Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #7 – “The Last White Event”! I finally return to continue more Avengers Original-Flavored Action. In the previous storyline, we witness a couple of gods (Ex Nihilo and Abyss) try to terraform Mars, and eventually Earth, by launching big, weird bombs full of spores! The Avengers fly to Mars to make short work of that though, and then some Universe Lady shows up and tells Ex Nihilo and Abyss to go home. And they do! She’s their boss, after all. The big gross humanoid they created, “Adam”, gets taken home back to Earth by the Avengers. Tony Stark attempts to learn his strange Builders language.

After a Hyperion origin story and a Smasher origin story, we see Shang-Chi try to speak with Universe Lady…or at least the human woman absorbed within Universe Lady. Her name is Tamara Devoux, and she survived a car crash. In a coma for 10 years, Tamara doesn’t know what became of her six-year-old daughter, but Shang-Chi learns that Universe Lady is using her body because “she’s broken, just like me”.

Later, Universe Lady and “Adam” (named Nightmask) are able to communicate. Nightmask warns of a “White Event” that is happening now! NOW! NOOOOOWW!!

So now you’re all caught up! And I suppose this White Event isn’t going to be the first one. So, let’s all learn about what happened last time.

Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #7 [May, 2013]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“The Last White Event”

THE SUPERFLOW. UNIVERSE 7109. Some rickety spacecraft gets infiltrated by what looks like slick blue tentacles. Everything keeps going offline! Whatever that “everything” actually is, I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with an AOL chat room from 1999.

“Please extrapolate, Curator,” says a guy from what I assume is a Mission Control-type location. The robot Curator next to him is frazzled as all heck; they keep losing their communications at a rapid rate! “Outside of the web, it is impossible to determine whether or not the superstructure will maintain integrity,” it says, which sounds like a steaming pile of gobbledygook to me.

“Total collapse of the superflow,” says the Mission Control alien. “Almost unthinkable.” You know what else is unthinkable? A fucking Avengers story without any Avengers in it yet! Where’s muh Spider-Mans?!

The Curator asks if they should alert whoever it is that they should alert a problem to. I don’t know, because the alien cuts him off. “No until we know more.”

THE NEXUS OF ALL SUPERFLOWS. THE CENTRAL WEB. It’s a large alien space station thing, and it’s plunging into some really red liquid on what I assume is a planet? I’m going level with you guys, I don’t know what the FUCK is going on. I might as well be reading manga with all the inscrutible horseshit that’s happening right now.

The alien is called The Caretaker, and the structure is collapsing. The Nexus of All Supeflows. Does that deserve capital letters? It seems appropriate.

Everything dies, chump.

The Central Web is broken, they can’t escape. Resistance is futile! Everything keeps going offline. Hey, Caretaker! Do something about it, would ya. Take care of it! It’s in your name, dude.

The Caretaker asks how many communication/ascension stations remain, and the answer is a big fat 192—151—127 hut hut hike. Dropping like flies. Mr. Caretaker orders the Curator to salvage any worlds that can be salvaged and then destroy the rest. “I have failed you, Builders,” he says. “Forgive me.”

Who cares? So the Central Web is broken, big fuckin’ whoop. Make a new one! What’s another million years, anyway?

The blue-tentacled mass slams into the space station and blows that shit up real good. Meanwhile, the Superflow of Universes 69001, 2091, and 3281809 are also getting wreaked havoc upon.

The Superflow of Universe 616, however…

*Avengers opening credits music plays, sounding dangerously close enough to the Full House theme to incite a team of Warner Bros. lawyers. Aunt Becky had it going on, that’s all I can say about this*

AVENGERS TOWER. NOW. “Adam” Nightmask “Sandler” picks up where we left off. Boogity boogity the White Event is coming!

Tony Stark is like WTF DID HE SAY? Ms. Universe reiterates what “Adam” Nightmask “West” said: “Boogity boogity the White Event is coming!”

Black Widow doesn’t really like the sound of that, to be honest.

Then white stuff happens.

Then white stuff goes away.

“What just happened?” asks Spider-Man.

