Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #4 – “The Death and Resurrection of Major Titans”

* Part 4 of 6 of the Avengers World storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #4 – “The Death and Resurrection of Major Titans”! And that sounds like a sad tale, indeed. I once served under Major Titans, he’s a good man. In the previous installment, which seemed like the end of a storyline but I suppose it’s really NOT, the entire Avengers team showed up to Mars to fight. It turned out to be pretty pointless, because some lady that I’ve so-far dubbed Universe Lady showed up and told Ex Nihilo, Abyss, and Aleph that they were done doing their thing now. Go do something else. So that’s the end of that! Sex Nihlio is going to keep playing around on Mars.

That’s it for now, I don’t know where we’re headed at this point at all. But, since this is a Jonathan Hickman run, I’m told that he sets shit up years in advance. I mean, that’s what I heard about East of West in any case. Maybe Hickman saved up all his thinking for that one, and phoned it in for Marvel? That would be funny!

Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #4 [March, 2013]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“The Death and Resurrection of Major Titans”

That’s Hyperion on the cover! I know him now! Mr. Belt Buckle.

This issue begins on Kobe, Japan, a location where one of Ex Nihilo’s big and farty stink bombs landed. S.H.I.E.L.D., a fucking name I have to copy and paste here every time I use it or I’ll go goddamn nutso, have successfully put the town in a bubble. Ergo, they contained the impact zone. Other impact zones are reporting the same conditions: a 10-mile radius of big, nuclear, space bees…or something to that effect. I just wanted to type out “space bees”. They’re more like egg sacs with scary non-bee bugs.

A rugged, unshaven Captain America is being briefed on all this by some other Avenger-types. He asks about S.H.I.E.L.D.’s status in Perth and Regina, the locations of the first two bombs. In Regina, the Canadian government is insisting that S.H.I.E.L.D. stay out of it! In Perth, the Australian government is insisting that S.H.I.E.L.D. stay out of it! So it’s going well. But the other, more recent impact sites are contained. They’re fine!

Maybe. I mean, those sites are fine, but Cap’n is told that there may be another bomb, a SHADOW BOMB, that came into the atmosphere with the rest! And who knows where it could be! So they’re looking into it. Go to where there are suddenly a lot of bugs, ok?

I still can’t tell who all these 47 Avengers members are without their costumes. Some guy is nerding around on the computer, saying stuff like “the friction coefficient is wrong here” and “eliminate any vector greater than 15 degrees” while pretending to figure out a shadow bomb impact site, but really he wants to play Minesweeper once everyone else leaves. But, then, he accidentally finds the right impact site about six seconds later! Good job, we don’t expect any task to take longer than three minutes in Avengers World. This is Avengers World! Anything that takes longer than a commercial break is a failure.

All of a sudden, there’s some narration about two titans, each called Hyperion, from an Earth that no longer exists. The first, a well-known legend, he escaped his exploding planet and flew to Earth where a man called Father raised him. “Marcus” he was called. Not the Father, he was “Father”. The little boy, I mean. Father taught Marcus all sorts of stuff, like how to be a good public speaker! Also, that a society and/or a community shouldn’t be seen as any less than its whole. Also, some moral code.

Thought without error! Never make a mistake! PERFECTION. AND LESS THAN THREE MINUTES.

Yeah, those. Especially the “Thought Without Error” part, that seems perfectly reasonable. Anyway, Father and his children remade Earth. It was pretty cool.

The other Hyperion was the Hyperion within himself, so it was a trick all along! There aren’t two Hyperions at all! What the fuck! THIS Hyperion saw the things that the people couldn’t, and that the people didn’t know Hyperion could! Electrons orbiting nuclei, protons and neutrons, atoms within the compounds, all sorts of crazy minutiae. He saw the society and the community, but, against Father’s wishes, he saw the people that made up the community as well. He saw them dance and mingle and eat and poop and fuck and sing and, like, poop some more. But he hid this fact, because he wasn’t supposed to see all that.

There were two Hyperions.

Very profound.

You heard the woman. Everyone grab a broom.

Later, at “Site Six: Fallen Heights, the Savage Land. Infected”, a gaggle of suited-up Avengers dorks leave their weird ship to do a sweep of the land. JUST AS THEY THOUGHT! The “infected” area is small and stops abruptly. It’s like a little circle of land. Nothing’s moving, but there are plenty of heartbeats. JUST AS EXPECTED! They’re cocoons. These Avengers already know everything. Why bother? Even Thor doesn’t want to be here! In fact, here’s his take about this particular plot of land: “Surtur’s Sweaty Orbs, it’s hot.” By the hammer of Thor, sir, that’s quite a scandalous thing to say!

