#macrobot

[legotoys-blog1]

Ăn Kiêng Mác Crô Bi-ốt: Có Phù Hợp Với Người Tập Gym Không? Hướng Dẫn Nhanh Chóng! #Macrobot #Gym #TapGym #AnKieng #SucKhoe #CachAnUong

Ăn Kiêng Mác Crô Bi-ốt: Có Phù Hợp Với Người Tập Gym Không? Hướng Dẫn Nhanh Chóng! #Macrobot #Gym #TapGym #AnKieng #SucKhoe #CachAnUong Thực đơn ăn kiêng Mác Crô Bi-ốt, với triết lý cân bằng Yin và Yang, đang ngày càng được nhiều người biết đến. Nhưng liệu nó có thực sự phù hợp với những người thường xuyên tập luyện thể thao, đặc biệt là những người đam mê gym? Bài viết này sẽ cung cấp cho bạn…

[the-firebird69]

Madonna - Frozen (Official Video) [HD]

They see him in the movie The Terminator but I don't think so they would have to paste it in. And make it into the movie it was close no I had a problem and I had to run and there are witnesses and it was macrobots.

Zues Hera

we see out of there we ck need it now

bja

we see it ran .me too yeh but ok. no did

trump fast and they are feaster hell way faster but you can outrun them in a short run yes

faast ok wow

mac daddy

Olympus

[pixelbt]

Hello everyone! I say "hi" with my mini-Baymax! Have a good day! #cutestuff #cutedoll #baymax #bighero6 #bigherosix #hiroyamada #takashiyamada #sanfransokyo #robot #android #whiterobot #medic #doctor #bighero #anime #manga #pixar #microbot #macrobot #bigrobot #bay #max #hiro #takashi #carstuff #cutie #littlerobot https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsohtosh8Tv/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=142pzwmtxmfzq

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #129: Bid Tomorrow Goodbye!

November, 1974

KANG GROWS GIGANTIC! VISION SHOOTS HIS NIPPLE WITH HIS HERETOFORE UNKNOWN HAND ZAP POWERS WHILE IRON MAN VEERS AWAY IN DISGUST FROM KANG’S ARMPIT!

Or maybe its just symbolic.

So last time: Well Scarlet Witch beat Necrodamus and there was a lot of relationship drama but the relevant information is that a star appeared above Avengers Mansion and then Kang showed up, ready and raring to be the worst.

He is at least kind enough to do a title drop in his little introductory spiel.

Thor wastes no time and just starts attacking Kang although Kang just turns it around into self-gratification saying that until this time the Avengers have always refrained from attacking until he attacked first.

Hey, idiot. That’s because you tend to sneak attack them.

Anyway, this time Kang has the MACROBOTS at his disposal. The finest in 41st century science win buttons.

The Avengers, of course, assemble but soon discover that the Macrobots reflect force back at their attackers. Even the bullshit force of Vision doing his hand job dealie or Scarlet Witch sending a hex bolt to affect the brick work behind a Macrobot counts.

The Macrobots truly are the finest in ‘the villain needs an immediate win for the story to work so here’s some weirdly undefeatable thing he won’t just use all the time.’ And no sooner can you say ‘ineffectual heroes’ the heroes are all knocked unconscious.

For good measure, Kang even paralyzes Jarvis so he can’t come to the Avengers’ rescue.

And having beaten up the Avengers through the proxy of overpowered Macrobots, Kang feels sad that he has never met men as ruthless as himself who will provide him the savage struggle he craves.

So the only thing for it is to start World War III and then rule over the few who survive on the nuclear-scarred planet.

Also now that the Avengers are unconscious, Kang decides its a great moment to exposit about the dawn star of not Bethlehem. He had read about it in the few records that survive to his crapsack future empire and knew it was coming. He only didn’t know when.

Its the reason he’s always bumming around the 20th century, swearsies. And on a previous time he got his ass handed to him by the Avengers, he hid a temporal monitor to alert him if the dawn star showed up.

Because the Dawn Star signifies the completeness of the Celestial Madonna, whatever that means.

And the records say that her mate will be the most powerful man on Earth and she’ll give birth to a god baby.

And Kang is the exact amount of petty and insecure that he hears about a woman who has an important husband and immediately tries to insert himself into the narrative.

I have to say, he got over Ravonna fairly quickly. Or not. Time travel.

Here’s the problem. The star appeared about Avengers Mansion. That would normally be a good thing because the Avengers can’t bear to have more than one woman in their clubhouse at a time. Their hormones start to sync up and their menstruation attracts bears. Its just a hassle.

But this time, the Avengers have three women living in the mansion. So one of these three women have to be the Celestial Madonna but there’s no way to be sure which one.

Its equal odds that its any of the three. Scarlet Witch, Mantis, or the woman who is clearly far beyond menopause. Yup. Any one of these three women could be the Celestial Madonna that lays the golden baby.

If only there was a way to rule out any of them. Alas.

While Kang waits for the Celestial Madonna’s identity to be revealed, he’s just going to go conquer the planet. Its something to do to fill the time.

And he teleports the Avengers away. Well. Except for Swordsman.

Kang: “You, Swordsman? You are a weakling and a blunderer -- while my plans call for powerful male Avengers! Thus, I plan nothing for you but a scornful farewell!”

Dick move, Kang. The least you could do is to kidnap him to make him feel like he’s just as valid as everyone else.

And since spite is the purest motivator, Swordsman decides he’s going to show Kang what he can do.

Except he doesn’t know where to start. And there’s so much going on in his life right now he’s having trouble even concentrating.

Thankfully, Agatha Harkness appears as a giant angry face in the sky to drop some key plot details on Swordsman. Based on the hieroglyphics she can see from the tube she’s imprisoned in, she recognizes that the Avengers are being held in the pyramid of the Pharaoh Rama-Tut.

She also adds that hey no duh she’s not the Celestial Madonna because Agatha Harkness isn’t an idiot. “Yet my Wanda and your Mantis may suffer at this savage’s hands!”

‘I’ve known her for five minutes but I love her and she’s mine.’ Weirdly possessiveness aside, Agatha was always a better parent figure to Wanda than Magnto. Sometimes the blood of the magic teacher covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. Because of all the platelets.

Swordsman hurriedly checks to see if Jarvis is alright before running to take a Quinjet to Egypt. All the while brooding on his relationship with Mantis. Guy has it bad.

Like ‘spends the entire flight to Egypt lost in his thoughts and doesn’t even notice the time going by’ bad.

And because he just flew into Egyptian airspace without so much as a ‘sup’ the Egyptian air force shows up and shoots him down.

Even the narration is getting on his case by this point, asking “Why is it, do you suppose, that some men are literally born to lose?”

After he crashes, Agatha contacts the Swordsman again but the message is cut off as she screams in pain. Kang noticed that the Swordsman crashed right outside the pyramid and he could never have found it without assistance.

And Agatha had been too serene since waking up. Therefore, pain laser.

But with that taken care of, Kang decides to exposit again. This time to the Avengers as they are being treated with a paralyray.

See, he was born in the 31st century but since it was a time of peace and progress, Kang got bored and stole a time machine that he decided to remodel into a sweet flying Sphinx.

He traveled to ancient Egypt and just mighty whitied all over them to become their pharaoh. Seriously: “I rebuilt the device in the form of a Sphinx -- and traveled to Ancient Egypt, where my inexplicable appearance stunned the natives into cowed submission, just as I planned.”

Kang is the worst.

After the Fantastic Four kicked his ass, he decided to return to his own time but because he was using a time machine that did not look like a Sphinx, it goofed up and deposited him into the 41st century instead.

A DARK AND GRITTY TIME where people are sci-fi barbarians, fighting for long-forgotten causes with weapons they no longer comprehend. And then Kang threw his imperialistic weight around until he was the boss.

