For most of the sixth year of his superhero career, Tony Stark is primarily focused on growing his business, which takes a significant step toward becoming a modern multinational corporation. No longer dependent on the life-support system in his armor, Tony faces no major health crises during the next twelve months. During the latter half of the year, he maintains a low-key, long-distance relationship with his girlfriend, Roxanne Gilbert. Happy and Pepper have worked out their marital problems and are no longer a source of personal drama. It is also an unusually quiet period in terms of super-villain activity, and so Iron Man functions mainly as a company mascot and a part-time Avenger. In fact, only two issues of Iron Man’s solo series cover this time in the hero’s life.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Now resuming… The True History of the Invincible Iron Man!
January–April 1967 – Tony Stark spends much of his time at Stark Industries’ headquarters on Long Island, directing the company’s efforts in the fields of consumer goods, pollution control, and especially aerospace research, such as ongoing development of the Quantum IX Manned Orbiting Laboratory and the beleaguered Star*Reach I space-shuttle program. In order to reframe the company’s image in the public consciousness, Tony decides to rename it Stark International, effective at the start of the new fiscal year on the 1st of July, and prepares a huge public-relations campaign. While the transition away from weapons manufacturing has been difficult, Tony is glad to know he can rely on his executive assistant, Virginia “Pepper” Hogan, and her husband, Harold “Happy” Hogan, currently serving as the head of the company’s security division—especially since both of them know of his secret double life as a superhero. During this period, Tony suits up as Iron Man only for routine appearances at company events and for the Avengers’ regularly scheduled meetings alongside Thor, Captain America, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Swordsman, and Mantis.
Tony is frustrated when the subversive organization Black Spectre continually gets away with carrying out offensive pranks and outrageous sabotage, such as inciting a race riot at the Statue of Liberty, installing a swastika atop the Washington Monument, draping Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in black shrouds, and carving Adolf Hitler’s face into Mount Rushmore. S.H.I.E.L.D., which assists the government with repairing all the damage, assures the Avengers that it’s doing all it can to stop Black Spectre.
May 1967 – The Avengers receive a message from Black Spectre claiming that they have an atomic bomb hidden somewhere under Manhattan, which they threaten to detonate if the Avengers interfere with their overthrow of the U.S. government. Soon after, the terrorist group invades Washington, D.C. and storms the White House, only to be defeated by Daredevil and the Black Widow. Iron Man is relieved when the bomb threat turns out to be a hoax.
June 1967 – At Avengers Mansion, Iron Man joins Thor, the Vision, the Falcon, and the team’s butler, Edwin Jarvis, in trying to talk the disillusioned Captain America out of abandoning his costumed identity. They are joined by Cap’s girlfriend, Sharon Carter, and her older sister Peggy Carter, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent-in-training. Iron Man insists that people with special advantages have a responsibility to serve the public good, but Cap argues that all his heroic deeds and charity work counted for little when the Secret Empire’s smear campaign turned the public against him. America has simply changed too much since World War II, Cap contends, and he is no longer capable of representing its conflicting agendas. Ultimately, Cap does decide to retire, leaving his costume and shield in a storage vault beneath the mansion. Though disappointed, Iron Man respects his teammate’s decision.
Iron Man is sitting down to dinner at Avengers Mansion with Thor, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Swordsman, and Mantis when the Inhumans Gorgon and Lockjaw suddenly materialize in the room. Gorgon is annoyed that the Avengers are not ready to leave for the Great Refuge to attend the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver, but this is the first the team has heard of it. Apparently, Quicksilver neglected to invite them, much to the Scarlet Witch’s chagrin. Nevertheless, she decides that they will attend in any case. Iron Man sets up a video link to the Inhumans’ royal palace so the Whizzer, who is convalescing at the mansion after his recent heart attack and has come to believe that Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are his children, will be able to watch the ceremony. The Avengers then fly around the world to the Himalayas in a Quinjet while Gorgon and Lockjaw teleport home. When they arrive, they are greeted by the rest of the royal family—Black Bolt, Medusa, Crystal, Karnak, and Triton—as well as Mister Fantastic, the Thing, the Human Torch, and Susan Richards. Mister Fantastic introduces the Avengers to Agatha Harkness, an elderly woman who helps take care of his two-year-old son, Franklin Richards, who lies in a coma. When Mantis asks about what appears to be a huge, grotesque statue in the center of the city, Medusa explains that it is actually a giant android called Omega, which Black Bolt’s brother, Maximus the Mad, created in order to weaponize the Inhumans’ prejudice against their servant class, the Alpha Primitives. After being deactivated, the android was left in a public square as a memorial. Triton insists that Black Bolt has instituted many reforms since that fateful day.
Several hours later, Iron Man joins the others for a royal banquet in a large stadium, from which Quicksilver is conspicuously absent. To cheer up Crystal and entertain the crowds, Iron Man, Thor, the Thing, the Human Torch, and Medusa put on an impromptu exhibition of their superhuman powers. However, Iron Man and Medusa fall under some form of mind control and attack the section of the stands where the Alpha Primitives are seated. The pair is quickly subdued and then lapses into unconsciousness. When he comes to, Iron Man finds that the Omega android’s body has been commandeered by Ultron-7, who is ranting about punishing the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the Inhumans for his past humiliations. Iron Man realizes that Ultron-7 has used Omega’s psychic abilities to incapacitate not only Medusa and himself but the Swordsman, Mantis, the Human Torch, Gorgon, Karnak, Triton, Maximus, and Quicksilver as well. Ultron-7 then turns those abilities against all his enemies, intent on destroying their minds. His scheme backfires, though, as his psychic energies inadvertently awaken Franklin Richards from his coma. The boy lashes out at the source of the attack with his mysterious mutant powers, obliterating Ultron-7’s computerized brain. Iron Man and the others then look on happily as the Richards family is at last reunited.
The next day, as heralds fly over the Great Refuge blowing their horns to summon the guests to the wedding ceremony, Iron Man realizes that neither he nor Thor are particularly eager to attend the festivities due to their own star-crossed love lives. The thunder god reminisces about his love affair with Jane Foster and complains of how circumstances always seem to be keeping him and his new paramour, the goddess Sif, apart. Iron Man admits ruefully that he lost his heart to Pepper Potts, who is now married to his best friend, and has been searching for someone to replace her ever since. Noting that not everyone can be as lucky as Quicksilver and Crystal, Iron Man suggests they head to the palace. The wedding proceeds with no further disturbances, and at the conclusion of the ceremony, Lockjaw teleports the newlyweds off to their honeymoon. A huge celebration follows, which Iron Man enjoys tremendously despite having a little too much to drink.
The Avengers then return to New York, arriving at the mansion shortly before midnight. The Fantastic Four stop by on their way home to say goodnight. However, a sudden storm forms overhead, unleashing a series of deadly lightning bolts that strike the roof. Thor immediately launches himself into the sky and tries to dispel the storm, without success. Iron Man is startled when Agatha Harkness reveals herself to be a powerful sorceress by dissipating the storm with a magical incantation. She then informs the Fantastic Four that she will no longer be serving as Franklin’s nanny, for the time has come for her to take on a new charge—the Scarlet Witch. The Avengers are shocked, but the Scarlet Witch admits that she has long wanted to study true witchcraft and accepts Agatha as her tutor. As the Fantastic Four depart and the Avengers enter the building, Thor, as current team chairman, authorizes Agatha to take up residence there. Iron Man and Thor are then distracted when the Swordsman becomes distraught after Mantis abruptly ends their romantic relationship. Before they can resolve the situation, the Avengers are drawn outside by a commotion in the street. They find an intensely bright light shining down on the mansion from what appears to be a new star in the sky. Suddenly, their old foe, Kang the Conqueror, materializes and announces that the star is a signal indicating that the 20th century is ripe for conquest.
