For this weekend’s light-hearted and escapist superhero blog post here at Balladeer’s Blog will examine the 4th, 5th and 6th installments of the 9-part Avengers classic The Kree-Skrull War (1971-1972). For parts 1-3 click HERE.
THE AVENGERS Volume One, Number 92 (September 1971)
AVENGERS ROSTER: THOR (Donald Blake, MD), IRON MAN (Tony Stark), CAPTAIN AMERICA (Steve Rogers), THE SCARLET WITCH (Wanda), GOLIATH (Clint Barton), QUICKSILVER (Pietro), THE VISION (Not Applicable), CAPTAIN MARVEL (Mar-Vell, Kree Captain)
ALL THINGS MUST END
Synopsis: We pick up several days after the Avengers and their old civilian ally, rock singer Rick Jones, saved the world from Ronan the Accuser. Ronan was the new ruler of the alien Kree Empire after a coup d’état against the Supreme Intelligence. When his plan was stymied by the Avengers, Ronan was forced to retreat back to Hala, the homeworld of the Kree Empire, because the Kree’s ancient foes the Skrulls had launched attacks on every Kree-held planet in the galaxy.
The Scarlet Witch, Goliath (formerly Hawkeye), Quicksilver, the Vision and Captain Marvel are enjoying down time at Avengers Mansion. Soon their butler Jarvis brings their attention to newscasts stating that the Avengers are being investigated by the U.S. government and the U.N.
Word has leaked from a Senator named H. Warren Craddock and from the technicians the Avengers swore to confidentiality following last issue’s action. The entire world now knows about how the alien race called the Kree attempted to destroy the Earth.
Captain Marvel’s status as a renegade Kree captain helps draw attention to the Avengers and his place with them. Not helping the situation is the way Captain Marvel – aka Kree Starfleet Captain Mar-Vell – impersonated Earth scientist Doctor Walter Lawson as part of his original mission to infiltrate NASA at Cape Canaveral.
That circumstance leads to suspicion about how many other alien Kree may be infiltrating Earth bases, fanning the inevitable Witch Hunt.
Of course, our heroes know that eventually Mar-Vell sympathized with us primitive Earth creatures and sided with US against his own homeworld. Evidence links Captain Marvel to the frequent hostile alien activity at Cape Canaveral in recent years (in Mar-Vell’s own comic book) but in reality Captain Marvel was fighting that hostile activity, not participating in it.
Craddock’s fiery public accusations against the Avengers even imply that the reason the Avengers tried to impose a National Security blackout on the Kree attack in northern Alaska was really just to try to protect their member Captain Marvel from suspicion. (Marvel Comics has ret-conned several times if Mar-Vell was officially an Avenger by this point. I’m proceeding with him as a member since the whole story makes more sense if he is.)
NOTE: Craddock’s investigation is being called the Alien Activities Commission, a clear callout to the House Unamerican Activities Commission during the anticommunist Witch Hunts that ran through the 1930s to 1950s. (Though the 1950s edition gets much more coverage.) Before Republican Joseph McCarthy, Democrat Martin Dies led the Witch Hunts.
The 1950s edition was still often used in pop fiction as writers tried to draw various parallels to such activity. This was long before the modern-day “racism” and “hate speech” and “privilege” Witch Hunts in which accusations are – like in the anti-communist Witch Hunts – considered as good as proven and people who speak in support of the accused are tarred with the same accusations and presumptions of guilt.
Getting back to the story, Captain Marvel offers to turn himself in, but the Avengers and Rick Jones argue about whether or not he should. Some think he should, others think there is no way he could get fair treatment given the shady Senator Craddock’s way of conducting himself. (Picture the sleazy and corrupt Robert Mueller or the January 6th Witch Hunt. Craddock is like that.)
Already protestors are surrounding Avengers Mansion insisting the Avengers should turn over the Kree Captain or be arrested themselves. Carol Danvers (left) shows up in a helicopter over Avengers’ mansion. The copter malfunctions and the Vision and Captain Marvel must save her as the craft crashes on the ceiling of Avengers Mansion.
The Vision barely escapes serious injury in the rescue, and we get more character bits between him and Wanda/ the Scarlet Witch. She is very concerned over him since their mutual attraction finally came out into the open last time around. However, the Vision acts cold and distant to her, still feeling unworthy and ashamed, thinking that as an artificial being he is not fit to be her romantic partner.