“Adam” Nightmask “Driver” reiterates that it was the White Event. “THE LAST WHITE EVENT.”

Nightmask starts waving his arms around and creating some weird energy, which prompts Stark to angrily tell him to stop lest he fucks up all his machines. “You have many talking machines,” Nightmask says. “I can hear them. This is helpful as I mold them into what I need.”

Who gave you permission to speak, Spider-Man? Eat all my shit.

“You have to tell us what you’re doing,” Stark tells Nightmask desperately. “Maybe we can help?”

“I have to find the others,” Nightmask responds in that obnoxiously vague manner that we’ve all come to know and love in the last 15 minutes.

FIVE HOURS AGO, a young couple are sitting together on a park bench. The boy tells the girl that he already spoke to her parents to tell them that they were getting married. ISN’T THAT INTERESTING?! Let’s go back to the action.

“A White Event occurs when a world is on the verge of ascending on a universal scale,” says Nightmask abstrusely. “A White Event creates/alters heralds to shepherd this ascension, and a Nightmask always acts as forerunner of the change.”

Whatever. So this naked man they picked up from Mars is the White Event Whisperer? Give me some black smoke and a Dharma station any day over any of this shit.

“I am a Nightmask,” he says to the group, as if no one was paying attention. Captain America wasn’t, he was picking his nose with a garden rake. “There should be others.”

Ms. Universe knows that this wasn’t a regular White Event. For one thing, White Events usually come with cookies. Also, the universe is broken and whoops to that.

FOUR HOURS AGO, a college jock talks to college freak about knocking someone’s ass out for putting his hands on a girl. ISN’T THAT INTERESTING?! Let’s go back to the action.

THREE HOURS AGO, a man in line in a college cafeteria is yelling at his father over the phone about his science-y pursuits. ISN’T THAT INTERESTING?! This isn’t the action! Where’s the action?!

Be a pole dancer just like your old man or he’ll never respect you.

Next, Nightmask has tapped into the Starkcomm network, which is like the internet except you can only go to pornsites where Tony Stark is nude (and Starkcomm has about 900TB worth of content). Nightmask is accessing global mapping and tracking systems, presumably to find other Nightmasks. He finds what he’s looking for and points to a large crop circle thing in a hologram. “Here! We must go here,” he points. “There was an event.”

Tony Stark is finally able to help! Hot dog! He recognizes the point of interest as suburban. And…let’s see… pulling back the vantage point… reticulating splines… adding emotional weights… oh snap! “Sound the alarm– assemble the team. It was a college.”

TWO HOURS AGO, some professor with Beethoven hair lectures about electronics. He instructs a student to stand up and explain some fake theory about lossless rates of conversion for an infinite source of current. ISN’T THAT INTERESTING?! NOT AT ALL! Back to the action.

The crop circle thing on the college campus is called a starbrand – the impact site. It also acts as a herald, and besides blowing up colleges it also acts as a planetary defense mechanism. Problem is, the mechanism is broken.

What the fuck ever, Iron Man. Acting like the expert even though you just learned this shit an hour ago.

These planetary defense mechanisms are very important! For one thing, they defend planets. And also, th–

The gang arrives at the smoldering crater that was the college campus. No signs of life… except for one…

“Why there were only certain types of people that were ever given the starbrand. It’s a plantary defense system. To properly defend a thing, it requires an amount of energy equaling what’s needed to destroy a thing. Understand? Defending a planet requires the ability to break one.”

We see the flashbacks all over again. Same nerd walks in front of the happy engaged couple. Nerd gets accidentally jostled in the hallway by the college freak. Same nerd is serving up the science-y kid in the cafeteria. Same nerd is in the lecture hall.

“Now imagine that kind of power in the hands of someone who has spent his entire life being ignored.”

The nerd wakes up dazed among the rubble.

Final Thoughts

INTRIGUING! Why is this kid so special? Is Mr. Starbrand going to get thrown into some sort of power core in order to reverse the White Event effects, crushing him to death within the 9,000,000 psi pressure of the core? Oh god I hope so. Or else this isn’t a fucking COMIC BOOK otherwise.