Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: New Avengers (Vol. 3), Issue #4 – “World Eater”! In the previous installment, Beast is the new owner of Professor Xavier’s gem. They nab him, try to assemble the pretty gauntlet, and Captain America ruins the gauntlet and destroys all the stones trying to save the universe
Now there are no other options, but Cap is still stubborn about doing the right thing. SO, the rest of the Avengers wipe his memory and decide to carry on without him. It was unanimous! Fuck that guy. Let’s enter the Moral Gray Zone, gentlemen! It’s way more fun there anyway.
The Illuminati have officially kicked Captain America off the roster! Go jerk off an American flag, nerd.
New Avengers (Vol. 3), Issue #4 [May, 2013]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“World Eater”
Reed Richards and Tony Stark are discussing the device that Black Swan used to destroy the Earth that she jumped from before landing on this Earth. A bomb? Negative! An antiproton sling!
Unimpressed, Stark checks his watch. “Well, you gotta admit, there’s a certain amount of dark poetry to using an antimatter bomb to kill a world.”
Richards and T’Challa are spending their time trying to reverse engineer Black Swan’s device and build their own version. It’ll be at least another day to finish, and yet another day to run simulations. And here I am thinking that it takes me a whole afternoon to build an IKEA crib. These guys must be geniuses!
Stark tells the two of them to put these helmet dealies on. Richards recognizes them as military-grade Shi-ar Omnicasters! T’Challa is on to all of Stark’s watch-checkin’.
“Avoiding prying eyes means you have a very small window in which to bounce a signal to the other side of the sun. Window’s open, gentlemen. Let’s take a little walk,” Tony says as he outfits his own noggin’ with a Shi-ar Helmet Whatsits. He leads them outside, where his company is working on building a Dyson sphere! A real one! A Dyson sphere is supposed to be hypothetical; the idea is to build a structure that completely encompasses a star in order to harness its energy. Stark is not only building one on short-notice, but it’s going to work flawlessly!
I’ve weaponized planets, comets, asteroids, meteorites, moons, and the Van Allen radiation belt. So, I thought, hell. Stars.
Stark estimates about a month to completion, but they only need about two percent of it built to achieve the goal of bouncing that signal. So, all they need now is a name for it.
“Sol’s Hammer,” Richards says vaguely, eyes agape, mouth loaded with drool.
At the Sanctum of Doctor Strange (love or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sol’s Hammer), the Good Doctor has a large, occult tome open on his table. One of his assistants/sexual slaves, Wong, brings in tea and notices the large, scary book with a shiver of fright.
“Doctor, no spell in the Blu’Dakorr has ever not caused the death of the caster. To touch it stains the soul. Legend says, it requires the spirits of forty fallen men.”
Stephen Strange is like “look, pussy, sometimes things need to get DONE.”
Plus, the Blu’Dakorr is just the kind of book to liven up the room with some blue decor. HA!!
After Doctor Strange tells him not to fear the book itself, but fear the reason the book had to be opened in the first place, his palm tracking device starts glowing. “And fear most of all… time slipping away.”
Summoning time! Drink your tea en route. One last thing, Wong: I may not be coming back! So I have papers filled out on my desk. The house and everything in it is yours! Take good care of it. There are lots of secret passages for you to explore. *avuncular wink*
Unnerve you like a FOX, you mean, you little dish!
The little man is a little dispirited, and Strange doesn’t really say much to help. “My friend, from this point forward treat each moment of day as if it were your last. As it very well may be.”
And then he gives him a hearty clap on the back, and then a little noogie!
“Am I going to see you again?” asks the sniveling, whimpering Wong.
“I carry the blood bible, Wong… it would seem unlikely.”
OK, bye-bye then! Papers on the desk, you say? Bye!
At Ellis Island, the terrifying planet hovers close and ominous just like the moon from Majora’s Mask! Only that was just a video game. This is real life.
The Avengers thought Ellis Island would be a place to freely talk, but they’re surrounded by tourists. Richards and Stark wax on this for a minute before Namor tells them to start fuckin’ talking! Or else he’s going to think they didn’t do shit for the last two days.
Richards starts spouting off a bunch of technobabble like a regular Georgi LaForge: “T’Challa and I have a way to channel an ultimate nullifier through a vibranium barrel… instantly vaporizing the incursion site of that world along with the surrounding one hundred square miles.”
Here’s the catch: the user of the device will be killed as well. So, if we can only get Captain America back we can…no? OK, just thought I would try.