Quicksilver is angry that the Vision is being brusque with his sister Wanda. He doesn’t “get” the budding romance angle yet and when it comes out in the open down the road, he will be furious that Wanda is involved with an android.
Anyway, Carol Danvers says she resigned as Security Chief at NASA because ever since the defeat of Ronan the Accuser’s plans in Alaska there has been a growing movement at the top levels of the government to railroad Mar-Vell and any superbeings who side with him.
Captain Marvel saved Carol’s life multiple times over the years. (This is long before she became Ms Marvel.) Through some of her friends in the covert services she knows of an upstate New York farm where Mar-Vell can hide out, so he won’t be in Avengers Mansion when S.H.I.E.L.D agents show up to arrest him.
Again, the opinions of the Avengers are divided between helping the Kree Captain elude the authorities or cooperating with those authorities.
Rick Jones – IN A BIT THAT WILL HAVE GREAT SIGNIFICANCE DOWN THE ROAD – ruminates on how “human” superheroes have come to seem to him.
When he was growing up, he idolized all of them, like a kid in the days of the Old West reading up on every single gunslinger covered in the papers and dime novels of the time period. He reflects on his exhaustive research on World War Two superheroes like Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, the Original Human Torch (really an android), the Fin, the Patriot, Miss America, the Whizzer, the Blazing Skull, the Golden Age Vision and so many others.
However, as he’s come to know them personally, he sees how human and tragic some of them are – like his friend the Hulk, always a fugitive … or Captain America, at this time still wallowing in self-pity over losing decades of time when he was frozen in ice and still blaming himself for Bucky’s “death” (later retconned). And now, of course, Captain Marvel and the Avengers and the very real personal crises they always have to deal with.
At length Mar-Vell leaves with Carol in a loaned Avengers Quin-Jet. Nick Fury, Dum-Dum Dugan and some other S.H.I.E.L.D agents in aircraft try to intercept the Quin-Jet but Mar-Vell and Carol get away. The incident further blackens the Avengers in the public eye and Craddock soon has them summoned to testify the next day before his committee at the U.N. (No, a Senator can not personally start a committee at the U.N. Readers will need to ignore usual political channels and just go with this. It’s just a comic book story, after all.)
The U.N. building is surrounded by anti-Avengers protestors and our heroes struggle to maintain their cool faced with the insulting and mocking shouts from the crowd. Inside the hearing room testimony is heard from various scientists at Cape Canaveral and the Alaskan base which Ronan attacked.
It’s all nice Marvel Comics verisimilitude, and my research makes me feel things like this separated them from DC Comics during this same time period. Some of the testimony advances the Avengers’ cause, but some undermines their position.
Craddock doesn’t call either the Wasp OR her then-husband Yellow Jacket to testify since their testimony would likely support the Avengers, whom he clearly wants to just nail. Investigators abusing the power of subpoena never goes out of style.
Reed Richards – Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four – is called to testify because, years earlier, he and his team had the first run-in with the Kree, their Sentries AND Ronan the Accuser over in their own Comic Book. Reed can testify to the Kree’s hostile intentions and has to admit that he has never met Captain Marvel but in his professional opinion if the Avengers vouch for him he would accept their testimony.
Ben Grimm – the Fantastic Four member called the Thing – does NOT support the Avengers and calls out the Avengers for not turning over Captain Marvel to S.H.I.E.L.D. and for their apparent complicity in helping him escape. He even goes so far as to say “Superheroes like them, we don’t need.”
NOTE: In the forever-overlapping stories of the Marvel Comics Universe, the Thing’s hostile testimony against the Avengers is due to his growing mental instability at the time. The Fantastic Four themselves had not come to realize it yet, but a recent invention of Reed’s which let Ben Grimm transform from his human form to his rock form and back again at will was also causing him to go nuts.
Eventually that would all get resolved in the Fantastic Four’s own comic book but it makes Ben look like a real jerk here in the pages of The Avengers.
Anyway, Goliath loses his temper and threatens the Thing while he’s still on the stand, making the Avengers look even worse, especially as the vulture-like media distorts the proceedings in the pile-on public atmosphere.
