Last year featured one of the most fun
series of articles I've ever written. Not the most popular one mind
you but highly enjoyable form my point of view. I'm talking about the
multi-part review of The Crossing, one of the worst major comic book
events of all time. One so bad in fact that only a few years later it
inspired a whole mini-series designed to practically wipe it from
existence. Little did readers know at the time though that The
Crossing was essentially a pit-stop along the way to an even larger
serialized cash-grab known as the Onslaught Saga. What of the few
months between these two behemoths? Well that's what we're here to
talk about today in the first installment of our road to Onslaught.
In case no one remembers the
developments of The Crossing, very possible given those articles low
rankings, here's what went down. Tony Stark turned out to be a toady
for time-traveling villains. He killed a few people and eventually
sacrificed himself in a last ditch effort at redemption, leaving his
time-displaced teenage self to pick up the pieces. Another villain,
Madam Masque seemed to turn over a new lief and joined the Avengers
while Wasp was actually transformed into a bug-person because we all
remember how big kids were into the works of Cronenberg in the 90's,
right? In other books at the time Captain America returned from some
situation that caused people to think he was dead, Thor lost all his
godly powers, and west coast team, Force Works disbanded. Now we
should all be ready to dive in.
CAPTAIN AMERICA #499
Thing's kick off in rather fittingly
with Sharon Carter dangling a SHEILD bureaucrat out of a hellicarrier
window. Girl's pissed about being left high and dry while on some
mission. Not to mention somebody had the stones to lie about her
being dead. Cap pulls the poor office jockey back inside and the
couple is soon interrupted by Contessa.....who I guess was in charge
of SHEILD at the time. Really don't know who this lady is. When asked
about speaking to Nick Fury she reports that he's dead, for real this
time, and nobody comes back from the dead. This leads to one of my
favorite comic panels where Cap makes an expression that essentially
says “can you believe this bitch?” Classic.
The confrontation is soon ended and
with the couple back on the ground Cap tries his best to convince
Sharon to come over to his place (smart man) before he's cock blocked
by a force field surrounding all of Manhattan. If that weren't bad
enough everything electrical goes dead, prompting the star spangled
hero to start rescuing folks from crashing helicopters and such. He
eventually learns the city is overrun by a group called Zodiac who
have created a device which takes the energy from everything but
their own tech and crates the giant barrier. There's too many for the
old boy to take on by himself so he goes in search of Thor who he
finds shirtless, powerless, and living with a supervillainess,.
Terrific.
THOR #496
The Zodiac members who followed Cap
into this building last issue are soon part of one of the quickest
stand-offs I've ever witnessed as Enchantress, Thor's girl Friday at
the time lays them out with her automated rubber bullet machinegun.
She has her own generator in case you're fretting about how that
worked but it too is soon drained of energy. She coerces some info
from the thugs while the boys chat with Phillip...the landlord.
The boys know their target. They must
reach an abandoned subway stations ten blocks away where the Zodiac
are pouring into town through an inter-dimensional portal. Cue
another citywide tour of villains, daring fire rescues, stampeding
crowds, looters, you name it. Only a portion of the journey leaves
are heroes drained. Luckily they come across a group of militant
blind students who sneak them into the subway. I don't want to turn
this into a political blog but the Marvel universe could certainly
stand some tighter gun restrictions if people who lack sight are
wielding assault riffles in the streets of Manhattan. The issue ends
with our boys having no clue what to do about this dimensional portal
which is still sending horrible shit our way.
IRON MAN #326
Teenage Tony Stark is attempting to
get his life started with classes at Columbia. Within a few minutes
he's got a potential supporting cast with love a interest named Kris,
irritating jocks, and even a nerdy chap named...oh god, his name is
actually Chap. The cherry on this social sundae is the teacher of his
new science class, the girl he was dating when the Avengers pulled
him into the future. Ya think he'll get fair grades with an
instructor like that? T0ny tries to doge this lovely reunion and a
citywide power outage provides the perfect opportunity to avoid
emotional responsibility.
One major issue with the power drain
is Tony himself practically runs on batteries since his heart had to
be modified with Iron Man technology after his older self went all
Mortal Kombat on his vital organs. He goes in search of anything to
improve his situation when he comes across an odd pulse which leads
him through the basement of Columbia University strait into the
subway station where Captain American & Thor are battling
countless Zodiac soldiers. Speaking of Thor. At some point in the
battle he found the time to change from a shirtless beach bum to full
scale bondage queen.
Our boys escape with a Zodiac
teleportor and head to the Brooklyn Bridge to meet with teammates on
the other side when wouldn't ya know it, a morale dilemma pops up.
Tony can force the teleportor to open a hole in the force field for
thirty seconds. In that time they can either let other heroes in to
help battle the enemy or let civilians escape the carnage and quickly
dropping temperatures. Guess the field drags down the temp too. Oh
and did I mention this little strategy is going to be powered by
Stark's chestplate leaving him on the edge of death? Must be time for
another issue.
AVENGERS #396
Given the nature of this story you'd
be right in thinking the cliffhanger wasn't really an issue. The team
succeeds in both saving civilians and letting a few extra Avengers in
to lend a hand. Giant-Man even returns a little energy to Tony
ensuring his heart doesn't cave in like an overripe melon.
Meanwhile in the Grand Canyon. No I'm
not drunk, the story's really making a brief jump across the country,
Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye are trying to figure out what to do with
their Force Works careers officially over. They encounter their own
batch of homicidal madmen who shoot them out of the sky. If you're
looking for a resolution to this subplot you'll have to come back for
another entry cause these two are M.I.A. For the rest of this issue.
Back in New York the Avengers locate
Zodiac's hideout on an antiquated battleship of all things. Punching
naturally ensues as they're also introduced to the evil commander,
Libra who has control over his own molecular structure, allowing him
to make delicious puns about being “a master of destiny and
density.” Cute. While he works on his comedy routine and smacks
alien cat girls around, Giant-Man finds the force field device deep
within the ship and celebrates in the only acceptable fashion, by
sinking a national treasure. The bad guys turn tail. That's it.
That's what four issues of comics added up to in the mid-90's.
In all fairness this tale is actually
better written than just about anything found within The Crossing.
Even the Iron Man portions which are from the same writer benefit
greatly from the focus on the new Tony kickstarting his life rather
than old Tony bemoaning his very existence. It's kinda cynical to
make this heroes first adventure another crossover story instead of
letting him do his own thing. I get that it makes business sense to
try and get readers from other books to notice him but when it's just
a thinly veiled attempt at showing he can hang with the big boys,
dignity sorta gets tossed out the window.
That's all for today folks. I gotta go
pretend to be responsible now, or go downtown to play board games.
Eh, screw responsibility. See ya.
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