Using 41st-century robots called “Macrobots,” Kang easily defeats Iron Man, Thor, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Swordsman, Mantis, and Agatha Harkness and takes them prisoner. The time-traveling despot then explains that the “newborn star” heralds the appearance of the legendary Celestial Madonna, who is to mate with the most powerful man in the world and produce a child who will conquer the universe. Kang is determined to be that man and to rule the heavens through the child. Due to strange disturbances in the timestream in the late 20th century, he was unable to determine the exact date the star would manifest itself, so he left a temporal monitor behind during his first incursion four and a half years ago. And although the historical records of the 20th century that have survived to Kang’s era are fragmentary at best, the positioning of the star above Avengers Mansion suggests that the Celestial Madonna is either the Scarlet Witch, Mantis, or Agatha Harkness. In order to solve that riddle, Kang teleports his prisoners to a laboratory hidden inside an ancient Egyptian pyramid, derisively leaving the Swordsman behind. He then conducts a battery of tests on the women while Iron Man, Thor, and the Vision struggle to escape the paralysis beam that renders them helpless. Fortunately, the Swordsman is able to pull himself together and mount a rescue mission, apparently led to the pyramid by Agatha’s telepathy. Kang dismisses the threat of the Swordsman, though, revealing that he designed the pyramid himself while ruling Egypt as the pharaoh Rama-Tut and left a vampire named Amenhotep behind to guard it. Upon entering, the Swordsman inadvertently releases the vampire, though it soon stumbles out into the sunlight and is disintegrated. Unconcerned, Kang seals Iron Man, Thor, and the Vision inside Macrobot exoskeletons, revealing his plan to send them out to kill key government personnel in the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China, after which a strategically placed neutron bomb will set off a global nuclear war. With that, Kang loads all his captives into his time-capsule and flies to the United Nations building in New York City.
With the time-capsule rendered invisible by a cloaking device, Kang dispatches the Macrobot containing the Vision, only to watch him be defeated by the Swordsman, who has been joined by Hawkeye and a mysterious stranger. Deciding to cut his losses, Kang pilots the time-capsule to Peking, China, where he sends out the Macrobot containing Iron Man. Again, his scheme is foiled by the Swordsman, Hawkeye, and their unknown companion, now joined by the Vision. Iron Man is set free but finds that his armor’s energy levels are dangerously low. Rather than go on to Moscow, Kang sends the Macrobot containing Thor out to recapture Iron Man and the Vision. As the cloaking device is deactivated, Vision is able to phase inside and free the Scarlet Witch, Mantis, and Agatha. The two younger women immediately join the battle, though they bicker constantly. The Avengers manage to immobilize the Macrobot long enough for the mystery man to open it up, releasing Thor, though the thunder god took quite a beating during the fight. The enigmatic stranger then confronts Kang, who reveals him to be his own future self, living once again as Pharaoh Rama-Tut. As the two men start fighting each other, a strange wave of hallucinatory images wash over the Avengers—dreamlike images of the past, present, and future. Suddenly, Kang realizes that Mantis is the Celestial Madonna and announces that if he can’t have her, no one will. He fires his ray gun at Mantis, but the Swordsman leaps in front of her and is mortally wounded. Rama-Tut tackles Kang, and as they struggle, they inadvertently activate the time-capsule, which dematerializes. The Avengers are shocked and horrified by this sudden turn of events. The Swordsman dies in Mantis’s arms, cursing himself as a failure. The sorrowful Avengers honor their fallen teammate, then take his body back to New York. When they arrive at the mansion, Jarvis informs them that the Whizzer has moved on, showing them a morose farewell note he left behind. The Scarlet Witch is very upset by it. Thor encourages everyone to get some much-needed rest.
On the last day of the month, Tony holds a vast company picnic to celebrate the name change to Stark International and gives a speech outlining the company’s global priorities, which is broadcast to every branch office, laboratory, and factory around the world. He then appears as Iron Man to entertain the crowd with feats of strength and to encourage charitable donations to the various foundations for which he serves as spokesman. At the end of the day, Tony considers the event to have been a tremendous success and is glad to see that it’s garnered the company some good publicity.
July 1967 – The next day, Tony jets out to San Diego to deal with an emergency at his branch office there, only to discover that a solution was found while he was en route. Left at loose ends, Tony decides to check out a comic book convention being held at the El Cortez Hotel. Since the convention features a costume contest, Tony decides to attend as Iron Man so he can blend into the crowd. When he arrives, a group of Star Trek fans try to get him to sign a petition to prevent the show’s cancellation, and a security guard admonishes him for getting too close to a display of the ultra-rare first issue of Purple Pig Comics from 1939. He notes with some concern that a fan is complaining about the boring stories in Marvel’s officially licensed Iron Man comic book and the stupid-looking nose on the hero’s faceplate. These sentiments are echoed by another fan named Kenny Lupoff, who is wearing a homemade mockup of Iron Man’s armor. Though he tries to defend his new look, Iron Man realizes his current helmet design is more controversial than he thought. Suddenly, the Melter, Whiplash, and the Man-Bull appear in the crowd and are directed to attack Iron Man by the Black Lama, who is attempting to recruit the evil trio into his war of the super-villains. The ensuing melee disrupts the convention, but Iron Man ultimately triumphs over his foes, with a little help from Kenny Lupoff. Defeated, the Black Lama teleports away, but the other three villains are taken into custody by the police. With the real Iron Man’s presence revealed, the convention organizers convince the hero to stick around as the day’s guest of honor. Several hours later, an exhausted Iron Man departs. He returns to New York the following morning.
At the next Avengers meeting, Thor agrees to serve another term as chairman and Hawkeye continues to hang around, though he won’t commit to formally rejoining the team. He’s not shy, though, about claiming credit for convincing Steve Rogers to adopt a new costumed identity. Mantis requests permission to take the Swordsman’s body to Vietnam for burial, since she has decided to return home rather than remain with the Avengers. Thor grants her request, offering to have the team accompany her and try to unravel some of the secrets of her past. Mantis is touched by such generosity. The Scarlet Witch begs off, saying that Agatha Harkness is insistent that she continue her education in witchcraft without delay. Vision is also reluctant to go, concerned that he has had panic attacks in the heat of battle a few times now, but Iron Man and Thor assure him that they will look out for him. Hawkeye agrees to go along, so the five heroes are soon aboard a Quinjet on its way to South Vietnam.
After spending a night in Saigon, the Avengers fly their Quinjet to the abandoned temple of the Priests of Pama, where they battled the Star-Stalker several month ago. There, they conduct a simple funeral for the Swordsman and bury him in a shady spot in the garden. Afterwards, they are drawn into a confrontation with the Crimson Dynamo, the Titanium Man, and the Radioactive Man, who are chasing a terrified local man. The trio claims that they are considered heroes in that region and were punishing the man for beating his wife. Iron Man loses his temper and charges at his foes, intent on avenging the death of Janice Cord, but Thor forces him to stand down, citing jurisdictional issues. Seething, Iron Man accompanies the Avengers back to Saigon, where they broadcast a worldwide appeal for Captain Marvel or Rick Jones to contact them, since, like the Priests of Pama, Captain Marvel is of Kree origin and might be able to shed some light on the situation. When no answer is immediately forthcoming, they decide to check out some of the places Mantis remembers from her childhood. However, her memories turn out to be at odds with the facts, leading Mantis to start questioning her sanity.
Another day of investigating leads the Avengers to Saigon’s warehouse district, where Mantis remembers working in seedy bars and brothels. But again, no one there recognizes her. Suddenly, they are set upon by the Crimson Dynamo, the Titanium Man, and the Radioactive Man, accompanied this time by an armored Vietnamese man calling himself the Slasher. Iron Man is relieved that Thor refuses to back down this time, given that they are now in Saigon, and immediately starts fighting the Crimson Dynamo while his teammates deal with the others. Strangely, the Crimson Dynamo seems to have trouble staying on his feet. In the course of the battle, it is revealed that the Slasher recruited his associates by claiming to be a Viet Cong sympathizer whom the Americans were harassing, but when he drops his bag of stolen diamonds, the Titanium Man realizes they were duped by a petty criminal and calls an end to the fighting. The communist supermen withdraw, leaving the Avengers to turn the Slasher and the stolen diamonds over to the local authorities.
The following day, the Avengers meet up with Steve Rogers in his new identity as Nomad. He reports that he’s just wrapped up his first case, for the most part—he’s just waiting for the last two members of the Serpent Squad to turn up somewhere so he can apprehend them. After a battle with the villains on a Roxxon oil rig in the Pacific Ocean, he and the Sub-Mariner were pursuing Warlord Krang when he heard the Avengers were in Saigon and decided to pay them a visit. Nomad is surprised to hear of how the Swordsman sacrificed his life to save Mantis, given his criminal past. Iron Man and Thor both find their friend’s new black-and-gold costume to be somewhat off-putting but are glad that he seems to have put the Secret Empire scandal behind him. Vision then draws Iron Man aside and asks for advice dealing with women. As the synthezoid describes his love triangle with the Scarlet Witch and Mantis, Iron Man becomes increasingly uncomfortable and finds himself at a loss for words. Realizing his faux pas, Vision apologizes and drops the subject, to Iron Man’s great relief. A few minutes later, Jarvis radios the team to report that there’s been no word from Captain Marvel but news outlets are reporting that the fugitive Serpent Squad members have been spotted in Los Angeles. With that, Nomad bounds off, promising to keep the Avengers posted on how his mission turns out.