But he got bored of that too so decided to pick fights with superheroes. And then they kicked his ass. Multiple times.

Mantis and Scarlet Witch challenge Kang, saying if he wants a fight they’ll kick his ass. He responds that once he figures out which one of them is the Celestial Madonna, the other two won’t survive long (MEANING HE STILL THINKS AGATHA HARKNESS IS A VIABLE CANDIDATE).

He also speculates that maybe a closer examination (don’t be skeevy, Kang) will provide a clue.

Meanwhile, the Swordsman. It turns out that breaking into pyramids is one of his many skills.

Yup. Back when he was bumming around taking on any job, he robbed a pyramid or two.

I love that what Swordsman brings to the table is not just great sword skills, a swashbuckling attitude, and enough insecurity to make Hawkeye jealous. He also has a bunch of less than legit skills. He’s like the team rogue. But not the team Rogue. Only bad Avengers rosters have one of her, unfortunately.

And then he runs into a goddamn vampire.

Like an honest to god vampire. Its revealed in a couple pages that the vampire is Amenhotep, who Kang forced to drink the nectar of the undead. Perhaps to guard the pyramid or more likely for shits and giggles.

And Swordsman is in such a fragile emotional state right now that he just snaps and goes ‘okay vampires so then I guess I’m Conan the barbarian’ and is the happiest he has been in days.

“Ha! Die, by Crom!” He stabs the vampire through the skull.

I like that Swordsman is apparently a fan of Robert E. Howard. I mean, I figure he’s a bit of a closet dork for stuff like that and Errol Flynn. His desire to be a swashbuckler must come from somewhere.

Unfortunately, big, red, demonic vampires are apparently not perturbed by swords through the brain. As another scarlet vampire once said, “Humans are the only ones who need simple chemical thought centers such as brains.”

So Amenhotep is still trying to get at Swordsman’s throast. Until a platoon of Egyptian soldiers busts in to arrest Swordsman. Remember. Violating air space?

And the vampire makes a snap decision between one man or a platoon and he has gone 5,000 years without eating. So he abandons Swordsman and attacks the platoon.

And as Swordsman tries to stand up in a daze, he falls through a secret passage. And then he sees a spooky sarcophagus and runs down a tunnel, by chance finding Kang’s control center. But behind him, unseen, the sarcophagus begins to open.

We’re mixing a whole lot of genres right now.

Kang watches Amenhotep killing the platoon before foolishly straying out into the sunlight and dying. He hadn’t been watching during Swordsman’s encounter with the vampire so he just assumes the Avenger is dead, the first victim of Firebrand the Vampire.

Anyway, he has work to do. The paralyrays have finally completed their work. Kang has the three captive male Avengers placed in his Macrobots, to power them up further. The exposure to parlyrays means that the Avengers will be helpless to try to escape. Even Iron Man who recently upgraded his armor to avoid this exact situation by making it partially mind controlled. Dang.

And with Kang’s three souped up Macrobots, nothing will be able to stop them from starting WORLD WAR III!

No, not the one with farting aliens. The one with a time traveling guy who wants to force a woman to marry him because half of a record says she’s destined to give birth to an awesome baby.

Within hours, Kang will have struck down the world’s greatest leaders and the resulting chaos will inflame the world. Both in temperaments and also literally as the world will catch on fire from all the nukes.

From his peeping perch, Swordsman scowls and decides to put one sword blast in the back of Kang’s head. To save the world. And because Kang is a dick.

But suddenly someone grabs Swordsman and pulls him away from his shot at Kang and yells that he must not destroy Kang!

A suddenly someone who introduces himself as... RAMA-TUT!?

But if Kang is Rama-Tut and he’s in the next room then who is flying the plane??

... Dammit, time travel!

Stay tuned! As another time traveler once said, “This is where it gets complicated.”

Next time the Celestial Madonna Saga continues in Giant-Size Avengers #2.

[quasar1967]

Giant-Size Avengers #2

Aug 27th 1974

A Blast From The Past

The Avengers, hurtled through time at the hands of Kang! Earth’s Mightiest Heroes find themselves neck-deep in a rescue mission…in ancient Egypt! Will Thor, Iron Man, and Vision be saved from Kang’s Macrobots? A revelation about Mantis’ true identity tears the time stream in two. An Avenger falls in battle.

Prisoners Of The Pharaoh (reprint from Fantastic Four #19)

[lightscamerastripods]

Silverlit Macrobot is Child's First Step to Actual Robotics, with Remote Control (Included) 50 Programmable Actions. Free App for Extra Fun (Color May Vary)

[jenroses]

So I’m working on a Patreon page for my original stuff, and if anyone wants to kibitz my reward tiers, I’m definitely open to feedback.

Nanobot * $1 or more per month 

A good way to keep up with all public content, and I'll post to Patreon first.

Help increase the frequency of art!

Access to Patreon-based community!

Microbot (Early Access) * $3 or more per month

See new public material early. Some exclusive content!

Early access to my latest writing

Sneak peeks of upcoming work

Plus all previous rewards

Macrobot (Behind the Scenes) * $5 or more per month

Meta meta!

Exclusive chats, streams, blog posts 

Plus all previous rewards

When art and comics are being put into a printable form, this tier will have access to PDF versions

Probe * $10 or more per month

Dedicated monthly chat

Fractal History Q&A Day (Ask me a question about plot adjacent near future history or far future history, and I'll dive as deep as I can in about a 250 words, if the question is answerable.)

Plus all previous rewards

Alphabot Access * $20 or more per month

Comment-level access to some Google docs in process. Spoilers abound, and this reward will be eliminated if text is copied out of the document and shared by any method. No guarantee is made that text in an active doc will remain stable.

Plus all previous rewards

Droid (Deep Focus) * $100 or more per month

Private chat, prompt fill, writing critique, and/or advice session, up to 1 hour total, text only (not art.) 'Lon related or not. See web page for limitations. Repeats monthly after payments are processed.

Plus all previous rewards

AMA (Artist Sponsor) * $500 or more per month

Suggest several artists who take commissions, and I will commission one of them for at least $300 worth of artwork for every month your payment processes.

Plus all previous rewards

Goals: $500:  Hire artists to illustrate existing chapters. (There will be pretty much as much art as I can afford. I have years worth of storylines roughed out.)

$1000:  Increase the frequency of art-based installments (1/3 of net will be earmarked for art. There will be pretty much as much art as I can afford. I have years worth of storylines roughed out.)

$5000: Hire dedicated artist (Half of net will be earmarked for art and other professional services including database management, proofreading.) Improve the website.

$10000: Hire a personal assistant. Publish at least 1 comic book's or short story worth per cycle. Support the fan community with a dedicated chat server, forums, and a formal submission chain for fanworks.

$100000: Fund science scholarships for neurodivergent people, people of color, and LGBTQIA youth to explore technologies theorized in the series. Explore other media (animation, live action film.)

