#a giant naked conjoined atomic man

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers #323: The Crossing Line Part 5: ONE WORLD'S NOT ENOUGH FOR ALL OF US

September, 1990

GROUND ZERO! Guest starring ALPHA FLIGHT

Aw geez.

Alpha Flight is looking pretty chipper considering Canada is exploding behind them.

Plus, the Avengers have mutated into giant disembodied heads.

I guess the People's Protectorate don't get to be giant disembodied heads.

Last time in Avengers:

THE AVENGERS NUKED CANADA.

Well, more specifically, Peace Corpse nuked Canada by setting up a fail-safe that went off when the Avengers punched the two ringleaders in the face and disconnecting them from the missiles.

But Captain America has been bungling this entire The Crossing Line incident. Spent more time fighting their Russian counterparts instead of the terrorists who hijacked a nuclear submarine. And then he played hardball during a hostage crisis and got Stingray shot in the head. And then the thing with the failsafe.

Dammit, Cap, you got Canada nuked!

So... What's the book about now? Giant disembodied atomic heads?

Okay. So.

The Avengers didn't get blown up.

Can you imagine?

Captain America, Red Guardian, Vision, Vostok, and Peace Corpse minus the two main dudes are floating in a mysterious, speckled void. The cheetah dimension, perhaps.

Weirdly, Vostok's sensors read the cheetah as biologically active.

That's unsettling.

Fantasma telepathically contacts Cap and reveals that she, Sersi, and a whole bunch of civilians are in a fire dimension. Sersi is having to strain her powers to not only shield the group from the fire but also to keep the temperature within her shield bearable.

Because. Heat. It goes to where there's less of it.

Also, Sersi and Fantasma are the only woman of their respective groups and they've been forced together by circumstance and so they've decided to spend the time being catty.

Weird flex, writer Fabian Nicieza.

When Sersi tells Fantasma to ask Cap, telepathically, whether there's any way he can get them out of the fire dimension:

Fantasma: "Calm yourself, Eternal!"

Sersi: "Don't talk to me that way, you haggling witch!"

These two have barely contributed to the plot and now this.

Fantasma manages to contact Shaman who knows what's going on because he fucking did it. He did the thing that's going on.

When Cap et al fucked up so bad that they nuked Canada, Shaman turned his mystic pouch inside-out.

And apparently his mystic pouch was just packed with dimensional planes.

Then he pulled the pouch inside-inside-out, slurping up all those dimensional planes and also the explosion and also a chunk of Canada.

He's just kind of floating over a hole where the town was.

Annnnd. He can't... quite... just put everything back. So easily.

He needs the peeps inside to draw the various dimensional planes together, for reasons. And quickly because the mystic pouch warranty didn't cover this and it may just break.

What the hell is this plot? We started off with a airport paperback Cold War thriller with a hijacked submarine and now everyone got sucked into a pocket dimension.

Meanwhile, in the cheetah dimension, thin air starts shooting lasers at people.

Vision can just intangible but he notes that he still feels it passing through him, which means those lasers are packing a lot of power.

Cap tells Sersi and Fantasma that he doesn't know how long he can hold out in the cheetah, laser dimension.

Sersi: "Wouldn't the colloquial response be 'welcome to the club'...?"

Fantasma taps into Sersi's mighty psychic powers (even apologizing for how it's going to hurt like hell) to search the pouchaverse for more of the missing peeps.

And she finds another group, in a dimension of water.

Quasar and Crimson Dynamo float above the waves. Crimson Dynamo's armor is running low on power. And Quasar is having to focus on keeping the place lit up so they can see if anybody starts drowning.

Because, yeah, dimension of pure water doesn't have any light.

Puck, Perun, Diamond Lil, and Box sans his armor are treading water. Also, Tyrak and Orka are here. They're just vibing.

Fantasma projects an image of herself to team water world. She fills them in on the mystic pouch stuff and that they need to find a dimensional nexus that connects the planes.

Tyrak has some opinions to share about that.

Tyrak: "Why should we Atlanteans believe you? We can survive here -- we will wait until this nuclear squall clears and then we --" Perun: "Look around, you scale-infested oxygen-deprived lobotomzied minnow! The skies are black, the water purple! We are not on Earth! I will gladly fight you til eternity's end, Tyrak, but if you ever want to see your home again -- you land -- your loved ones -- we will have to work together! Do you understand cretin?!" Tyrak: "What must we do, woman?"

Hah, Perun is fun.

That string of insults was something else.

Meanwhile, in the energy dimension, Vostok finds the Box armor. He's able to use his synthezoid powers to interface with the systems to maneuver it.

Meanwhile, the rest of everyone, in the desert dimension.

Guardian is leading a huge pack of civilians, U-Man, and Stingray. And nobody is doing well. U-Man is dehydrating fast. STingray has a concussion, and the civilians are getting exhausted from marching through the desert.

Fantasma psychically projects to Guardian and tells her she needs to get everyone to the desert plane's nexus so she can reunite with everyone. And Guardian passes the info along to everyone else that they now have a concrete destination.

Guardian: "The Russian woman -- Fantasma -- she told me we have a chance of finding the others and a way out of here. But we have to go back. I'll fly ahead, you lead the others." Stingray: "The fact that I'm operating with a major concussion doesn't matter to you?' Guardian: "No. Just do it."

Ha.

But this has been such a trying day for Stingray. He didn't even want to be here and all he's gotten is grief.

