Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #1 – “The Avengers: Avengers World”! Trite, I know, to start off my Marvel NOW! journey with the plain-Jane Avengers series, but I’m gonna have to get to it eventually. There are 50 other Avengers series branching off from this one. Plus, Jonathan Hickman wrote it! He’s good. He writes the incredible Image Comics East of West series that I’m working on at the moment as well! So why the hell not?

I know I kind of just finished the first story from Mark Waid’s Captain America from 1998, which was really dumb, but here’s hoping that Hickman’s version of Steve Rogers has a kernel of personality. Capmania certainly didn’t take me over. In fact, I hate him even more than before!

Anyway, onward.

Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #1 [February, 2013]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“The Avengers: Avengers World”

Going off the cover alone, it looks like we got Captain America, Wolverine, Hulk, Scarlett Johansson, Super Saiyan, Guy in Shadows, and then there’s a leg there on the right side. The Dream Team!

“There was nothing.” Panel of darkness.
“Followed by everything.” Panel of light!

The intro makes it sound like God created light. Then the Avengers. Then everything else.

And excuse my flippancy! The Avengers team here is Cap, Hulk, Black Widow, Thor, Iron Man, and Hawkeye. I guess I’ll find out soon why Wolverine’s fully on the cover while we just get Iron Man’s leg. Wolverine does what Wolverine wants, that’s for sure.

These first few pages catch readers up on what’s been going on in Avenger Town. Hyperion was rescued from a dying universe. The Guard were broken on the dead moon. Ex Nihilo terraformed mars. These are all cataclysmic events, sure, why not, it’s in all the history books! But there was an even more cataclysmic-y event that happened before any of those piddling events. Before the light, before the war, before the fall. And it started with two men…

Dexter and Jimmy Smits?!

No, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers.

I unironically think it’s fantastic that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers share a bed.

Stark can’t sleep. He’s been thinking about something Rogers said, and he’s been up all night working. He’s got a scary placid grin on his face. “So…this idea has been running through my mind. It’s overwhelming — all-consuming — and I can’t shut it off.”

We see a quick flashback panel of Iron Man finding Rogers frozen in the ice. Stark tells him that he hasn’t felt this feeling since that day. “You remember that?” asks Rogers, who seems to be currently underestimating his friend’s ability to remember a day when he found a man frozen in ice. “We started something that mattered. Because of you, the world changed. I changed.” Stark tells him, as if he was completely fucked up on drugs in the ‘90s and redeemed himself in the ‘00s by starring in major Marvel motion pictures! Stark leans in for a kiss, but Rogers denies him. AGAIN.

And the world is so fucked up, so full of dangers and villains and spooky monsters and ghouly ghosts, but good ol’ Steve Rogers had such a simple answer to a complex problem, even back then:

“We have to get bigger.”

Sexy!

So that previously mentioned terraforming Ex Nihilo guy? We cut to him, on Mars, one month later, working on his terraforming. He’s working on creating plants; some Mars plant launches some baby plant straight into the sky? Ex Nihilo points, marvelling at creation. His robot companion is all “ERROR! DOES NOT COMPUTE! WE ARE HERE TO DESTROY WORLDS, NOT CREATE THEM! GET IT TOGETHER! FOCUS!”, but Ex Nihilo is done with that shit. He’s rather make things now, not tear them down.

And if you don’t like it, you can kiss my big, yellow butt.

Ex Nihilo is a naked gold humanoid with viking horns. He’s playing God and he likes it, baby! Don’t you care, robot buddy? Aleph?

A female humanoid creature named Abyss, emitting black smoke and speaking with black speech bubbles, tells Ex Nihilo that he’s wasting his time talking to the robot. “He has marked the world for destruction, and the Eye of Aleph will not be averted.” And, to this, Ex Nihilo puffs and pouts! He asks her opinions, and she certainly has them, let me tell you! Humans evolved to be self-aware creatures who built better and better tools in order to be dangerous jerks. “Building a better primate seems…unwise. Sparing them in any way…reckless.” she says. And I have to agree with Abyss over here! Kill all humans!

All my apes gone.

Abyss is using a nearby pond as a computer. She finds that, even now, as they speak, a team of Earth’s mightiest shitty humans is making plans to come over to Mars and stop them! Rude!

