#countess valentina de allegro fontaine

[nerds-yearbook]

Marvel launched the third volume of Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD with a cover date of September, 1989. The issue introduced Director Pincer, (Death's Head Squadron) Wilhelm Schmidt, Lump, Werner Von Strucker, Sean Dugan, and Werner's wife, as well as the Gnobians. They were created by Bob Harras and Bob Hall. ("The Past Still Haunts", Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD 1# vol 3, Marvel Comic Event)

[jhsharman]

Cheeky

Hm. They have undifferentiated Cheryl's ass cheeks.

Nothing new here in the field of comic books. Just ask Jim Steranko.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #118: To The Death

December, 1973

Dormammu strikes me as a guy that would be more interested in ‘to the pain.’ And I’m not one to criticize cover combat strategies but maybe don’t all jump at Dormammu in one easily Evil Eye’d clump.

Last time: Dormammu tricked the Defenders into collecting the Evil Eye, Loki tricked the Avengers into ineffectually trying to stop them. The two teams finally realized something was up but not in time to stop Dormammu from stealing all the Evil Eye bits and merging Earth with the Dark Dimension.

This time: Things are bad forever. Buildings are warping, people are turning into monsters and not in the cool way.

But no matter the odds, the Avengers and Defenders will fight

to the death, yes.

God, Namor. I don’t know what you were going for but it probably wasn’t constipation. And got to love Cap trying for an intimidating flex.

And then we zoom out a little and the assembled heroes look less mighty and dynamic and more royally screwed.

They’ve got a couple royals among them so yeah, royally screwed sounds right.

Geez. Look at that disproportionally huge upper body monster man and his tiny legs. Look at that girl turning into a dragon feets up. Lookit everything being on fire and buildings sagging like a souffle.

This is some good ‘world gone to hell’ art.

The Avenging Defenders and Defending Avengers get to work holding back the monsters. But they have to hold back because these were people once and will be people again if they can thwart Dormammu.

Dr. Strange casts a quick spell to prevent the two superhero teams from turning into monsters. Sadly, that’s all he can protect without expending too much energy to face Dormammu.

It really kind of drives home the shit that the teams are in. But for a roll of the dice, they could have been the ones turning into monsters.

Now, the only way to stop this is to stop Dormammu. And the only way to stop Dormammu is to go to his dimension. I guess since Earth isn’t fully merged he has to stay on his side until the hour is up.

But Cap raises the point that they can’t just desert Earth. Hundreds of people could be killed in their monster forms before they could fix things. Hell, the monster people might kill people who have yet to transform.

But they can’t split the party. Dormammu plus Evil Eye means they need to confront him with their full strength.

What is a superhero to do? Leave the few to possible death to save the many? There’s no easy answer.

Not unless SHIELD shows up to lend a hand. Hey, just like Age of Ultron!

Now, monsterfying is happening all over the world but SHIELD is an international agency at this point so hey! Problem solved. SHIELD will take over the Los Angeles situation so the Avengfenders can deal with the big picture.

Now, yeah, debate cut short with a convenient answer but I’m glad Englehart addressed that there would be collateral damage. That the heroes couldn’t just pop off and fight a fire-headed jerk without leaving behind a bad situation.

I like it was Defender Dr. Strange who said they needed to go after Dormammu and Avenger Captain America who worried about leaving defenseless civilians behind. That feels about right for where the teams would respectively focus.

Anyway, Dr. Strange casts his dimension jump spell and off the two teams go. While SHIELD begins a holding action. Although, I’m not sure how you perform a holding action when an entire world is going bonkers and your own people might turn into monsters.

Because, yeah. That happens. SHIELD didn’t get a fancy protection spell against monsterfying.

Countess Valentina Allegro de Fontaine transforms into a big lizardy monster and turns on Nick Fury. He stuns her but realizes that anyone else could turn at any time. This holding action is doomed if the heroes don’t come through.

SPEAKING OF, welcome to the Dark Dimension, Avengers and also Defenders. Hope you survive the experience.

And the Dark Dimension is weird and, yes, mostly poorly lit.

Thor wants all the fliers to fly ahead but Dr. Strange cautions him not to stray from the gray, meteor pocked trail. The laws of reality are weird in the Dark Dimension and its not safe off the trail.

Some of the Avengers are resentful to take Dr. Strange’s lead but they all charge forward along the gray path.

Meanwhile, miles or millenia ahead, Dormammu shoots off rainbows from the Evil Eye to amuse himself.

Loki is unimpressed. Because he can’t see anything. So maybe Dormammu should fulfill his part in the bargain and restore Loki’s sight now? After all, Dormammu couldn’t have pulled this off without Loki’s aid.

Dormammu thinks no. In fact, he thinks its kennel time for Loki and puts him in a mystic pink cage. See, once he got the Evil Eye, he realized that Loki had tried to screw him over by alerting the Avengers.

So he can stay in the cage and think about what he’s done.

AND THEN THE WATCHER SHOWS UP! Oh but don’t fret. He’s not here to interfere. He’s just here to watch. Two dimensions merging together? That’s a pretty sweet spectacle.