Back in the energy dimension, Vostok turned the Box armor and maybe some other parts, I dunno, into a neat looking spaceship.

Team energy dimension is feeling worn down. They've been traveling in the direction Sersi told them for almost two days.

But when Sersi contacts them again, she tells them it's barely been five minutes on her side. So I guess time is flowing differently in different parts of the mystic pouch pocket dimension.

In order to get the energy and fire dimensions to touch, Shaman has to compress the energies of the pouch. "Both physically and spiritually."

Which means he's gotta scrunch the pouch in his hands.

Yes, really.

Sersi has to open a gap in her force field to let the tether from the Box Ship in. She warns everyone to get back but the nearest people still get badly burned by the heat that comes pouring in even that small hole.

As badly strained as Sersi is, she can't pull the ship through the vortex by herself. She asks Vision to help her.

Vision: "To do so would require I solidify my form. To solidify my form would subject me to the potentially terminal ravages of this environment." Sersi: "I know what I ask of you, Avenger! It is no less than we have all had to give!" Vision: "I am well aware of that and am acting accordingly."

And he do. He suffers from cosmetic damage to his synthetic skin but they get the ship through. Vostok warns that he won't be able to maintain this construct much longer in this heat but Sersi tells him that won't be a problem for much longer.

So the heroes get everyone aboard the Box Ship and next travel through the portal to the water dimension.

Vostok reshapes the ship again to be more of an open boat so they can fit more people on board.

It was an entire town that got slurped up in this mess.

As he helps people out of the water, Captain America marvels. But doesn't Captain Marvels.

Captain America: "Even Tyrak is helping! Our differences -- the angers we just recently had -- all put aside for the sake of survival."

I feel like that's the thesis of this story.

Peace Corpse thought the only way to bring the world together and Fix Everything was to spark another world war. Because Peace Corpse is dumb.

But by having three different superhero teams and a squad of named Atlanteans all having to work together to survive this madness, the comic says 'maybe there is a better way than Peace Corpse's stupid dumb idea.'

Although, uniting the world for survival is what leads to Ozymandias Watchmen and his giant octopus psychic alien scheme so bear in mind that no idea should be taken to extremes.

New problem though. Vostok is worn out, I guess, and Box pilot Madison Jeffries says he can't fly the Box armor with so many people.

He can turn the armor into a flying chair, a la Metron's Mobius chair, with a tether that everyone can hang onto.

But there will be no protection from the void.

Captain America: "Sersi -- can you provide a protective sheath -- similar to the field you recently erected -- around each of us individually?" Sersi: "And still telepathically scan for Guardian's nexus? I believe I can, Captain. Just be certain my funeral is a lavish one upon your return to Earth."

I love that Sersi sass.

'I'll die for your cause but my funeral better kick ass.'

And with new Eternal lore, she'd pop right back up so she could personally make sure they don't half-ass the event.

The amazing chair and its trailing tail finds Guardian's group and all the people in the bag of holding are finally together.

So Shaman can finally start letting some people out. But first he has to put some land for them to stand on. And then Guardian insists that the civilians be rescued first.

Oof.

That first group of civilians released is almost immediately skeletonized by the radiation. Including an on-panel child death, geez.

When Shaman slurped up the land, the people, and the nuclear explosion, that meant he slurped up the radiation too. And it's apparently not a problem inside the bag for whatever mystical reasons or because of different laws of physics.

But back on planet Earth, that much radiation kills people dead. And Shaman can't sift the radiation out from all the people. That'd be crazy.

Since that's not bonkers enough, a giant, naked and conjoined Prokvitch and Strokov show up, promising to help everyone return to Earth.

Captain America: "Why do you want to help us? If you return us to Earth now, not only will the radiation kill us, it will also poison the planet!" Combine: "Yes... we know."

I suspect that these dudes that planned to start a nuclear war on purpose are, in fact, assholes.

Also, remember when this was an airport paperback political thriller plot? Now we've got enormous conjoined dudes with cosmic swooshes covering their junk.

What a weird situation.

Anyway, more tales of The Avengers Crew

This time starring John Jameson, aka the former Man-Wolf.

Fun fact: Werewolf just means manwolf so Man-Wolf is just a werewolf. But specifically a space werewolf tied to a hunk of shiny mineral.

John is enjoying his life as the Avengers' pilot, enjoying an automated ride on the secret Avengers subway that goes from the Subbasement to the sub bay.

But when he arrives back at the Subbasement, he is shocked - horrified, even! - to find the moon-stone that turned him into the werewolf Man-Wolf!

So, obviously, he picks it up in disbelief and it jumps on his throat and turns him into Man-Wolf again. And he gets the zoomies.

Man-Wolf zooms through the Subbasement and mauls each member of the Avengers Support Crew that have gotten these little back-up stories.

Jarvis. Michael O'Brien. Fabian Stankowicz. Peggy Carter.

I thought that two of those people were already dead but whatever. They get to be mauled. We're not leaving people out.

And then a voice sounds out through the Subbasement, commanding the Avengers Crew.

Voice: "Arise, Jameson... Carter... O'Brien... Stankowicz... Jarvis... Scurry out of your cubby-holes... Come out to the courtyard! Ah! Like dutiful little zombies they come! Hear me, you five! Now that I've tricked you into revealing each darkest secrets... Your guiltiest fears, you are in my power forevermore!"

The back-up plot thickens. Next time, apparently, we'll learn what the heck is going on.

And next week, we're doing another Avengers post. So you don't even have to wait two weeks. Ain't that grand?

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