Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2) Issue #3 – “Zodiac (Part 3)”! In the previous installment, a few Avengers try to beat up Taurus with very little success. They discover what’s in the time capsule: a nullifier! A thing that erases reality! Why are the Zodiacs playing around with such a thing, are they nuts? YES!

The Zodiacs think the Avengers stole the nullifier from them, which is technically true actually. The Zodiacs showed up to kick their asses. I hope they succeed, this Avengers team is bush league.

Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2), Issue #3 [July, 2012]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Zodiac (Part 3)”

Look at the cover, the Avengers are ready to fight! For their right! To party! Meh.

So these Zodiac dudes hover menacingly over the Avengers. Thor takes the reigns, six feet shorter than any member of the Zodiac clan. “Hear me, Zodiac. I am Thor, son of Odin. You will stand down and surrender. Or you will feel the mighty wrath of the Avengers assembled.”

Yeah, that’s going to do it. A few Zodiacs kindly remind these blowjobs that it only took one of them to almost kill a whole lot of ya. So can it. Leo is starstruck by the Hulk, but then flings him right out of a window of their starship with a sickening “KRABOOM”. You know it’s sickening because the O’s are bigger than the rest of the letters! That’s my interpretation.

Ah, ok, the sky craft is called a helicarrier, which isn’t a real thing according to the red squiggly line under my unnamed word processing software that I use to write this stuff up (and I’m not going to namedrop the company because I don’t want Bill Gates to get anymore publicity! whoops). The commander instructs her officers to do what it takes to keep this hunk of metal aloft and hope that the Avengers don’t suck ass.

Black Widow carries the lunchbox that contains the Ultimate Nullifier. It seems like she’s planning to leap out of the helicarrier? What’s her super power again? Not flying? Okay!

The Zodiacs wake up and take action!

“Did I miss the part where they told us who they are and what they are up to?” Hawkeye asks himself while leaping toward Leo with a dagger, which I didn’t think bow-and-arrow man would have on his person. But, if I learned anything from Skyrim, it’s that… yeah, you get it.
“Just die!” yells Leo, “That would be plenty!”
“Dude, you’re hurting my feelings,” says Hawkeye, always the cutup.

huff puff oh god oh god gotta get out of here gotta get out of here huff puff puff

Black Widow is booking it through the empty corridor, probably smug in her aloneness. BUT NOT FOR LONG, because Aquarius pops in to send a million gallons of water flooding through the corridor. Black Widow hangs onto the box tightly while getting swept up in the torrent.

Tony Stark, shirtless and definitely not in his Iron Man costume, tries to reason with the assailants. “Guys, guys, guys…come on,” he whines feebly. Then he starts trying to bribe them, lol. Kind of neutered when you don’t have your suit, huh?

But, hey, they do stop in their tracks with mild interest. Money, huh?

“I want you off this ship. What will it take?” Stark asks, confidence building.

Captain America takes advantage of the sudden respite by smacking a Zodiac lady right in the fucking kisser with his shield.

Ha ha, though. Tony Stark was just goofing around! He just needed to stall so that his Iron Man suit could go online! Hahahaha! The wifi is connected, bitches! Google THIS: *punch*

The battle is heated now. Avengers punching Zodiacs! A to Z, as it were! A full-page spread of this cockamamie pissing contest. “HAVE AT THEE!” Thor yells, then a FAKOOM of a hammer hitting a lion face, then an “ARGH!” Go get ‘em, heroes! WOOP WOOP WOOP!

Uh huh. And even Hawkeye breaks the fourth wall by saying “Faboom” before he shoots off a bottle rocket, or something, and hits another Zodiac in the face! FABOOMM!

Yeah yeah yeah, what else is new?

Hulk, as you can see, somehow makes it back into the helicarrier. Perhaps he landed on a carefully placed trampoline and bounced his ass back up? Well, he goes down again, and this time he takes Leo with him. “What are you doing?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Leo screams as they both plummet.

They land in the water near a beach, and they’re close enough to the beach that there’s no way that water is any more than five feet deep. No broken bones here, though, this is a comic book! For children! Hulk grips a terrified Leo by the neck while underwater and launches him on the beach, scaring the hell out of a group of innocent bonfire enjoyers. Possibly killing a handful like Putin just struck another Ukrainian grocery store.

Hulk continues to really pummel the unholy crap out of this lion while demanding answers for the following: who are you, what do you want, have you watched the fourth season of Stranger Things, and why are you people attacking them? Leo is probably like “what do you mean YOU people, but he holds his tongue as now is probably not the time.

Aquarius has stopped the flood for now, but he’s lost Black Widow. That’s because she found a small vent to sexily crawl through.

Yeah, well, your charms may work on Daredevil’s blind ass, but not the likes of me. That’ll learn ya.