I guess Dormammu appreciates an audience because he promises enough spectacle to justify the Watcher’s entire existence of watching things.

Also, Dormammu swears by his sister. Is her head also on fire?

Meanwhile, the Avengers and Defenders hit a snag. The path just kind of ends. Also: now they’re being attacked by the Mindless Ones. Good news though: the Mindless Ones brought their own path so there’s the way forward.

Feels kind of like a side-scrolling beat-em-up. You hit the end of the path. A bunch of dudes show up that you have to beat up and then it lets you continue forward.

Problem is that physical combat just makes the Mindless Ones excited. So instead all the Avengers that have ranged blasty powers all line up and blast at the same time, causing the Mindless Ones to flee off-panel.

But they left their sweet pink road.

Mantis, who apparently has an internal clock rivaling the Andalites, tells the group that they only have twenty minutes left. I say rivaling because apparently she ‘literally feels each second being ripped from the cosmos around her by the invisible hands of time!’

That sure is a power to have, Mantis.

Meanwhile, lets check in on the homefront. Buncha heroes fighting monsters and reacting to this bazonkers event. I think the best might be Dracula objecting to Earth becoming monstery because it might affect him. AND THAT MUST NEVER BE!

Or Luke Cage grumbling that this was supposed to be his day off. Later on he would try to take Martin Luther King Day as a personal day only to get wrapped up in Vision and Scarlet Witch’s problems. Poor Luke.

Also Gorgon doesn’t know Triton’s name. What’s funniest about that is that the marvel wiki tries to justify it as in-universe sarcasm. Sometimes people mess up, guys.

Meanwhile, the Dark Dimension. The Avengers and Defenders have finally reached Dread Dormammu.

Unfortunately, he has a shield up to keep the Mindless Ones away from himself. Dr. Strange can sunder the shield but it will take time. And they probably don’t have a lot of that left.

Also, think about the Watcher’s vow of non-intervention. I think its doomed to failure. Because just by showing up, he influences events even a little. People generally know that something is significant when the Watcher shows up. In the Infinity Gauntlet event, Thanos knew that a big battle was headed his way because the Watcher showed up to watch. Granted, Thanos was near omnipotent at the time so its not like it affected things much there.

So lets look at here instead. The Watcher shows up to watch. Thor sees the Watcher and shouts excitedly because its someone he knows because Thor is always jazzed to see a friend. Dormammu suspects that this excitement means the Watcher was lying about being neutral. The Watcher goes ‘how dare, non-intervention is my game, dawg. I love these guys but I’ll stand by and watch them brutally slaughtered, that's how much I’m about non-intervention.’

And then Dormammu tells the Watcher to chill out.

But while this conversation was going on, Dr. Strange bursts through Dormammu’s barrier. You could argue that the distraction the Watcher provides just by being present is an intervention. The Watcher is a bad anthropologist, probably. At the least, he should invest in a cloaking device.

Anyway, Dormammu isn’t worried. Why, with the Evil Eye backing him up he can merely wave his hand and instantly K.O. the Defenders.

Alas.

Still, the Defenders have been trouncing the Avengers this whole crossover. Time for them to pull their own weight. Plus, the final part of this story is taking place in an Avengers book.

The Avengers are uncowed and shout that thing they love to shout and rush forward.

So Dormammu turns the ground into quicksand.

Because if you have power overwhelming, why not mess with your enemies. Its not like they can stop you, probably.

Except for Scarlet Witch, Iron Man, and Thor all the Avengers fall victim to the quicksand. 

Scarlet Witch wants Thor and Iron Man to try to pull the rest of the Avengers free but Swordsman tells her not to stop for them.

He’ll use the heat rays from his sword to fuse some solid islands out of this quicksand to give the bogged down Avengers something to hang onto.

... Okay. Not sure if that’s how quicksand works but whatever.

Iron Man, Thor, and Scarlet Witch run forward to confront Dormamu. Dormammu is okay with this. In fact, he likes the humanity of these superheroes. Makes them more fun to play with. In fact, they’re so human why not become all human.

And he vanishes Iron Man’s armor and turns Thor into Donald Blake.

Kind of weird that Scarlet Witch is still running around. Whats the deal?

She was born with her power. So she can’t be separated from it, at least not in the same way that affected the other two.

Of course, Wanda phrases this differently. And also says “You cannot stop me!” So 10/10 for confidence there.

So instead Dormammu attacks Scarlet Witch with a harmless little rain shower. NOT! Its a glue storm. And now she’s covered in glue.

Dormammu is being weirdly non-violent with his ways of stopping the Avengers.

I guess because its all a game to him. Although I fear its because he doesn’t want to break his new toys just yet.

But with all the Avengers incapacitated in one form or another, there’s nothing to stop Dormammu from winning in abouuuuuuuuuuuut... five minutes. Oh, sorry. Five of your Earth minutes. Dormammu minutes are presumably cooler.

But Loki has been waiting for an opportunity. Dormammu’s attention is fully taken up with gloating over the Avengers and not paying any to Loki in his mystic cage.

