflict with the Fantastic Four and whose calculations bordered on prophecy.

“Cease your bickering,” the Mad Thinker calmly addressed the two cosmic Elders. “If you were so concerned about the strict rules of engagement, you should have laid the ground rules at the start.”

“Wha--?!” sputtered the Collector. The Grandmaster’s eyes narrowed, “Human, do not presume . . .”

The Mad Thinker held out his hand. “Grandmaster, above all, *I* and *I alone* have won this day, and I demand my recompense! As compensation for my winnings, I demand that I be granted access to the Power Primordial that powers both your and the Collector’s separate obsessions! I will be named a new Elder of the Universe! The Mad Thinker no longer, today I am . . . the Strategist!

He continued, hearkening back to his secret lair, filled with dozens upon dozens of computers and separate displays. “My life has been a single-minded devotion to strategy, to contemplation of past, present and future events. Finally, my mind suddenly broke through, seeing all of human history as an interwoven tapestry. I clutched my head-- filled with visions of days past, of days yet to come. I had glimpsed a perspective only believed achievable by gods themselves. Just as suddenly, the vision was gone, and I was left gasping on the floor. But I knew that I had reached the limit of what my human body could achieve. If I were to truly progress, I must become something more than what I am. I remembered the Elders of the Universe, a collection of individuals whose obsessions allowed them to move from the realms of their respective humanities into that of the cosmic, of the Power Primordial. I entered their names, looking at their visages on my display. My choice was clear. I could either end my life at that moment, or seek to become an Elder of the Universe!”

“After many weeks of inventing, searching, and pondering, I contacted the Collector. I offered him information in the one thing he was never able to accomplish-- to add the Avengers to his collection. In return, he would grant me a portion of the Power Primordial. After all, I knew what was going to happen to them. I foresaw the series of disasters that would befall their number, I knew each where, each when, each condition the heroes would be in after this catastrophe.”

Bill Foster looked up at the containment tube holding the Scarlet Witch. Beyond her, dimly seen were Jocasta, Stingray, Moon Knight . . .

“But that was not the extent of it. I then contacted the Grandmaster. I knew his obsession with games would afford me an additional chance. I told him of the Collector’s plan, and also told him of its risks. After all, even though my strategy for collecting the Avengers was nearly perfect, the 0.01% chance of failure was enough to pique his competitive streak. I told him all the various scenarios in which the Collector might fail, and should he fail, the Grandmaster would grant me a portion of the Power Primordial as a kind of, shall we say, finders' fee?"

“So, gentlemen,” the Mad Thinker flashed a crooked smile, “The Collector amassed all the Avengers for a brief time. Success. The Grandmaster is correct, he could not manage to keep them. Success. And I helped you both. Success.”

“A-ha!” a voice rang out with a sudden epiphany. “Time out, flag on the play, ten yard penalty!” Hawkeye swaggered up to the trio standing above the scene on the catwalk. He turned and spread his arms wide in a magnanimous gesture. “Thanks for playing, everyone. Game over. Some departing contestants may receive the Avengers Home Game, by Milton Bradley.”

“What are you talking about, human?!” the Collector demanded. The Grandmaster folded his spindly arms, reminded that a mewling child demanded his attention. The Mad Thinker simply stared, the same crooked smile on his lips.

“This all comes down to the wager YOU made, Chester the Collector, inspired by information by the Mad Tinkler and wagered upon by the Grand Duchess? And if I may quote, ‘to acquire all Avengers currently in existence?’” To his companions, he winked, “For a copy of official rules, write to the address on your screen.”

“Yes.”

“Well, BZZT!” Hawkeye sounded the buzzer. “You ALL failed ‘cause you forgot the plain and simple fact THAT THE AVENGERS OFFICIALLY DISBANDED BEFORE YOU STARTED COLLECTING THEM! If you want to get hung up on technicalities, you got trapped in the biggest one of all! There weren’t any Avengers to collect in the first place!”

“Oh, come on,” the Yankee Clipper breathed, “Clearly the spirit of the agreement was too—" He was cut off short by a quick jab to the elbow by the Black Cat. “Whose side are you on!” she whispered, “Go get ‘em, Hawk!”

“Hmm,” the Grandmaster turned to the Collector. “And you say *I’ve* cheated?”

The Collector’s eyes narrowed. “None of it matters. I have all the heroes now. Even Hawkeye’s new crew is within easy capture.”

The Grandmaster shook his head. “Must I remind of the strict cosmic laws under which we must operate? This collection, this game . . . There is little room for pettiness, brother.”

“So, as unpalatable as it is, you will force my hand?”

The Grandmaster nodded.

“So be it.”

The containment tubes began to glow. With a flash of light and ozone, the Avengers disappeared, from Beast to Warbird, from Crystal to Yellowjacket.

“Now would be a satisfactory time to leave,” the Collector stare lanced Hawkeye directly.

In another flash of light and ozone, Hawkeye, the Black Cat, the Guardsman, Marsha Rosenberg, Bill Foster, the Yankee Clipper, and Beta Ray Bill found themselves aboard Beta Ray’s spaceship. All was silence for a moment, and then Hawkeye yelped the loudest “YA-HOO!” as everyone’s breath collectively exhaled in laughter.

“We . . . did it!” Marsha beamed. “We saved the Avengers!”

“Yeah, I guess we did!” the Black Cat found herself hugging Beta Ray Bill’s arm.

“I have to admit,” the Yankee Clipper slapped Hawkeye’s back, “that I had my doubts, man. I really did. But, boy, that felt good.”

Bill Foster agreed. Silently, he looked down at his particle ray gun. His power pack was totally exhausted, but it was due in no small part to his Fosteron particles that this crew was able to face the entire contingent of Avengers. Foster couldn’t help but wonder what the implications of that truly meant for him, for this group.

The Guardsman took off his helmet, shaking Hawkeye’s hand. “After all that, I can only think about how tired and hungry I am!”

“Well, Michael,” Hawkeye winked, “let me tell you of the Avengers’ tradition with my award-winning barbecue!”

And amid all the laughter and relief, Beta Ray Bill stood, silent, his alien features inscrutable.

Later, elsewhere, on a wind-whipped plain of snow on earth, a flash of light and ozone seared the air, marking the appearance of the Mad Thinker, the Collector, and the Grandmaster.

“So you presume to know our ways, to twist the cosmic balance to your own agenda? Your reach truly exceeds your grasp, human.”

