#which seems like a disadvantage but reapers struggle with their humanity so

[nonbinaryphantom]

ive been putting way too much lore into reaper au especially stuff like reaper biology/abilities and psuedo reaper abilities

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #105: In the Beginning Was... the WORLD WITHIN!

November, 1972

This is a fun cover. Maybe I’m just a sucker for covers featuring total pandemonium, just a big ol’ chaotic scrum. Or maybe because the frog guy looks super toyetic.

This time, tiny mascot Vision looks super judgy of himself though. Although possibly for a good reason because this is a very important issue of Avengers despite it being complete filler.

Last time: Quicksilver had a big shouting row with the Avengers over Scarlet Witch’s safety, went his own way, kidnapped a dude, ran into a wall and has gone missing.

This time: Scarlet Witch is angry at you, specifically.

But, nah. She’s angry at Iron Man and Hawkeye. They’re worried about her because apparently she has been constantly manning the monitor room in the ten days since Quicksilver disappeared. Hasn’t even slept.

And Hawkeye trying to sweet talk her into taking a nap just gets something thrown at his head. Because Hawkeye. He has constant disadvantage on Charisma rolls.

Also in the ten days since their Australian adventure, a bunch of Asgardians have been crashing at Avengers Mansion. But the Avengers are used to godly types crashing on their couch and eating all their grapes.

Also, also, Black Panther (the Leopard for a very short time prior) is here to visit. Its not so flattering that Daredevil was his first stop but whatever. At least he’s taking time off from his important kinging to come by.

And Scarlet Witch’s constant vigilance and probable burgeoning caffeine addiction pays off. She caught a Chilean newscast about strange men kidnapping scientists and hey maybe Quicksilver was kidnapped?? MAYBE THIS IS ABOUT HIM???

More contrived coincidences happen to the Avengers constantly so might as well check it out.

And this time, the Avengers get a guest star! Lady Sif, one of the Asgardian house crashers and Thor’s maybe girlfriend, decides to join the party.

So the Avengers blast off to Tierra del Fuego in their newest Quinjet. It looks significantly pinker when its landed so I guess its red color is just ridiculous air friction.

The Avengers speak to the university expedition that the scientists were kidnapped from and they point the heroes to a sealed up cave.

Hawkeye and Iron Man open up the cave (Hawkeye almost kills them all with a landslide) and they treck through the cave and geez. Okay so the bulk of this issue takes place in the Savage Land. The hidden tropical jungle hidden in Antarctica? But the cave was apparently in Chile (it also doesn’t seem to appreciably dip under sea level so who knows what’s going on).

The Avengers walk through the cave and reach the Savage Land in a matter of four panels. Its hard to calculate but that’s at least several hundred miles.

They are impressive speed walkers.

But it still takes long enough that the Avengers have a short conversation with Black Panther about his preferred codename these days. See, Stan Lee was not aware of the Black Panther party when he and Kirby created the character. At some point prior to this issue, the character was renamed Black Leopard. That did not last because neither the readers nor the creators liked the new name.

In-universe, T’Challa didn’t want his personal goals and heritage conflated with someone else’s political party. But he eventually decided that it was dumb. It’d be like Scarlet Witch changing her name because witches are typically thought of as ugly.

Anyway, yeah. After a brisk walk, the Avengers are in the Savage Land. And they are only in the Savage Land for one panel before they’re attacked by some of the people from the cover.

The Savage Landers appear to be mentally controlled by someone so the Avengers hold back on fighting them and the fight is over shortly. But it goes on long enough for Lady Sif to get kidnapped by a dude and need to be saved.

So Thor makes some lightning which scares off the swamp-men, for swamp-men they apparently be.

So the Avengers and special guests continue into the Antarctican jungle, Black Panther leading the way. Because he’s besties with Ka-Zar and Ka-Zar told him about the X-Men’s battle with the Beast-Brood from X-Men #62-63.

Hm. So first the Sentinels and now this. Are the Avengers just cleaning up after the X-Men’s loose ends now?

Case in point, the Avengers run into the ruins of the village Magneto had built when he created the Beast-Brood.

T’Challa exposits that when Magneto died (or appeared to die or whatever) the Beast-Brood regressed back into swamp-men where under Magneto they were more human-like.

He also finds Angel’s discarded costume and Wanda speculates on whether something happened to the X-Men, since the Sentinels didn’t know where to find them.

Oh but then the Beast-Brood shows up and T’Challa helpfully introduces them all.

And then Thor gets a boulder to the noggin.

Equilibrius, with his vertigo gaze, squares off against Iron Man. And Iron Man clearly wasn’t paying attention to T’Challa’s introductions because he stands right in front of the dude bantering. And so he falls right over.

After closing the eye and mouth holes, circulating fresh oxygen, and keeping his eyes closed, Iron Man struggles back to his feet declaring he’ll keep fighting to the death.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye goes after Brainchild, WHO HAS THE LOGIC OF A MACHINE BUT THE EMOTIONS OF A CHILD.

