Between New Avengers 63 and Siege 4 in the ol’ Siege bag was the aforementioned Mighty Avengers, wherein Hank Pym’s team of never-acknowledged-anywhere-else-in-the-Marvel-U “Avengers” is fighting Ultron and an army of Jocastas for some stupid reason. In this title, Hank has gone nuts over Janet’s “death” in Secret Invasion, taken on the Wasp name, begun an unhinged romance with Jocasta, the robot Ultron built with Janet’s brainwaves, and assembled a team of classic Avengers like Hercules and Quicksilver to do random nonsense that doesn’t amount to anything, it was a terrible comic book. In this one, Hank declines Captain America’s call for help prior to the real Avengers charging into Broxton because he’s wrapped up in his own thing. Some of Hank’s team goes, anyway, but he’s obsessed with rescuing Janet’s spirit from the Underspace. WHATEVER. Also there’s another Thor, wherein the Asgardians dig out of the rubble, Volstagg gets to beat up some HAMMER goons, and Loki feels remorse for this unforeseen outcome and is banished by Baldur, but declares his intention to save the day, anyway. Typical Loki arc, honestly. So, now we’re back here. The final issue, on time, with the same art team, a miracle. This phase of the Siege is called “The Fallen,” just so you know, as the Sentry/Void looms over the assembled heroes being menacing and expelling his dark energy as Loki does voiceover, talking to his currently dead dad (He’ll get better, then die a couple more times, and then kind of stay dead, which I would call a terrible choice, but no one asked me), telling him he never meant for this to happen.
“The Stones of Norn,” said no one outside a Bendis comic, again…
The heroes set to attacking the big cloud that is the Sentry/Void. The Hood and his goons, robbed of the power boost they’ve been enjoying, stand around gawping, Madame Masque the only one with the sense to say they need to leave now, while the heroes are distracted.
Loki explodes into pieces and turns to dust. Don’t worry, he gets better. As I recall, he gets better, like, immediately, as Kieron Gillen ends up having a lot of unusual and memorable plans for Loki. Thor keeps throwing down with the Sentry/Void as the back-to-normal heroes wonder what to do. What, pray tell, did they do before? This Norn Stone power boost was pretty vague as applied to the bad guys, but it didn’t seem to be anything for the heroes. No one did anything they wouldn’t have done before. Well, whatever. Cap catches a fleeing Norman Osborn (Remember him???) and demands to know how he controlled the Sentry, but Norman’s gone bye-bye, and just keeps repeating that Sentry is the Angel of Death.
The Sentry/Void is hit with a massive explosion, the blinding light from which distracts Cap and allows a non-verbal Osborn to crack him in the head with a rock and run away. But he is nabbed by Volstagg, out of nowhere, as a bit of payback. Meanwhile, in the crater where Sentry/Boid had been now kneels one Bob Reynolds, asking if he did all this.
Rather odd page layout there, but it works. Thor flies Bob’s remains into the sun. This is hilarious. It became such a running joke that the Sentry could solve any problem by just flying someone into the sun, and there he goes.
How… did this day teach Steve that Bucky should be Cap? What did either of them really do? Cap got to hit Norman in the face, that was nice, but Thor battled Sentry to a standstill and Iron Man stopped him. Everyone else just hopped around. This, naturally, means Bucky gets the shield back. What, what Steve will do is get called to the White House and offered control of the next iteration of SHIELD. And he will accept. And thus, he won’t be Captain America again for awhile. This event promised you the Holy Trinity of the Avengers reunited, but it didn’t say for how long! Now, are you ready for the page that takes this series from kinda underwhelming to outright ridiculous?
WHHYYYYYYYYYY, exactly, has the SHRA been thrown out?? What about any of these events has caused the US Government to decide it maybe is a good idea to have anyone who wants to running around in their undies beating people up in the street??? All through Civil War, I used to say that Captain America seemed to think he could get Congress to repeal a law by punching Iron Man in the face, and that made him look like an absolute moron. But, as it turns out, he totally could get Congress to repeal a law by punching Norman Osborn in the face! This just smacked of editorial saying “We are tired of this untenable status quo” more than any natural storytelling choice. So, you know, like One More Day. At any rate, everyone’s all shocked lookin’ cuz your favorite characters from the Thor comics have arrived to tell the assembled heroes that Asgard owes them a great debt for “the acts of friendship and bravery you bestowed upon me and my Asgardian brothers today.” TODAY? That whole battle, Steve flying to DC to become the new Nick Fury, Congress repealing the SHRA and Tony Stark scheduling this victory lap all took place in the same 24 hours? Are you kidding me?? Thor wants to show them how much he appreciates their heroism, and one Rainbow Bridge zap later…
That, as I recall, is sort of an Asgardian Embassy on Earth, neatly replacing the Sentry’s Watchtower.
Hilarious that they all posed like that for his final line. Coipel making bank! And we’re out! This ushers in the so-called Heroic Age, a new phase of the Marvel U that isn’t a real phase at all. As much as people were excited about the event ->new status quo ->event pipeline for awhile, fandom decreed they were tired of it, and Marvel listened. The Heroic Age is characterized by the various books being allowed to truly do their own thing for the first time since Civil War, and Marvel said they wouldn’t do annual events for awhile. “Awhile” wound up being about a year, because, they said, sales dipped significantly without one. But few properties would be more changed by this new direction than the Avengers, wherein one title’s team no longer exists and the other’s aren’t fugitives anymore. And that wasn’t all, either, a whole little miniline of Avengers titles would launch out of this, closer to the release cadence of the X-Men, with 3 “main” Avengers titles, a high profile miniseries, and a book called Avengers Academy replacing the basic idea of the Initiative. But, for our purposes, the end result will be this blog continuing to follow 2 monthly Avengers titles… and the reason… if you’re like me… will elicit an exasperated sigh from you. But first, we got more tie-ins to this event to look at. And, you know, USM and ASM, but you know. Eventually.