A moment later, without warning, Iron Man finds himself teleported to a series of stone catacombs in the timeless dimension of Limbo, where he is taunted by the echoing voice of Kang the Conqueror. After what seems like several hours of aimless wandering through an unending labyrinth, Iron Man finally stumbles upon Hawkeye. Suddenly, they are ambushed by Kang and his undead minions—Baron Heinrich Zemo, Wonder Man, and the long-lost original Human Torch. When his repulsor rays barely slow Wonder Man down, Iron Man tells Hawkeye to go find the rest of the Avengers so they can mount a last stand together. Though reluctant to abandon his comrade, Hawkeye complies. Kang then hits Iron Man with an energy blast, stunning him long enough for the Human Torch to grab him from behind. The Torch generates so much heat that Iron Man fears his armor’s internal systems will melt, and a moment later, he passes out. Iron Man then comes to and finds himself in what appears to be the throne room of an enormous castle, alongside Thor, Hawkeye, Mantis, and Vision, whose left arm is badly damaged. Rama-Tut is also there, talking with a similar-looking man called “Immortus.” Iron Man soon realizes that, while he was unconscious, Kang was driven off.
After restoring the Vision’s arm, Immortus dispatches Kang’s so-called Legion of the Unliving—Baron Zemo, Wonder Man, Midnight, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Ghost of the Flying Dutchman—back to oblivion. The original Human Torch, however, is permitted to remain, and Iron Man is astonished to learn that he and the Vision are now claiming to be the same android. Rama-Tut thanks the Avengers for their help preventing Kang from causing chaos while chasing after the Celestial Madonna, then teleports himself away. Immortus then offers to facilitate the Human Torch and the Vision’s quest to learn the secrets of their past, saying he is sympathetic to their plight because, as the Avengers may have guessed, he is the same man who was once Rama-Tut and Kang. He assumed the name Immortus, he explains, after taking over the dimension of Limbo, where time is not linear. Furthermore, he offers to enable the rest of the Avengers to uncover the ancient secrets of the Celestial Madonna and how that legend has shaped Mantis’s life. Thus, he hands what he terms a “synchro-staff” to both the Human Torch and the Vision and sends them off into the timestream, explaining that, because their secrets are of recent vintage and still able to affect the course of present events, they must go on their journeys through time alone. Immortus hands another synchro-staff to Thor, saying that it’s fine for the others to accompany Mantis since their quest will lead them into the distant past. The enigmatic master of time then activates his machines again, sending Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, and Mantis into the psychedelic lightshow of the time-vortex.
The four Avengers soon find themselves flashing phantom-like through vast expanses of space and time while the synchro-staff telepathically narrates the events they are witnessing. First, they see the earliest events in the recorded history of the Kree race, when a delegation of Skrulls arrived on the planet Hala and proposed a contest between the Kree and sentient, telepathic plant-creatures called the Cotati to determine which would serve as the planet’s official representatives in subsequent trade negotiations. A Kree tribe was transported to Earth’s moon through a naturally occurring space warp at the edge of the solar system and there built the city within what the Fantastic Four have dubbed the Blue Area of the Moon. However, when the Skrulls chose the Cotati based on the garden they created, the tribal leader of the Kree, a barbarian named Morag, led his warriors to attack the aliens and slaughtered them. The Kree then plundered the technology of the Skrull spaceship, built a fleet of their own, and soon started the Kree-Skrull War, which has raged off and on for millions of years. Then, several centuries later, the Avengers see how pacifist Kree monks known as the Priests of Pama, who had developed their psychic abilities alongside a unique form of martial arts, entered into an alliance with the surviving Cotati. When the leader of the Kree Empire, the Supreme Intelligence, exiled the pacifists to a remote prison planet, the Cotati telepathically lured the Star-Stalker there. Using their martial-arts skill, the monks drove off the Star-Stalker, then warned the Supreme Intelligence of the threat it represented to Hala. Ultimately, the Supreme Intelligence agreed to the monks’ proposal to spread out across the galaxies in small groups to stand as sentries on all known inhabited worlds. The Priests of Pama then smuggled the Cotati to these remote outposts, where the plant-creatures could live in peace within their temples. One such temple was built on Earth, in the region now known as Vietnam. Iron Man notes to himself that this accords with what the Star-Stalker told them last year. Mantis realizes with a start that the Cotati garden is where they buried the Swordsman. Suddenly, the four Avengers find themselves materializing in that very garden, where they are met by Mantis’s father, the international criminal mastermind known as Libra, and the Swordsman, seemingly alive and surrounded by a greenish glow. A small spacecraft lands nearby and Moondragon disembarks. Iron Man, Thor, and Mantis remember meeting her last December and know her to be a friend of Captain Marvel.
The Swordsman prompts Moondragon to tell the Avengers of her origins, and the heroes are struck by the many parallels between her tale and what they’ve learned of Mantis’s youth. Then, Immortus emerges from a portal to the time-vortex, bringing along a large crate, and leads everyone inside the temple’s main building. Telling the Swordsman to carry on, Immortus disappears into the time-vortex again to search for the Vision. The Swordsman and Libra then explain that both Mantis and Moondragon were chosen as potential candidates for the Celestial Madonna and, when circumstances permitted, were taken to remote monasteries to be raised by the descendants of the Kree pacifists. The ultimate goal of the girls’ training was to enable them to communicate with the Cotati—the first non-Kree ever to do so. This formed the basis of Moondragon’s mental powers and Mantis’s empathic nature. After several years, while Moondragon continued on in the life of a priestess, Mantis was given a set of false memories of a childhood on the streets of Saigon and sent out into the world, where she experienced all the mysteries of humanity. As a result, Mantis was finally chosen to be the Celestial Madonna. Moondragon, it is explained, lacked a certain rapport with ordinary people—a conclusion the Priestess of Titan finds insulting.
Iron Man and Thor are then summoned outside by Hawkeye, who has discovered the Crimson Dynamo, the Titanium Man, and the Radioactive Man lying in the dirt, badly beaten. Iron Man is alarmed by the amount of damage his foes’ armor has sustained. The Crimson Dynamo comes to and reveals that they were searching for the Avengers after their abrupt disappearance when they were ambushed by Kang the Conqueror. Realizing that Kang must be making another attempt to kidnap the Celestial Madonna, Thor wonders when the villain will learn his lesson and accept defeat. The three Avengers decide to split up and search the area. Flying around high above the jungle canopy, Iron Man soon spots Kang in a clearing below and attacks him. Though he puts up a decent fight, Kang proves to be no match for the Golden Avenger and is beaten into unconsciousness. When the three Avengers then discover that each of them has captured a time-displaced version of Kang, they realize the fights were a delaying tactic and race back to the temple. When they arrive, Thor barely has time to call out a warning before Kang’s time-capsule materializes. Using his force fields, Kang is able to kidnap Mantis and escape, and his three doppelgängers slip away in the confusion. The thunder god is ready to pursue the villain to the furthest reaches of time and space, but Immortus appears and tells him to stand down. Having brought the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, and Agatha Harkness with him, Immortus finally opens the large crate, revealing Mantis inside, safe and sound. Laughing at his own cleverness, Immortus explains that Kang has actually kidnapped the Space Phantom, the sole subject of his kingdom of Limbo, who used his powers to trade places with Mantis.
