Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: New Avengers (Vol. 3), Issue #6 – “Blue Hell”! In the previous installment, with nowhere left to go, the Avengers team turn to Black Swan for help on how to stop the incursions and save the many universes from colliding and knocking around like a volatile Newton’s Cradle. She wastes a lot of time telling her life story, describing an god-type entity named Rabum Alal, the Great Destroyer, who needs to eat inhabited planets every so often. And this Earth is next on the menu.

The appetite of this Rabum Alal guy was mentioned in passing by Black Swan to Black Panther in Issue #2, and he was like “the fuck you talking about, lady?”

Now Black Swan senses Rabum Alal’s presence in Latveria, which sounds like a country Putin wants to invade.

New Avengers (Vol. 3), Issue #6 [July, 2013]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“Blue Hell”

Interesting how this Avengers team has no women in it. Like a bunch of men are part of the Illuminati. That’s why they want you to think.

There are about 7 hours and 29 minutes until oblivion, which isn’t enough time to watch the entire original Lord of the Rings trilogy, but it is enough time to watch the entire original Star Wars trilogy! So Namor will do just that.

Richards asks Black Swan if she knows what to do. She confirms. Iron Man does the big “let me hear you say it so the comic book readers knows what you know, sweetheart”. She keeps her poker face through this one. “I am to observe, and when needed–and asked–offer information that you…great men can find useful.”

See? Men. Pfft.

Anyway, good. Ironing Man and Mr. Fantastik All-Purpose Cleaner take to their lab where they’re trying to build that flux-capacitor-xylophone planet killer with the trigger mechanism device. She needs to tell them if it looks right to her. She doesn’t seem very technically inclined, calling the Antimatter Injector System a great gift from Rabum Alal and the only hope for the future and other pious pg.-540-of-a-bible hogwash baloney.

Black Panther assures her that this room full of smartypants men reverse engineered the thing immaculately, and they’re sure it works, because why wouldn’t it? It was reverse engineered by smartypants men! Immaculately, you might say. “But this is not the kind of thing you get to beta test.”

Blac Swan gives them all a coy smile. “I am very proud of all of you,” she coos.

The group stares at her, looking like they want more of that sweet, sweet recognition.

Yes ma’am, thank you ma’am, we did it all by ourselves without any help from grown-ups, ma’am.

Beast doesn’t like being condescended toward! He makes it clear to her that this wasn’t anyone’s first choice. It’s something they now need to do, not want to do. OK? Just so you know.

After more hemming and hawing, as if the Avengers are still trying to find a way to weasel out of this one at the 11th hour (or perhaps waiting for Captain America to burst through the door going “EUREKA!”, but that will never happen), they finally begrudgingly agree to continue moving forward with this sham of a heroic plan.

“You’ve built the knife,” says Black Swan, “now you have to find the courage to get it bloody.”

Yeah, stab me in the dick with it, you old bat.

So the team takes their large metal dildo over to Latveria, where Black Swan senses an incursion wall a mere “twenty lengths” in front of her with the Incursion Sensor App on her iContactLenses. They move through it into the blue alternate dimension. Finally, something not red! They see a large spheroid celestial body hovering inches from a Latverian castle, but the quiet, peaceful blue color is foreboding and giving everyone the heebie-jeebies. Black Swan freaks out. Blue is soo much worse than red, you guys! Blue is Sidera Maris. I think that was Niles’ ex-wife on Frasier.

Reed Richards uses his palm tracker to show the woman that there are 7 hours and 20 minutes to go. Plenty of time to explain what the fuck she’s talking about. “NO. There’s no time…” she insists. Come on, Namor’s only ten minutes into A New Hope. Out with it. Spill.

Those nefarious mapmakers. Ptolemy, Gerardus Mercator, John Paul Goode? We should’ve murdered the lot of them when we had the chance.

A team of metal-suited dudes descends from the sky.

“An invading army from another world. This just keeps getting worse,” whines Beast. Speaking of Frasier.

Both Richards and Stark were prepared for this. “At some point, someone was bound to try to do to us what we’re considering doing to them.”

“Have I told you how much I’m enjoying your company as of late?” Beast jabs, but neither of them are paying the hairy blue guy any attention. Iron Man zooms in on his visor to a man on the castle roof in a green hood and cape, trying to fight off the invading army. “Wait. That’s not Doom. It’s his son, Kristoff Vernard.” Aha! Certainly! Kristoff Vernard! The Son of Doom! Sure.

Richards is like, shit, then where’s Pops? And just as he thinks it, Dr. Doom himself shows up to help sonny boy on the roof. So there you go. A couple of green hoods doing the Avengers’ bidding.

“The very worst of men know better… GODS know better… who is behind such folly?” Dr. Dumb Ol’ Doom Demands Daintily. Well, at least the Avengers are getting some help for now, but Black Panther is uneasy about it. Doom is now witnessing the incursion and the presence of the Avengers in Latveria. He will now have a record of all of this. I’m not sure exactly what that means. I haven’t brushed up on any Doom lore before the Doom test.