As the hearing goes on, Craddock is trying to destroy the Vision as he gives testimony, when Rick Jones experiences a brief flash of the mind-meld he formerly had with Mar-Vell when their atoms were fused. (See Parts One and Two) He realizes that the upstate New York farm where Carol took Captain Marvel was really a trap and Mar-Vell’s been captured by alien Skrulls.
Like an idiot, Rick flees the hearing room and escapes, another black eye for the Avengers since he’s under subpoena like they are. In the accompanying uproar Craddock brings down the gavel on the first day of the committee’s hearings.
Back at Avengers Mansion, the Scarlet Witch, Goliath, Quicksilver and the Vision find the place ransacked and vandalized. Their butler Jarvis tells them that a few troublemakers in the crowd of protestors led the others in attacking the place. He disarmed the automated defenses to prevent the protestors from getting injured or killed by the mansion’s automated defense systems which are set for superbeings.
Even worse for the foursome, Thor, Iron Man and Captain America are waiting for them. The Big Three chew out the Scarlet Witch, Goliath, Quicksilver and the Vision for their obvious aid in helping Mar-Vell escape. Next, invoking their rights as Founding Members of the Avengers, Thor, Iron Man and Cap expel the four of them from the team, saying they’ve brought it into disgrace.
The four numbly accept this and leave Avengers Mansion, little realizing that Thor, Iron Man and Cap are really just shape shifting Skrulls in disguise. +++
THE AVENGERS Volume One, Number 93 (November 1971)
AVENGERS ROSTER: THOR (Donald Blake, MD), IRON MAN (Tony Stark), CAPTAIN AMERICA (Steve Rogers), ANT-MAN (Hank Pym, PhD), THE SCARLET WITCH (Wanda), GOLIATH (Clint Barton), QUICKSILVER (Pietro), THE VISION (Not Applicable), CAPTAIN MARVEL (Mar-Vell, Kree Captain)
THIS BEACH-HEAD EARTH
Synopsis: We open at Avengers Mansion. Iron Man has summoned Thor, Captain America, the Wasp and Yellow Jacket in response to an alarming and confusing letter that Tony Stark (Iron Man) received. That letter was from Jarvis, the Avengers’ butler, resigning his position since – as we saw last time around – Thor, Iron Man and Captain America expelled the Scarlet Witch, Goliath, Quicksilver and the Vision from the team.
Iron Man, Cap and Thor make it clear they have no idea what Jarvis was talking about. Obviously, some imposters threw out the four expelled Avengers using their apparent complicity in Captain Marvel’s flight from S.H.I.E.L.D. as the excuse.
Suddenly the Vision bursts into the room. He has clearly been in a fight and is badly wounded. Before he can tell Thor, Iron Man and Captain America what happened he collapses into unconsciousness. The Big Three get the Vision to the Avengers’ infirmary and are alarmed to realize that he no longer has a pulse.
Ant-Man (Hank Pym, PhD) arrives from Alaska, where he says his wife the Wasp (Janet Van Dyne) is laid up with an illness after the Avengers’ recent battle with Kree forces there. Since Ant-Man created Ultron who in turn created the Vision, Hank’s expertise is called upon to see if the Vision can be repaired. For nostalgia’s sake he came as Ant-Man instead of as Yellow Jacket.
Ant-Man shrinks himself down the most that he can and enters the Vision’s body through the android’s nostrils. This begins an adventure through the Vision’s body in which Ant-Man will face the android’s dangerous artificial defenses. Obviously, the whole setup is an intentional homage to the 1960s sci fi movie Fantastic Voyage.
After a lengthy mini-epic taking him throughout the Vision’s body, Ant-Man at last reaches the android’s brain where he effects repairs that cure the Vision. He also gets momentarily shocked by an unexpected discovery – “WHAT’S THIS?” he exclaims.
Before he can probe further he gets attacked by more of the Vision’s body’s automatic defenses. This distracts him and it left the mystery of what he discovered in the Vision’s brain a puzzle for years.
NOTE: As seen during my issue by issue look at The Celestial Madonna Saga last year, what Ant-Man discovered was a vestige of the Vision’s original android body when he was the Original “Human” Torch in World War Two-era Marvel Comics (then called Timely Comics). It turned out that Ultron secretly overhauled the “dead” android body of the Original Torch into the Vision’s current form, unknown to anyone for years.