Mantis then reveals the true destiny of the Celestial Madonna: to enter into a marital union with a member of the Cotati and produce a new lifeform—a hybrid of plant and animal who enjoys the best of both worlds. The Swordsman’s body has actually been reanimated by the eldest Cotati on Earth, who arrived with the Priests of Pama nearly 20,000 years ago, and Mantis has agreed to marry him. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch announce that it had better be a double-wedding because they’ve decided to get married too. Immortus is pleased and volunteers to officiate. Thor, as Avengers chairman, makes a motion that the team officially induct Mantis as a full member, to honor her and their time together. The other Avengers agree, and Mantis is truly touched. They all adjourn to the garden, where Immortus conducts a brief ceremony to unite the Scarlet Witch & the Vision and Mantis & the Swordsman/Elder Cotati in matrimony. Afterwards, Mantis and her husband transform into pure energy and ascend into the sky. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch decide on a more traditional honeymoon in French Polynesia. Moondragon flies the Avengers to Saigon to pick up their Quinjet, and the Vision and the Scarlet Witch part company with them there. Iron Man and Thor then fly Agatha back to New York in the Quinjet while Moondragon gives Hawkeye a lift in her spaceship. En route, they all discuss their strange experience over the ship-to-ship communicator. Upon arrival, the Avengers inform Jarvis of everything that’s happened. Moondragon decides that she will stay with the team for a while, so Jarvis prepares a room for her. Iron Man says goodbye and flies off to the Stark International complex on Long Island. The next day, Agatha Harkness and her cat head home, telling the Avengers that the Scarlet Witch has made a good start on her magical training.
Tony decides to head back to Vietnam to try again to discover what happened to Roxanne Gilbert, who disappeared there late last year while searching for Eddie March’s missing brother. While flying over the jungle, Iron Man briefly picks up the signal from the electronic tracking device he had given Roxanne but is distracted when heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles are launched at him. Iron Man is horrified to realize they are Stark weapons that have clearly fallen into the wrong hands. He manages to outmaneuver the missiles, sending them crashing into the side of a mountain. However, the explosion causes an avalanche that reveals the mountain to be hollow with a futuristic city concealed inside. Flying down to investigate, Iron Man is met by the Crimson Dynamo. The Golden Avenger ridicules his foe about their previous encounter and the humiliating defeat Kang handed him, but the Russian refuses to take the bait. However, the Crimson Dynamo manages to get under Iron Man’s skin by pointing out that Tony Stark is considered a murderous war criminal in that part of the world for designing the weapons that have killed so many soldiers and civilians alike. During the ensuing battle, Iron Man realizes that the Crimson Dynamo has incorporated pirated Stark technology into his own armor, making him more dangerous than ever. The fight carries them down into the hidden city, where the Crimson Dynamo grabs a bazooka-like weapon that Iron Man recognizes as one of his own designs—perhaps the worst weapon he ever made, as it fires small fragmentation grenades filled with napalm. His attempt to stop the Crimson Dynamo with a repulsor ray backfires, causing the Russian to fire wildly and set the buildings around him ablaze. The fire spreads quickly, and while Iron Man is busy rescuing people from the collapsing buildings, the Crimson Dynamo flees the scene. Despite his best efforts, Iron Man is not able to save everyone, and he castigates himself for ever creating such weapons of mass destruction in the first place. He also vows to make the Crimson Dynamo pay for his crimes.
When the evacuation is complete, Roxanne’s tracking device leads Iron Man straight to her in the jungle just outside the city, where he finds her with Marty March and his Vietnamese girlfriend. Iron Man tells Marty that his brother Eddie has been worried sick about him, but Marty decides there’s nothing for him back in the United States and he’d rather make a new life for himself there in Vietnam. Since Marty lost his right arm in combat, Iron Man knows his tour of duty is over and respects his determination to move forward in a positive direction. He is concerned, though, that Marty and Roxanne were held prisoner in the hidden city for several months, but Marty insists that that’s all over now and he doesn’t want to talk about it. Roxanne follows Marty’s lead, so Iron Man escorts her back to Saigon and puts her on a plane bound for Detroit, Michigan.
Back in New York, Tony is contacted by Dr. Dane Gavin of the American Museum of Natural History for help devising a means to capture the mysterious swamp monster of the Florida Everglades known as the “Man-Thing.” Tony agrees to give the matter his personal attention, since he sits on the museum’s board of trustees and finds the matter intriguing.
Not long after, Tony is shocked to wake up and discover that everyone in the city has been unconscious for two days. Reports of strange occurrences start coming in from around the world, but then the Fantastic Four notify the Avengers that it was all part of an alien invasion plot that they have foiled.
August 1967 – Iron Man and Moondragon get reacquainted as she settles into life at Avengers Mansion. Hawkeye seems to find her irresistibly attractive, though she clearly considers him to be crude and obnoxious. She obviously finds Thor fascinating, though, which makes Iron Man uncharacteristically jealous. When Manhattan is rocked by a series of unnatural earthquakes, Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, and Moondragon rush out to help rescue people from damaged buildings. Since the earthquakes seem to have two epicenters—one in Washington Heights at the north end of the island and the other in the Financial District on the island’s southern tip—the thunder god decides to split the team up. While he and Moondragon head to the north, he sends Iron Man and Hawkeye to the south. There, they receive some help from Mister Fantastic, the Thing, and Daredevil.
While in Detroit visiting Roxanne, Tony checks in on the local Stark International facility, which is a hub for their aerospace division. During the tour, he has to change into Iron Man to deal with a costumed saboteur who calls himself “Infinitus” and claims to be the reincarnation of Pharaoh Amenemhet III of Egypt’s 11th dynasty, out to destroy his ancient enemies. The ray gun he carries fires blasts of heat capable of damaging the Golden Avenger’s armor, which enables the villain to escape capture. Further investigation suggests that Infinitus is tied to a series of suspicious deaths in Detroit over the last few weeks, which the media is calling “the techno-murders” since each case involves technology suddenly going haywire. Thus, the following morning, Tony phones the Fantastic Four for help, thinking Mister Fantastic’s scientific expertise might be invaluable. He is annoyed, however, when Mister Fantastic sends the Human Torch instead, and the two heroes get off on the wrong foot. During their strategy meeting, Infinitus strikes again, severely damaging the administration building, and gets away by causing another building’s façade to collapse onto the Human Torch. Tony decides to use some applied psychology on the brash, young hero, adopting a patronizing attitude to goad him into trying to prove himself by capturing Infinitus before Iron Man can. As the Human Torch streaks off, Tony retreats to a workshop and spends the next few hours modifying a tracking device to locate the villain. He wonders if there’s any merit to Infinitus’s claim of being a reincarnated pharaoh and if his victims could actually be the reincarnations of that pharaoh’s ancient enemies. At dusk, Iron Man flies out over the city with the tracking device, which soon leads him to a nondescript factory building. He is ambushed by Infinitus, whose heat ray again shorts out the hero’s armor. Luckily, the Human Torch swoops in and rescues Iron Man, boasting that he’s figured out the entire scheme on his own. He’s also discovered that Amenemhet III was of the 12th dynasty rather than the 11th, proving that the villain’s reincarnation story was phony. Iron Man and the Human Torch then team up against Infinitus and defeat him, exposing him as a man named Michael Rodgers who was trying to murder his brother, an engineer at Stark International.
When the sophisticated trap that he has designed for the Man-Thing is ready, Tony sends a crew of engineers and technicians from Stark International to the Florida Everglades with Dane Gavin. They successfully capture the creature and bring it back to a special holding facility, also provided by Stark, that simulates its native environment. Tony is fascinated by the Man-Thing, which appears to be surprisingly docile. When Gavin proves reluctant to put the creature on public display, a meeting of the board of trustees is called to discuss the matter. Tony arrives to find Gavin; Reed Richards and other fellow board members; Vivian Schist, who financed the operation; and her good-looking daughter, Carolyn Schist. Gavin’s concerns are overruled, and the board votes to open a special public exhibit in one week, seeing the Man-Thing as a huge windfall for the museum. Both Tony and Reed assure Gavin that they will personally supervise the preparations.
One week later, the American Museum of Natural History hosts a formal opening for a select crowd of its most generous patrons. Tony attends in his tuxedo but is so confident in their preparations that he leaves the attaché case containing his armor in his office. In the auditorium, the chairman of the board thanks Tony and Reed, as well as Vivian Schist, for making the event possible. However, as soon as the Man-Thing is revealed, the creature goes berserk and smashes through the transparent wall of its enclosure. As the audience panics, Reed shoves Tony out of the way and tries to restrain the Man-Thing with his elastic arms, but the creature merely oozes out of his grip and shambles toward the exit. Tony curses himself for not bringing along his armor. After wreaking havoc in the dinosaur exhibit, the Man-Thing escapes into the streets, finally collapsing into the fountain in Columbus Circle. Dane Gavin and Carolyn Schist agree that the Man-Thing must be returned to the Everglades immediately, overruling Vivian Schist, who, it turns out, wants the creature destroyed for killing her husband. The board quickly reverses its decision, and Tony provides a vehicle to transport the Man-Thing back to its swamp.
