Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #3 – “The Garden”! In the previous installment, we see a flashback of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark assembling an Avengers team to take on some new huge threat unlike anything they’ve faced before! And right now that’s a good thing, because most of the A-Team Avengers are stuck on Mars right now, and Captain America needs to go there with his now-assembled Z-Team of losers that kind of didn’t want to be there in the first place. Some of them did, like Captain Marvel, but some of them kind of didn’t, like Sunspot (?) and Cannonball (??).

Ex Nihilo, meanwhile, is very interested in enhancing Earth with about a million of these “origin bombs”, which unleashes creepy bugs that aren’t good for humanity. I’m on Ex Nihilo’s side with this one, though. Humanity sucks. If Ex Nihilo fails to do this, though, Aleph is slated to destroy Earth anyway. So either option sucks…in theory.

Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #3 [March, 2013]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“The Garden”

On Mars, there’s a very large green thing that looks like a weird, space egg sac. One of the eggs of the egg sacs goes “BLOORP”, signalling that a miracle of life is about to commence! Aleph alerts Ex Nihilo of this bloorp.

Ex Nihilo is going to be a new mommy and he couldn’t be more chuffed! It’s gonna be the “Adam” for his new world, made from the very best pieces and god particles! Oh boy!

Abyss forces Thor to watch as a hand slowly emerges from the big dumb sac. “Ex Nihilo is going to restart your world — erase it all and start over like he’s done on thousands of other worlds.” she tells him, and then whispers an offer for a “sweeter way out”. And this “sweeter way out” amounts to marrying her so they can be, like, god-betrothed.

Abyss looks like a Helena Bonham-Carter character. Thor asks her if she thinks him so simple, and after she lays a big wet kiss on his Thor mouth, he says “Well argued. You will be spared when the reckoning comes.” She didn’t like that response very much.

Whatever you say, Bellatrix Lestrange.

A large, gross, bald, nude man squelches out of the egg sac. He speaks that alien language you see once in a while on Futurama, and this is alarming to Abyss, to say the least! He should be speaking English!

Big Gross Adam’s eyes turn all-white. He gets on his knees, emits a radiant, blinding light, and speaks more gibberish. The Builders’ language, as it turns out. Or rather, the Builder machine code. A wisp of runes emits from his head. He looks pissed off.

Translation: “I’m aroused.“

And then Big Bald Adam either passes out or dies. Abyss is confused as SHIT, but Ex Nihilo carries this sizable naked dude in his arms and declares a success! Possibly to save face, though, because his new kid sucks ass and everyone in the room knows it.

He doesn’t blather long about his “success” before he gets blasted in the chest by someone’s X-Men Cyclops-ripoff eyeball firebeams. Aleph points out some approaching apes, who turn out to be Captain America and two other newbie Avengers: a guy with a stupidly enormous WWE belt buckle and flying fake-Cyclops. Aren’t superheroes supposed to constantly be referring to each other during fights? Like “GREAT WORK, SPARK-BOY!” or “FAST FISTICUFFS, THE HUMAN BLOWJOB!”. I don’t know these doofuses!

Captain America smashes his shield in Aleph’s robot face. And, oh damn, it’s Mr. Belt Buckle who’s firing off the laser vision! The other guy is just floating there, like he’s just around to be the hype man. Cap’n tries to approach the downed Aleph and give him a taste of his own medicine. “Yield.” he tells Aleph, trying to turn the tables on the unpleasantness he encountered in Issue #1, but it doesn’t work. Aleph knocks that bitch down!

I will ZZZRRRNNNNN! you to death, sir.

Abyss snaps Hulk into attention. “Beast! Serve me! Cast a ferocious shadow — blot out the sun!” And Hulk goes “rarr!” and gives Fiery Belt Buckle a big green fist to the face! Fiery Belt Buckle is named Hyperion. I don’t remember anything about him, nor do I remember him being recruited for the Avengers. But here he is anyway, crashing the party!