[gojohnetta]

Mr. MacRobot Presents: http://bit.ly/2VoX2FP

[tradingprotools-blog]

[GET] Smoothies for Holistic Wellness and Weight Loss: 50+ Amazing Smoothie Recipes Inspired by the Alkaline, Paleo, etc

http://www.tradingprotoolsnews.com/2018/02/11/get-smoothies-for-holistic-wellness-and-weight-loss-50-amazing-smoothie-recipes-inspired-by-the-alkaline-paleo-etc/

Smoothies for Holistic Wellness and Weight Loss: 50+ Amazing Smoothie Recipes Inspired by the Alkaline, Paleo, Macrobiotic, and Mediterranean Diets (Smoothie Recipes: Paleo, Alkaline, Macrobotic) ARE YOU READY TO ENERGIZE YOUR BODY AND MIND TO LOOK AND FEEL AMAZING? ***Over 50+ Recipes Included*** Imagine feeling like you are 15 again. Imagine a life without aches, pains, excess weight, and stiffness. Imagine feeling light, happy, and energized. Imagine more energy and personal success in all areas of your life Have you ever seen a wild animal with gout, arthritis, or obesity? Nope, neither have I. So is it really normal for animals and humans to suffer from: Gout Infections Osteoporosis Diabetes Cancer Heart Disease Or are our lifestyles and food choices to blame? Choices. Hm. Powerful word. What choices have you made about your health? Do you bounce out of bed in the mornings, or do you continue pressing the snooze button for just a few more moments of sleep? Are you able to get through the day without feeling fatigued? Do you suffer from any ailments? Disease? Cant lose weight even though you count calories and follow the latest dieting fad? Heres the good news: you dont have to continue suffering. But You have to make the right choice now. The solution is just in front of you. That is what this book is all about. Holistic, natural smoothies are a great health tool to help you nourish your body to achieve your health goals so you can be the person you want to be. They are a great way to add more healthy, nutrient-rich foods into your diet that will help you eradicate: Illness Disease Excess Weight Perhaps you suffer from fatigue, aches and pains, and stiffness, or perhaps you would like to lose weight. Youve been to doctors and taken medication, but for the life of you, you just cant understand whats making you feel worse than you should be feeling. You have been told to get used to it. Swallow another pill. If thats the case, you have the power to change it. "Smoothies for Holistic Wellness and Weight Loss" will provide you with holistic, natural tools so that you can finally energize your body and mind the way you deserve Additional HEALTH AND WELLNESS benefits of "Smoothies for Holistic Wellness and Weight Loss" : You will lose weight naturally You will get started on something incredibly healthy You will make your diet more exciting and fun You will wake up your body and mind with some highly energizing nutrients You can have the answers youve been searching for. Right now. Take meaningful and purposeful action today. Energize your body and mind like you deserve!

[rightquestionsrighttime]

Smoothies for Holistic Wellness and Weight Loss: 50+ Amazing Smoothie Recipes Inspired by the Alkaline, Paleo, Macrobiotic, and Mediterranean Diets (Smoothie Recipes: Paleo, Alkaline, Macrobotic)

Smoothies for Holistic Wellness and Weight Loss: 50+ Amazing Smoothie Recipes Inspired by the Alkaline, Paleo, Macrobiotic, and Mediterranean Diets (Smoothie Recipes: Paleo, Alkaline, Macrobotic)

buy now $12.25 [ad_1] UNLIMITED ENERGY AND VIBRANT HEALTH ARE WAITING FOR YOU!!!I WANT YOU TO BE BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS IT’S NOT ONLY ABOUT “FEELING GOOD”, OR “FEELING OK”, IT’S ABOUT FEELING AMAZING IN A HOLISTIC WAY!  If you feel like you lack energy and can’t focus, it’s time to get hooked on smoothies and feed your body and mind. Yes! Smoothies for HOLISTIC WELLNESS AND UNSTOPPABLE ENERGY …

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #133: Yesterday and Beyond...

March, 1975

This cover is a filthy, filthy lie. The hooded man does reveal his identity this issue but the Avengers are otherwise occupied and aren’t around for it. And the person he reveals his identity to already knows who he is.

We really start with Wanda’s magic training. Y’know, the thing that has kept her away from the team while they’ve been punching dead people?

She’s come pretty far.

She manages to Sorcerer’s Apprentice a chair to life, although it tires her way out. Using her mutant power to magic is exhausting. And since she was exhausted, she turned her attention from the man chair and it tries to kill her.

But Agatha Harkness is a good teacher and re-chaired the chair to protect Wanda. And gives her the important life lesson: “When one summons forth forces from beyond, one must never relinquish control, my dear.”

But she is pleased with Wanda’s progress.

Wanda only wishes that the Avengers would return from Vietnam so she could show them how far she’s come.

Agatha just darkly remarks that the Avengers are not in Vietnam. OR ON EARTH!

Wanda, maybe: ‘If those jerks went to space without me...’

But, no. The Avengers are in Limbo with the third tier evolution of Kang, Immortus.

Immortus explains that yes, he was totally humoring Kang about his sudden but inevitable betrayal. Getting angry about being a tube boy, pretending to want to team up to take out the Avengers. All of it was a cunning ruse to teach Kang the dominance of destiny by letting him make an ass out of himself, apparently.

And in exchange for using the Avengers in that scheme, he offers to show the hidden pasts of Mantis and Vision.

Except Vision has to go alone. Because his past is too recent and may affect the present if anyone but Vision knows it. APPARENTLY.

It sounds fake but its really so that Vision is alone for when he runs into mishaps in the next issue.

So Immortus hands Vision a synchro-staff which will guide and narrate Vision’s journey into the past.

Also, it later turns out that the synchro-staffs are Space Phantoms in disguise. Everything is Space Phantoms. Your lamp is a Space Phantom. Your dog is a Space Phantom. Your parents are Space Phantoms. That sudden feeling of existential paranoia you get when you realize that with shapeshifters like Skrulls and the Space Phantoms, anything and anyone could be imposters and you can never know for sure that what you know is real is a Space Phantom.

Why Immortus had a couple dumb aliens disguise themselves as glitzy sticks is known only to Immortus and Kurt Busiek. Its probably so that the sticks could lie to Vision and/or Mantis so that troublesome background elements could be retconned.

Although you could always just say the sticks lied so there’s still that matter of why the sticks had to be Space Phantoms specifically, Immortus?

Anyway, voop. Vision is in the past.

Now for the rest of everyone. They’re all going to Mantis’ backstory. Her past doesn’t get to be private. She’s going to have Hawkeye, Thor, and Iron Man watching and peanut gallerying her origin story.

Oh and Hawkeye makes a comment very much in line with Hawkeye’s tendencies towards sexual harassment.

Meanwhile elsewhere IN SPACE, Moondragon. The priestess of Titan and a character from the Captain Marvel book. She once was spanked by Ben Grimm and once fixed Daredevil’s eyes. She once turned into a dragon and was ridden through space by her girlfriend.

These are all far off things or irrelevant.

What is relevant is that she has picked up the Avengers’ signal calling for Captain Marvel and since he hasn’t answered, she feels compelled to. So off she goes to Avengers Mansion, to obey the inscrutable exhortations of her soul.

But that’s for later. For now its:

THE ORIGIN OF THE VISION

Firmly grasping an alien shaped like a scepter, Vision flies through time musing and contemplating and recapping.

He remembers the Sentinel back in #102 identifying him as three decades vintage.

Three decades and change would put that back to 1939, when the robot Human Torch first appeared.

And the alien disguised as a stick clarifies that it was November 1939. And then introduces itself. Except as a staff. Leaves out the part about being an alien because that hasn’t been invented yet.

Basically tells Visions that it will summarize events for his greater ease of understanding as they zip past them.

So 1939. We see Professor Phineas T. Horton introducing his synthetic man. As seen in Marvel Comics #1. Except there’s one tiny eensy little design flaw.

The dang thing bursts into flames if exposed to oxygen.

The gentlemen of the press overreact, demanding Horton destroy his creation before “some madman can grasp its principles and hurl it against our civilization!”

Horton refuses so the gentlemen of the press create an outcry that forces Horton to bury the project.

Literally bury it.

Put the air-tight tube in a steel container and then dunk that container in fast-drying cement.

There to stay until further experimentation finds a way to correct the flaw of having oxygen reactive skin. Or a way to control the synthetic man and make him do Horton’s bidding and make him a fortune.

Professor Phineas T. Horton is actually very concerned about money. He’s not in this solely for the discovery or prestige. He wants to make bank.

Unfortunately, he went a little cheap on the materials for burying the Human Torch forever. The alleged air-tight tube developed a small leak and after a few days enough air leaked in that the Human Torch ignited. And exploded.

The Human-shaped Torch was set free and freely did he fly around New York, accidentally spreading terror because he is a flying man on fire going around and melting things.

