Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #9 – “Star Bound”! In the previous installment, there was one kid left after the college got destroyed and his name is Kevin Connor. He is the Starband, and he has the ability to destroy planets! But now’s not the time for that cockamamie malarkey. The Superflow of the Universe has crashed and now communications are down and now the machine is broken which means the universe is broken and now Kevin and Nightmask have a lot of work ahead of them. It’s supremely dumb and I’m hoping this will resolve itself into something not dumb.

Oh yeah, Nightmask drags Kevin to Mars, his birthplanet, where Ex Nihilo is still hanging out. Daddy dearest is going to help out his sonny boy with his broken universe problem. He’s going to pawn his gold face in order to afford a better Superflow of the Universe.

Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #9 [June, 2013]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“Star Bound”

You can’t see the cover very well, but rest assured that Kevin Connor’s eyes look like they’re rolled back in his head in bored, smug ecstacy. Impervious to Hyperion’s lasers, Hulk’s fists, and Thor’s hammer?! This pipsqueak can’t even make it to the bathroom in time before pooping his nerd pants.

“Hello, Father… we need your help.” Nightmask is glowing with radiant energy. Ex Nihilo is like pffft, kids. Run away from home and then come back begging when they need something. Typical. Abyss tells Ex Nihilo to hold his horses. Maybe this is a different case! Maybe Nightmask didn’t actually total the car or fail his algebra test.

Ex Nihilo does notice something different about his son. He and this douchebag over here *points to Kevin Connor* have changed. Abyss wonders what it is and does a quick scan of Kevin’s torso with her wispy, black, smoky tendrils. He tells her to bug off. She tells him that fighting it will make things harder for him. He then yells “GET AWAY” and cuts her in half with a huge energy blast.

All she can do is snarl. Kevin freaks out and apologizes. As she magically mends, Nightmask speaks his gobbeldygook Builders language and insists that Abyss mess with him first if she’s going to mess with anyone. And make it snappy.

So she does. With her wispy, black, smoky tendrils, she senses the following: a genetically perfect, but modified, human being with an incompletely downloaded secondary Builder system. Cool. What else, grandma? Oh, and the conflict isn’t with him or Kevin, it’s… Earth. Earth is the conflict.

She turns to her brother Ex Nihilo, who admits that he fucked around Earth when he got bored. So what? Big whoop.

I started using my left hand! It’s like someone else it doin’ it!

So, usually, these gardener gods will terminate a world if it was flawed, and encouraged evolution if a world has potential. With Earth, however, for fun, he’s attempting to make the planet sentient. Self-aware. Self-sustaining. Self-repairing. Able to reproduce! Able to communicate! Able to evolve! Able to self-defend! Able to pee with the toilet seat down! And all this because Ex Nihilo wants to play dice with the universe! Hella Yahtzee!

Nightmask asks Ex Nihilo if he can stop the process. Ex Nihilo responds that it’s impossible to stop life without ending it completely. Plus, he and Abyss aren’t allowed on Earth anymore. Restraining order.

“So what are we supposed to do now?” Kevin asks, scratching his head and making a 40 IQ face.

“Behave, and you and Adam can stay here as long as you like,” responds Abyss.

Ex Nihilo thinks that’s dull as dirt! Return to Earth! Revel in the fun! Maybe something cool will happen!

Speaking of something cool happening, we return to Avengers Tower where nothing cool ever happens. Steve Rogers is putting on his Captain America costume which, hopefully, he washed this time. Captain Marvel reports that they’re attempting to track Nightmask and Kevin and, hopefully, Ex Nihilo and Abyss didn’t get involved. “Maybe we just let them be?” she says. Cap tells her that a college was destroyed, and since Cap himself has never set foot within 14 miles of a college, he feels like it’s his responsibility to avenge his inability to get an education and NOT let them be. Off to Mars they go!

Tony Stark tells him to cool his overly flatulent jets. “Signal just disappeared from Mars and popped up local. Earth’s atmo”.

In the Quarantined Zone.

Croatia.

Where I hear it’s lovely this time of year.

I’ll show you a sack, you little shit.

Night Adam Mask is 47 days old. That’s like 500 in Builder years, maybe. I’m making that up, of course. On a beach in Croatia, the duo hear a very loud buzzing sound. Kinda like when a phone is on vibrate only a lot less phone-like. The beach is full of these weird bug pods that are starting to expel giant worms from their husks. They all start converging to one spot, swarming all over each other.

“What are they doing?” asks Kevin. “It’s worm sex, isn’t it?”

Nightmask answers in the negative. They’re creating a consciousness. As individuals, they are simple organisms. Together, they are attempting to create one complex organism.

While they watch the worms fucking, the Avengers jet rolls on in. At an impossibly fast pace, the worms are forming an enormous brain. They watch as Nightmask attempts to communicate with it. It doesn’t work very well, since the brain-like entity reaches out with not-wispy, not-black, not-smoky tendrils and latches onto Nightmask’s arm to suck him in. “MRRFFF!” he says! Kevin attempts to pull him back, but of course he gets fucking mad when he can’t accomplish it and blows up the brain-thing. And, again, he’s all like “oh no oh no I’m sorry I’m sorry” like that’s going to make it all better.

Wasn’t the world already broken, though? You can’t break it twice! Lighten up!

Captain America, on the dead Earth, tells Kevin that he’s out of control. Young man. And he has to get a spanking. Kevin apologizes, says he doesn’t know what’s going on and he’s not meaning to be a Bad Boy. Honest, mister! Nightmask corroborates this very unlikely story. All he needs is time to get adjusted, that’s all. Who’s the widdle out-of-control pistol. Is it you? Is it you? Goochie goochie goo.

Nightmask turns to Captain Universe, who pretty much tells him that he has to die for all this to get fixed. After a hearty refusal to die or do anything close to dying, Captain America is left with no choice to but to BRING THEM BOTH DOWN. AVENGERS! ASSEMBLE!

*skirmish*

While that happens, let me transcribe the narration!

“It was the spark that started the fire – a legend that grew in the telling. It happened after the light. Before the war. And before the fall. They were the high days of the great idea – an Avengers World. A time of life, before a season of death. They were titans and gods and mortals doing immortal acts… They had been summoned, and did not pause to answer. They were perfect… they were heroes. And we… we were broken. Not called… but made. Errors in the system anomalies. Planet killers and world breakers. Final options. Last resorts. Things it was not time for…”

After getting his butt blasted to smithereens, Kevin cries uncle. He put up quite a fight even though he was holding back, because, deep down, he doesn’t really want to hurt anyone. If you can believe it! “I never asked for this power. I don’t want it.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, save it for the judge, dipstick.

“We’re going to try to help you,” says Iron Man. “We will help you, because that’s what we do.” But for now, Kevin is too dangerous to run around all fancy-free. “Because we have the world to think about. And today, it’s safer with you not in it.”

Final Thoughts

Ouch, man. The truth hurts like a poison dart to the dick. I don’t like this kid very much, even less than I like Captain America, so if the Avengers can throw this kid down a well then I’m all for it.