“Perhaps,” the Thinker smiled, “and perhaps this is what is meant to be. As best as I can glimpse of this cosmic balance, I wonder if succeeding in capturing the Avengers is in the best interest of either of you. Whose reach truly exceeds whose grasp, here? The fact remains that I fulfilled my obligations to you. It was your natures that twisted that fulfillment into the situation that it became. It is your natures that will fulfill your obligations to me, nonetheless.”

A moment of silence past among the three. Then, the Collector and the Grandmaster raised their hands, sending waves of energy coursing into the Thinker. The air warped. The sky seemed to turn into a negative image of itself. The earth seemed to shudder at the blow. The Thinker was left lying on the ground, struggling to right himself.

As they faded away, the Elders’ final words were heard hanging in the air. “There is one thing you failed to discover in your determination to become an Elder. Each of us has followed our obsession to such an extent as to outlive all others of our native race. Should your own obsession allow you to do the same, then and only then will we begin to consider you among our brethren.”

The Mad Thinker raised his head to the wind and sky. He smiled, his eyes flashing with a piece of the Power Primordial. Of course he discovered that. As the Strategist, he could wait for humanity to die. Or, of course, he could use his powers and strategies to perhaps hasten such an event. The Strategist’s laughter rang out over the plain . . .

THE END
(for now!)

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 9

2004-12-15T23:08:00.000-08:00

“I don’t believe you!” shouted the Collector. Volcana peered at him for the first time. His face was pudgy and grotesque, lined with wrinkles that were so distinct that she almost felt she could run her finger along the ridges. She suppressed a slight shudder of queasiness with the though that her fingertip might slip in and be lost the fold of his wrinkle forever. “These,” he dismissed the group with a gesture, “are not the Avengers!”

“True enough!” Hawkeye shouted back. “As long as there are creeps like you in the universe, THERE WILL BE AVENGERS!”

Hawkeye and his motley assemblage stood their ground in a circular formation. Although their poses were dramatic enough, they were nearly overwhelmed in the cavernous darkness-- only a pale aura of light from some unseen source spotlighted them. The latticed columns and support beams barely appeared in the distant darkness, looking like ribs holding up the insides of some rough beast.

Yards away, a similar spotlight dimly illuminated the form of Beta Ray Bill. His form was slumped over, on his knees, with his cape looking almost like a shroud draped across his shoulders and mighty frame. Strangely, he looked discarded and noble at the same time.

The banks of machinery, confusingly intertwined with more intestinal wiring and piping, illuminated one section at a time, revealing large tubes. Within, a yellow glow began pulsating, growing in intensity.

“Hawkeye, look!” the Black Cat blurted out.

“Hmph!” was Hawkeye’s only response as he stared ahead. “Foster, Yankee Clipper, same plan, multiple targets. Everyone keep to the center until my signal.”

The Avengers stood, impassive and cold, inside the tubes. Captain America, Iron Man, the Wasp, the Hulk. . . over 40 heroes in over 40 tubes. The glow lit their faces from beneath, making them look deathly inhuman. Even the normally-impassive Guardsman held his breath at the sight. With a soft FSST! that echoed throughout the chamber, the tubes split open.

As the Avengers stepped forth, Hawkeye and his crew tapped a small metal device on their left forearm.

“Take them!” screamed the Collector from above. In eerie silence and with blank expressions, the Avengers complied.

The New Avengers took immediate defensive actions. Energy blasts and missiles of all types began to fly their way. The Guardsman, Hawkeye, and Volcana took care of most of them, using their own powers to block or knock away flying shields, bioelectric blasts, and throwing darts. Foster fired his gun at several energy blasts, using his new Fosteron particle to harmlessly dissipate even Quasar’s energy hammer. Nevertheless, some blasts seemed to be breaking through. The Black Cat cringed at the sharp sting from the Black Widow’s “biting” blast. The Yankee Clipper nearly keeled over from Moondragon’s mental blast.

From high above, the Collector overlooked it all with intense satisfaction. “Look at all of this,” the Collector crooned. “Ah, such power. Such determination. Truly, these are singular beings. Is it any wonder why I must have them all?” He leaned over the railing as a man in full control of his players below. He laughed a deep and resonant laugh. “You will never win this desperate gambit, fool!” But he seemed to be talking to someone behind him.

“Clipper!” Hawkeye barked. Bill Foster grimaced. He knew it was all up to him. If his gambit wouldn’t pay off, they were doomed. For the first time since he started this adventure, he realized he might have to give up his life as the price of failure. Was it worth it?

The Yankee Clipper reached down to press a knob on his alien belt. In the blink of an eye, he suddenly appeared on the other side of the attacking Avengers. He placed on the ground a small metal box and flipped a switch. “This better work, Foster!” In another blink, he was gone. In his stead, the box exploded in a flash of light and sizzle of sound, with energy trailing downward in a spiral around the explosion.

Nearly all of the attacking Avengers appeared stunned, drained. For that is exactly what they were. Wonder Man, Photon and the Living Lightning fell from the air, reverting to their normal selves. Falcon, too, had his photonic wings clipped. Firebird stared at her flame-less hands, and the Invisible Woman, now visible of course, dropped to one knee. Machine Man toppled over face down, same with the Vision. She-Hulk sat down in amazement-- as Jennifer Walters.

“Nice!” Bill Foster exclaimed. “The Fosterons worked! We’ve reduced their energy to virtually nothing! Keep your arm devices protected so you’ll stay uneffected!”

“You forgot one minor detail,” the Black Cat purred. “Some of these guys don’t rely on fancy energy and would rather do things the hard way.”

The Guardsman nodded once. “And let’s work fast. We won’t know how long this will last.”

“I’ve got time,” the Yankee Clipper noted, touching his belt. In his next breath, he was next to Quicksilver. “My belt lets me slip in and out of time itself. Looks a lot like super-speed, doesn’t it?” It was useless to ask the question as he gave Quicksilver an upper cut, since the mutant was sent crumpling to the ground.

Hawkeye fired a knock-out gas arrow as he fell back. He saw Rage, Justice and Firestar cough in the face of its thick cloud before he turned his attention to Beta Ray Bill. “Bill, how dare you go to a party and not invite us along!”