Back to the story: With the Vision cured and on the verge of regaining full consciousness, Ant-Man departs, returning to Alaska to take care of the Wasp and resume his crucial research into the Alaskan eco-system.
When the Vision fully recovers, he expresses anger at Thor, Cap and Iron Man over their expulsion of him, the Scarlet Witch, Goliath and Quicksilver. Thor and the others explain to the Vision that they are just as puzzled about that as he is and that imposters obviously are to blame.
They ask Vizh to explain what happened to him and the others. Vision states that when they left Avengers Mansion in Wanda’s (the Scarlet Witch’s) car they headed north to the Upstate New York farm to which Carol Danvers took Captain Marvel in order to hide from the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents trying to arrest him.
When they arrived at the former government facility disguised as a farm, they found the place surrounded by tall fencing and with a closed gate at the entrance road. Goliath recklessly passed over the gate and went exploring.
The Vision offered to help the Scarlet Witch over the fence, but Quicksilver flew into one of his creepy Scarface-style protective fits about his sister Wanda. The Scarlet Witch enters into the argument on the Vision’s behalf but Vizh, still feeling that his growing attraction to Wanda is pointless since he is an artificial being, backs down.
When Vision, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver finally enter the grounds the Vision accidentally trips a high-tech defensive ray that blasts him out of the sky. He lands on the ground and is paralyzed. As the Avengers are attacked, he is still unable to move so he wills himself intangible enough to sink into the Earth, so that he cannot be used as a hostage against his teammates.
While Goliath is still off wandering the farmland, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver find themselves attacked by three members of the Fantastic Four – Mr. Fantastic, the Human Torch (Johnny Storm version) and the Thing. The battle is joined.
The three seeming members of the Fantastic Four are really three of the shape shifting alien race called Skrulls, the ancient enemies of the Kree. These three Skrulls impersonating Mr. F, the Thing and the Human Torch were the three captured from the first Skrullian attempt to conquer Earth back in Fantastic Four number 2 (January 1962).
Since then, the Fantastic Four assumed the Skrulls were being kept in hypno-captivity at this government facility posing as a farm. It turns out that a Skrull “hyper-beam” was triggered when the Fantastic Four first fought the Super-Skrull in their 18th issue (September 1963).
That hyper-beam set off by Super-Skrull woke the three Skrulls out of their hypnotic slumber. Ever since then they alternated between pretending to still be hypnotic captives and using their shape-changing powers to outsmart their government “captors.”
Helped by the fourth Skrull from their war party – who escaped way back in Fantastic Four # 2, the three Skrulls covertly made the farm a secret Skrull outpost on Earth. These three Skrulls also trained themselves, honing their shape-changing abilities to the point where they could reproduce the powers of a Fantastic Four member – one each. (As opposed to the Super Skrull, who had the powers of all four Fantastic Four members at once.)
Thanks to the recent Kree assault on Earth the Skrull agents activated themselves. Since their ancient foes the Kree consider Earth to have strategic value, they decided to seize it immediately. The three Skrulls impersonated Thor, Iron Man and Captain America last issue, expelling Wanda, Pietro, Goliath and the Vision from the Avengers.
Back to the action, the Scarlet Witch defeats the bogus Human Torch, but she and Quicksilver are defeated by the bogus Mr Fantastic and Thing. The Vision, still paralyzed, found that he was able to will himself to float very slowly, so he rose above ground in his intangible state and slowly – very slowly – drifted his way south to Avengers Mansion.
By the time he reached the mansion he was able to solidify his body. That was when he burst in on Thor, Iron Man and Captain America before collapsing.
With everyone up to date now, Thor, I.M, Cap and the Vision board an Avengers Quin-Jet and fly off to the Upstate New York farm/ Skrull station.
Meanwhile, back at that site, Goliath encounters the Avengers’ civilian friend Rick Jones. Rick fled Senator Craddock’s hearing against the Avengers last issue because he got a brief flash of his old mental link with Captain Marvel. (See Parts One and Two). That flash let him know that the farm was really a trap and that Mar-Vell and presumably Carol Danvers were captured.
Rick tells Goliath that he has been skulking around the farmland and there is definitely something suspicious about the place. The Skrull version of the Thing shows up and defeats Goliath.