I am not interrupting my Star Wars binge for any of this nonsense.

But that’s for worrying about in the future, if there’s any future in the future at all in the first place. Once again, Black Swan hollers that there’s no time, and, once again, she is kindly reminded that it’s only been two minutes since the last time she hollered about the clock. Once again, Black Swan kindly reminds them that the sky is blue! The sky is blue! Do you know what it’s like to see a blue sky? A blue sky means death and destruction and obliteration! Blue skies are bad! Ask anyone ever!

Of course, this is nuts, so she elaborates. “Red means order. Red means the righteous judgment of Rabum Alal. But blue– blue is an abomination. It means chaos… infection.”

In short, blue means mapmakers, and mapmakers fuck with the incursion rules. Black Swan asks them to follow her and bring the bomb with them. And follow her they do. And bring the bomb someone does. And jump to the other hovering planet they do as well. And the other hovering planet is not Earth, it is (not). “This is not an Earth,” Black Swan swansplains, “it is some dead other thing. It used to be Earth. It was Earth… before the mapmakers.”

Yes, that really clears it up. A real fountain of info.

Iron Man senses no life anywhere on this rock, not even Reed Richards the RealDoll Wannabe. Just “minor activity in the core”.

“They devour everything on the planet,” speaks Black Swan of the lovely mapmakers, “They harvest it… they suck the life from Earth and leave just enough of its heart behind as fuel for when they detonate the world.” Hey, it sounds like they’re trying to horn in on our action!

Black Swan isn’t done: there’s a whole bunch of other Rube Goldberg blarney. Mapmakers wait until one Earth touches the other, then the “sidera maris” that they leave behind hold the incursion point on the new Earth like a bridge. When the incursion happens, a sizeable chunk of the dead world breaks free, crash lands on the new living Earth, and serves as a detonation trigger for the old dead Earth. The chunk of dead Earth is like a marker for these mapmakers to find later and continue the process of killing the new Earth. Did you get all that? Is anyone still awake?

It’s sort of like charting new land, I suppose. Except they kill what they discover. So JUST like Columbus.

I dunno. Democracy is cool?

Iron Man continues to scan the dead planet. He clearly didn’t hear the woman say that it’s a dead planet. It’s dead, Jim. Tony. Whatever.

Namor wants to hurry this along! Dead planet = nothing to kill by blowing it up. Couldn’t be simpler. Weight off everyone’s shoulders, etc. Explode this bitch.

Richards wants to vote on it. He’s an idiot. They fly back to the Good Earth and get ready for kablooie time.

Black Panther gets to do the honors. He holds the large detonator, which looks like a camera. He’s standing with his legs spread unnecessarily wide, showing off every sinewy thread of his beefy thighs.

“What are you waiting for?” asks Namor. By now the end credits of A New Hope are rolling.
“I’m not waiting… I’m remembering who I used to be.”

Black Panther clicks the button on his camera. The flash goes off. The dead planet explodes.

“Everything dies. Empires collapse. Kings fall, and men perish. Worlds end. It was an Avengers World. It was the first of many. “

Black Swan praises Black Panther’s courage, but he ain’t hearin’ none of it. “I take no pride in this… in any of it. What we have done here today… the actions we have taken… I believe they will haunt us until the end of our days.”

What a buzzkill.

Dr. Doom and Son O’ Doom killed all the mapmaker dudes. Or, at least, if they didn’t do it, something did. Doomy stares down at the Avengers, possibly finally taking notice of their presence. He now has a record of all of this! And that’s bad, remember. I don’t know why yet. Dr. Doom sounds like some bean counter quality manager.

Later, back at Necropolis, Black Swan gets to go back to her Prison Cube. Richards was the only one on the team who voted against it, but they’ll all come around some day. Promise promise! “We need you,” he says, stupidly, before leaving the room.

Black Swan is not alone. In an adjacent Prison Cube sits that Terrax guy on his regal stone throne of arrogance. They give each other the side eye…

“I told you to stay out of my mind,” thinks Terrax.

Black Swan smirks.

“What do you want?” he asks.

She starts nudging this guy. Do you miss Galaktus? No? But do you miss destroying planets? More than anything? Fantastic! “We can find each other…useful,” she smiles.

EPILOGUE! Latveria, the fake Slavic country of castles and Rabum Alals. Dr. Doom sits on his own stone throne of arrogance.

His people found a cool thing.

Nice. Kill me, stuff my corpse in that thing, and launch it into the sun.

Doomy Doom smiles.

Final Thoughts

I dunno, man. This is gonna get convoluted. Is this the part where I’m going to have to keep track of a hundred different dimensions?

What about Captain America? Did they murder him?? Let’s hope so.