If the alien warrior understood Hawkeye’s humor, he gave no indication. He simply raised his head as Hawkeye tried to help him to his feet. Then, with a sudden movement, he lashed out his fist to pummel Hercules as he approached. “I was . . . but a plaything. He couldn’t decide if I should be added to his collection, discarded, or destroyed. In any case, I am not happy.” Beta Ray Bill strode to press his attack on Hercules, swatting aside Deathcry as he did so. Hawkeye couldn’t pursue any details, not with the Black Panther pouncing in from above.

“It seems you may have underestimated this team. It wouldn’t be the first time.” A voice sounded behind the Collector. The Collector didn’t respond. He simply looked at the battle below, but he was no longer smiling.

The Guardsman had the vantage of flight all to himself, thanks to Foster’s particle bomb. He strafed the area with his repulsor beams, forcing the attacking Avengers into several fronts. He hoped to isolate the more powerful members so that his allies could pace themselves. He kept the Beast and Starfox at bay, but cursed himself as Triathlon moved too quickly to be contained.

The Black Cat ran to take the fight to Hellcat, leaping around a metal column for momentum. “Cat fight!” Hellcat matched her, blow for blow. Unconcerned, the Black Cat laughed, toying with her as she evaded. “C’mon! You fight like a girl!” But a growl from behind made her twist too early, catching Hellcat’s lunge in the shoulder. The growl came from Tigra, who forced the Black Cat to dodge again.

After taking out USAgent, Volcana had succeed in fusing the Sandman’s form into glass. She barely had time to turn around when she was stopped short by Sersi, who extinguished Volcana’s flame, transforming her back into Marsha Rosenberg. Surprised and embarrassed, Marsha felt naked, exposed, despite her costume underneath.

“I really hate to do this,” the Yankee Clipper apologized ahead of time as he jumped out of the elongated embrace of Mister Fantastic. “If you can hear me, Reed, I apologize.” With a twist of his belt, he was slipping in and out of time once more. With his enhanced strength, it was easy to grab Mister Fantastic’s rubbery arm and weave in and out among his opponents. The Clipper came to stop, looking back at the Thing and the Sub-Mariner hopelessly entangled in Reed Richard’s body.

The Yankee Clipper ran towards the incoming Silverclaw and Mantis, clocking Sersi with his elbow as he ran past her. “Check!” he called. The momentary distraction was all Marsha needed, transforming back to Volcana and unleashing her full power at her opponent. “Checkmate!” she smiled. She saw the Guardsman battling the Black Knight and Captain Britain, and Darkhawk was still recovering from being drained by the Fosterons.

Still, there were too many heroes. Volcana hurried to the thicker part of the battle, running into Black Cat. Her body was intertwined with Spider-Man’s, and both of them were covered in gobs of think webbing. “We wrestled for control of his web-shooters,” the Black Cat explained. “I’m not sure who won.” It was too hard to move in the mass of webs, but the Cat managed to rub her head against Spider-Man’s. “Not that I’m complaining too much, mind you.”

“Okay, uhm. Sit tight,” Volcana continued on, blasting Spider-Woman aside with a plasma burst.

“Take your time!”

Hawkeye yelled for Volcana. “’Cana! Fall in!” He was flanked by Bill Foster and Guardsman. Beta Ray Bill was still battling Hercules, who now alternated blows alongside Demolition Man. The Yankee Clipper was nowhere to be seen.

With another arrow loosed, Hawkeye nodded to Bill, “It’s time for Plan B.”

“You know this will probably exhaust my reserves?”

“I think we’re all getting a bit exhausted at this point.” Another arrow fired.

“All right,” Bill steeled himself. “Volcana, you ready?”

“I . . . yes.”

Volcana stood with Foster and the others behind her. She folded her arms against her chest.

“Okay, here we go,” Bill unfastened the feed to his particle ray gun and turned the feed toward Volcana’s back. He reached to his power pack and cranked a dial to its maximum . . .

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 8

2004-12-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

Previously: The Avengers are missing! Hawkeye, once believed dead, has returned and is assembling a new team to track them down-- the Black Cat, burglar-turned-partner of Spider-Man; the Guardsman, armor-powered policeman; Bill Foster, scientific adventurer; Volcana, plasma-charged reluctant hero; the Yankee Clipper, lost-in-time 50’s hero. But when they tried to recruit Beta Ray Bill, an alien granted the power of Thor, they were attacked and Beta Ray Bill was kidnapped!

Hawkeye stared in disbelief. For the moment, the Marksman with a Mouth was uncharacteristically speechless.

“Gone?” Volcana breathed. “They just . . . took Beta Ray Bill.”

Hawkeye felt like he needed to blink. As his eyes began to shut, all his bravado, all his confidence seemed inconsequential. Instead, he was faced with an overwhelming sense of defeat, of purposelessness. Who was he to think that any effort on his part could unravel this mystery that could claim gods, aliens, the world’s greatest champions? He opened his eyes—the blink was over.

“All right,” he vaunted his courage, swinging back towards the group assembled in Beta Ray Bill’s now-abandoned spacecraft. “Everyone loves a mystery . . .”

“Like this--” the Yankee Clipper offered, “how come those things didn’t grab any of us? ”

“Well, they ARE Mindless Ones,” Hawkeye shrugged. “Not exactly known for their witty repartee.”

“Or,” countered the Clipper, “they were after him specifically.”

“It’s happened before,” the Black Cat pursed her lips. “How come the Human Torch was left behind, but the rest of the Fantastic Four have disappeared? How come Spider-Man is missing, but yours truly is still here?”

“Well, we do believe they are targeting HEROES,” the Guardsman folded his arms.

“Ouch!” the Black Cat purred, her eyes flashing, “A Tin Man without a heart! How original!”

“That’s not what I --"

“No,” Hawkeye wagged his finger knowingly, “It fits. Everyone gone has been a card-carrying Avenger. Someone with a serious interest in Avengers has been busy.”

“Or a serious grudge,” remarked the Yankee Clipper.

“Mindless Ones,” mused the Black Cat. “Are we dealing with someone magic?”

“Notice, too, that those things came out of the ground the moment Beta Ray Bill called down his Asgardian powers?” the Guardsman entered forensics mode. “That’s got to be connected. Perhaps the abductor really thought he was kidnapping Thor?”

“Let’s track ‘im down,” Bill Foster announced. “My ‘Fosteron.’ This new particle I’ve tweaked, it’s like a Pym particle, but for energy, not mass. I can amplify the ambient energies present during the Mindless Ones’ attack and use it to search for trace signatures. With luck, we can get a trail and follow it.”