So Loki busts out one of his less used powers and transforms into an insect to fly between the bars of the cage. Relying on the sound cues of Dormammu’s ceaseless yammering, Loki grabs Dormammu from behind and tries to pry the Evil Eye away from him.

I wonder if he learned any good wrassling moves from growing up with Thor.

Now Scarlet Witch is the one who has been forgotten. Still pretty ensnared in goo, she takes the opportunity to unleash all of her stored power at the Evil Eye.

Because its thought-controlled. And from what I gather, usually has to be triggered by touch. But with the probability warping power of Scarlet Witch’s arbitrary mutant power, she causes the Evil Eye to trigger itself.

And the Evil Eye eats Dormammu. And, uh, sort of goes off right in Loki’s face.

Due to probabilities gone mad, the energy discharge fulfills Loki’s most fervent hope and restores his sight to him. It just... has a minor side effect of driving him totally insane.

With Dormammu defeated, the dimension merge is cancelled. The people unmonsterfy, the landscapes return to normal, and a confused Ben Grimm takes credit for fixing everything.

Back in the Dark Dimension, the Watcher congratulates the Avengers and Defenders and decides to explain some things.

Apparently Dormammu’s extra-dimensional form is composed of raw energy that is constantly on fire. This energy is generated by belief and worship of Dormammu, like with most mystic entities. So that’s how the Evil Eye ate him. It probably can’t eat anyone not made of energy. Probably.

But Dormammu will be back. And not even in the ‘this is comic books and he’s an iconic villain, of course he’ll be back’ sort of way. More in the “those who love sin will continue to call upon him -- and in time, their reverence will reshape him!”

Way to screw the rest of us over, all you sin lovers.

As for Loki. He had Dormammu’s energy blasted through his brain. And no brain from Earth’s dimension can cope with so much sorcerous force. His mind has broken under the strain, reverting him to the mentality of an infant.

I don’t know if ‘totally insane’ is in fact the right way to describe that?

And since the Watcher has been handing out free exposition like its going out of style, it would be nice if the Vision answered a question. Why did he panic instead of fly when Dormammu made the ground into quicksand?

Vision can’t answer the question because he doesn’t understand it himself. Yet another weird clue in some long mystery about the Vision.

But anyway. The day is saved thanks to the Scarlet Witch mostly. So Dr. Strange scoops up the Evil Eye.Time to go back to Earth and use it to fix Black Knight. Also he just up and erases everyone’s memory of seeing Iron Man and Thor’s civilian identity so they can reveal it when they choose.

WHICH IS NICE I GUESS BUT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICER IF DR. STRANGE HAD ASKED FIRST! He just erases everyone’s minds without a by your leave.

And he half-asses it too because Iron Man and Thor presumably still know each other’s identities since they found out independently.

I get that status quo is god and maybe the decision to have Iron Man and Thor’s identity be revealed should happen in their respective books but instead of having mind erase happen, just make it so nobody saw their faces? The Defenders were unconscious, the Avengers were mostly stuck in the mud. Really only Scarlet Witch would have seen and recognized them and she can be trusted with a secret.

Hell, that would be a good thing to follow up this story with. Thor and Iron Man having a quiet conversation with Scarlet Witch after this to formally entrust her with their secret identity.

Alas.

So that was the Avengers/Defenders War. The Avengers go on from this to have a Halloween adventure at the Rutland Halloween Parade. Remember last time they went to Rutland, straw feminism kicked their butts.

The Defenders go on to try to unstone Black Knight with the Evil Eye to mixed success. Its technically counted as the final part of the Avengers/Defenders War despite the war being over. Maybe I’ll cover it but basically the Defenders end up transported to the 12th century Crusades, discover the Black Knight living through the body of one of his ancestors, and have to stop Mordred from getting the Evil Eye. Prestor John ends up with the Evil Eye, implying a weird time loop. And Black Knight decides to stay in the past times so he can continue fighting in the Crusades and I guess eventually meets Exodus, Mysterious Overpowered X-Men Villain #71.

So. The Avengers/Defenders War. It was more of an Avengers/Defenders Scavenger Hunt. And the Avengers really underperformed until the end when Scarlet Witch grabbed the Quidditch and won the game for Earth.

I mentioned that it reminds me a lot of JLA/Avengers and I’ll go into that a little now. We have two teams clashing where the Avengers are way outmatched. We have them fighting over a number of arbitrary powerful items. We have the conflict being engineered by outside manipulators. We have all the arbitrary powerful items being taken away from the heroes once they’re gathered and used to make the world go screwy. And we have the two separate teams spending some time to get to know each other, decide that they’re not so bad, and then teaming up to kick a cosmic jerk in the face. And also, Hawkeye is a member of both the fighting teams.

These very broad points also correspond to JLA/Avengers.

Its probably a coincidence but I wonder if the Avengers/Defenders War was used as an inspiration for how to handle an extended crossover between two unmatched teams. JLA/Avengers was written by Kurt Busiek and he’s kind of a continuity buff.

I know that the ‘two superhero teams fight because villain pulling the strings’ thing has become a cliche but a hero vs hero story where the teams are able to just hang out and socialize and part on good terms feels good.