He came to realize that he was different from other people. For one thing, nobody else was on fire. And decided that he didn’t deserve the name “Human.��� So unable to control himself, he flew into a swimming pool. But the pool belonged to a rackets boss named Sardo who trapped the Torch under the winter glass cover.

And there we get the meme. “You fucked up a perfectly good robot is what you did. It has anxiety.”

Because so perfectly did the Human Torch replicate a human being, he could even develop claustrophobia. And did. Because of being buried underground and because of being trapped in the pool.

And this latent claustrophobia is what caused Vision to panic with Dormammu’s quicksand, Taurus’ pool, and Kang’s Macrobots.

So that’s that explained. FOR NOW.

In the present Vietnam, the hooded man is still meeting with Swordsman’s force ghost. Swordghost tells hooded man to chillax a little. Everything is going according to plan. Moondragon is coming and Mantis is beginning her instruction in the history of the universe.

But despite all hooded man’s training with the Priests of Pama, he has to fret. The plan is so intricate with so many different points. If even one little thing goes wrong... and even if Swordghost says nothing will go wrong, Mantis is hooded man’s daughter!

Yeah. Hooded man is secretly Libra.

AND NOW THE ORIGIN OF MANTIS.

And here a cheeky narration box says that this was why Avengers #123 was titled “An Origin for Mantis.” Like I said at the time, it had ambiguity about it.

The party of Thor, Mantis, Iron Man, and Haweye fly through time. Except Thor is leading this time voyage and holding the Synchro-Staff despite this being about Mantis’ backstory because: “Mantis may yet be overcome by her empathic nature during this voyage, and she cannot be entrusted with my care.”

Fuck you, talking stick that is secretly an alien.

Annnnyway. Planet Hala. The Kree homeworld. And the first year of their recorded history. Because yes, Mantis’ backstory goes back this far. Or at least the context for understanding it does.

And the Kree were already a warlike people. Strong, brutal, quick to anger, and obligate carnivores. If you see a Kree eating a salad, it’s fake.

And their leader was Morag, the mightiest male who hunts the mightiest, most ferocious beasts for his eats.

Oh and Hala was inhabited by another intelligent race at this time too.

The Cotati. Psychic plant people evolved from algae. They can locomote, slowly, and can communicate telepathically.

And neither the Kree nor the Cotati have anything to do with each other.

Since the Kree can’t eat them and since the Cotati aren’t competitors for resources, the Kree consider the Cotati and also all plants as beneath their notice.

And the Cotati consider the Kree frenetic and unstable barbarians WHICH ISN’T REALLY WRONG.

But everything changes when imperialism happens.

A spaceship touches down on Hala, observed by both races and believed by both races to be harbinger of the end of the world. WHICH ISN’T REALLY WRONG.

And from the spaceship comes the Skrulls! In the future, the age old enemies of the Kree. In this flashback, some little green men from space. And these Skrulls are not the Skrulls we know.

I mean, they’re still arrogant jerks but they’re straightforward arrogant jerks. Emperor Dorrek I lays out exactly what their deal is.

In the past decade, the Skrulls have perfected interstellar travel and Skrull scouts have traveled around space only to discover that they’re the best in space. Nobody else they found even approached their level.

But not being warriors, the Skrulls have decided there’s another way to exploit all these space people. So Dorrek has been traveling planet to planet and offering a beneficial proposition (not sure its ‘mutually beneficial’ but it could reasonably be described as beneficial).

The Skrulls will provide knowledge and technology in exchange for the loyalty and resources of their vassal planets. Sounds easy enough.

Sounds a lot like the Shi’ar actually. They’re the most notable space empire for having a lot of vassal planets. Except they’re kind of assholes while the Skrulls would be mostly exploitative and condescending. So like less bad Shi’ar.

There is one caveat though. Having two intelligent races on a single planet could create confusion or dissension over who will be representing the planet to the Skrulls. So the Skrulls will set up a small test and settle who should represent the planet.

Seventeen Kree and seventeen Cotati will be taken to different uninhabited planetoids for a year with complete supplies. And when the Skrulls swing back to pick them up, they’ll judge what each group has done with their time. Easy peasy.

The Cotati immediately accept. They sense “arrogance but no deceit in the Skrulls” and plus they want to grow. Its a plant thing, probably.

The Kree are “too barbaric to allow themselves a luxury like trust” or maybe wise enough to know that you don’t immediately trust weird chinned aliens that come bearing situational gifts and not having psychic powers would prefer to take some time to think through their course of action.

So for the rest of the day, the Kree debate whether to take the Skrulls up on their offer or not. Declining would probably mean the Cotati would win by default but when Morag decides to agree to the offer its because “he has heard no way to gracefully decline.”

And buddy, I’ve been there. Social is hard.

So seventeen Kree and seventeen Cotati are taken aboard the Skrull’s mighty spaceship. The Cotati are taken a random planetoid and dumped off. They’re starting off on bad footing though. These seventeen Cotati have never been this far from the rest of their people before and suffer from the psychic isolation. Apparently they’re plunged into shock for days.

Hawkeye interrupts the story to comment that he was pretty sure that this whole thing was a Skrull trick. Speaking of tricks, someone, possibly Coloring Error, stole his pants while he was distracted by all this space history.

ANYway. Next the Kree are dropped off on a familiar looking planetoid called Earth’s Moon. Yup.

Of course, this took place a long, long time ago so life on Earth is still of the cellular variety.

The Skrulls set up an artificial atmosphere and left supplies and tools for the Kree. And then they leave the Kree for a year.

And the Kree haven’t been idle on a spaceship for the first time. During the journey, they’ve been making plans and as soon as the Skrulls leave, the Kree get to it.

They mind, they refine, they build. Its like Minecraft: Kree edition.

They apparently have near-perpetual daylight to work with. Which. I don’t know if that’s right. But whatever.

Each Kree works until he passes out, slumbers where he falls, and then gets back up to work again.

They stick to this routine for one full year (no party time for the Kree) and are finally able to look upon their completed project. A gargantuan gleaming blue city, a testament to Kree muscles and dedication and Skrull technology. A city with an artificial atmosphere on the Moon.

Yup. The Kree built the Blue Area that the Watcher squats in.

The Skrulls are extremely impressed. Its a nice city (Or it was when they first built it. Its a decaying ruin by the time the Fantastic Four find it) and they built it in a year with only seventeen people.

So the Skrulls gather up the Kree to transport them back to Hala. All through the journey back, the Kree envision long and glorious futures in the Skrull Empire for themselves. Which is a change in attitude from ‘we’re only doing this because we can’t think of the right way to say ‘thanks but no thanks to our first alien contact.’

But when Morag gets back home, he discovers that the rest of the Kree are all depressed and pissed off and nobody came out to welcome him home. Which: rude.

Nameless indistinguishable Kree guy tells Morag that the he wasted a year of his life. The Skrulls are more impressed with what the Cotati accomplished.

When the Cotati were left on their barren planetoid they reached out with their psychic plant powers and found ancient seeds and water beneath the planetoids surface. And they used these to create a, well, the comic doesn’t say this so I might as well. The Kree created the Blue Area of the Moon and the Cotati created a Green Area of Some Planetoid. A garden on an otherwise lifeless rock.

So Nameless Indistinguishable Kree Guy is sure that the Skrulls are going to pick the Cotati as the winners. And Morag is blown away that after struggling to build a city in only a year, a park is going to be judged more impressive.

Hell no. He worked too hard for the Kree to be left behind.

So the Kree pull out their ace in the hole to give themselves the edge in this contest. Which is that they are really, really good at murder.

Like, super good. Best at murder for lightyears.

So they head over under the cover of darkness and KILL THE COTATI!

And I don’t really approve or endorse using murder to win a contest to determine which race a silly group of green imperialists like best but.