Beast doesn’t like this idea. He came up with another one! Here it is: how about we find Professor Xavier’s hidden Mind Gem and we put all the gems together and we…
Oh, right! Heh heh. OK, second plan: that Earth comes from a universe that should have its own set of Infinity Gems, correct? So let’s ransack their universe of their Infinity Gems?
Reed Richards is like “We don’t have time to find new gems! Assuming they can be found! Assuming they can be used! Assuming they can be used in other universes! Assuming there isn’t a Bizarro Avengers Team using them right now! Hey, maybe they are! Maybe we don’t have to do anything! Who wants lunch?”
Stephen Strange likes the idea and maybe they should try looking for them. If the user is stuck in the other universe, so be it. He has a backup plan he can do there if this first plan fails. It’s unspeakable, though, and it shall remain unspeakable. BUT, Strange volunteers so that he can do his voodoo magic if it becomes necessary.
I still say we should find Cap and fling him head-first into the other universe.
This somber moment is undercut by Namor’s raucous hootin’. He laughs and laughs! “Let hope die, fools… it’s time to embrace oblivion,” he remarks with a devilishly handsome grin.
Namor then flies away first with his delicate and dainty winged boots. “We are already dead.”
The rest of the Avengers silently follow suit, with the three flightless team members (Richards, Beast, T’Challa) floating together in a cute bubble. They break through the atmosphere and approach the New Earth. The All New, All Different Earth. Earth NOW!
Landing on New Earth’s version of Ellis Island, the first noticeable difference (besides the red-ass sky) is the Magneto statue in lieu of the traditional Statue of Liberty. You know the one, the one with the pointy lady.
“Admit it, Henry,” Namor prods Beast with a smirk, “The idea excites you a little, doesn’t it?”
Not pictured: Beast’s enormous blue boner.
The team has four hours to try looking for these alternate dimension gems. Then Stephen Strange has two hours to blow everything up if that doesn’t work. Any questions?
Come on Reed, one universe is enough, isn’t it? We can’t be superheroing everywhere we go all the time.
Black Bolt snaps his fingers and brings a little problem to everyone’s attention. A giant asshole named Galactus is hovering above Bizarro New York City and systematically destroying skyscrapers with his Galactus conversion machine of conversion therapy. They have to try and stop them!
At least Reed Richards thinks they have to stop them. The rest kind of look at him like “uuhhhhh”.
Some other big guy with a big scythe-like weapon pops in and tells the New Avengers that they would be dumb to try during an incursion now, of all times. It doesn’t matter anymore anyway. Iron Man asks this newcomer how he knew what an incursion was, how he knew to be here, and how he knew to find it in the first place. As if the SUPERHERO ILLUMINATI could be the only people in 900,000 universes to know about it. The arrogance!
“The universe is vast, human. And I am Terrax, the Truly Enlightened.” Does that answer your question, you braindead alcoholic? You Robert Downey Jr. good-for-nothing?
“I know many things…and clearly, you do not,” Terrax continues to belittle and condescend. The ground starts rumbling. Galactus continues vaporizing buildings. “You should run now,” Terrax warns with a smile, “something glorious is about to happen.”
Richards takes that as a challenge! Five hours until the window closes. Namor asks Terrax if he’s going to try and stop them.
“I can tell that you recognize me [Terrax]. Clearly, you know my master [Galactus]. But beyond the Eye of Agamotto [?]… I have no idea who you people [Puny Earth Men Wearing Tights] are.”
In short, you puny Earth men wearing tights think you can stop this? Idiots.
“Galaktus is a universal constant,” declares Terrax, but if he’s so constant how come you can spell his name with either a C or a K, huh? “He must be there at the end of each universe. But because of this world, the universes are dying too soon. So we will unmoor our universe by killing this world.”
The Avengers team all look at him like they didn’t have this same exact idea! But now a bad guy is doing it, so they must stop it! Something like that. Terrax tells them all to go home and stop getting involved. For the greater good, just let this stupid Earth die. Sound fair?
“Or we could play warriors while the world crumbles around us… pretending like this is something you can defeat with your fists.”
Cry, man. I’m just gonna cry. Is that cool?
The Avengers like that second option better! They start pretending like this is something they can defeat with their fists. Terrax starts whacking them with his large glowing scythe.
Final Thoughts
These New Avengers are biting off way more than they can chew here. When it comes to traveling to other Earths to save colliding universes, I’d say you gotta draw the line somewhere and admit you have no control over any of this shit.
But hey, there are still two issues left of this storyline! And they still have five hours left! Miracles happen all the time! All you gotta do is click your heels and don’t look Namor too squarely in the eyes.
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