Elsewhere in one of the phony farm buildings the three Skrulls are securing their new captives Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch in the same high-tech chamber as Captain Marvel and Carol Danvers. Wanda and Quicksilver are in chryo-sleep, but the Skrulls have kept Mar-Vell conscious for taunting and interrogation purposes.
When a nearby video-screen shows that the Quin-Jet with Thor, Iron Man, Captain America and the Vision has landed, the three Skrulls reassume their disguises as Mr. Fantastic, the Thing and the Human Torch and leave to attack the newly arrived Avengers.
While the battle between the Fantastic Skrulls and the Avengers rages, Captain Marvel is able to complete a maneuver he’s been trying bit by bit to escape his high-tech prison. He succeeds and then frees Carol Danvers.
With the Skrulls making their own bid for the Earth, Mar-Vell uses parts from the Skrullian lab to start assembling an Omni-Wave Projector. As we saw in the first three installments, that device can be used for instantaneous communication across the galaxy, for instant teleportation across the galaxy AND as a weapon. Mar-Vell plans to warn his Kree people about the Skrull’s plans.
It turns out that the “Carol Danvers” who led Captain Marvel to this farm/ Skrull station and has seemed to be a fellow captive is really Super-Skrull. He was posing as Carol precisely in hopes that Mar-Vell would assemble an Omni-Wave Projector, a device that the Skrulls have still not been able to create.
Captain Marvel realized it was really Super-Skrull and destroyed the Omni-Wave Projector before it could fall into Skrullian hands. Super-Skrull and Captain Marvel now fight each other while the Fantastic Skrulls continue fighting the Avengers outside on the farm grounds.
Eventually Super-Skrull defeats Captain Marvel and gasses him into sleep. The Avengers defeat the Fantastic Skrulls and – seeing this on the viewscreen – the Super-Skrull decides it is time to leave with his three captives.
The farm’s “barn” turns out to be a disguised spaceship and with the Skrull piloting it it starts to rise toward the sky. Goliath comes to after having been knocked out by the fake Thing earlier and leaps on the rising craft, trying to drag it back down to the ground.
Unfortunately, it’s been several days since Goliath drank any of the liquid serum with Pym Particles – the serum which lets him grow like it used to do with Hank Pym when he was Goliath. Goliath shrinks back to normal size and falls off the Super-Skrull’s spaceship. Thor is forced to cut short his pursuit of the Skrull craft to save the falling Goliath. The ship darts off at hyper-speed for an unknown location.
The Avengers plus Rick Jones mull over the grim situation: Earth being fought over by two super-advanced alien races, Senator Craddock’s investigation against the Avengers still ongoing and now the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Captain Marvel are captives of the Super-Skrull. +++
THE AVENGERS Volume One, Number 94 (December 1971)
BEHOLD THE MANDROIDS
Yes, this is the very first appearance of the Mandroids, the S.H.I.E.L.D. combat suits designed by Tony Stark to defeat the Avengers themselves if they ever turned bad. X-Men fans will remember that years later Moses Magnum used stolen Mandroid technology in his bid to conquer Japan.
Synopsis: Our story this time picks up just over an hour after the Avengers defeated the three Skrulls who were simulating the powers of the Fantastic Four. During that same battle Super-Skrull, the Skrull agent with ALL of the Fantastic Four’s powers in one, defeated his Kree archenemy, the Avenger called Captain Marvel, and fled in a spaceship with Mar-Vell, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch as captives.
Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Goliath and Rick Jones have taken the captive Skrulls back to Avengers Mansion where they have subjected them to sedatives that will keep even those three alien agents unconscious for an extended period.
That accomplished, the Avengers contact Reed Richards – Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four – on their visi-screen. Since the Fantastic Four had Earth’s first several encounters with both the Skrulls AND the Kree the Avengers want to know if Reed has any idea what kind of strategy the Skrulls may be pursuing with the captive Avengers now that both alien races are fighting over possession of the Earth.
Reed promises to scour the Fantastic Four’s extensive records on the Kree and the Skrulls and get back to our heroes. While waiting to hear back from Mister Fantastic the Avengers turn their thoughts to what became of the Vision after the earlier battle. He was not defeated by any of the Skrulls so they are not sure where he disappeared to.