Hawkeye slammed his fist into his palm. “Excellent! Bill, work with Yankee Clipper. Clips, you were a physicist and engineer, right? We got two big brains and one spaceship. Let’s fly!”

And that’s how Marsha Rosenberg, the reluctant Volcana, found herself peering out of a porthole at the vast emptiness of space.

She was standing in a relatively small room that must have served for some cargo storage. She remembered having an apartment bedroom smaller than this, but not by much. She looked out at the millions of stars burning white-hot with their own plasma. In some strange way, she felt an odd kindred with the stars. Perhaps her own plasma-flame powers were the same. Did they keep her at a distance from the world, too?

“Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” the Black Cat bounded in with her best Jan Brady impersonation. “Sorry. Guess you’ve heard that one before, huh?”

She sighed. “Yeah. Just a little.” Marsha turned to look back out to space. “So . . . what do you think we’ll find out there.”

“Ooh, I dunno,” The Black Cat shrugged. “Something big. Something cool. Sure beats cold pizza and The O.C. Well, maybe the cold pizza.” Sensing Marsha’s reluctance, the Cat sized her up and down. “Are you up for it?”

Marsha didn’t really answer. She smiled a bit, still looking away. “I just can’t believe the beauty of it all. The vastness. And all I can think about is if I should call in sick for Monday.”

“Hmm. You’d better hurry up. I think you’ll be in a roaming area soon.”

Marsha looked at the Black Cat, and the two burst into laughter.

“Ladies?” They were interrupted by the Guardsman, who peeked in from the doorway behind them.

They all crammed into the forward compartment, which was little bigger than Marsha’s erstwhile observation deck. Obviously, Beta Ray Bill’s spacecraft wasn’t a deep space luxury liner. But at least it made Hawkeye’s pose in the front of the deck that much more impressive when he was flanked by six other distinctive heroes.

“There it is!” announced Hawkeye. “Bill, you’re a genius. Led us right to ‘im!” He was staring at a large ark-like spacecraft. It’s massive bulk dwarfed the heroes’ tiny spacecraft, and a moon was barely visible, being eclipsed behind it.

“I recognize it now. The Collector. I should have realized-- in my dying vision, I saw the Grandmaster, his . . . ‘brother’ . . . for lack of a better term. I should have known the Elders of the Universe were somehow involved in all of this.”

“Amazing,” the Yankee Clipper sounded more matter-of-fact than awestruck, but his sentiments clearly echoed through the hearts of his teammates.

“Okay . . . so, now what?” Marsha Rosenberg assumed her fiery form of Volcana. She did her best to keep her body temperature low so as not to damage her teammates or any of the equipment in such a tight space.

“Well, obviously the Collector has decided to ‘collect’ anyone whose ever been an Avenger,” Hawkeye explained. “As the New Avengers, we should be polite and point out that he’s got a couple of gaps in that collection.”

With that, Hawkeye reached out to the hailing button to send a message to the Collector’s ship.

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 7 pic

2004-12-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

Hawkeye, archer extraordinaire; the Black Cat, burglar-turned-partner of Spider-Man; the Guardsman, armor-powered policeman; Bill Foster, scientific adventurer; Volcana, plasma-charged reluctant hero; the Yankee Clipper, lost-in-time 50s hero; Beta Ray Bill, an alien granted the power of Thor!

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 7

2004-11-30T18:53:00.000-08:00

Previously: The Avengers are missing! Hawkeye, once believed dead, has returned and is assembling a new team to track them down-- the Black Cat, burglar-turned-partner of Spider-Man; the Guardsman, armor-powered policeman; Bill Foster, scientific adventurer; Volcana, plasma-charged reluctant hero; the Yankee Clipper, lost-in-time 50’s hero; Beta Ray Bill, an alien granted the power of Thor!

The ground suddenly rumbled underneath them. The earth itself seemed unable to suppress a shudder. The spacecraft nearby rocked gently on its landing gear, its soft squeaks the only sound to break the sudden silence.

“Uh, did he do that?” the Black Cat nervously asked, regarding Beta Ray Bill and his recent display of power.

“I doubt it,” Bill Foster remarked, his lab coat fluttering as the last vestiges of the wind-whipped breeze died down. “The Other Bill’s been granted the powers of Thor, god of thunder, not earth.”

Just as suddenly, a heavy stone-cut hand burst from the grass. Cracks appeared in the soft dirt, and whole pieces of turf gave way as huge, misshapen bodies began to raise from the ground. The creatures were completely featureless save for a glowing red split in their stony surface where their eyes should be.

“Yikes! Stay sharp, fellas,” the Guardsman immediately took to the air in his gleaming green armor. “Looks like we got company!”

“Omigosh!” Volcana cringed, “They’re . . . hideous!” The strangeness of the creatures was not enough to keep her from unleashing a blast of plasma at them, but they seemed to ignore her efforts and pressed inward toward the center of the company.

“Hold the line, missie,” barked the Yankee Clipper. After pressing a panel on his bulky belt, he reached up to grab a creature’s hand. He pulled, hard, effortlessly swinging the creature off its feet and into another of its comrades. “The bigger they are . . .“

A hand emerging from the ground took ahold of Beta Ray Bill’s red cape, tugging it taut. Two more hands erupted forth and grasped his boots and legs. Hawkeye’s reaction was equally as swift. In a manner of split seconds, he knocked his bow and fired two blunt arrows at the hands. He managed to cause one to flinch away, but Beta Ray Bill remained stuck fast.

Bill tried to draw himself up to his full height. “So, you seek to take on a warrior of the Burning Galaxy, eh? Let’s see how you fare against one deemed worthy to be an honored son of Asgard!” He waved his golden hammer high above his head and brought it down with both hands on the arm from the ground. With a tremendous sound of thunder, the arm exploded in fragments.

“Mindless Ones!” Hawkeye identified the misshapen attackers. He fired an exploding bolt at another figure. “Just your average mindless creatures from another dimension! Give ‘em all you got!”

“’Get ‘em!’” echoed the Guardsman, strafing from his position above the crowd. “Gotta love that sytle.”

The Black Cat grew worried, however, as more and more of the creatures began to appear, clearly outnumbering the group of seven. She ducked a blow from a creature she was blocking, darting below its reach and clamoring up its back. She kicked off from the back of its head, sending the creature to the ground.

Bill Foster was right behind her. He followed up with a blast from his gun. The creature began to glow softly between cracks that appeared all over its surface, and a distinct but low buzz followed the scent of ozone in the air. “Now!” he cried to the Cat. “Again!”