Hyperion observes that the planet they’re on is warmer because of the troposphere or climate change or farting penguins or some shit. Thor offers to share a bottle of a drink called fimbulvinter, stolen from the Frost Giants when Thor and his brother were lads. “It’s like vodka, but for men.” he proudly claims! Hyperion scoffs at the god. He doesn’t eat or drink! He takes in light! Like plants! And alcohol is for deadbeats, that stuff should be beneath Mr. Thor in the first place.

So Thor begins to enjoy his Man Drink alone, and Hyperion notices something six miles away: hazmat suit-wearing dudes drawing liquid, with needles, from a strange plant-sac on the planet. They have to hurry up, though, they heard the unmistakable sound of an AVENGERS QUINJET landing and must make all manner of haste!

These anonymous hazmat dudes decide to perform their experiments here and now before the Avengers show up. They’ll never let them leave the planet with the samples they just extracted! So they drag in their confident, stupid-looking, un-hazmatted intern to perform the test on. He doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but he’s all for it! Whatever it is! Don’t worry, son, you’ll be ok! They’re just checking to see, you know, if the virus from Ex Nihlio’s weird plants interact preferably with the immunosuppressant they fused it with. And by “interact preferably”, they mean “work to fuck you the hell up”. Now, son, we’re gonna just inject this here, and –

Yo nerd, your t-Virus is showing.

Beautiful! You’re dead! Not what we wanted exactly, but at least we’re getting somewhere! Oh shit, there are the Avengers.

Before we get to that though, there’s more about Hyperion that needs to be talked about. Apparently. This second-rate Superman’s world was exploding. You see, “the children”, Ex Nihilo and Abyss, made a second world to replace Hyperion’s. And, well, you know.

OK, maybe you don’t know. I still don’t know either. It sounds like this Hyperion cat was attempting to prevent this new world from colliding with this current world. And he was successful! But not really. The two universes ended up collapsing around him.

And do you know what happens when two universes collapse at the same time?

I dunno.

You start floating around a white void if you’re separate from the two universes, I suppose. Just like that episode of Futurama where Fry and Al Gore and Uhura and Stephen Hawking ended up playing Dungeons and Dragons in the endless white void. It was like that.

But it didn’t last long.

Or maybe it did, you know, and they condensed 900 centillion years into three panels. Either way, eventually, a large robotic arm ripped through the time-space continuum and pulled Hyperion through the Stargate into OUR universe! Earth! Yuck.

At least he looks comfortable.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled program: Avengers Babies.

The team demands to know what these hazmat scientists are doing on the planet. In about 40 words they say “research”. And ALSO that they have diplomatic immunity on the planet. Hyperion informs them that they don’t have a blessing from a god, and points to a smug-ass Thor.

Before the hazmat guys have enough time to really rebut that, some tentacle plant tendrils emerge from the intern’s dead body, grab some dudes, and start snarin’. The Avengers act fast! And then learn that cutting off the tentacles does bupkis! Gotta attack the body. But with what?

“Stand back.” Thor says. This guy thinks his hammer solves everything! Well…yeah, it solves this. He summons some lighting to strike the body. And then…that other guy…with the fire eyes. He burns the body some more. Good work team! It’s dinner time.

PARENTAL ADVISORY: tentacle hentai porn alert

Oh, not yet? I’m hungry, what’s the hold-up? Oh, the Avengers demand an answer to why these weird plant tentacles burst out of the intern’s dead nerd body. They answer earnestly! Ok, dinner time.

Ugh, ok, not yet. The Avengers need to call a containment team pronto! Gotta make sure all these impact sites are quarantined! No more experiments!

More Mr. Belt Buckle Flashbacks. Again with the two Hyperions. They were both pulled into our universe because, as you recall, they’re the same damn person! Or god. Or whatever. He was imprisoned, deprived of that precious, precious sunlight that fuels him like so much delicious fimbulvinter.

And then Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor bust him out of the joint!

Truth without compromise. Thought without error. All things for the betterment of the whole. These were the words Hyperion’s father said.

And Hyperion, my dude, he finally sees something wrong with that!

FOR YOU SEE…blah blah blah.

Anyway, a bunch of weird zebra-striped Builder babies bust out of the planet’s cocoons speaking the Builders machine code. And Hyperion decides to let them live, or something.

He is the sun. They are his children.

With all the impact sites contained, the Avengers pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Where’s that dinner?

We’re not done yet! We end in Norway. Another troop of hazmat fucks approach a mysterious seventh impact site, with a mysterious humanoid entity encased in a large icicle.