I mean, you have to give them credit where its due. I wasn’t joking about the Kree being super good at murder.

Over one night, they manage to kill every Cotati. A species of plant people that occupied an entire half of the planet. And they manage this with nothing more than a pointy rock tied to a stick.

Its definitely an achievement.

Anyway, by morning the Kree greet the Skrulls and tell Emperor Dorrek that they went ahead and solved the dilemma of Hala’s reputation for him. No big.

Perhaps not surprisingly (since these are the relatively kinder and gentler Skrulls of untold ages ago) Dorrek does not take kindly to the news. He is, in fact, horrified.

Emperor Dorrek: “You -- did what? Fools! Did you believe this would gain you our favor? Skrulls may deal with barbarians, but we do not condone barbarism! Now, Hala shall be shut forever from our circle of favored worlds!”

Yup. He just up and perma-bans them.

Which might have come as a shaming moment for the Kree except they just killed half a world. A handful more won’t matter. And after being exposed to all the Skrull’s wonderful toys, they’re not going back to their former ignorance.

Hawkeye (Mr. Peanut Gallery apparently) calls Morag stark, raving crazy and the stick doesn’t disagree but does wonder if they would see any more sanity if they were perusing Earth’s history.

So the Kree rush the Skrull spaceship with their pointed sticks and murder all the Skrulls.

Because, again, these are the Skrulls of long ago. They are not the scheming warriors that endless war with the Kree made them. Instead, they’re pacifists. Of the ‘think fighting is beneath them’ type. So they all die without fighting back.

“So much for pacifism” announces Hawkeye. Because Hawkeye.

Mantis argues that pacifism doesn’t preclude self-defense and grieves that the Skrulls believed otherwise.

Although its weird that this is apparently the first time the Skrulls’ sales pitch was met with violence. They never went somewhere where someone tried to kill them? They had no contingency for that? Huh.

So now the Kree have the planet all to themselves and they have a pile of Skrull bodies (probably to eat) and a Skrull spaceship. And they’re going to reverse engineer that ship and go out into space and kill the rest of the Skrulls because then the Kree can be bosses of space.

And apparently the Skrulls back on their homeworld weren’t keeping great track of their emperor because they never knew what happened to that ship. Probably figured it fell into a negative space wedgie. So they were entirely unprepared when decades later, the Kree attacked them with an armada.

And thus began the Kree-Skrull War.

Again, don’t want to condone killing and eating aliens and stealing their stuff necessarily but to go from using spears to mastering spaceship construction in decades? That’s really impressive.

But its still a little unclear what this has to do with Mantis. And I love space history but we’re here to learn about what Mantis has to do with space history.

And that will come next issue as the stick tells them to prepare to journey onward for more story.

But geez. The Kree really are the biggest dicks in space, huh?

[knight-of-pain]

.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #130: The Reality Problem!

December, 1974

Not sure what this title means.

And I think “one of the greatest battle issues ever!!” is maybe overselling it a bit. But I appreciate that your own stories excite you, Steve Englehart.

Last time: Kang kidnapped Mantis, Scarlet Witch, Agatha Harkness because one of them was destined to be the Celestial Madonna (it was Mantis) and Thor, Iron Man, and the Vision to stuff into Macrobots to cause World War III. Swordsman, Hawkeye, and Pharaoh Rama-Tut freed the other Avengers but at the cost of Swordsman’s life and Rama-Tut and Kang disappeared into the time stream after slightly nudging a lever.

This time: A bunch of villains interrupt a perfectly good funeral.

But the splash page was a bit ahead of where the story actually starts. After thwarting Kang in China, the Avengers have returned to Avengers Mansion to catch up.

Hawkeye tells the Avengers (and Agatha Harkness who is sitting in on the meeting and distracting Wanda with her cat) that Captain America has become Nomad. They’re all just thrilled that Cap is getting back out there into the game of punching people in the face after he was so disillusioned post-Secret Empire.

Iron Man assumes that Hawkeye is going to be rejoining but Hawkeye is non-committal.

Then Mantis comes in and tells them that this is goodbye. She doesn’t feel she can remain with the Avengers after her actions dishonored them. She’s going to return to Vietnam and try to figure out her past. And she only asks she be allowed to take the Swordsman’s body to bury it in Vietnam.

As far as she knows, it is where he was the happiest.

It occurs to me that because of the nature of the biz, they are going to bury him without knowing his real name (Jacques Duquesne). Or his life outside the mask at all. It actually turns out that he had a daughter and although he never really raised her, apparently swording is genetic because she became a master of the blade too. But because Swordsman never told even Mantis anything outside the swashbuckling persona he wanted for himself, the Avengers don’t learn about her until 2014. And who knows how many years that is in sliding timescale time.

Just goes to show. If you’re a superhero with a secret identity, make arrangements. You could die during the next big event. Although it might later turn out that you weren’t dead or you may be resurrected so it could be hard to make any kind of arrangements you’ll be happy coming back to.

Anyway.

Thor says that they were holding off on burial arrangements because they were waiting to see what her wishes were. And says thee nay to goodbye. Obviously the Avengers are going to the funeral.

Mantis is shocked that the Avengers are sticking with her after the terrible way she acted but Thor says “thy chastened demeanor doth reflect a penitent soul.” I guess as long as you know you goofed up?

Scarlet Witch can’t go though. Agatha Harkness insists that she get back to her witchcraft studies. And although she doesn’t say anything out loud (because it would be in poor taste) she wishes Vision would stay with her because she still doesn’t trust Mantis around him.

Vision does initially decide to remain. But because he no longer trusts himself. He has frozen up in the middle of battle three times now: once against Dormammu, once against Zodiac, and now once against Kang. He doesn’t feel fit company for the Avengers.

But Iron Man and Thor talk him into coming. Its better that he be along where they can aid him if necessary than cooped up alone in the mansion, since Wanda is going to be sequestered.

ELSEWHERE, the Saigon Diamond Exchange. A probably-ex-GI has covered himself with razor blades and called himself the Slasher. I’m not sure how he feels about shipping but he’s slashing prices down to nothing!

... he’s stealing the diamonds.

And he means business. When a security guard tries to intervene, the Slasher back hands him across the face, causing several spurts of blood.

And then he runs off with the diamonds. And since nobody can block his way without getting cut, he escapes easily. THE PERFECT CRIME.

Hours later, the Avengers Quinjet over to the abandoned temple of the Priests of Pama.

Mantis chose this spot for the Swordsman’s burial. BUT ONLY BECAUSE IT FILLS HER WITH AN OVERWHELMING SENSE OF TRANQUILITY. Its not like she believes that she was raised here.

(I think there’s a somewhat darker reason she chose this location but we’ll get to that a moderate amount down the line)

And then the burial.

Hawkeye thinks something that I had been thinking. That Swordsman was basically a Hawkeye that never got the breaks. And with that realization, Hawkeye is sorry for giving him so much grief.

Mantis lets her feelings out in a chant of lament and then asks Thor to speak for Swordsman as a god, despite not knowing Swordsman’s chosen faith. But hey, if he was Norse, he definitely earned a place in Valhalla. Died in battle.

Thor: “All Father Odin, we who be immortal are ofttimes tempted to forget the meaning of mortality -- that life is but a temporary gift for most. A man cannot exist without the knowledge that he may forfeit that gift whenever he places himself in the path of peril... yet men do risk their lives, and sometimes lose them, for many and varied reasons... and the greatest of these... is love.”

And then they bury the Swordsman.

So he’s gone forever.

And then the Avengers hear a scream from outside the temple and go rushing into action. They’d have liked to mourn the Swordsman much longer but being an Avenger means running towards the screaming.

And they find Iron Man foes the Titanium Man and the Crimson Dynamo and Thor villain and Master of Evil the Radioactive Man chasing a man out of the jungle.

The man sees the Avengers and hopes they’ll save him but he doesn’t make it before Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man start blasting him.