September 1967 – While on monitor duty at Avengers Mansion, Iron Man receives a video-call from Sif and another Asgardian woman named Krista, informing him that Thor is on his way over with an injured Hercules. Thus, Iron Man powers up the mansion’s medical bay. When Thor arrives, he is determined to use the memory-inducer device on the unconscious Hercules, as they did a couple years ago. Since the device was only partially effective last time, Iron Man quickly modifies it to use Thor’s hammer as a power source. However, once it has been activated, Hercules awakens with a start and goes berserk, believing himself to be surrounded by demons. Iron Man and Thor are unable to restrain the maddened Olympian, but Krista manages to calm him down. After spending the next hour in a stupor, Hercules finally comes to his senses and describes an encounter with a shadowy being that filled him with an unaccustomed dread. Thor decides they should go investigate further, telling Iron Man to come looking for them if they haven’t reported in within the hour. Iron Man is relieved when Hercules contacts him a little while later to say that everything is okay.
When Thor finds his former love Jane Foster comatose in a hospital, he steps down as Avengers chairman. Iron Man agrees to take over for him and serve in that capacity for the remainder of the year. Hercules and Krista take up residence at Avengers Mansion and spend a lot of time together. Iron Man is struck by Krista’s incredible beauty, being as she is a literal goddess. He is interested to learn that she is the sister of Hildegarde, the Asgardian shield maiden he met two years ago. Near the end of the month, the Scarlet Witch and the Vision return from their honeymoon in French Polynesia and settle into their new routine as a married couple. They decide to continue living in their adjoining rooms at Avengers Mansion.
October–November 1967 – Tony focuses on running Stark International, though he does spend a good deal of time at Avengers Mansion under the pretext of upgrading the building’s security and communications systems. As team chairman, Iron Man recruits Krista to provide combat training to the Scarlet Witch and Moondragon, sessions which he is happy to oversee personally. Whenever he can get away, Tony spends time with Roxanne in Detroit.
December 1967 – Iron Man is hanging out with Krista and Jarvis in the Avengers’ conference room when a video-call comes in from a distraught Tom Fagan up in Rutland, Vermont. Fagan reports that Loki has vanished, replaced by a kid named Bunker who disappeared after last year’s Halloween party. Bunker remembers nothing since that night, and Fagan suspects that he’s been there disguised as Loki ever since Thor and Captain America dropped the god of mischief off in Rutland. To make matters worse, the police are accusing Fagan of kidnapping Bunker and holding him prisoner for the last year. Iron Man assures Fagan that the Avengers will vouch for him and get everything sorted out. Just then, Thor arrives with Firelord, a former herald of Galactus who’s been living on Earth for the last two years. Firelord reveals that he just encountered Loki in the Dark Dimension and learned of his plans to conquer Asgard using the augmented mystical powers he’s gained since Dormammu’s essence was blasted through him by the Evil Eye of Avalon. Loki then sent Firelord back to Earth, presumably to warn Thor of his brother’s plot. Iron Man informs the thunder god of Tom Fagan’s call, corroborating Firelord’s story. Thor is clearly torn, knowing that honor demands he stand with the Avengers against Loki’s threat but wanting nothing more than to race back to be with Jane Foster. After learning from Krista that Sif and Hercules have gone off on some kind of quest together, Thor goes out for a walk to collect his thoughts. While he is gone, a mystical force field suddenly surrounds the mansion, imprisoning Iron Man, Krista, Firelord, and Jarvis. Reports soon come in that every other superhero in the world is likewise trapped. Loki then leads a host of Asgardian warriors on an invasion of Washington, D.C., declaring war on Earth. Luckily, Thor remains free and joins the U.S. Army troops who mobilize to stop them, though Earth’s defenders are forced to retreat after their initial skirmish. Unable to help, Iron Man spends the time on the phone with the authorities in Rutland, getting the charges against Fagan dropped.
Just before dawn the next morning, Firelord grows impatient and starts blasting at the force field with his flaming staff, which appears to channel cosmic energy. Iron Man analyzes the field’s reaction to Firelord’s blasts and formulates a plan to breach it. By focusing both Firelord’s cosmic energies and Iron Man’s repulsor rays on a small section of the field, they succeed in creating a breach large enough for Firelord to fit through. As Firelord streaks off toward Washington, D.C., Iron Man collapses, his armor’s energy reserves completely drained. Krista carries him to a spot where he can recharge his armor, and before long he is back on his feet. Not long after, with help from Firelord, Thor defeats Loki and orders the Asgardians to withdraw. Krista decides to return home with them, bids farewell to Iron Man and Jarvis, and departs. Both men are disappointed to see the gorgeous goddess go. Once back in New York, Thor resumes his vigil at the hospital. Iron Man is saddened to learn that Jane’s condition is terminal. The Grand Vizier of Odin’s royal court has accompanied the thunder god and takes a room at the mansion, intending to spend some time on “Midgard.”
Iron Man is relieved when Steve Rogers turns up at Avengers Mansion, discards his tattered Nomad outfit, and retrieves his Captain America costume and shield from the storage vault. Having resolved his identity crisis at last, Captain America sets out to hunt down his nemesis, the Red Skull. Nearly a week later, Iron Man attends the Avengers’ Sixth Annual Christmas Charity Benefit with Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, and Moondragon. Thor puts in a brief appearance, and the Grand Vizier seems genuinely curious about the team’s holiday customs. The next day, Tony flies to Detroit to spend Christmas Eve with Roxanne. They have a wonderful time together. Looking back, Tony realizes he’s had a very good year.
Notes:
January–May 1967 – Black Spectre wreaks havoc in the United States in Daredevil #109–112 and Marvel Two-In-One #3, during which the Avengers remain behind the scenes.
June 1967 – Disillusioned after the Secret Empire affair, Captain America calls it quits in Captain America #176. Iron Man and his fellow superheroes fight Ultron-7 while attending the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver in Avengers #127 and Fantastic Four #150. The Avengers’ battle with Kang the Conqueror then follows in Avengers #128–129 and Giant-Size Avengers #2. The timestream disturbances in the late 20th century that Kang refers to are the result of the “time bubble” (which stretches from 1995 to 2010) that Iron Man and Thor (among others) will investigate in Avengers #296–297 and Fantastic Four #337–341.
July 1967 – Iron Man fights some of his old foes at the San Diego comic book convention in Iron Man #72. This may have been the first such event held in the city, occurring a few years earlier than it did in the real world. The saga of the Celestial Madonna continues through Avengers #130–137 and Giant-Size Avengers #3–4. The members of the Legion of the Unliving are actually simulacra created by Kang using Immortus’s time-manipulation devices. Baron Zemo is based on the villain as he was just before he died while fighting Captain America in 1963. Wonder Man is likewise a simulacrum based on Simon Williams just before his apparent death earlier in 1963. The Original Human Torch simulacrum is based on the flaming android just before he deactivated himself out in the desert in 1955. Rather than sending him into the past, the crafty Immortus merely disintegrates the fake Human Torch like the rest of the Legion of the Unliving, but the Avengers are none the wiser. It is finally revealed in Avengers West Coast #50 that the Vision and the Original Human Torch are two separate entities. (Later revelations to the contrary are considered non-canonical here.) When Iron Man departs from Avengers Mansion on the splash page of Iron Man #74, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch are erroneously shown instead of Moondragon. Iron Man then returns to Vietnam to rescue Roxanne Gilbert and battle the Crimson Dynamo in Iron Man #73. (Only the first page of #74 occurs out of sequence.) The people of Manhattan are rendered insensate for two days by alien invaders in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3.
August 1967 – Earthquakes strike Manhattan in Marvel Team-Up #28, courtesy of a pair of disgruntled scientists being manipulated by They Who Wield Power. The Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and Daredevil remain behind the scenes. Iron Man and the Human Torch then join forces against Infinitus in the next issue. Tony Stark helps capture the Man-Thing in Giant-Size Man-Thing #2. (The placement for this story suggested in Iron Man #73 is erroneous.)
September 1967 – Iron Man is on hand when Thor brings Hercules to Avengers Mansion in Thor #230. The shadowy entity Hercules encountered was the demonic Dweller in Darkness.
December 1967 – Iron Man is trapped in Avengers Mansion during Loki’s attempted invasion of Earth in Thor #232–234. He remains behind the scenes when Steve Rogers again takes up the mantle of Captain America in Captain America #183.