We readers now learn that the Vision stowed away on the Super-Skrull’s spaceship in order to keep close track of the captive Avengers – especially the Scarlet Witch, with whom his romance has barely begun. As it develops, the Super-Skrull is using advanced Skrullian technology to leech off the “X-Waves” (named for Professor Charles Xavier) that emanate from the mutant brains of the unconscious Scarlet Witch and her brother Quicksilver.
NOTE: This technology was eventually developed by the villainous group of Earthlings called the Secret Empire, who leeched X-Waves from the brains of eight captive mutants to power their aircraft when they tried to conquer America in the pages of Captain America and the Falcon.
At any rate the Super-Skrull’s spaceship has been using Wanda and Pietro’s X-Waves to locate the hidden city of the Inhumans: Attilan. The Skrulls know the Kree plan to use the Inhumans – descendants of primitive humanoids experimented upon by the Kree in the distant past – as super-powered soldiers against the Skrulls in the ongoing war.
Super-Skrull states that the X-Waves of mutant brains are similar enough to the altered brainwaves of the Inhumans that this has helped his craft to locate Attilan after several orbits around the Earth. He plans on wiping out the entire population of thousands of Inhumans with one massive, Death Star-like blast from his spaceship. (Again, courtesy of the X-Waves from the unconscious Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.)
The Vision is forced to reveal his presence on the ship in order to prevent Super-Skrull from wiping out all of the Inhumans. He and Super-Skrull at first fight each other to a draw but then, using the invisibility powers of Invisible Woman the Super-Skrull slips past the Vision and pulls the lever to unleash the deadly blast.
As it turns out the Vision’s attack delayed the Super-Skrull long enough for Attilan to raise a black energy shield around the entire city. This dome of black energy saved the city from the death-ray, infuriating Super-Skrull.
NOTE: This shield was erected by Maximus the Mad, who, in contemporary issues of Amazing Adventures, had been helped by Ronan the Accuser to overthrow his (Maximus’) brother Black Bolt and assume the rule of Attilan, the Great Refuge. Ronan helped Maximus to do that in return for Maximus agreeing to turn over to the Kree all those Inhumans whose powers would be useful in a war.
Also depicted in contemporary issues of the Inhumans’ own series over at Amazing Adventures, Black Bolt, the rightful ruler of Attilan, was in San Francisco. He had originally gone there undercover to try to learn harmless ways of letting Earth people learn of the existence of the Great Refuge and its inhabitants.
His absence had provided Maximus and Ronan with the opportunity for Maximus’ coup, aided by his League of Evil Inhumans – later renamed the Inhuman League. An invention of Maximus’ then remotely caused Black Bolt to be struck with amnesia in hopes he would never return. As of this issue Black Bolt was still wandering San Francisco, not knowing who he was.
Back to our story: With his attempt to deprive the Kree of super-soldiers in the Kree-Skrull War thwarted, the Super-Skrull announces his plans to pilot his spaceship back to the Skrull homeworld with his three captives. The Vision agonizes over leaving his beloved Scarlet Witch but ultimately decides he must seek the aid of the other Avengers to save not only Wanda, Pietro and Mar-Vell but the entire planet Earth.
Super-Skrull tries taunting the Vision as a coward, but he replies that his logic makes him immune to such irrational attempts to bait him. So saying, the Vision flies out of the Skrullian ship and heads for Avengers Mansion.
With the Vision gone, Super-Skrull uses his ship to burst out of the Nega-Shield that Ronan’s Kree technology caused to form around the Earth to preserve it as a Kree spoil of war. Next, he travels to the Star-Gate that Skrulls, Kree, Shi’ar and countless other Marvel Comics alien races always use to bop back and forth from our solar system to deep space.
In this case Super-Skrull’s ship winds up around the far-distant Skrull homeworld, name unpronounceable by a human tongue. Super-Skrull’s capture of the Kree Captain Marvel plus Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver will supposedly put him back in the good graces of Emperor Dorrek IV.
Super-Skrull even hopes that the Emperor may give him his daughter, Princess Annelle, to wed. The now-conscious trio of captives hear Super-Skrull boasting that the Emperor will force Captain Marvel to reveal the secret of the Kree race’s top-secret Omni-Wave Projector.
