Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #10 – “Validator”! In the previous installment, Nightmask (Adam, whatever you want to call him) speaks with Ex Nihilo and Abyss about his and Kevin Connor’s changes. Turns out it’s not them that changed, it’s Earth! Ex Nihilo is attempting to turn Earth into a fully sentient entity! Bwahahaha!

I think this was stopped anyway by Kevin Connor blowing up a weird brain-thing that was growing on a Croatian beach. Captain America decides Kevin is too dangerous for Earth, so they’re going to figure out what to do with this dork soon enough. I’m all for launching him out of a cannon into the sun, but a man can dream.

Avengers (Vol. 5), Issue #10 [June, 2013]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“Validator”

Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, which is a real place and not some goofy made-up place, is the location for the beginning of Issue #10! A couple of officers of some sort of organization look upon their dead friend hunched against a rock, blood all over the side of his face.

“Can we transport him back to the carrier?” asks one.
“I’m worried about degredation,” says the other.

One sticks a plug into the dead one’s brain, hoping to record an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond based on his memories. “Why did you do it, Agent Michaud?” asks the other officer vaguely, who is revealed to be Commander Maria Hill. “What did you see in there?”

Eight hours ago, the Avengers have docked their jet onto another bigger jet and are getting briefed by Hill. There’s a lot going on at once, so bear with her: Shit is going down like bananas, son. All this space pod flingin’ from Ex Nihilo has really gummed up Earth’s works. Kobe, Chhatarpir, Split, all those places have been quarantined. Regina and Perth, however, are being taken care of by their respective governments, so we expect that to get abso-fucking-lutely mishandled royally.

Oh wait, it’s already been mishandled! Ha! Before they go into detail to the de facto dumbass leader of the Avengers, Captain ‘Murrica, it needs to be reiterated that the whole situation is CLASSIFIED and any WHISTLEBLOWING could lead to SEVEN MONTHS unclogging the MANY S.H.I.E.L.D. TOILETS. Understand?

If I so much as hear ONE COMPLAINT I’m turning this car around.

Yes, they understand.

OK good. Sit back and relax, grab some popcorn, here’s a video for y’all:

“DEPARTMENT H MISSION LOGS: 044399-978.

EVENT SITE: REGINA

LAT: 50 DEGREES, 24 MINUTES

LONG: 104 DEGREES, 37 MINUTES”

Boooo-o-o-o-orrriing! This video sucks! Where are the guns and titties?!

The mission video goes on to relay the primary mission objective (Secure Event Site) and the agents tasked with the mission (Wendigo, Validator, Kingdom, and Boxx) and the threat level (Black) and the entertainment after the mission (Jeff Dunham stand-up comedy).

The mission clock starts when they leap majestically off of their ship! Four minutes in, they see no life signs in Regina. The population of Regina is/was 203,975, which is what I just Googled give or take a decade of explosive population growth! Jonathan Hickman did his homework!

At 23 minutes in, they see some stuff. At 42 minutes in, they see some other stuff. Mostly just those space pods. I’m wondering what’s taking so long to engage with these space pods? Are they playing Angry Birds are their phones?! Ha! 2013!

At 1.5 hours in, things start getting blown up and Wendigo gets a hole ripped out of his chest for some reason.

At 2.5 hours in, a weird biodome closes over the survivors. They are verily trapped!

Help me, mysterious metal eyeball!

The survivors start getting hella attacked by hostile lifeforms. The dome becomes a fiery inferno of biblical proportions! You remember that part in the Bible with all the fires in the biodomes, right? It’s just like that!

Then the transmission ends. Video over. Jeff Dunham still got paid for showing up.

S.H.I.E.L.D. says that all happened a month ago, which the Avengers find inexcusible! Why wait this long to do anything? What is this, the government??? S.H.I.E.L.D. claims they spent that time trying to get into the dome by bombing it and using wire cutters and even asking it very nicely to open up. Nothing worked. So now the Avengers are here to hump the dome into submission.

Since this was eight hours ago, Agent Michaud is still alive and he’s able to tell the Avengers that he tried digging under the dome to set a big ol’ bomb to blow up the Earth to get into the dome. It didn’t work. The dome extends into the ground, forming a perfect sphere of isolation, loneliness, and really angry bug creatures. Now the Avengers are here to hump the dome into submission. I believe we’ve already covered this.

Eden is able to get in there. I don’t remember who Eden is or what he does, but he obviously has dome-breaching capabilities. Beautiful! Agent Michaud wants to go too so he can die for no reason, so that’s happening.

An hour later, a ragtag mini team of Avengers get beamed down to the ruins of Regina in order to hump their way into the dome. Just outside the city, they find a little Gollum-like hobbit thing with a large stick who points them into a specific direction.

Translation: The bathroom’s this way.

Captain America, with his endless fountain of wisdom, decides to follow the creepy little creature. “Let’s go,” he says wisely. The group gets followed by a large gaggle of creepy little creatures. They all point to a very large pit filled with glowing lava-like liquid. “Hey! I think something’s moving in there!” yells Nameless Avenger Member #4.

A shape emerges from the pool.

“It’s Validator.”

It’s Validator. She looks like a mime. She raises her hand and starts speaking the Builders’ language. Probably asking what these honkies are up to.

She then whispers in Michaud’s ear…

Later, the group waits in the desolation for S.H.I.E.L.D. to pick them up. Michaud asks Captain America if he’s going to tell anyone what he saw. He says no, and then asks Michaud the same question. He claims that he has a chip in his head that records video – no audio – and the department is going to review it. And they’re going to ask questions. And…

“Robert…” says Wolverine to Michaud. “What did she say?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Michaud responds before pulling out a gun and blasting his head wide open.

Everyone is STUNNED! STUNNED!

So now, after reviewing the footage on Michaud’s chip, there was nothing to see but that episode where Ray Romano and Brad Garrett get made fun of by Peter Boyle. Maria Hill got nothing from debriefing the Avengers, those sluts. They went to Regina and found nothing Regina-like anymore. The end.

“Do you believe them?”

“No. I think they were holding something back. But they’ve left, and I’m not much for chasing air.”

Ha. OK. Just let the Avengers leave suspiciously. Nice commanding, Commander.

Agent Porter is holding something back from Maria Hill, as it turns out! Tables have turned, lol lol. Roll that beautiful bean footage:

Just a big stash of VHS tapes!

On top of the 49 minutes of footage, they also found an additional 327 hours! Isn’t that hilarious? Some of it was from 30 years ago. Some of it is from decades in the future. We see a montage of each Avenger changing slightly. An extra piece of armor here. Extra feathery wings there. Hulk with, like, a beard or something. There’s a vision of Michaud raising his gun to stop Validator, but he gets vaporized into a pile of skeleton bones!

The last bit of footage is Validator pulling Michaud in to tell him something…

Meanwhile, the Avengers all talk amongst themselves as they leave on their jet. And by “talk amongst themselves” I mean “barely talk about anything” like they don’t want to relive any of the event.

When asked why Michaud shot himself in the fucking head, Wolverine is like “he thought it was for the best”.

“He did what someone does when keeping a secret is worth more than their life.”

Anyway, there’s this whole thing where Validator is apparently Michaud’s daughter and here were her words to him:

“The System is now online.”

Final Thoughts

They sure are building up to this mysterious system-like system, like it’s the Internet and it’s all important and a matter of life or death or something actually worth something. BUT I DON’T BUY IT.

This is all obviously bigger than the Avengers, who are used to punching bad guys in the face. Maybe they should sit this one out.