Jump Back: Iron Man – Year Five
Next Issue: The Fantastic Four – Year Seven
Wednesday
OMU: Thor -- Year Six
Old habits die hard, it would seem, even for thunder gods. Over the next twelve months, the mighty Thor falls back into his double life as a part-time superhero and part-time medical doctor, as well as seeing a rekindling of his romance with the mortal nurse Jane Foster. Also, after a long interregnum, we finally catch up with Thor’s solo title again, which brings a return of his Asgardian supporting cast. It proves to be a lean time for the Avengers, plagued by membership upheaval and long periods of inaction, but Thor does what he can to get the team through it until he is overwhelmed by matters of the heart.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Let the tale be told of… The True History of the Mighty Thor!
January–March 1967 – Thor splits his time between fighting crime in New York City as the Asgardian god of thunder and working as a physician in his mortal identity of Donald Blake, M.D. In addition to caring for the retired superhero known as the Whizzer, still recuperating from his recent heart attack at Avengers Mansion, Don regularly checks on the young Asgardian woman Krista, who remains in a coma in a Manhattan hospital, the result of an ordeal in Hades over a year ago. Having rented an apartment for himself in the city, Thor finds himself once again spending more time in his mortal guise and has little contact with Asgard. Periodically, the thunder god travels to Rutland, Vermont to visit his adopted brother Loki, who appears to be in a near-catatonic state. Thor also attends the Avengers’ regularly scheduled meetings, along with Iron Man, Captain America, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Swordsman, and Mantis.
Thor is frustrated when the subversive organization Black Spectre continually gets away with carrying out offensive pranks and outrageous sabotage, such as inciting a race riot at the Statue of Liberty, installing a swastika atop the Washington Monument, draping Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in black shrouds, and carving Adolf Hitler’s face into Mount Rushmore. S.H.I.E.L.D., which assists the government with repairing all the damage, assures the Avengers that it’s doing all it can to stop Black Spectre.
April 1967 – Thor agrees to once again serve as Avengers chairman, taking over for the Vision. As a prince of Asgard, he enjoys being in charge of the team, though he finds many of the routine administrative duties rather tedious.
May 1967 – The Avengers receive a message from Black Spectre claiming that they have an atomic bomb hidden somewhere under Manhattan, which they threaten to detonate if the Avengers interfere with their overthrow of the U.S. government. Soon after, the terrorist group invades Washington, D.C. and storms the White House, only to be defeated by Daredevil and the Black Widow. Thor is relieved when the bomb threat turns out to be a hoax.
June 1967 – At Avengers Mansion, Thor joins Iron Man, the Vision, and the team’s butler, Edwin Jarvis, in trying to talk the disillusioned Captain America out of abandoning his costumed identity. Thor insists that Cap is the epitome of the noble warrior and nothing could be more glorious, but Cap counters that such sentiments are better applied to Asgardians than the men of Earth, where things are more complicated. Ultimately, Cap does decide to retire, leaving his costume and shield in a storage vault beneath the mansion. Though disappointed, Thor respects his teammate’s decision.
While taking a taxi to the hospital to check in on Krista, Don Blake sees a flaming message in the sky from the Human Torch, requesting that Thor meet him atop the Statue of Liberty. Curious, Don tells the driver to pull over and finds a shadowy alley where he can transform back into the god of thunder. When he arrives, Thor is surprised to find the Human Torch is there with Molto, the Lava Man. Mortally wounded, Molto warns them that his tribe’s fanatical witch-doctor, Jinku, has convinced their king to use a weapon commandeered from the Mole Man to cause every volcano on earth to erupt simultaneously. Molto fled to the surface to try to find Thor, only to be cut down by the radioactive energies from Jinku’s staff. He explains that Jinku, inspired by strange visions, is convinced the Lava Men will succeed in taking over the world. With his dying breath, Molto reveals that Jinku and the king are planning to test the device on Mauna Loa in Hawaii at any moment. Thor is saddened by his friend’s demise, but with no time to spare, he uses Mjolnir to generate a space-time vortex that carries him and the Human Torch to Hawaii, where they find Mauna Loa is already erupting. Thor immediately digs a deep channel in the ground to divert the lava flow away from a nearby village and conjures up a tropical storm directly above the summit. Using his enchanted hammer, Thor then tunnels down to Subterranea and confronts the Lava Men. The Human Torch follows, but the two heroes are soon knocked unconscious by the witch-doctor’s deadly staff. When he comes to, the thunder god finds he has reverted to his mortal form. Don realizes that Jinku must have tried to use Mjolnir as a power source for his world-destroying weapon. Not seeing the Human Torch anywhere, Don assumes the Lava Men must have killed him. He clambers up the side of the gigantic machine and retrieves his walking stick, immediately changing himself back into Thor. Wading into the Lava Men’s vast army, he is heartened when the Human Torch arrives on the scene along with hordes of Subterraneans. A fierce battle ensues with over half-a-million combatants, but with Thor and the Human Torch on their side, the Subterraneans eventually win the day. Before returning to the surface, Thor again gives the defeated Lava Men a stern warning to live peaceably in their own realm. The Human Torch is eager to brag to his teammates about his epic adventure, though as far as Thor is concerned, he was pretty useless.
Thor is sitting down to dinner at Avengers Mansion with Iron Man, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Swordsman, and Mantis when the Inhumans Gorgon and Lockjaw suddenly materialize in the room. Gorgon is annoyed that the Avengers are not ready to leave for the Great Refuge to attend the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver, but this is the first the team has heard of it. Apparently, Quicksilver neglected to invite them, much to the Scarlet Witch’s chagrin. Nevertheless, she decides that they will attend in any case. Iron Man sets up a video link to the Inhumans’ royal palace so the Whizzer will be able to watch the ceremony, since he has come to believe that Quicksilver is his son. The Avengers then fly around the world to the Himalayas in a Quinjet while Gorgon and Lockjaw teleport home. When they arrive, they are greeted by the rest of the royal family—Black Bolt, Medusa, Crystal, Karnak, and Triton—as well as the Human Torch, the Thing, Mister Fantastic, and Susan Richards. Mister Fantastic introduces the Avengers to Agatha Harkness, an elderly woman who helps take care of his two-year-old son, Franklin Richards, who lies in a coma. When Mantis asks about what appears to be a huge, grotesque statue in the center of the city, Medusa explains that it is actually a giant android called Omega, which Black Bolt’s brother, Maximus the Mad, created in order to weaponize the Inhumans’ prejudice against their servant class, the Alpha Primitives. After being deactivated, the android was left in a public square as a memorial. Triton insists that Black Bolt has instituted many reforms since that fateful day.
Several hours later, Thor joins the others for a royal banquet in a large stadium, from which Quicksilver is conspicuously absent. To cheer up Crystal and entertain the crowds, Thor, Iron Man, the Human Torch, the Thing, and Medusa put on an impromptu exhibition of their superhuman powers. However, Iron Man and Medusa fall under some form of mind control and attack the section of the stands where the Alpha Primitives are seated. The pair is quickly subdued and then lapses into unconsciousness. The Alpha Primitives start yelling accusations at Black Bolt, only to be shouted down by the Inhumans around them. The Alpha Primitives then leave the stadium in protest, and the festivities are quickly brought to a close. Thor realizes the situation in the Great Refuge is less rosy than the royal family made it seem. Later, he meets with Mister Fantastic and Black Bolt to discuss the situation, with Triton interpreting for his silent king. The meeting is interrupted when the Swordsman and Mantis raise the alarm—Omega has come to life and kidnapped Crystal.