Ex Nihilo is a smoldering pile of flames, whom the small Avengers team thinks might be the end of it. But that’s pretty naive, this is only the third fucking issue!

There’s no way that someone like Ex Nihilo is going down this quickly. Aleph approaches him and “talks”: “QUERY: STATUS STABLE?”. Ex Nihlio picks himself up, dusts himself off, and responds “No, Aleph. Never static…forward. Always forward.”

The guy I didn’t know, not Hyperion, I can see now that it’s one of the women, but I can’t fucking tell who. It’s not Captain Marvel, Spider-Woman, nor Black Widow, unless one of them suddenly dresses sort of like Cyclops.

Anyway, she finds herself surrounded by dozens of egg sacs that burrow their way to the surface from underground. Summoned by Ex Nihilo? Ah, these are a bunch of origin bomb plants! A cavalcade of hideous creatures bursts forth from their sticky, squishy, blue eggs.

Listen Steve, I know you’re not that bright, but come on, dude. This was your idea.

Captain America finally starts to get up after an eternity of just chilling on the ground. Tony Stark, hanging about four feet away on the Mars tree, lifts his head, gives Cap’n an icy glower, and says “uhhhhhh, what about the plan, chief?” And Captain America goes “buuhhhhh, uh, yeah, the plan, uh, I stuck to it already, heh heh, don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

And then Cap’n presses a button against his ear and radios the rest of the team. “EDEN! FIND ME!” he messages to Manifold, who does his space magic to fling everyone else into space. So now everyone’s on Mars for a BIG AVENGERS BATTLE! So that happens.

A bunch of costumed ninnies start punching egg sac creatures. One keeps Hulk at bay so he doesn’t keep doing more of Abyss’ bidding. Fake-Cyclops actually does have laser eyes too, I guess. I still don’t know who she is. Some other Avenger on the ground hits on her during the fight, I don’t know who he is either. Maybe I shouldn’t have started reading an Avengers series that has about 45 Avengers instead of, like, 4.

Captain America tries to lead his troupe. “Quickly. Let’s get everyone out of this thing and back into the fight.” He points to the sorry bunch still strapped to the Mars tree. Cap’n can easily throw a shield and cut them all down with one boomerang toss, but instead he’d rather sit back and jerk off and delegate.

Spider-Man proves useless, as usual, against trying to cut the snaggly Mars vines. This is Wolverine’s time to shine! And it must be some unwritten rule that Wolverines retractable claws make a “SNIKT” sound effect. Here’s how I’d write the onomatopoeia: “SWIIISSSHH!! HONK!”

Captain America helps Stark down and gives one of his ass cheeks a little squeeze, probably. He notices the Falcon (Sam?) staring up in a trance at some demon Ex Nihilo sac birds flying around. There’s a point made here that Falcon used his Falcony bird telepathy to make the demon birds start leaving. This makes Ex Nihilo sad. “My creations abandon me? Who leaves their creator’s garden willingly? All is lost, isn’t it?” he frowns, giving up pretty quickly for an almighty shiny yellow god.

Wolverine works on cutting everyone loose. Thor tells him to shake a leg, it’s taking fucking forever. Abyss sees her new lover Thor summon his big Thor hammer to do dangerous Thor things with it. “KRAK-A-THOOM!” goes a bolt of lightning! It strikes the three mean gods. Or, rather, the two mean gods and their robot pal. It’s at this point that Abyss realizes, maybe, that he’s just not into her.

*punch* How about now? *punch* Now? *punch* Feeling even better yet? *punch* *kick*

What’s his face, Hyperion, Mr. Belt Buckle, socks Hulk in the face and that makes him turn back into lowly Dr. Bruce Banner. Hyperion, therefore, has Hulk Reversal Powers! Hyperion makes a face that looks like Stephen Malkmus from Pavement.

Another Avenger hurtles through one of Aleph’s legs, snapping it from his body.

