Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Uncanny Avengers (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “Thunder”! In the previous installment, Red Skull takes his big Charles Xavier brain and hypnotizes Manhattan into turning against mutants, like, immediately. Like, right where he was standing. A massacre of mutants at the hands of humans.

The Avengers tried to show up to stop it, but they fucked it all up completely, as they do. In short, Wolverine suffered a killing blow to the head by an addled Thor, and by “killing blow” I mean “even Wolverine shouldn’t fucking survive it”, but he will.

Destruction in his wake, Red Skull is like “ha ha ha.”

And continue on we do.

Uncanny Avengers (Vol. 1), Issue #3 [March, 2013]
Written by: Rick Remender
“Skull & Bones”

“Minutes ago, the Summers family was returning home from a vacation in Anchorage, Alaska. Now Christopher Summers fights back tears as he straps his eldest son Scott into the only intact parachute. It doesn’t go unnoticed by younger brother Alex.”

First of all, Anchorage? Really? That was your vacation? You deserve to die in a fiery plane crash then, Summers Family. Second of all, fuck Scott Summers. If I were his father I would’ve been like “so long, son!” and leapt out of the plane with the only parachute. Alex is just collateral damage.

Scott is like, 10, and he’s able to jump out of plane, hold onto Alex for dear life, and deploy his parachute without multiple casualties. Two seconds after he jumps out of the plane, it explodes in 7 trillion bits of fiery shrapnel.

Havok, in the present day, lies down on the concrete looking half-dead. He has a concussion from all the buttfucking he’s been receiving at the hands of Red Skull and his various manipulations. His eyes refocus to a scene of Scarlet Witch fighting Thor in a torrent of purple energy.

“Damn you, Thor! We’re running out of time,” Scarlet Witch says. “Every passing moment more innocents are harmed!”

“WE WILL CLEANSE THE WORLD OF YOUR PUSTULOUS LEGION!” Thor responds. The Witchy Woman warns Thor to knock it off before she sends a hex down his throat that will shred up his internal organs from his esophagus to his tender testicles. Thor doesn’t let up. He blasts her with HAMMER ENERGY! Lightning! Lightning which can be instantly transmogrified by Scarlet Witch, ha ha ha! “I WITHSTAND YOUR WORST!” she cries.

Thor threatens Scarlet Witch with a blow to the head. Scarlet Witch responds by throwing a fucking truck at his face.

Hey, this isn’t the way to San Antonio!

Thor gets up like a few drops a rain plopped on his head. He’s about ready to smash her face into a kumquat when Havok rises to the occasion! He KKAAZAKTs Thor with a mighty stream of whatever the hell Havok does. It looks like the kind of sound waves that Aquaman uses to talk to dolphins. That’s something he does, right? I’m not going to read any Aquaman comics anytime soon, so let me just pretend I know what I’m talking about and we can move on.

Red Skull’s Nazi sidekicks yell to the crowd about the dangers of mutants and how regular folk aren’t safe in their own homes. Captain America bonks him in the head with his shield, and now turns to Red Skull himself.

“WELCOME TO THE REICH ETERNAL, HERR ROGERS!” greets Red Skull. “Rejoice, broken spirit! I bring you a better world. A global Reich built on art and intellectual pursuit. Orderly, safe and clean.” He stands in front of a couple of unstylish Nazi flags. He continues saying some rather alarming things about America, like how the melting pot has failed miserably, and how white people are the best race this side of the Mississippi. You know, the kind of stuff that Congress projects openly on a daily basis lately. Captain America refuses to fall into the spell.

This is why you will always be a hopeless idiot in my eyes, Cap.

Suddenly, Captain America thumps face first on the cement hilariously. Red Skull has corrupted his cerebellum and now he can’t even do his two favorite pastimes: standing and drooling. He mocks Cap’s naivety about America’s “bright future” without him. Well, you’re in luck, pal! Not only will Red Skull brighten the future of the country, but Cap himself is going to be the figurehead of the movement! Doesn’t that sound lovely, son? When people see you smacking mutants around with your shield, the common man will start smacking mutants around with his shield! It will be glorious!

And this guy keeps talking. Keeps on fucking talking. Stripping mutants of their rights (voting, marriage; rights reserved for humans only). Then they will be killed by either gas chambers or by flinging poisoned hot dogs into their mouths, whichever is more cost-effective.

Havok and Scarlet Witch are continuing to fight Thor unsuccessfully. The guy just won’t die! Scarlet Witch brings out the big guns: slowing down time to a crawl and focusing upon a well of chaos energy within her. “She spasms – Tapping directly into the source of her power, she is transformed into a living conduit of pure disorder. An overindulgence so dangerous it could easily unhinge her mind. It is her only hope. She knows there is no defeating Thor in direct conflict… there is only removing him from battle.”