And yes, the Avengers are in a spaceship and they just shot down the thing in the sky that Ex Nihilo launched. They all pat themselves on the back like a ragtag bunch of arrogant losers, secure in the idea that they’re successfully sneaking up on these terraforming punks with mucho gusto. As they get closer, the team is puzzled by the greenery on Mars! Captain America, smart as a whip as always, says something to the effect of “buhhh, dere’s no treez on Marz.”

Iron Man isn’t surprised. The first two bombs that hit Earth (Perth, Australia and Regina, Saskatchewan, killing two million people) altered the biospheres. Makes sense for Mars, too. Sure.

The Avengers land on Mars, where the air must already be breathable. Hulk gets immediately trapped in a spherical…thing…that Iron Man calls a “null space/shadow cage”. Iron Man gets entangled in some rapidly-growing Mars beanstalks or some shit, which compromises his suit functions.

Ex Nihilo wants to play with the metal man! “Surprisingly, only three percent of sentient races have exoskeletons. Let’s peel this off and see if we can’t speed your evolution on a bit.” To this, Tony Stark says “NUHHH…” which I think means “ok”.

Hawkeye shoots some arrows at him and he stops. Petulantly, Ex Nihilo cries out that these Avengers don’t appreciate his efforts to make things better and then, like, breathes some fire on some of them like a dragon.

In the Sphere of Silence and Doom and Other Scary Final Fantasy Spells, Hulk floats around pretending that he isn’t scared out of his big, dumb, green mind. Abyss creeps down to his ear and whispers directions to open his mind to her. See, that’s not scary either, right? His eyes turn gray. His boner? Still green.

She tells him that Thor thinks he’s stronger than him, the Hulk! Stronger than the Hulk! It’s like, what! The Hulk is the strongest thing ever! “Only one person here who thinks you’re a frightened little child.” she coos in his mind, “Why don’t you show him how wrong he is?”

And then Hulk punches Thor’s lights out! Ha!

This version of Captain America has chicken feathers on his suit. He tells Abyss that she hasn’t won as long as he’s left standing. Which is true! That’s very smart of my old boy Cap’n over here! That’s a good lad. Then he throws his shield at Ex Nihilo’s chin. He goes “UUFFH!”.

Chumbawamba! Tubthumping! Sing along with me.

Aleph the Mean Robot catches Cap’n’s shield and tells him to yield. And that rhymes, we’ve got a real Jesse Jackson over here! Cap says “no”, so Aleph throws him to the ground like the chickensuit ragdoll that he is. He tells him to yield again, Cap says “no”, and Aleph probably breaks 30 teeth with one punch. He tells him to yield again, Cap says “uuffh”, and Ex Nihilo likely stops the killing blow.

“Enough, Aleph. We are in the Garden. And of this Garden, I choose not to waste life…I choose to transform it. To change it and give it purpose.”

Then Gold Viking, Mean Robot, and Smoke Lady all walk away, with Gold Viking carrying Captain America’s broken-ass body to the ship the Avengers came in. “We will use him to send a message.” he says. The jist of the message is something like “fuck you, Earth, you sent shitty heroes and we beat your best shitty heroes. Go fuck yourselves. *middle finger*”

The ship crashes on Earth, which flings Captain America right into a brick wall. This would normally kill anybody ever, but Steve Rogers lifts a lot of weights or something. He’s fine. They show him working on recovery in the Avengers Tower three days later and he’s just like “ow my side hurts a little” about it.

Meanwhile on Mars, or “Ex Nihilo’s Bitch Planet”, he has the rest of the Avengers hanging unconscious from those creepy Mars beanstalks.

Stevie hobbles over to his computer, looking at it like my mom looks at a RAR folder. “We have to get bigger” he says. To no one.

Flashback to Stark’s invigorating speech from earlier this issue. There was more to it. Stark talks about something looming past the horizon. They’ve held on for this long, but this new obstacle is too much to handle. Keep it on the downlow for now, Stevie, but they’ll need to recruit more people. More teams. Then, when the day comes, O Cap’n My Cap’n, just say the words, and we’ll all LEAP INTO ACTION.

It started with an idea.

Expansion was the spark that started the fire.

“Our captain spoke and gave the idea form.”

“Assemble at dawn.” he said.

And how could we not?

We were Avengers.

*tender jerkoff*

Final Thoughts

Fuck ‘em up, Captain America! USA! USA! EARTH! EARTH!

Nothing to say yet! Fine so far. I know better than to make any judgments after only one issue by now. See ya next time, dorks.