The Black Cat kneeled, kicking with her other leg in a perfect karate kick. The creature exploded as the energy burst forth from the cracks inside it. “Neat! What was that?” she asked as she turned to meet another attack.

Bill fired his gun again, then displayed the power pack that the gun was plugged into. “Been poking around a bit in the lab. My mentor Dr. Pym had developed Pym Particles to enable him to grow in mass. I’ve just developed a new particle to enable something to accumulate energy.”

Another blast caused a creature to slow in its tracks, hampered by its newly ionized state. Its baleful eye watched as cracks appeared over its arms and hands, and it burst, disintegrating into dust.

“Fire!” yelled the Yankee Clipper. He could barely restrain a creature, holding its arms back, over its head.

Volcana nodded, pouring on the power of her blast. The creature was left with a huge crater in its gut, and it crumbled to the ground. The Yankee Clipper fell to the ground as well.

“Oh, no!” Volcana rushed to his side. “Are you all right?” She knew his high-tech belt granted him superhuman strength, but surely it could not protect him against her high-energy plasma bolts!

The Yankee Clipper rose, shrugging off her concern as easily as he dusted off his costume. “Just lost my leverage for second,” he said, running back into the fray.

Volcana hesitated, looking at the energy crackling within her fists. She decided to stick to the fringe of the battle, firing away from her teammates, just in case.

The Guardsman swooped down beside Hawkeye, who was tumbling in and out of the army of creatures just as fast as he could fire an arrow and be gone. The Guardsman staggered another creature out of Hawkeye’s way. “It’s getting a little thick in here,” the Guardsman remarked. “Tell me you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

Hawkeye groused. “Retreat? We’re just getting warmed up!”

The Guardsman’s helmet hid whatever expression he was feeling. “I would rather say ‘fall back,’ but, yeah.”

Hawkeye took a moment to use the Guardsman’s covering fire to assess the situation. The heroes seemed to be holding their own, but the creatures just kept on coming. And for any that managed to get destroyed, another would rise from the ground to take its place. He watched Beta Ray Bill swing his hammer from side to side, sending creatures flying. The alien warrior was consumed with the battle, throwing himself into it with reckless abandon. As much as it was obvious that Bill needed to release something, it would only be a matter of time before he would be overwhelmed entirely.

“Alright,” he muttered, almost spitting the words out, “fall back.”

“Fall back,” the Guardsman echoed in a cold, commander-like tone, “to the ship! Head toward the ship!”

Volcana and the Guardsman reached the spacecraft first. The two stationed themselves to provide cover for the others as they clamored up the access ramp: the Yankee Clipper, the Black Cat, Bill Foster, Hawkeye.

Hawkeye had purposefully held back, retreating with his back to the ship so as to support Beta Ray Bill. He fired everything he good-- explosive arrows to blow back the advancing creatures, net arrows at their heads and glue arrows at their feet, blunt arrows directly into their glowing red eye.

But Beta Ray Bill didn’t make it. As he was within twenty feet of the ship, he stumbled under the weight of five creatures holding him back. Before Hawkeye could draw a breath, dozens of the creatures swarmed over Bill.

“No!” shouted Hawkeye, instinctively hoping to rush out to his fallen friend. A cold armored hand of the Guardsman had to hold him back.

The creatures seemed to form a stone dome over Beta Ray Bill, and the mound melted swiftly into the ground. In seconds, the grassy knoll was empty. The heroes slowly filed out of the ship, in quiet awe that the scene was just as it was a scant fifteen minutes ago. Beta Ray Bill . . . was gone!

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 6

2004-11-27T11:55:00.000-08:00

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 5

2004-11-23T16:23:00.000-08:00

The heroes stood gathered on the grassy knoll at sunset. Hawkeye stared expectantly up into the sky, shielding his eyes against the setting sun. Yankee Clipper stood with his arms crossed. Bill Foster cupped one hand over the high-tech gun he held against his chest. Guardsman stood at attention. Black Cat kneeled slightly in front of the group, a grin on her face as she anticipated action.

Hawkeye was talking to the assemblage behind him. “I knew something was wrong from the start. I mean, one attack, maybe two, on us at the Mansion might be understandable. Maybe even expected. It’s happened before.”

Hawkeye dropped his head as he remembered the events of the worst day in Avengers history. “Friends turned into enemies. Old enemies returned. Within the space of a few hours, our headquarters was destroyed. The city overrun. And to top it all off, an alien invasion? No, it didn’t add up.

“That’s when I got the idea. Not one of my most brilliant, I have to admit. I had to sideline myself. Double-back and assess the situation from the outside. Thought I could take out a Kree mothership at the same time. Grabbed a soldier. “Borrowed” his jet pack to fly ourselves toward the engine. At the last minute, I jumped off, used the cover of the explosion to drop to the roofs below.

“Like I said, not one of my most brilliant moments. Had to use a magnetic line arrow without a bow. Barely managed to swing through the red skies, crashed with a tumble and a roll into some kind of rooftop. I thought I had tried one too many longshots. My gambles had caught up with me at last . . .”

Flashback: Scattered debris and broken machinery laid strewn about the roof. Loose gravel told of a heavy impact and a long skid. Hawkeye breathed heavily, crumpled up into a ball against the roof edge. His costumed was tattered, charred. His face bruised and marked.

A gaunt figure stood over him. His skin shone blue in the dim light. His clothes were a garish yellow robe, with a high, pointed collar. His very presence was alien.

“You have spoken true,” he spoke to a figure in shadow behind him. “By all rights, he should die now.”

“You can hasten the process, but he must be brought back if you want to win.”

“That would be . . . acceptable,” the blue figure smiled thinly, “All you have spoken of has indeed come to pass. I would be remiss to believe you would be wrong at this point.”

The alien stretched out his thin, sinewy hand toward Hawkeye, his pale white eyes luminescent and grotesque, the sounds of battle behind him. Hawkeye’s eyes grew wide in fear. A moment of pain shuddered through his body, and all was black.

“When I came to,” Hawkeye turned to the heroes he had gathered, “I found the Avengers, our enemies, everything gone. I realized I must have gotten something right. That cosmic gamester the Grandmaster was up to something.

“But I was too late. Months had passed. I tried to find the Avengers, only to find the team disbanded, its members scattered. I tried to track down each member one at a time, but couldn’t find anyone at all. Iron Man hasn’t checked in. Cap isn’t at home or on any recorded mission. Heck, even the Living Lightning hasn’t attended classes in over two weeks.”