Thor, Mister Fantastic, Black Bolt, and Triton rejoin the others and see that Quicksilver has finally deigned to make an appearance now that his bride is in danger. Through Triton, Black Bolt suggests that the Avengers, being impartial observers, may have better luck questioning the Alpha Primitives about Omega’s reactivation, and Thor concurs. Quicksilver leads his former teammates into the caverns where the Alpha Primitives live, only to lose his temper and attack them, demanding that they return Crystal at once. Mantis forces Quicksilver to stand down, but they both suddenly fall unconscious. Thor quickly determines that their symptoms match those of Iron Man and Medusa and calls for the Avengers to retreat back to the surface. The Alpha Primitives become a rampaging mob, but Thor keeps them at bay with bolts of lightning from his hammer. Outside, the Avengers find the other heroes carrying Maximus on a stretcher. Though he appears to be unconscious as well, Maximus leaps up as soon as the Alpha Primitives emerge from the caverns, grabs a blaster, and opens fire on them. In the ensuing melee, Maximus, Gorgon, Karnak, Triton, the Swordsman, and the Human Torch abruptly fall unconscious as well. Finally, Omega strides across the plaza to the remaining heroes and reveals himself to be Ultron-7 in disguise. The murderous robot explains that Maximus brought the severed head of Ultron-6 to the Great Refuge after the Vision defeated him a few years ago and eventually fused his circuits with the Omega android, giving him Omega’s psychic abilities, which he has used to incapacitate the unconscious heroes. Ultron-7 then turns those abilities against all his enemies, intent on destroying their minds. His scheme backfires, though, as his psychic energies inadvertently awaken Franklin Richards from his coma. The boy lashes out at the source of the attack with his mysterious mutant powers, obliterating Ultron-7’s computerized brain. Thor and the others then look on happily as the Richards family is at last reunited.
The next day, as heralds fly over the Great Refuge blowing their horns to summon the guests to the wedding ceremony, Thor realizes that neither he nor Iron Man are particularly eager to attend the festivities due to their own star-crossed love lives. The thunder god reminisces about his love affair with Jane Foster and complains of how circumstances always seem to be keeping him and his new paramour, the goddess Sif, apart. Iron Man admits ruefully that he lost his heart to Pepper Potts, who is now married to his best friend, and has been searching for someone to replace her ever since. Noting that not everyone can be as lucky as Quicksilver and Crystal, Iron Man suggests they head to the palace. The wedding proceeds with no further disturbances, and at the conclusion of the ceremony, Lockjaw teleports the newlyweds off to their honeymoon. A huge celebration follows, which Thor enjoys tremendously despite the Inhumans’ peculiar customs.
The Avengers then return to New York, arriving at the mansion shortly before midnight. The Fantastic Four stop by on their way home to say goodnight. However, a sudden storm forms overhead, unleashing a series of deadly lightning bolts that strike the roof. Thor immediately launches himself into the sky and tries to dispel the storm, only to find that it resists his influence. He is startled when Agatha Harkness reveals herself to be a powerful sorceress by dissipating the storm with a magical incantation. She then informs the Fantastic Four that she will no longer be serving as Franklin’s nanny, for the time has come for her to take on a new charge—the Scarlet Witch. The Avengers are shocked, but the Scarlet Witch admits that she has long wanted to study true witchcraft and accepts Agatha as her tutor. As the Fantastic Four depart and the Avengers enter the building, Thor authorizes Agatha to take up residence there. He and Iron Man are then distracted when the Swordsman becomes distraught after Mantis abruptly ends their romantic relationship. Before they can resolve the situation, the Avengers are drawn outside by a commotion in the street. They find an intensely bright light shining down on the mansion from what appears to be a new star in the sky. Suddenly, their old foe, Kang the Conqueror, materializes and announces that the star is a signal indicating that the 20th century is ripe for conquest.
Using 41st-century robots called “Macrobots,” Kang easily defeats Thor, Iron Man, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Swordsman, Mantis, and Agatha Harkness and takes them prisoner. The time-traveling despot then explains that the “newborn star” heralds the appearance of the legendary Celestial Madonna, who is to mate with the most powerful man in the world and produce a child who will conquer the universe. Kang is determined to be that man and to rule the heavens through the child. Due to strange disturbances in the timestream in the late 20th century, he was unable to determine the exact date the star would manifest itself, so he left a temporal monitor behind during his first incursion four and a half years ago. And although the historical records of the 20th century that have survived to Kang’s era are fragmentary at best, the positioning of the star above Avengers Mansion suggests that the Celestial Madonna is either the Scarlet Witch, Mantis, or Agatha Harkness. In order to solve that riddle, Kang teleports his prisoners to a laboratory hidden inside an ancient Egyptian pyramid, derisively leaving the Swordsman behind. He then conducts a battery of tests on the women while Thor, Iron Man, and the Vision struggle to escape the paralysis beam that renders them helpless. Fortunately, the Swordsman is able to pull himself together and mount a rescue mission, apparently led to the pyramid by Agatha’s telepathy. Kang dismisses the threat of the Swordsman, though, revealing that he designed the pyramid himself while ruling Egypt as the pharaoh Rama-Tut and left a vampire named Amenhotep behind to guard it. Upon entering, the Swordsman inadvertently releases the vampire, though it soon stumbles out into the sunlight and is disintegrated. Unconcerned, Kang seals Thor, Iron Man, and the Vision inside Macrobot exoskeletons, revealing his plan to send them out to kill key government personnel in the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China, after which a strategically placed neutron bomb will set off a global nuclear war. With that, Kang loads all his captives into his time-capsule and flies to the United Nations building in New York City.
With the time-capsule rendered invisible by a cloaking device, Kang dispatches the Macrobot containing the Vision, only to watch him be defeated by the Swordsman, who has been joined by Hawkeye and a mysterious stranger. Deciding to cut his losses, Kang pilots the time-capsule to Peking, China, where he sends out the Macrobot containing Iron Man. Again, his scheme is foiled by the Swordsman, Hawkeye, and their unknown companion, now joined by the Vision. Enraged, Kang abandons his plan to go to Moscow and sends the Macrobot containing Thor out to recapture Iron Man and the Vision. As the cloaking device is deactivated, Vision is able to phase inside and free the Scarlet Witch, Mantis, and Agatha. The two younger women immediately join the battle, though they bicker constantly. Thor takes a beating inside the Macrobot, but his teammates manage to immobilize it long enough for the mystery man to open it up, releasing the thunder god. The enigmatic stranger then confronts Kang, who reveals him to be his own future self, living once again as Pharaoh Rama-Tut. As the two men start fighting each other, a strange wave of hallucinatory images wash over the Avengers—dreamlike images of the past, present, and future. Suddenly, Kang realizes that Mantis is the Celestial Madonna and announces that if he can’t have her, no one will. He fires his ray gun at Mantis, but the Swordsman leaps in front of her and is mortally wounded. Rama-Tut tackles Kang, and as they struggle, they inadvertently activate the time-capsule, which dematerializes. The Avengers are shocked and horrified by this sudden turn of events. The Swordsman dies in Mantis’s arms, cursing himself as a failure. The sorrowful Avengers honor their fallen teammate, then take his body back to New York. When they arrive at the mansion, Jarvis informs them that the Whizzer has moved on, showing them a morose farewell note he left behind. The Scarlet Witch is very upset by it. Thor encourages everyone to get some much-needed rest.
July 1967 – Over the next few days, Thor agrees to serve another term as Avengers chairman and Hawkeye continues to hang around, though he won’t commit to formally rejoining the team. He’s not shy, though, about claiming credit for convincing Steve Rogers to adopt a new costumed identity. Mantis requests permission to take the Swordsman’s body to Vietnam for burial, since she has decided to return home rather than remain with the Avengers. Thor grants her request, offering to have the team accompany her and try to unravel some of the secrets of her past. Mantis is touched by such generosity. The Scarlet Witch begs off, saying that Agatha Harkness is insistent that she continue her education in witchcraft without delay. Vision is also reluctant to go, concerned that he has had panic attacks in the heat of battle a few times now, but Thor and Iron Man assure him that they will look out for him. Hawkeye agrees to go along, so the five heroes are soon aboard a Quinjet on its way to South Vietnam.
After spending a night in Saigon, the Avengers fly their Quinjet to the abandoned temple of the Priests of Pama, where they battled the Star-Stalker several month ago. There, they conduct a simple funeral for the Swordsman and bury him in a shady spot in the garden. Afterwards, they are drawn into a confrontation with the Radioactive Man, the Titanium Man, and the Crimson Dynamo, who are chasing a terrified local man. The trio claims that they are considered heroes in that region and were punishing the man for beating his wife. Iron Man loses his temper and charges at his foes, intent on settling some old scores, but Thor forces him to stand down, citing jurisdictional issues. The Avengers return to Saigon, where they broadcast a worldwide appeal for Captain Marvel or Rick Jones to contact them, since, like the Priests of Pama, Captain Marvel is of Kree origin and might be able to shed some light on the situation. When no answer is immediately forthcoming, they decide to check out some of the places Mantis remembers from her childhood. However, her memories turn out to be at odds with the facts, leading Mantis to start questioning her sanity.
