Seems like forever since #2. This one’s cover features Cap and Iron Man squaring off, IM on the back cover…
We rewind a bit to start.
I don’t know that I think writing T’Challa is too hard. He’s regal, he’s a man of few words, he rarely uses contractions. Really managed to botch it in 2 pages somehow. Meanwhile, Tony Stark has gone to see Emma Frost about getting the X-Men to help hunt down the rogue heroes. The joke there, of course, is the X-Men have been fighting mutant registration since the 80s, and Emma says hunting down people who don’t register would violate everything they believe in. Duh. Emma says the X-Men won’t get involved. As Stark leaves, tho, Bishop, the cop from the future, wants a word. ACAB, amiright?
Hold the phone. DD is suddenly Matt now? He wasn’t in New Avengers 22! I forgot about this. This event is such a mess.
So, the boys and a few others go to the scene of the emergency, only to find it’s a Stark subsidiary and this is all a trap. Cloak and Wiccan are tranq’d before anyone can react, leaving Cap’s team with no means of escape. And then we see Tony’s team is all the people assembled at the end of ASM 533, because this is right after that, and none of the 7 Spider-Man comics we read in between could’ve actually happened. I love it. Also, speaking of things not lining up, The Thing is a conscientious objector in the Fantastic Four tie-ins, but here, he’s firmly on the pro-reg side. How’s that square? And yet, It doesn’t. And yet again, JSM had him drawn into this pro-greg squad in ASM 533. It makes no sense. Anyway, the SHIELD agents in reserve, les by Maria Hill, mention “Codename Lightning” is standing by as the heroes start mixing it up.
Iron Man catches Cap offguard, flying him through a stone wall face first, which should have killed him, and then punching him with his metal fist so hard Cap’s mask and face seem to explode, which also should have killed him, but this comic sucks, so they didn’t. Then a huge bolt of lightning crashes into the area, stopping everyone in their tracks.
Thor, of course, died in the millionth Marvel Ragnarok during Avengers Disassembled. More recently, again in JMS’s FF, his hammer crashed to Earth in Oklahoma, in a big crater, and after a bunch of people, including Dr. Doom, tried to lift it, a mystery man with the initials DB took it and vanished in a flash of lightning. DB, like Don Blake, Thor’s long-abandoned secret identity. So is Thor back? Seems like it. But this is a Mark Millar comic, so shocking people is job one, so… best to wait and see.