“But what can WE do,” the Yankee Clipper tossed his head at the others around him. “None of us can track these guys down.”

Hawkeye pointed up to the sky. “I’m just waiting for the last piece of the puzzle. There’s one more Avenger to check up on, and one guy who might know where to look.”

With that said, a gleaming spaceship came into view from behind the pink and purple clouds of the sunset. The sunlight glinted off the rounded hull, and a dull roar filled the ears of those below. The ship banked and settled in for a landing a short distance off. Its engines still blew a gust of wind and dust over the heroes. The hatch opened with a soft hiss, and an impossibly large figure stepped out, shadowed from the light streaming out behind him. His cape billowed behind, as if it was trying and failing to contain the power and majesty that radiated from him.

“Greetings, Hawkeye,” boomed a voice that was powerful yet quiet at the same time. An alien, horse-like skull of a head looked down upon them “What baleful tidings did you speak of that required the attention of . . . Beta Ray Bill?”

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 4

2004-11-22T22:08:00.000-08:00

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 3

2004-11-16T21:07:00.000-08:00

Previously: The Avengers, a team of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, suffered the worst day in its history. Many of the Avengers were hurt, both emotionally and physically, and their mansion headquarters was all but destroyed. Facing personal and fiscal crises, the members collectively decided to disband the team and go their separate ways . . .

TWO DAYS AGO
MANHATTAN
NIGHT

With the New York City skyline twinkling below, a young man sat on the domed roof of a skyscraper. His hand on his chin, he modeled Rodan’s Thinker if not for the blue and white jumpsuit. Johnny Storm, the heroic Human Torch, waited. “Guess he’s not coming.”

Above him hovered a flaming hoop designed to resemble Spider-Man’s head. As it slowly faded into the night sky, Johnny sighed. With a wave of his hand, the flame extinguished entirely, and he turned to leave. He paused when he noticed a figure swinging through the air toward him. Could it be? No, it was obviously someone entirely different.

“Black Cat?” he asked.

The lithe form of Felicia Hardy dropped effortlessly onto the roof. “Hi, uh, Torch. I was kinda hoping you were looking for Spider-Man. . .?”

Johnny scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, I guess. But I’ve been waiting for hours and . . . no luck.”

“I haven’t been able to find him at all for almost a week. A . . . mutual friend of ours, she asked me to look for him.”

“No way. Crap. This is bad.”

The Black Cat turned to look over the city. “I’m sure he’s just managed to get stuck on some secret mission or something.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s worse.”

ONE DAY AGO
PROJECT: PEGASUS
INSIDE

Alarms blared. Red lights flared. Boots stomped down the sterile white and stainless steel hallways. Several nondescript guards with rifles ready trooped behind an armored figure in green.

Michael O’Brien’s expression remained hidden behind the helmet of the Guardsman armor. It was one of intense concentration on the task ahead. He had to keep focus, prepared for anything, and push the uncertainty from his mind. He knew and trusted that Tony Stark’s new design for the Guardsman battlesuit would be up to par. But there was always that nagging discomfort that came from wearing shoes that haven’t been broken in yet.

His fears were ungrounded. As Michael led the guards out of the front entrance to the source of the attack, they were all taken back by what they saw.

Hawkeye stood, leaning on the side of an overturned and smoking gun turret. He was in the dead center of broken and damaged turrets, net launchers, robotic arms, and other computerized security devices. Arrows stuck out of broken joints and camera lenses, telling the tale. “I’m disappointed, guys!” Hawkeye called out. “I thought the security at Project: Pegasus was top of the line! Too bad I’m over the top.”

“As always,” Michael smirked back.

MANHATTAN NIGHT

“All of them?” the Black Cat asked, once she caught her breath.

Johnny Storm nodded, pursing his lips. “There’s probably some big button I can press back in Reed’s lab that will help me figure it out, but it’s only times like these when I remember I forgot to pay attention.”

“But can’t you call anybody?”

“I tried! That was the first thing I tried! But I couldn’t find She-Hulk or Namor. And what do you think I was trying to do with my big Spidey-logo in the sky . . . ?”

The Black Cat was silent. She thought there were other allies of the Fantastic Four that Johnny could call, but chances are they were all ex-girlfriends of some sort. “So this could be bad. Something big. Guess we can’t call the Avengers.”

At that moment, an arrow whirred overhead and landed with a loud THWACK! into the antenna pillar between Johnny and the Black Cat. The arrow was attached to a line, and a familiar figure zipped along the line toward the roof.

“Maybe you spoke too soon!” Johnny grinned.

PROJECT: PEGASUS

“Well, here are the coordinates you gave us. You’re right, Hawkeye, there is a ship there.” Bill Foster stood beneath the wall-high monitor, idly gazing down every now and then to twist a dial and press a blinking light or two. The display showed a vast reach of space, dotted with stars behind the gridlines.

“Good,” Hawkeye acknowledged. “Send the message I’ve prepared.” He turned to the Guardsman. “So Mike, are you back to old habits again?”

Michael shook his head. “Not really. Project: Pegasus couldn’t hire me back as a security director, per se. I’m kind of a glorified outside consultant. At least the gig let me be first in line to test the upgraded design. Have talked to Stark about Iron Man, yet?”

“Uh, not really,” Hawkeye dodged the question, “Which could be part of the problem. So, are you in? I could definitely use you and your experience.”

“Absolutely.”

Bill Foster interrupted. “Actually, it appears the ship is headed in Earth’s direction already.”

“Huh,” Hawkeye sounded surprised. “Well, I suppose that makes it a little easier.”

MANHATTAN NIGHT

Johnny Storm ran his hand through his short blonde hair. “Okay, this is getting frustrating.”

The Black Cat mused, “No Spider-Man, no Captain America?”

Hawkeye nodded, “No Yellowjacket, no Wasp.”

Johnny threw up his hands, “No Fantastic Four . . . yours truly excepted, of course.”

The heroes fell silent.

“I have it on good authority that all this is related somehow.”

“On WHOSE authority?” Johnny demanded.

“It was one of those cryptic oracle-type things,” Hawkeye admitted.

A sigh of disgust was his only response.

“Look, here’s what we’re going to do,” Hawkeye raised his fingers. “Black Cat, you’ll come with me. I could use you. Torch, you keep up your public profile. The supervillain community will catch on pretty quick when heroes keep failing to show up.”