From my point of view, it looks like she opens a portal to another dimension and blasts him through it. I sure hope so, that Thor guy is boring and is really stinking up the place.

Red Skull continues to groom Captain America into a life of far-right tomfooleries. He talks a lot, almost as if this issue needed to be padded out because Rick Remender only wrote 40 words in the first draft.

“But in reality, this is, and will remain, your America. An uneducated population fixated on competition, material wealth, and voyeurism. Violent monsters doused in antibiotics to offset their diet of sugary sweet drinks and mounds of carcinogenic cow flesh. THIS IS WHAT YOU FIGHT FOR! Together we will clean this nation! Transform it to one more befitting both of our high ideals.”

Cap slobbers all over his costume and hazily goes “No… I’ll never…”

I’ll do whatever you say! Just stop pointing that thing at me!

This is the part where Rogue shows up to fuck some shit up again. She was able to suddenly turn off Red Skull’s Xavier-brained telepathy powers and motions to “crush his skull with her bare hands”. Then Red Skull, always with the gambit, pulls out a gun. “Stupid girl. I, of course, have other weapons.”

He shoots Rogue through the chest with some sort of red hot laser blast. Havok is too late in pushing Red Skull out of the way with his sonar rings, or whatever. I’m still unsure what Havok actually does besides jerk off. Maybe I’ll never know.

The narration calls Rogue’s injury “non-fatal” which is ridiculous considering there’s a three-inch hole in her chest now. Havok starts punching the snot out of Red Skull. “You’re like a closeted jock who beats on gay kids!” he says, which is only ¼ true. “You don’t hate mutants, you are terrified because you want to be just like us!”

Scott should have dropped Alex after jumping out of the plane.

When Rogue was shot, Red Skull gained back his brainy brain powers. Now Havok is punching the daylights out of her instead of his intended target! Then Cap hits Red Skull with his shield really hard, man. Cap is about to finish him when the waterly lady… *checks notes* …Dancing Water reaches out of a waterly portal on the ground and pulls Red Skull through it. Cap beats the ground with his fist. “No! NO!”

Red Skull’s spell is broken on everyone present. The citizens of New York are now like “what hath we wrought” and Thor looks sheepish to say the most. They all observe the carnage; the literally blood on their hands. They all look at each other like “well, shit.”

Thor picks up a badly-beaten Wolverine. Not dead, but sort of dead. The civilians look very unhappy, and Havok reminds these people that they were under Red Skull’s spell. This is no one’s fault but his! And maybe a little bit of Thor’s as well. That bitch is supposed to be a god.

“None of this is your fault… but what happens next is!”

…then wallow in pitiful sadness in your homes while watching Dancing with the Stars and eating Cheetos. See if I care.

Havok and Captain America return to Avengers HQ where they correctly report that the bad guys have escaped. Havok tells Cap that, whew, being in charge is tough. Why don’t you do it instead please? Cap tells him absolutely fucking not. Havok is like “just kidding” and tells him that he’ll try not to let him down.

Scarlet Witch visits Rogue in the hospital. She doesn’t want her there, but she’s there anyway. She wants to tell Rogue that she doesn’t have to worry about her putting on the hurty hurty. Even with Red Skull’s influence, she wasn’t moved to destroy her people. So lighten up! Have a cookie! It’s all gonna be all right!

She asks Rogue to be friends. Rogue declines. “I don’t care what you say – I still think you’re a dangerous mess.”

Thor and Wolverine are having a cozy evening in, presumably, Wolverine’s studio apartment. Thor throws him a newspaper with a front page headline “XAVIER GONE, DREAM STILL ALIVE – Mutants and humans work together; stop Red Skull from murder spree.”

“You did not fail him,” Thor says, putting his hand on Wolverine’s shoulder. “He knew you would get it right. Knew you would double the fight without him. Only this time… you will not be fighting alone.”

THREE MONTHS FROM NOW, something I don’t understand at all happens! Havok, Scarlet Witch, and a flame dude who I think might be Sunfire but also who the fuck cares, traverse the mean streets and descend a manhole. They’re running away from something. They find a skeleton wearing kingly armor hunched against the tunnel. “Immortus must have arrived centuries ago, before the Apocalypse Twins locked the era as prime. He left a message. Cable was right – that was it. The moment the anomaly began. The moment the seven became one.”

“Yes, indeed a historic time… the day Onslaught began.”

We see Red Skull in some sort of Transformers suit. Standing in front of him is a man in a suit with glowing green eyes.

Did you understand all that? Me neither.

Final Thoughts

They always fucking do this. The penultimate issue in a storyline always half-wraps things up and then introduces some crazy fucking unrelated nonsense! I will not stand for it!

…I’ll just sit for it. It’s more comfortable that way.