Brainchild scampers away and tricks Hawkeye into causing a rubble slide and trapping himself.

But proving that his second greatest skill is being abrasive, Hawkeye insults the dude until he has a tantrum and passes out. We’ll call that a draw.

Meanwhile, Lady Sif gets a round two with Barbarus, a kinda strong dude with four arms. This time, Barbarus is surprised by Lady Sif’s strength as she holds him still so Thor can KPOW! the guy right in the face.

Meanwhile, Iron Man busts out the Iron Skates again. In perhaps his most thrilling fight, Iron Man just skates around Equilibrius to stay out of his eyeshot and relying on centripetal force to keep him from falling over.

And then he fails and falls over again. But this time he uses the momentum to lurch towards Equilibrius and punch him in the face.

Scarlet Witch faces off against Gaza, THE GIANT WHO SEES WITH HIS BRAIN. Wanda asks him why he’s bothering to fight when his allies have been getting spanked but Gaza just likes to win.

So he grabs her. That’s a bad touch so Scarlet Witch uses her hex power which somehow lets Gaza SEE WITH HIS EYES.

And suddenly seeing light and color is sufficiently distracting that Black Panther is able to sneak up on Gaza and SPOOM! him out.

Tragically? Wanda reports that giving Gaza sight was only a temporary effect.

Also, Vision tries to complain that T’Challa should have let him knock out the giant. Maybe he called dibs or maybe he felt he was owed because Gaza was menacing the woman he loves but won’t admit he loves.

But he doesn’t get the chance because Amphibius starts bounding around and kicking Vision in the face, trying to batter him unconscious. He expounds that he refuses to lose because it might mean regressing into a savage again.

Vision gets tired of the fight and goes intangible, allowing Amphibius to slam into the wall at full speed, knocking him out.

He does sympathize with Amphibius’ desire for humanity but not enough to allow him to defeat the Avengers.

And since it seems that all the enemies have been defeated, Black Panther and Iron Man go to free Hawkeye from where he’s pinned.

Unseen, Equilibrius skulks off. He wonders what the Beast-Brood’s regained humanity says about Magneto’s status. They regressed when Magneto died but now they’re restored.

Either way, its time to resort to desperate measures.

He summons Lorelei, whose siren song bewitches any man who faces her.

And her Ooooooooooooooooooooo song does seem to have put goofy dumb expressions on the male Avengers’ faces. At least those with visible faces.

With the men taken care of, Equilibrius can use his vertigo vision to take care of the two women. See, Avengers? This is why you need more women on the team. One of many reasons.

But Vision walks forward and intangibles his fist through Equilibrius and Lorelei, knocking them out.

And then he just keeps walking. Scarlet Witch chases after him asking why he’s acting so weird. Why he won’t say anything, won’t answer her.

And he finally turns around and answers. The fact that Lorelei’s song didn’t affect him proves that although he was built to look like a man, he cannot be affected by LOVE!

Or at least kinda-rapey mind control powers.

But he’s conflating them so he’s feeling some intense robo-angst right now.

So the Avengers rescue the three scientists in a caption box. Seems the Beast-Brood wanted the scientists to evolve more swamp-men to increase their group. The captured Beast-Brood were delivered to the Chilean authorities because the Savage Land doesn’t have a no-extradition anything. And neither hide nor hair is found of Quicksilver so this was naught but a red herring.

The Avengers return home to the Mansion. Jarvis is waiting for them because he taped a news story that might be interest to Wanda.

A man walking down Avenue C disappeared in full view of over twenty people. And again its vague enough that Wanda must check it out hoping that this is the one that will return her brother to her.

In the time it took her to watch the tape, Thor and Lady Sif have vanished to deal with stuff from the Thor book. And Cap is gone somewhere. So Wanda asks all the on-call Avengers and Black Panther to help her track down this new clue.

But Vision isn’t paying attention. He just sits brooding, ignoring Scarlet Witch as she begs him to pay attention.

Until she and the rest of the Avengers (Hawkeye, Iron Man, and Black Panther) just leave him to his brood. The Avengers have work to do.

The issue closes off on Vision slouched into an armchair, staring silently at the amulet Grim Reaper gave him.

And the next issue promises “A Traitor in Our Midst!” so the intended take away is that Vision is at last tempted by Grim Reaper’s offer. If his robot body cannot feel love or non-consensual terrible mind control, he could move his mind into the Wonder Man body which could feel the feelings he feels he should feel for Wanda.

Will Vision do it? Will he betray the Avengers to become a real boy? Probably not but lets see how this plays out.

So #105 was largely a filler issue with some leftover X-Men chumps that the Avengers pretty handily deal with. But its a largely filler issue that sets up something very important for the upcoming issues. And also the time that Vision got super moody over not being mind controlled. So a very important issue.