To Super-Skrull’s surprise, however, the Emperor’s forces open fire on the returning Skrull spaceship. This forces Super-Skrull out of the ship where he uses the Fantastic Four’s powers to defeat a large part of the Emperor’s army before Dorrek IV’s high-tech trap subdues Super-Skrull.
The Emperor tells his nearby daughter Annelle that he never would have created a super-being like Super-Skrull without a means of defeating him if need be. As with all of Dorrek’s other lessons to Annelle, this Machiavellian piece of thinking is wasted.
Princess Annelle is a kind-hearted woman who rejects the Skrull’s warlike ways. Skrull females are beautiful humanoids with smooth faces – not the rough and rippled faces of Skrull males. When Dorrek IV addresses the three captive Avengers Princess Annelle expresses admiration for Mar-Vell. She feels that any enemy of Ronan the Accuser must be a good man.
Dorrek is furious at this – and yes, Princess Annelle and Captain Marvel will begin a Romeo and Juliet-style romance in the midst of this Kree-Skrull War. The Emperor demands that the Captain show him how to build an Omni-Wave Projector so he can use it as a weapon against the Kree.
Mar-Vell refuses to betray his own race. Dorrek mentions that the Treaty of Fornax prevents him from torturing Mar-Vell for the information, but that Treaty doesn’t apply to primitive creatures like Earthlings. The Emperor – to the horror of his daughter Annelle – forces Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch to fight various monstrous and/or deadly alien beasts to try to get Captain Marvel to change his mind.
At great length, when an exhausted and overwhelmed Wanda and Pietro are about to be killed, Mar-Vell gives in. He promises to build an Omni-Wave Projector for Dorrek if he spares the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.
The Emperor spares the pair but keeps them imprisoned lest Captain Marvel change his mind. Mar-Vell begins to – as slowly as possible – construct the device for Dorrek, with Princess Annelle hovering nearby. (No, I don’t know why Dorrek allows this. Ya can’t stop love, I guess.)
Back on Earth, Senator H Warren Craddock, with his special powers from the U.N, is overseeing S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists as they perfect a device for detecting alien Kree who might be infiltrating Earth bases in human form as Mar-Vell did when he first came to Earth.
With the device fine-tuned by using human guinea pigs – the scientists who witnessed the Kree attack in northern Alaska – Craddock plans on rooting out any and all Kree infiltrators. In the meantime, he wants S.H.I.E.L.D. to arrest the Avengers for ignoring their subpoena and failing to testify once again at this second day of his hearings at the U.N.
Those hearings ended earlier in the day and now as night approaches Nick Fury contacts the Avengers on their visi-screen with a quick comment that Acapulco is nice this time of year before immediately signing off. The Avengers rightly decide that Fury was trying to give them a hint to leave Avengers Mansion.
Before our heroes can fully contemplate acting on the heads up, the Vision arrives and tells the other Avengers everything that transpired on the Super-Skrull’s ship and at Attilan. No sooner has the Vision finished with this update than the Avengers hear a loudspeaker broadcast outside the mansion calling upon them to surrender in the name of Senator H. Warren Craddock.
They rush outside, refuse to surrender and find themselves under attack by the Mandroids, outfitted with tech to counter all of their powers. Goliath had – just before the Vision arrived, consumed the very last of Hank Pym’s serum containing Pym Particles that let him grow so he knows his power will be wearing off for good soon.
This suits him fine because – since Clint Barton is always reckless and impulsive – he has decided he wants to stop being Goliath after this mission is over just because the growth serum wore off last time around when he tried to stop Super-Skrull’s escape. Emotional jerk.
Anyway, the battle between the Avengers and the Mandroids rages before a crowd of onlookers. It goes on and on, and suddenly – off to one side on the street – a manhole cover opens, and the Inhuman named Triton emerges. The narrative ponders if he come as friend or foe as we get this issue’s cliffhanger ending. +++
I’LL POST THE FINAL THREE PARTS NEXT WEEKEND.
FOR MY EXAMINATION OF THE 13-PART BLACK PANTHER STORY TITLED PANTHER’S RAGE CLICK HERE
FOR THE AUSTRALIAN SUPERHERO PANTHEON CLICK HERE
FOR MORE SUPERHEROES CLICK HERE: Superheroes
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