But they’re not killing him. They say they are only teaching him a lesson. For this man, Sen Fa, struck his wife so hard that she died of it.

The Avengers run to intervene but Crimson Dynamo goes Red Light. This is their business, the business of the Titanic Three. And the Avengers have no authority here.

See, this is after the Vietnam War cease-fire but before the fall of Saigon. And in North Vietnam (which is where the temple is, I guess) the Titanic Three are the superheroes.

Radioactive Man recaps their origin. He was sent to America by his Chinese masters and then joined the Masters of Evil but he met defeat each time. Likewise, Titanium Man fought Iron Man several times for the Russians and always lost. His final mission was to persuade the exiled Crimson Dynamo to return to Russia. Instead, Titanium Man joined Crimson Dynamo as an independent agent. And hearing about it, Radioactive Man broke out of prison to join them.

The three allied themselves with the Viet Cong, the only popular front in Vietnam, because none of the superpowers could touch them without political complications. And together they became the TITANIC THREE!

Here, they are the LAW. And the Avengers are trespassers. So kindly gtfo.

Now this is a fascinating concept. I always like for non-America countries to have their own superheroes. Because you’d think that logically, the same amount of weird lab accidents, mutations, and inventing would happen outside America and create superheroes and villains.

Failing that, during the Cold War, a lot of comic villains were enemy agents sent by Russia or China to America to steal plans or sabotage or fight American superheroes or whatever. If they would just stay home, they could be the Russian Avengers. (The Russians do get a superhero team later which includes a guy who turns into a BEAR!)

But with the Titanic Three you get the added wrinkle that they’re all devoted communists but tired of how their homelands treated them so they all moved to Vietnam to be superheroes there. Still half-communistic but independentish from China and Russia.

And they may not act like the Avengers would view superheroes (clearly torturing a helpless captive) but on the other hand, they tracked an abuser and murderer through the jungle to bring him to justice. On some level, they do seem committed to the idea of being heroes. Maybe if only to put some tallies in the win column for a change.

I expect it only to last until someone wants to use one of the three as a villain of the month.

Anyway, Iron Man takes great exception to being told to leave. Titanium Man and Crimson Dynamo were responsible for the death of a woman he loved and the Viet Cong was responsible for him becoming Iron Man. So he is itching to pick a fight.

Thor holds him back.

Thor: “‘Tis their land now, and even as we may not follow Dr. Doom into his kingdom of Latveria -- so are we powerless here!”

Well, the Avengers did go into Latveria once, although they were lured into a trap so it probably doesn’t count.

Iron Man then attacks Thor to get him out of the way.

It goes about how you’d expect.

Thor is mostly embarrassed that Iron Man is making him settle this dispute so publicly. And in front of their villains, no less! Geez, Tony.

Anyway they agree to leave and head for Saigon to investigate Mantis’ past. Since Captain Marvel is Kree, they broadcast a worldwide signal for him or Rick Jones but they’re both busy in Captain Marvel’s own book so the Avengers go to do some legwork.

Mantis goes to a house she remembers living in when she was young but the inhabitants tell her the house was only built two years ago.

Leaving Mantis to realize she may be mistaken about her whole life and being.

Hawkeye asks whats the deal with Mantis anyway and Vision recaps all the Mantis highlights, which is handy for any readers just tuning in. Although because he’s a gentleman he doesn’t share that Mantis was aggressively flirting with him before Swordsman’s death.

Mantis leads the Avengers to other landmarks from her youth but nobody at those places remembers her. And her spirits sink lower and lower.

The tour just so happens to go by the Slasher’s hiding spot (oh yeah, he was set up in this issue, wasn’t he?) and he instantly assumes that they’re looking for him. Because he has an over-inflated sense of his own importance and a little bit of paranoia.

Initially, he plans to just lay low until his fence arrives so he can palm the jewels off on him. But then he happens to spot the Titanic Three walking around on another street.

Because they can just visit Saigon whenever they want because nobody can prove they’re with the Viet Cong and they probably beat up anyone that accuses them.

But that gives the Slasher an idea.

Meanwhile, some brief Mantis self-doubt. Her whole life as she knows it is probably a lie, implanted memories by the dead Kree priests. And she doesn’t see herself as any kind of Madonna, not after how she treated Swordsman and tried seducing a man already in a relationship. And if she is the Celestial Madonna, then who is her mate supposed to be?

And then this character moment is interrupted by an action scene.

The Titanic Three show up with the Slasher yelling about the Avengers abusing their privileges. And now that they’re not in North Vietnam, Thor has no problem throwing down.

Thor gets into it with Titanium Man who blasts Thor and then tries to hold him down, accusing him of bothering a Viet Cong sympathizer. Thor just hammers him.

Crimson Dynamo tackles Iron Man claiming that the armored Avenger only blames him for Janice Cord’s death to spare himself. And then Iron Man blasts him in the face.

Crimson Dynamo realizes that Iron Man is even stronger than last they fought and decides on a strategic retreat down an alley but a hooded figure swings from a rooftop and kicks him off his feet. Which Crimson Dynamo is kind of befuddled by. Dude knocked him on his ass with his bare feet.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye shoots Radioactive Man in the face with a FOOM! arrow because he’s bored of talking politics.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Mantis engages the Slasher. But she’s out of sorts what with Swordsman’s death and learning that her past is a lie. In a brief exchange, the Slasher gets the better of her, BOP!ing her across the face. Thankfully without using any of the many blades glued to him.

And then Vision steps in.

Slasher tries to tackle him but Vision just goes diamond-hard and Slasher bounces off. Some of his little blades even break off in the impact. It’s pretty great.

It’s stuff like this why Vision has one of my favorite power sets.

Anyway, Vision then uses Solar Beam which was Super Effective because it knocked Slasher’s diamond sack loose. The not-so-sharp sharp guy goes scrabbling for the diamonds.

But Titanium Man calls the fight to an end. See, the Slasher told the Titanic Three that the Avengers were harassing him with trumped up theft charges. But he really did have stolen jewels!

Plus, Thor says that the Avengers didn’t even know of the Slasher’s existence until his fight.

Titanium Man: “So! We have been duped! He is a thief -- and as such, he deserves no aid from any decent man!”

The Slasher: “Decent man? You? YOU’RE A COMMIE!”

Titanium Man: “Come, comrades. We need not listen to this filth. We have no further business here.”

The Slasher: “No! Come back! You can’t leave me -- to them!”

Thor: “This man did precipitate battle most foul between two bands of super-beings! To think that one such as he could do that.”

The Vision: “But isn’t that always the way, Thor? Whenever a war is fought, it is never the people who must fight it -- who have any reason to bring it about.”

You sure said a thing, the Vision. A thing that is probably relevant to the country you’re currently in. A thing about a Western guy causing a war in Vietnam after trying to rob the country.

Anyway, the issue felt kind of fillery. Like Englehart needed some Mantis exploring her past before what happens next issue but didn’t want an issue with just with that. So we get a little engineered conflict between the Avengers and the Titanic Three so the action buffs have something.

Still, it gave us the Titanic Three.

Oh. Also, back in the post for issue #126, I said I’d never find out why Klaw teamed up with Solarr. I was wrong. The letters page included in this issue has what I guess was the winning fan theory.

“While Klaw was in a Rudyarda prison, he requested for privileges to get American newspapers, seeking perhaps, an ally to free him. The permission granted, strangely, he read of Solarr’s battles with Cap. Solarr, a maniac with no scruples, who would murder without remorse, was the perfect ally. Calling a human contact on the outside, Klaw set up the freeing of Solarr. Solarr, grateful and anxious for another chance to kill and pick up a few thou, springs Klaw from the Rudyardan slammer, and the end result, AVENGERS #126!”