“So this is why you’re laying low? Letting the public think you’re dead?”

Hawkeye winked and tapped his finger on his nose.

The Black Cat turned to follow Hawkeye’s zip line with her grappling hook. She kept quiet, for now, but she couldn’t help but feel treated horribly—like little more than expendable cannon fodder. She participated in the same conversation, but what SHE heard was “so Cat, you’ll come with me. You’re just as unnoticeable as the presumed-dead guy.” Be careful, Hawkeye, you know how cats can act when they get cornered!

PROJECT: PEGASUS

Bill Foster was a bit distracted. He tried to divide his attention between the screen in front of him and the conversation in back of him. Would Hawkeye ask him to be a part of this? Foster realized he didn’t exactly stand out—his lab coat and jumpsuit blended into the Project’s background a bit more easily than the Guardsman’s gleaming green armor.

Hawkeye and the Guardsman turned to exit, still in conversation. Hawkeye was asking about the communications room and a database of heroes to pull from. Foster couldn’t help it anymore. Working with Project: Pegasus had been great—after all, it allowed him to discover his new particle. Maybe now it was time to put it into practice?

“Hawkeye!” Foster called out, perhaps a little too loudly.

The archer turned, surprised. “Yeah, Foster, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just . . . I wondered if I could join you?”

Hawkeye casted his eyes about. “Uh, well. Gee, Bill, you know I’d LOVE to invite you, but we’re going to be running into a bit of trouble, you know, and, uh, your powers haven’t exactly . . . well . . . when was the last time you worked as Giant-Man?”

Foster smiled, “No, not Giant-Man. Not Goliath, either. Let me show you something else I’ve been working on . . .”

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 2

2004-11-14T21:37:00.000-08:00

Previously: The Avengers, an assemblage of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, have disbanded! Elsewhere, Marsha Rosenberg, a.k.a. the plasma-charged Volcana, thought she was finally fitting into her new groove in New York City, leaving her past behind her. That was before she happened to encounter an old acquaintance— Crusher Creel, the supervillainous Absorbing Man!

The Absorbing Man rushes toward Volcana. Above his head, he swings his ball-and-chain, which has transformed into the same armor-plated steel that Creel turned into from touching the police van. He brings it down on Volcana’s plasma-sheathed form. Her arm instinctively raises to block the blow. SLAM!! Instead, she is staggered back several feet, falling to her knees.

“It don’t have to be like this,” the Absorbing Man sneers at Volcana. Before she can get up again, another blow to her side sends her body skittering across the street, leaving little trails of smoking plasma in her wake. “But I gotta say, it’s doin’ WONDERS for my anger management! Har-har!”

Volcana says nothing. Still lying on her side, she punches her hand deep into the pavement. A low rumble gives the Absorbing Man pause. He looks all around the ground beside him, and RR-PLOOSH!! the very street explodes with Volcana’s white-hot plasma. Volcana stands, pouring it on, firing bursts of energy until the Absorbing Man fades from view. “No, Creel! You were on your way to prison, and that’s where you’re going now!”

“Heh.” The Absorbing Man’s voice cuts into the smoke as it clears, revealing a plasma-form similar to Volcana’s own. “If ya can’t beat ‘em . . .” His ball-and-chain is now a churning ball of fiery energy.

The two fire blasts of energy at each other. FTZOOM!! FTZOOM!! The air crackles with ozone, and thunder rumbles the windows of the buildings nearby. The streams of energy flow as continuous extensions of their arms—the fire rolling and rippling across their bodies, through their arms, and outward in jets of white and yellow plasma. ZZMMM!! ZZMMM!!

“Why . . . won’t you . . . go . . . down!” the Absorbing Man grits his teeth.

“I just . . . wanted . . . to go . . . to work today!” Volcana squints.

In a final flash of furor, the air itself seems to ignite! One blinding flash and explosion of thunder, and the two super-powered beings fall backward. The Absorbing Man’s plasma-form flickers briefly, and then winks out, leaving him reverted to flesh and bone. Volcana’s form flickers as well, sparking over her body like static on a television set but remaining.

The Absorbing Man scrambles on the street, looking for material to touch and absorb. Still looking at Volcana, he reaches out and places his hand on the street. “Alright, girlie,” he growls, “Let’s finish this.” Taking on the strength and resistance of the very street beneath him, the Absorbing Man rears up to smash Volcana with his ball-and-chain, hoping to catch her while she’s down.

“Right, let’s finish it,” Volcana agrees. Her fiery form flares up once again, and she blasts the Absorbing Man once again.

“Wait! Wait!” he screams.

Unfortunately, the Absorbing Man failed to account that his asphalt form granted him an increased degree of strength along with an increased degree of malleability. Within seconds, Volcana’s fire slips off the Absorbing Man, revealing a misshapen lump of asphalt.

“Whew,” Volcana breathes, wiping her brow. Which is somewhat odd, as her body is still a seething inferno.

“Uh . . . ,” she pauses. “Now what?”

The scene was now completely deserted. The street was still left smoking from the energies released in the brief but intense battle. The scattered cars and debris, the emptiness, all gave the scene a post-apocalyptic feeling. Volcana took a few steps back. Should she wait for authorities? Might as well go back to work. Did she return to work?

“Looking good, ‘Cana,” a voice sounded from behind her.

Volcana whirled around, not sure what to expect. The sudden appearance of a familiar figure took her breath away.

“You!? It can’t be! The Avengers, they said . . . I . . . the world watched you die!”

The Avengers’ Hawkeye jumped down from his vantage point on an overturned car. “Yeah, never believe anything you see on TV.”

“Hmm, not bad,” said the costumed archer, tapping the deformed remains of the Absorbing Man. “Ooh, warm!” He waved his hand to cool off his knuckles. “Still, I’ve seen him come back from worse. I give him two weeks, tops.”

Volcana tried to clear her head. “What . . . what’s this all about?”

“Lady,” Hawkeye winked, with a twinkle in his eye. “Have I got an opportunity for you!”

Avengers Anew #1 -- Part 1

2004-11-12T21:41:00.000-08:00

Previously: The Avengers, a team of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, suffered the worst day in its history. The chaos started when one of their own became overwhelmed with her powers, losing control over her reality-altering magic. Many of the Avengers were hurt, both emotionally and physically, and their mansion headquarters was all but destroyed. Facing personal and fiscal crises, the members collectively decided to disband the team and go their separate ways . . .

