Ok, back to the main book, finally. Back cover:
We begin in Arizona, where a new team of Champions created by Stark, Richards & Pym are being trained. They’re all named after Greek gods, and one of them is even Hercules. Rude. Maria Hill and Pym are surveying their training and talking about other teams being prepped for the various states around the country. Hank says they do this right or not at all. The so-called 50 State Initiative is the smartest thing the big brains came up with for this. 99% of all superheroes living in New York always seemed kind of stupid. Having superheroes all over the country is a good idea. Back in the day, near the end of his long Avengers run, Kurt Busiek had the team start thinking more globally, changing the team so they could activate reserve and former Avengers all over the world if needed, and I thought that was very cool. It was discarded immediately when Busiek left. With this, maybe there’s not a lot of supercrime in North Dakota, but if there is, someone will be there. And in the real world, if they wanted, Marvel could’ve really tried to spin a lot of those concepts off into new titles, but I don’t think they really did aside from one called the Order that didn’t last a year.
That’s a pretty damning thing for Cap, that registration is working so well.
There’s why Punisher needed all that stuff from Clarke.
Cap sent Sue Richards to go try to sweet talk Namor into helping them, playing on his love for her. Namor sees right through that and is insulted Cap would send her instead of coming himself, and says no. He also says Namorita’s killer has been dealt with privately, a reference to the Wolverine tie-ins where he wound up meeting a gang of Atlanteans who helped him take down Nitro (And learned the corrupt new CEO of Damage Control more or less caused Stamford on purpose to win the contracts to clean up, which seems like a big deal, but I don’t think that plot point made it out of the Wolverine comic).
There’s our guy.
Then Diamondback, Captain America’s one-time girlfriend and former criminal, brings in Goldbug and Plunderer, the guys Punisher shot in his comic, and then Punisher shoots them in this comic, also. Things play out more or less the same after, but certainly not before, Frank saying he won’t fight Cap and whatnot.
The implication that Frank’s not the only one is clear. Cut to Stamford, where Miram Sharpe is thanking Tony and Reed for all they’ve done, then to the North Pole, where the Watcher is, uh, watching Dr. Strange meditate. He’s been fasting and meditating since all this started, and tells Uautu he’s trying to meditate for “whatever outcome is best for mankind.” And then, it’s showtime at Ryker’s Island.
Your what, Spidey? Your top secret danger sense you’ve definitely told everyone in this raiding party except the Young Avengers about more than once over the years? JMS, man.
Uh, Hank being Hulkling doesn’t explain how Hulkling knew about Tigra, nor would finding out about her just a few hours ago have helped at all. Like… what?
Not really the face of a good guy. Well, it’s all about to come to a head.