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Giant-Size Avengers #2: A Blast From the Past

November, 1974

But it seems that the Giant-Sized are Kang and Rama-Tut. The Avengers are pretty Normal-Size actually, except for Scarlet Witch who looks like she lost a couple feet.

So last time: a portentous star appeared above Avengers Mansion, indicating that one of Scarlet Witch, Mantis, or Agatha Harkness will marry the most powerful man on Earth and give birth to a god-baby. So obviously Kang kidnaps them and the rest of the Avengers for good measure. Except Swordsman. Fuck that guy.

Swordsman takes exception to that and the kidnapping of his maybe ex-girlfriend Mantis so flies to Egypt, pisses off the Egyptian airforce, fights a vampire, and meets a pharaoh. And weirdly, yes, this is all relevant to Kang.

This time: Hawkeye.

Yup. He’s the blast from the past, maybe.

The purple bowman is catching jewel thieves with tentacle arrows and just doing a decent job at a solo career.

And then the cop that comes to pick up the thieves tells him that Kang the Conqueror kidnapped all the Avengers and Hawkeye immediately rushes to Avengers Mansion to see what’s going on.

Also the Avengers were nice enough that they didn’t change the locks after Hawkeye left, even though he was a real douche about it.

Hawkeye eventually runs into Jarvis, who recaps the previous issue for Hawkeye and for people that didn’t pick up issue #129 before this one. They were published the same month.

Jarvis also tells Hawkeye about Swordsman’s recent travails. Like Mantis leaving him, how he keeps fucking up, and how he’s been so distraught lately. “It’s not a butler’s place to pry... but one notices things...”

And then Swordsman returns with Pharaoh Rama-Tut. And he’s actually glad to see Hawkeye. Swordsman is, I mean. They weren’t exactly glad to see each other during the Avengers/Defenders War but now, Swordsman is thrilled to see Hawkeye come to help in the hour of the Avengers’ need.

Hawkeye is not thrilled to see Rama-Tut though. See, he’s heard that Rama-Tut is what Kang called himself when he ruled Ancient Egypt.

‘Time travel, bro’ Rama-Tut basically says and then refuses to elaborate.

And Hawkeye just shrugs and goes along with it because he can tell that Swordsman needs this. He’s privately doubtful though - what can the two weakest Avengers (fucker actually says “the weakest two, next to the Wasp”) and some “old clown in a mushroom hat” do against a dude that took down the most powerful Avengers?

And that brings us to Kang, who is busy stuffing the most powerful Avengers inside the Macrobots.

And using the Avengers as batteries for the Macrobots, he’ll start World War III! But specifically, he’s going to have them kill the American Secretary of State (probably because supervillain Nixon recently killed himself) and the leaders of the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China. And during the resulting chaos, one well-placed neutron bomb and boom World War III.

And then Kang rules the glowing scraps of what was once a world and marries the Celestial Madonna. Everything is coming up Kang.

Scarlet Witch and Mantis both think that the Celestial Madonna has to be Scarlet Witch.

Scarlet Witch: “It must be me! Mantis is anything but a Madonna! The completeness he mentioned must be my turning to witchcraft!”

Mantis: “It must be Wanda! This one feels no vibrations -- no empathy with this concept! Good! Let her marry Kang -- and leave this one the Vision!”

Wow, you’re both horrible.

And weirdly, this is the first time you’ve agreed on a thing in a while.

So Kang drops Vision!Macrobot outside the United Nations. Inside the robot, the other robot is seized with a mysterious and impotent horror, much like has struck him twice before which made him think he was malfunctioning.

But as the Macrobot grabs someone who might but then again might not be the Secretary of State, Hawkeye, Swordsman, and Rama-Tut wearing a disguise that makes him look like a flasher teleport in.

Swordsman and Hawkeye engage the Macrobot while Pharaoh Flasher hangs back.

They don’t have the foggiest notion on how to defeat a Macrobot so they just kind of give it their best. Which involves running into smacking distance and getting smacked.

In fairness, a sword is a melee weapon. In unfairness, it was Hawkeye who led the charge.

Meanwhile, Kang watches, unimpressed. Hawkeye and Swordsman lack the power to stop him and whoever the third guy is, he’s not even doing anything. Wanda points out that it was obviously him who teleported them all but Kang still isn’t concerned.

And then we take a break so Rama-Tut can have some flashbacks. He reminisces on when he was Kang but for all his power, he never had the one thing he really wanted. His beloved Ravonna. Who still is stuck almost lifeless in suspended animation (because Kang fucked up that one time with the Grandmaster and tried to kill the Avengers instead of healing Ravonna).

As Kang neared sixty years old, he realized how empty his life was. Conquest was like a drug for him - stimulating for a time but when the high wore off he was alone.

So he decided to retire and return to Ancient Egypt, probably because they’re the only ones that actually liked him. He smashed his time machine and returned as pharaoh, to the joy of his subjects.

And he believed that this time, he ruled them well. Having gained compassion in his old age. At seventy, he finally felt fulfilled. It turns out that what he really needed to make something meaningful of his life was to become the god-king of Ancient Egypt. I think we can all learn something from that.

Back in the present, Rama-Tut finally contributes. He tells Hawkeye and Swordsman that this Macrobot is Vision-powered.

So Hawkeye goops up the Macrobot’s face so that no sunlight can get through. No sunlight and Vision will run out of power. Vision runs out of power, so will the Macrobot.

And the Macrobot lashing out in flailing fury helps use up all its stored power really quickly. And then it just keels over.

Kang does not react well.

Although that reminds me that this was published in the time period after Watergate. So is this like a meme?

Kang gets a hold of himself and has his time sphere jet off to the next battle.

On the ground, Rama-Tut opens the deactivated Macrobot to free the Vision.

Vision: “Freed of everything, in fact... except the terrible, enervating weakness... I feel in every synthetic fiber... of my being... No light reaching the jewel... no power coming in... my energy was draining... draining...”

The narration makes a note that both Hawkeye and Swordsman intensely dislike the Vision but the situation being what it is, they’re thrilled to have him join the party.

And then Rama-Tut teleports them off to Kang’s next target. While Swordsman thinks “Avengers Assemble!” to himself.

And then another Rama-Tut flashback break: Even though Kang, now Rama-Tut again, found happiness becoming pharaoh again, he regretted wasting his life in fruitless warfare. And what he regretted the most was the Celestial Madonna debacle. So he was going to do something about it.

But since he smashed his time machine to make a dramatic statement, he would need to think outside the box. He talked to his court wizard, Shamaz, and although he was incredulous, he helped Rama-Tut fake his own death and bury him in a pyramid in suspended animation.

Suspended animation that would only end when the Swordsman stumbled into the hidden crypt through a bunch of mishaps and accidents. Yes. Swordsman falling through the wall was Rama-Tut’s plan all along. How? He remembered from his past life as Kang.

In fact, that’s how he knows how to sabotage himself, remembering how he did it.

Of course, he had to stop Swordsman from killing Kang because then that would prevent Rama-Tut from ever having done any of this in the first place and time would probably break.

Although time in Marvel was quite a resilient thing. Until Beast broke it just to make a petty point to Cyclops.

And then Kang arrives at his second target. Or rather his third. He switched the order to throw off the Avengers’ mysterious ally.

The funny thing is that earlier Kang said that the only reason to worry would be if he had an equal and there is no such man. Ripe with dramatic irony considering the one helping the Avengers.

Anyway. Peking’s Forbidden City. Here, the Iron Man!Macrobot will kill the entire ruling clique of China.

But no sooner does the Macrobot appear then so do the Avengers.

Kang rants about how they’ll pay for interfering and how since Vision is still weak, he’ll die first.

And, hey, there’s probably time for Scarlet Witch and Mantis to be catty towards each other right now even though lives are on the line.

Scarlet Witch: “You rave on and on, Kang, but you don’t say much that turns out true!”

Mantis: “Bring harm to this one’s man at your own peril, rash one!”