I forgot to mention: during this whole fray, a disoriented woman wearing a bodysuit, but no mask of any kind, and obviously not involved with the Avengers, had appeared on Mars when Captain America called the rest of her team. She doesn’t know where she is, how she got there, and the last thing she remembers is some shaking and some violence! Nonetheless, she’s curious! And, she just noticed Big Bald Nude Adam lying down in a makeshift cocoon of Martian plants. “Oh! Systems!” she says to him, and he looks up at her with normal eyes. He says a couple lines of that Builders’ code.

The battle rages on. Stark’s getting nervous, he thinks the game is starting to shift in the gods’ favor. “Keep pressing!” Captain America tells him, never one to listen to naysayers and Negative Nancys.

This mysterious confused lady, she’s starting to get less confused. And a bright blue light washes over the red Mars landscape for a second, enveloping everyone in its pacifying glow.

This lady hovers in the air and addresses her ugly children. “Please…Equilibrium. You recognize this form? You know who I am?” To this, Ex Nihilo and Abyss bow with phrases of reverence like “The Legend.” and “The Mother.” and “Goddess.” and “The Universe Herself.”, but Aleph says “ERROR: DEITY NEGATIVE.” like an asshole.

Universe Lady corrects Aleph. “Deity POSITIVE.” It’s kind of like a Wayne’s World “No way.” — “Way.” exchange, just more…uh, pious?

“My children — your Builders — are adrift. They flail, and their actions — YOU — have become insufficient. That cycle is broken. The systems are broken.” Now go to your room! Universe Lady is really letting them have it, by god, she’s going to whack them with a rolled-up newspaper in about two minutes if she hears any lip. “Destroy/transform NO MORE inhabited worlds,” she orders.

If she’s the universe, then how come I’m not in her right now? Huhh-huhh-huhh.

Abyss and Ex Nihilo are confused. This is what they exist for! It’s who they are! What are they supposed to do now? Paint? Make websites? Collect Magic: The Gathering cards? They look to Aleph for guidance. “DECLARATIVE: NO.” he beeps like a microwave.

“QUERY: THIS ALEPH HAS DETERMINED THAT THE HUMAN WORLD MUST BE DESTROYED. MUST THIS ALEPH NOT PERFORM ITS FUNCTION?”

And Universe Lady’s main argument is “What good is any system built by children? Stand down.”

This scrambles Aleph’s circuits. He sizzles and shorts! He sparks and twitches! He jizzes and farts! “DECLARATIVE: I CANNOT OBEY.” He creates a large ball of energy in front of him, intended to be a projectile for Universe Lady, but she makes short work of that. She touches the ball and obliterates Aleph into seven trillion pieces with a “ZZZRRNNN”.

Everyone just stares up at her while she floats there.

JUMP CUT! Ex Nihilo and Abyss are neutered shells of former gods in only a matter of 10 minutes, just because mom said so. Thor’s got Nude Adam in his arms, and Ex Nihilo stands there whining. “This is wrong…why are you taking my Adam?” he asks, morose and bewildered. And Universe Lady tells him, duh, you made a human. He belongs with the humans. And Ex Nihilo is like “I guess…so…uh…now what?”, and he is advised to continue making Mars as long as he leaves Earth alone. “Do you think you can restrain yourself?” Cap’n asks him, and Ex Nihlio, having no other choice because mom might smack him with a switch, claims that it’s not gonna be a dang problem. “But you have to wonder, don’t you?” Ex Nihilo directs his attention toward Captain America, “I have remade thousands of worlds, and seen the destruction of far, far more — and yet it is your planet she has chosen to call home. What is it that makes your Earth so special?”

And Steve “Brain Genius” Rogers, he thinks about that for a minute.

“It’s an Avengers World.”

Final Thoughts

And just like that, the threat is neutralized?? These gods have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years, and some Universe Lady tells them to stop? And they’re like “yes’m”.

The Avengers did nothing! Useless! Who cares?!

I’ve always thought they were useless anyway. Give me Batman any day. That guy fucks.