Captain America is getting tired. They need a better plan fast. The Zodiac has *counts on fingers, gets to ten and starts drooling* …more than ten of them!

Iron Man says duh.

The guy with the Libra symbol is wondering why Aquarius is taking so long to steal the big lunchbox from the one lady. “Let’s just crash this whole ship!” he suggests. I think that idea is capital, personally. You can crash it right into Professor Xavier’s stupid X-Men school!

Uh oh, that sounds like bad news bears, sir. Captain America radios the helicarrier commander to abandon the ship, but the commander is like “no fucking way, dummy”. The craft is staying in the air where it belongs! It’s going to stay in the air for 47 years if she has her way!

Thor, meanwhile, is getting nervous. He’s a GOD! How are these dudes putting up such a fight? “That’s the thing,” responds Libra Man, “we know everything about you and you don’t know a damn thing about us.” BUT, Thor saves face by pointing out that the Zodiacs have the power, but he can see the fear on their faces. They lack the skill. So give up while you still can, and your mercy will be generous. Something to that effect; it sounds like a bluff to me.

Then stuff explodes on the helicarrier. Stuff also explodes outside of the helicarrier! A menagerie of explosions. A veritable cavalcade of blow-’em-ups.

♫♩ Whooooo are you? Who who? Who who? ♫♬♩ ♫♩

There’s still some more Hulk/Lion fighting on the beach. Leo’s getting his ass handed to him, to the point where he clutches his chest and yells “muh heart!”, then collapses. He returns to his original, ugly semi-human form. The possession entity flows out of him as bright golden wisps, ascending to the heavens! Hulk looks up with placid confusion. In other words, he looks up as normal.

Iron Man has been found through another helicarrier window, leaving maybe two windows still intact. He passes through the wisps of shiny goldenness and asks his Metroid suit what it is. “Scanning. Unidentified.”

Well, what good are you, you dumb suit? Tony Stark is going to crush it into a cube when he gets home, make no mistake.

Other Avengers are still beating up other Zodiacs. Yawn. Oooh! Ok, the helicarrier officers are making their way down the scary red corridor. Acting Commander Maria Hill has security clearance to access the armory… but so does someone else! That would be Black “Natasha” “Moose and Squirrel” Widow “Romanoff” already hanging out in the armory being volatile and weird.

That’s right, bitches. I gots me a bigger gun.

The officers ask Black Widow to assess the situation for them. Here’s an assessment for you: shit sucks. The officers want to call for backup. Some real military troops. Black Widow says that Captain America doesn’t wanna. He wants to find out more about these Zodiacs first. And why should anyone listen to him? The dude can’t even tie his own shoes.

Iron Man pops in with some information. The 4-1-1. The skinny. The infoglut. The dirt. The spiel. “It’s unidentifiable,” he mutters. Well that’s just FUCKING great, Mr. Useless. Go be useless somewhere else, you useless bum.

Oh, the unidentifiable power source is currently being transmitted and examined as we speak? Ok… well… uh… yeah, good job. Thank you. Sorry. But hurry up!

They walk toward Nick Fury’s old car, which happens to be parked on the helicarrier I guess. That will surely be explained soon.

Hulk returns to the fray, as Thor puts it, “sans opponent”. This is a good sign! The bad guys aren’t going to win today! HA HA HA HAAAA!! *hammer*

Hawkeye suggests that Hulk can make short work of all the Zodiacs while he takes a nap.

Aquarius also returns to the fray, as I will put it, “sans Nullifier”. Waterboy just assumed Black Widow would’ve circled back to the fight with the lunchbox. That seems like a dumb thing to do, though. That’s probably why it didn’t happen!

“AVENGERS, DISASSEMBLE,” commands Black Widow as she and a couple officers fly into the scene with Nick Fury’s Back to the Future II futuristic flying car. Then there’s an unexplained inferno swirling around the vicinity. The Zodiacs smile within the flames devilishly. The Avengers stare stunned. “Where’re the powers?” Black Widow asks.

Iron Man knows what’s going on! And even after he explains it, the rest of them still don’t know what’s going on. Basically, Iron Man confirms that none of these Zodiacs are pulling the strings. Someone else is in command here…

A bright blue ball of light descends from the sky. Great, more stuff happening. Why is there always stuff happening around here? But, with a big-ass FRAKABOOM, the ball of light smashes into the helicarrier and shakes, rattles, and rolls that sucker.

The blue ball of light takes the form of stupid-looking X-Man-looking villain-looking kind of guy. He’s blue, has an overbite, and skimpy armor covering, among a short list of other areas, his genitals.

“You Earthers have stumbled into the affairs of THANOS, Warrior of Death. You have angered me and brought me to you. Because of that, I will end your world.”

It’s Thanos. It’s Josh Brolin.

Final Thoughts

Fuckin’ Thanos, always getting angered and involved and threatening to destroy Earth. What a broken record.