Scarlet Witch: “Wha-at? Since when is the Vision your man, lady? Neither he nor I heard a thing about it! HE’S MINE!”

Mantis: “Oh, IS he? Must he suffer slavishly, then -- while you play your games of neglect and abuse? Is that what you expect of a man?”

Scarlet Witch: “Listen here! I’ve been going through a rough time -- discovering myself! The Vision understands!”

Mantis: “In this one’s land, a woman is taught to discover her man!”

Scarlet Witch: “So who are you -- Marco Polo? If you hadn’t been so intent on exploration, your first man wouldn’t be in the shape he’s in!”

Mantis: The swordsman is weak! He was not enough for me!”

Kang: “SILENCE! The only man in your lives now is me -- so cease this raucous prattle!”

Love triangles ruin everything, basically.

Meanwhile, despite knowing that it only worked the first time because of the Vision, Hawkeye tries to goop the second Macrobot’s face and gets swatted for his trouble.

Swordsman even calls it out as a very stupid move.

But then he gets blasted away when he tries to attack too and laments that he can’t ever do anything right.

With those two down, Vision decides to take a crack at it. His plan was to fly through the Macrobot and short out Iron Man. Then the Macrobot would be disabled without its battery. Its for the best it fails because doing so would have killed Iron Man. He needs his chest plate to liiiiiiiiive. But secret identity means that his teammates don’t know this. Tony, ya dumb.

It fails because the Macrobot has a force field around Iron Man.

Thankfully, Vision has another trick he’s been meaning to try. And it just so happens to be one that retroactively justifies his sartorial choices.

He intangible jams his cape into the Macrobots back. Since the cape is basically part of his own body, he can shift its density remotely. Despite this not making sense based on how we see his density shifting working when Ant-Man took a fantastic voyage inside of him.

But its cool so who cares.

Then by willing it to solidify the cape is suddenly occupying the same space at the same time as the Macrobot and it violently explodes.

But violently explodes in a way that leaves Iron Man untouched thanks to the force field. Hooray! Once again the day is saved by capes!

Iron Man is fine but drained. Armor is nearly dead from being used as a battery and he needs a charge.

In the time sphere, Kang is furious. He immediately sends the third Macrobot to fight the Avengers. And this Macrobot is strongest Macrobot because its Thor powered.

So WAM! Hawkeye and Swordsman get punched. KRAK! Vision and Rama-Tut get zapped!

And Iron Man gets grabbed and zapped by the power of Thor.

Oh. Wait. Didn’t I say he needed a charge? Because as it turns out, Iron Man has previously established he can use his armor heating up to generate power. And re-energized, he bursts from the Macrobot’s grip with a VROOM!

I do love sound effects.

And while Kang was distracted, Vision stealthily flew up to the time sphere and uses his SOLAR BEAM to bust open the girl tubes, freeing Scarlet Witch, Mantis, and the unconscious Agatha Harkness.

And Scarlet Witch and Mantis still manage to be catty. There’s probably a time and place and that time and place is not now and China.

Although, Wanda does some cool stuff so maybe her magic is powered by how pissed off at Mantis she is?

To start off with, she causes an eruption of molten lava from beneath the Macrobot’s feet.

Then everyone just dogpiles this dumb Thor-powered robot.

... I am weirdly more amused at the thought of jamming Thor into a robot to act as a big D-cell than I was with Vision and Iron Man. Huh.

Anyway, here’s a cool splash page.

And then Wanda does something really, really cool.

She casts Meteor to hit the Macrobot with a space rock. Doesn’t even die from it like some spellcasters I could mention.

And she doesn’t even kill Mantis, even though Mantis was sitting on the Macrobot’s head when the meteor struck. Now that’s impressive.

Although Mantis is not impressed. Or maybe she would have just appreciated a heads up first.

With the Macrobot stunned or something, Rama-Tut opens it up to free Thor.

Funny panel: Iron Man congratulates Thor on how well he seems to have weathered his ordeal and looking absolutely cheesed off Thor says “Oh, aye! As best as one canst be -- for one whose prison hath felt the might of the Avengers assembled, and a meteor besides!”

Rama-Tut confronts Kang and tells him to recognize his loss. So Kang shoots him in the face with a laser gun to expose the one who defied him.

Gasp! It was Rama-Tut all along!

Okay. We knew that. But Kang just about loses his damn mind.

And Rama-Tut remembers this very scene except from the other side. And then they punch each other a bunch while time also loses its damn mind.

And apparently a man punching himself from the future and rupturing time is what it took to awaken the Celestial Madonna. And unsurprisingly, the Celestial Madonna is the girl with the mysterious past who seems to have been trained for some enigmatic purpose, and not the woman who is over a hundred or the Scarlet Witch.

Man. Its not just time that’s losing its damn mind. The panel layout has gotten pretty free form too.

Oh also everyone watching is losing their damn minds too because they can suddenly perceive the fourth dimension.

Kang knocks Rama-Tut down and demands he explain how any of this. Because he’s basically been trapped in a predestination loop now. Even as he denies that he would ever come and sabotage himself, Rama-Tut insists that future events will inexorably lead Kang to thwart himself.

But, hey, fuck destiny. If Kang can’t have the Celestial Madonna, then nobody can. He’s going to shoot her with this gun and then she’ll be dead. Unspoken but if the Celestial Madonna’s destiny to have a god-baby and etc can be broken by shooting her it also means that Kang can thwart his own destiny.

Mantis points out that he literally can’t kill her. If she dies, Rama-Tut would not have come forward to do what he did. She tells him to put the gun away.

But Kang doesn’t like being told what to do so he fires anyway. But in the instant that he does, Swordsman shoves Mantis out of the way and takes the lethal lightning blast, leaving him a charred (but technically still living) husk.

Rama-Tut tackles Kang and rants that he knew this would happen but hoped against hope that he could change this one thing. And then by accident, design or maybe destiny, in their struggle, they hit a lever causing the time sphere to vanish with the two time lords (no, not that kind. Probably) inside.

And Mantis is realizing too late that she did love Swordsman and that she treated him badly.

To psychoanalyze a fictional character for a bit, I think it all came down to the uncertainty over her past. What was once so sure became in doubt as two conflicting version of her past emerged. And with such uncertainty in her life, she began drifting more toward the Vision who seemed like a stoic rock of solidity (although he’s really as emotionally messed up as anyone in the Avengers) and away from the Swordsman who she knew to be a bit of a mess.

And possibly also part of that, if what she though was her past was a lie, that meant everything in her life was a lie. And she took that out on Swordsman a bit.

Mantis begs Swordsman to hang in there, survive this. But he’s not as recuperative as she is. And he was charbroiled by a future gun.

Swordsman: “We are... only what we are, darling... I tried... to be worthy of you... of the Avengers... but like Kang... I was doomed from the beginning... I’m... a failure... I’m just... one of those people... who doesn’t... count.”

And then he dies.

And I feel a great sadness.

The first Avenger to die for reals. Depending on whether you count Wonder Man as an Avenger and he’s not really dead anyway.

I felt more could have been done with him, honestly. He wasn’t around for that long. And they didn’t really explore his relationship with the other Avengers much at all because his character beats kind of got swallowed up in this love triangle stuff.

There was a lot of potential in a character like the Swordsman. He was a reformed villain. He truly wanted to turn his life around from his many, many bad choices.

But he could never live up to the image he wanted to embody, encountered set back after set back, and in the end he died feeling like a failure of an Avenger, someone who doesn’t count. Even through this issue, he felt like shit because it felt like the only thing he accomplished was bringing in the people who could actually get shit done.

And since he died, he doesn’t even hear Iron Man and Vision eulogize him.

Iron Man: “Every Avenger counts, Swordsman. Every one.”

Vision: “Sleep well, Avenger. Rest... in peace.”

[tradingprotools-blog]

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