Avengers Re-Assemble!

The first issue of Avengers (2018), gives us some pretty important information when it comes to Tony Stark (Iron Man), Thor (Odinson), and Steve Rogers (Captain America), and their current positions and roles in the Marvel Universe.

Early in the comic, the trio are sitting at a table together having drinks and are talking about the craziness that’s happened in their lives so far. Captain America notes that people are afraid of him because of what Hydra Captain America did. For those of you who don’t know, The Red Skull, Captain America’s arch-nemesis, uses this object called the cosmic cube to rewrite reality so that Captain America was a sleeper Hydra Agent all along. However, the Cosmic Cube is a powerful and complicated artifact. When the cosmic cube was used to rewrite Captain America’s history, it retained the “memory” of what once was, and so housed the memory or rather, a physical manifestation of the memory of Captain America before his life was altered. The “memory” Captain America is, for all intents and purposes, meant to be the “Classic” Captain America. The Classic Cap manages to escape from the Cosmic Cube with the help of Kobik. Kobik is the sentient physical manifestation of the Cosmic Cube in the form of a little girl. Anyways, Classic Captain America hands Hydra Captain America his ass, and saves the day. The only hiccup is that Classic Captain America just defeated the man that took over the entire United States, and that man happens to have the exact same face as him. So now, when people see the original Captain America, there are those that love him because they know he’s the original, but they still distrust him because someone who has the guy’s exact face became a tyrant. Then there are those that distrust him completely for the same reasons. As a result of people distrusting and being afraid of Cap, Steve decides that he should lay low for a while.

Tony Stark, on the other hand, has had a very crappy last 2 years in Marvel Comics. During the Civil War II Event by Brian Michael Bendis, there was an Inhuman that was discovered to have the ability to see into the future named Ulysses. Now you should realize that having someone that can tell the future would prevent a lot of crimes from happening. Captain Marvel, picking up on this, realizes how great of a tool that could be. Whereas Tony believes that the future is unpredictable and uncertain even though this kid claims to have the power to see the future, and that because of the future’s uncertainty, these events that Ulysses sees may not come true. Also, Tony was of the opinion that you can’t arrest someone because they might commit a crime or because you have a feeling they will commit a crime. Captain Marvel, on the other hand, wants to keep using this power, and finds out that Thanos is going to attack Earth. Carol Danvers and James Rhodes (War Machine) call for back-up from a few other heroes to ambush Thanos when he arrives. The battle ends with James Rhodes dying, and She-Hulk in critical condition. So now we have Tony Stark who just lost his best friend because Captain Marvel decided to use Ulysses’ powers getting angry and plans an action that would kick-start the second Superhero Civil War. Tony kidnaps Ulysses and finds out that he cannot see THE future, he can see a potential future, meaning that his visions are uncertain. Therefore, his powers are not a valid basis to stop crimes and other events from happening, and more importantly, it is not a basis on which you can arrest or kill someone for what they might do. Captain Marvel and the Inhumans find where Tony is hiding Ulysses and claim that this was an act of war against the Inhumans, and that Tony is going down. After that, Ulysses has a couple visions. The first vision is Miles Morales (Spider-Man) holding Captain America’s body that’s been impaled through the chest. The second is that Bruce Banner is going to become the Hulk and murder all of the superheroes.

Sidetracking here for a second, Captain Marvel then wants to arrest Spider-Man when he didn’t commit a crime, which makes Tony angry because Captain Marvel wants to arrest a 15 year old for literally nothing. Essentially some of the superheroes say “Miles didn’t kill anybody; he doesn’t want to kill anybody, why are you trying to arrest him for killing somebody?” And this coming scenario is awesome because it speaks a lot to Miles’ character. Miles goes to Washington DC (the place in the vision where everybody saw dead Captain America) and waits. He just sits there and waits for Captain America to show up, and when he does… they talk. That’s it. Miles talks to Captain America, Captain America talks to Miles, all is good and even better, Carol Danvers looks like a moron (I don’t like Carol Danvers). Now back to the whole Hulk murdering all the superheroes situation.

All of the superheroes rush over to where Bruce Banner is. Half of the superheroes want to make sure that Carol Danvers doesn’t do something stupid. The other half is with Carol Danvers to do something stupid. Bruce, surrounded by all of the heroes, wonders what’s going on, and it’s found out that he has been experimenting with gamma radiation, the radiation that makes Bruce Banner a Hulk. Banner says it’s because he may have found or is trying to find a way to get rid of the Hulk completely, but Danvers doesn’t have any of it. Banner starts to gets angry and that’s when an arrow gets Banner in the head, and it’s revealed that Hawkeye killed Bruce Banner because he thought he may turn into the Hulk, and was told by Bruce Banner to do this. Hawkeye gets arrested, and Tony Stark just lost another friend. Tony is furious at Danvers and the two begin to fight. Danvers does a super-punch and almost kills Tony, putting him into a coma. So they place him in a stasis pod. So yeah. Tony lost two friends, and essentially died for a bit then came back.

It took me a long time to tell you why Iron Man’s life sucked for the past two years, but that’s essentially the reason. Tony also seems to think that he is not ready to get back into the field as an Avenger. But in case you forgot, we also have to go over Thor. Thor’s life as a god has been pretty sucky as well. Don’t worry, I’ll go over it quickly. Thor lost his arm because someone cut it off; he became unworthy to wield Mjolnir (his hammer), his ex-girlfriend and close friend has cancer, and is going to die pretty soon, he became pretty depressed, and to top things off, he joined Hydra Captain America because he lifted Mjolnir. So people likely don’t trust him and want to see him around.

The funny thing is, Thor and Steve want to go out and be the Avengers again, but Tony thinks that’s a horrible idea just because of the fact that they are not ready. And that’s when giant dead celestial bodies fall out of the sky, and the trio goes to help. As the bodies fall to Earth, there is a figure that stands, and is shown to be the source of these celestial deaths, leading to Captain America saying the words he’s wanted to say for a while “Avengers Assemble.”

The first issue of this series was a pretty fun read, and I can’t wait to know more about the being that killed the celestials. My next few posts will have more current Marvel topics, and will cover Batman and Catwoman’s wedding. I am also starting a podcast fairly soon, so stay tuned for that. Feel free to check out my other posts on my profile. See you in the next post!

Note: I do not own the panels, characters, and art shown in this post, all panels, characters and art belong to their respective owners.