INSIDE:
NATIONSPAN MORTGAGE COMPANY
15th FLOOR, NEW ACCOUNTS AND REFINANCING

“Marsha!” Michelle Ranelli popped her head over her cubicle wall to peek into her new friends’ workspace. “So how is the new apartment?”

Over the background noise of phones chirping, conversation buzzing, and keyboards clacking, Marsha smiled back. “It’s good,” she replied, “it’s . . . good.”

Michelle disappeared only to sit down and wheel her chair to a better gossipy vantage position. “You just fit right into the big city, don’t you? What do you think of New York?”

Marsha Rosenberg sighed, looking out of the skyscraper window at the famous skyline. It was a relaxing sigh, however. It was good to find Michelle and the other girls so quickly, falling into friendships almost as easily as if in a sitcom. Her mother would joke that she might turn into Sarah Jessica Parker after moving back to New York City. A joke alright-- that wouldn’t happen anytime soon. She often felt awkward with others, feeling just a bit out of place with her tall stature and . . . ‘buxom’ weight.

“Well, I have been here before, off and on.”

“Of course, of course!” Michelle winked, knowingly. “You’ll come for drinks on Friday. Save some stories for us.”

As if on cue, a huge explosion ripped through the air outside. A large flaming cloud mushroomed upward from the streets below. Michelle rushed to the window, trying to look down at the commotion. “Ah! Look at that. More supervillains, I think. Someone in gray.”

She looked back at Marsha, who continued to sit, staring at her computer. “Aren’t you going to . . .” Michelle motioned with her head toward the window. “You know . . .” She tossed her head, more deliberately this time. “Going to . . .”

Marsha avoided looking at her new friend. She tried to keep her voice down. Not that she needed to be so secretive. Although several people were trying to twist their necks to peer below, by and large the office continued buzzing in its normal routine, in a weird, almost willful oblivion to the obvious chaos outside.

“It’s different now. I’m not . . . that was a time in my life that is over now. I’ve moved on.” She stared at her computer but all she saw were visions of herself transformed into a being of white-hot plasma. She fought superheroes, worked beside superheroes. She fought supervillains, she had a long-term relationship with one. She was . . . Volcana!

Her new friend looked at her with concern. “Marsha . . .” she looked at her in the eye. “Get out there. See what you can do. You can help people. Go. I’ll cover for ya.”

OUTSIDE:

A crater has appeared in the normal bustle of New York’s Financial District traffic. At its center, an overturned armored car; its flames and smoke turning the scene into one of confusion and fear. Cars and buses, some overturned and burst into flames, pepper the street and add to the debris. The pedestrians continue to flee, giving the supervillain at its core a wide berth.

Rummaging through what’s left of the armored car crouches the brutish form of Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man. The Absorbing Man places his palm on the side and absorbs the properties of the car, transforming his body, cauliflower ears and all, into the same metal as the heavy plating he touches. With his now-increased strength, he rips into the side of the car. After fishing for some time, he pulls out his prize—his signature ball-and-chain. “Ah, finally, baby. Thought I’d lost ya!”

“All right, you!” Marsha, now transformed into the fiery Volcana, strides into view, trying to sound confident. “Stop making this mess and let’s . . . uhm, come along quietly.” She does a double take. “Wha--? Carl?!” Of all the villains in Manhattan, she would have to run into someone she knew!

“Volcana!? ‘Cana, izzat you? Well, whaddya know!” The Absorbing Man jumps off of the car, casually swinging his ball-and-chain like an idle schoolboy. “Haven’t seen you in a while! You should stop by. Titania’ll be blown away to see you again.”

Inwardly, Volcana slumps. But she tries to stand her ground. “No, Creel, I can’t do that. That’s over now. Stop this mess and let’s just figure out what’s going on here.”

“This mess? Nuh-uh. They tried to cart me off again to the pen, but they couldn’t hold me for long. Took me some time to find out where they took my weapon, but now that I’s gots what’s mine. I’ll see ya.” He turns to walk away, but puts up a thumb. “Sure you wouldn’t want to come back and see Skeeter?”

“Creel, stop! Stop now! I mean it! If you won’t come along quietly, I’ll . . . I’ll have to take you in myself.”

Creel can barely hold in his laughter, and it comes barreling out in a hearty guffaw. He walks away. “Yeah, sure, babe. I’ll tell Skeeters I bumped into ya.”

Volcana musters her courage, then throws her hands outward, sending a blast of cracking white-hot plasma at Creel’s back. ZAAAM! He’s knocked down by the blow, his armored-plated back glowing red and sending off wisps of steam. “Oh, baby. Ya shouldn’ta done that.”

The Absorbing Man leaps to his feet, with a mighty yell he springs toward Volcana, his ball-and-chain swinging high above his head . . .

Welcome to . . .

2004-11-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

Avengers Anew

This web log will feature my original stories based on characters and situations from the Marvel Comics universe. Yup, it's blog and fanfic rolled together in bite-sized morsels for all to enjoy.

My stories will feature Marvel Comics' premeire superhero team, the mighty Avengers. This new universe springboards off of events occuring in "Avengers Disassembled," the "Chaos" arc from The Avengers volume 3 issues 500 - 503 and Avengers Finale, published June - Novemeber 2004. Whether you are a fan of Brian Bendis and his work there or whether you are dissatisfied with the current title, you are sure to love what you will find here!

Currently, there are only plans to feature one title, The Avengers, and I will keep the original title numbering, "debuting" with issue 504. Depending on your responce as fans of my little fics ("ficlets?"), that may change as new titles are added and the universe begins to grow. What you will not see here includes titles outside the typical "Avengers" venue, such as X-Men , Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man. But there are thousands of stories to be told with the "Marvel Heroes" branch of the Marvel Universe. And of course there's always the possibility of team-ups and a guest stars!

One more thing. In the mighty Marvel marketing tradition, I will only tease you with what you can expect to see in the opening story arc. Here is the "cover" of Avengers Anew #1, drawn and colored by me, your multi-talented storyman. Can you guess who will be starring in the premeire issue? What mighty threat will bring these heroes together? And what can explain the reappearance of the familiar hero in the center? Feel free to comment throughout the week, and I will post the opening chapter by next week!

Let the call ring out: "Avengers Assemble!"

Avengers Anew #1 cover pic

2004-11-11T10:15:00.000-08:00

Avengers Anew #1

Title Pic

2004-11-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

Use this picture to link to this weblog!