Another day of investigating leads the Avengers to Saigon’s warehouse district, where Mantis remembers working in seedy bars and brothels. But again, no one there recognizes her. Suddenly, they are set upon by the Radioactive Man, the Titanium Man, and the Crimson Dynamo, accompanied this time by an armored Vietnamese man calling himself the Slasher. Given that they are now in Saigon, Thor refuses to back down, so a fight breaks out. The thunder god focuses his efforts on the Titanium Man while his teammates deal with the others. In the course of the battle, it is revealed that the Slasher recruited his associates by claiming to be a Viet Cong sympathizer whom the Americans were harassing, but when he drops his bag of stolen diamonds, the Titanium Man realizes they were duped by a petty criminal and calls an end to the fighting. The communist supermen withdraw, leaving the Avengers to turn the Slasher and the stolen diamonds over to the local authorities. The following day, the Avengers meet up with Steve Rogers in his new identity as Nomad. He reports that he’s just wrapped up his first case, for the most part—he’s just waiting for the last two members of the Serpent Squad to turn up somewhere so he can apprehend them. After a battle with the villains on a Roxxon oil rig in the Pacific Ocean, he and the Sub-Mariner were pursuing Warlord Krang when he heard the Avengers were in Saigon and decided to pay them a visit. Nomad is surprised to hear of how the Swordsman sacrificed his life to save Mantis, given his criminal past. Thor and Iron Man both find their friend’s new black-and-gold costume to be somewhat off-putting but are glad that he seems to have put the Secret Empire scandal behind him. A few minutes later, Jarvis radios the team to report that there’s been no word from Captain Marvel but news outlets are reporting that the fugitive Serpent Squad members have been spotted in Los Angeles. With that, Nomad bounds off, promising to keep the Avengers posted on how his mission turns out.
A moment later, without warning, Thor finds himself teleported to a series of stone catacombs in the timeless dimension of Limbo, where he is taunted by the echoing voice of Kang the Conqueror. Thor tries to smash his way out of the labyrinth but finds that something has neutralized the power of his enchanted hammer, though he is still able to change into Don Blake. He soon encounters a lumbering monster that appears to be stitched together from various corpses. Don panics and strikes the creature with his walking stick. It retaliates by trying to strangle him. Don quickly turns back into Thor, and the thunder god easily bests the grunting, growling monster. Realizing that his mute foe is as much a pawn in Kang’s game as he is, Thor lets the creature go and follows it as it shuffles off down the corridor. The thunder god grows frustrated when he somehow loses the monster in the labyrinth, but then he finds Iron Man lying motionless on the floor. Unable to detect any signs of life, Thor vows to wreak terrible vengeance on Kang and all his minions. Soon finding Kang in the labyrinth, Thor attacks him but is unable to penetrate his personal force field. The thunder god is shocked when Wonder Man comes to Kang’s defense, revealing that he was brought back to life by technology belonging to someone called “Immortus.” The battle between Thor and Wonder Man is inconclusive, but the tide turns when the monster reappears, accompanied by the long-lost original Human Torch, whom Thor remembers encountering briefly during World War II. To Thor’s relief, the monster and the Torch refuse to obey Kang’s commands and declare the fight at an end. As Kang sputters in impotent rage, Vision steps out of the shadows, his left arm badly damaged. Wonder Man finds he is reluctant to attack the Vision, and Thor realizes it must be because they share the same brain patterns. Thor leaps at Kang, battering his force field with Mjolnir as a berserker rage comes over him. Unable to withstand the onslaught, Kang initiates a time-shift in order to escape. After the villain has dematerialized, Thor calms down and is astonished by the Vision’s revelation that he and the Human Torch are, in fact, the same android. Vision believes that this is the explanation for his panic attacks—certain circumstances were triggering residual memories of being entombed or submerged for long periods to prevent his former self from flaming on. However, they still don’t know how or when the metamorphosis took place.
Suddenly, they are all teleported to another part of the structure, what appears to be the throne room of an enormous castle. There, they find Rama-Tut with a similar-looking man called Immortus. Hawkeye and Mantis also materialize, along with Iron Man’s body and an unconscious fellow in black known as Midnight. Immortus assures the Avengers that Iron Man’s death is merely an illusion—the flow of time for the golden Avenger has been slowed down to such an extent that he is merely between heartbeats. Immortus reverses the effect, and Iron Man revives instantly, unaware that any time has passed since he collapsed. After restoring the Vision’s arm, Immortus dispatches Kang’s so-called Legion of the Unliving—the monster, Wonder Man, Midnight, Baron Heinrich Zemo, and the Ghost of the Flying Dutchman—back to oblivion. Rama-Tut thanks the Avengers for their help preventing Kang from causing chaos while chasing after the Celestial Madonna, then teleports himself away. Immortus then offers to facilitate the Human Torch and the Vision’s quest to learn the secrets of their past, saying he is sympathetic to their plight because, as the Avengers may have guessed, he is the same man who was once Rama-Tut and Kang. He assumed the name Immortus, he explains, after taking over the dimension of Limbo, where time is not linear. Furthermore, he offers to enable the rest of the Avengers to uncover the ancient secrets of the Celestial Madonna and how that legend has shaped Mantis’s life. Thus, he hands what he terms a “synchro-staff” to both the Human Torch and the Vision and sends them off into the timestream, explaining that, because their secrets are of recent vintage and still able to affect the course of present events, they must go on their journeys through time alone. Immortus hands another synchro-staff to Thor, saying that it’s fine for the others to accompany Mantis since their quest will lead them into the distant past. The enigmatic master of time then activates his machines again, sending Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Mantis into the psychedelic lightshow of the time-vortex.
The four Avengers soon find themselves flashing phantom-like through vast expanses of space and time while the synchro-staff telepathically narrates the events they are witnessing. First, they see the earliest events in the recorded history of the Kree race, when a delegation of Skrulls arrived on the planet Hala and proposed a contest between the Kree and sentient, telepathic plant-creatures called the Cotati to determine which would serve as the planet’s official representatives in subsequent trade negotiations. A Kree tribe was transported to Earth’s moon through a naturally occurring space warp at the edge of the solar system and there built the city within what the Fantastic Four have dubbed the Blue Area of the Moon. However, when the Skrulls chose the Cotati based on the garden they created, the tribal leader of the Kree, a barbarian named Morag, led his warriors to attack the aliens and slaughtered them. The Kree then plundered the technology of the Skrull spaceship, built a fleet of their own, and soon started the Kree-Skrull War, which has raged off and on for millions of years. Then, several centuries later, the Avengers see how pacifist Kree monks known as the Priests of Pama, who had developed their psychic abilities alongside a unique form of martial arts, entered into an alliance with the surviving Cotati. When the leader of the Kree Empire, the Supreme Intelligence, exiled the pacifists to a remote prison planet, the Cotati telepathically lured the Star-Stalker there. Using their martial-arts skill, the monks drove off the Star-Stalker, then warned the Supreme Intelligence of the threat it represented to Hala. Ultimately, the Supreme Intelligence agreed to the monks’ proposal to spread out across the galaxies in small groups to stand as sentries on all known inhabited worlds. The Priests of Pama then smuggled the Cotati to these remote outposts, where the plant-creatures could live in peace within their temples. One such temple was built on Earth, in the region now known as Vietnam. Thor notes to himself that this accords with what the Star-Stalker told them last year. Mantis realizes with a start that the Cotati garden is where they buried the Swordsman. Suddenly, the four Avengers find themselves materializing in that very garden, where they are met by Mantis’s father, the international criminal mastermind known as Libra, and the Swordsman, seemingly alive and surrounded by a greenish glow. A small spacecraft lands nearby and Moondragon disembarks. Thor, Iron Man, and Mantis remember meeting her last December and know her to be a friend of Captain Marvel.
The Swordsman prompts Moondragon to tell the Avengers of her origins, and the heroes are struck by the many parallels between her tale and what they’ve learned of Mantis’s youth. Then, Immortus emerges from a portal to the time-vortex, bringing along a large crate, and leads everyone inside the temple’s main building. Telling the Swordsman to carry on, Immortus disappears into the time-vortex again to search for the Vision. The Swordsman and Libra then explain that both Mantis and Moondragon were chosen as potential candidates for the Celestial Madonna and, when circumstances permitted, were taken to remote monasteries to be raised by the descendants of the Kree pacifists. The ultimate goal of the girls’ training was to enable them to communicate with the Cotati—the first non-Kree ever to do so. This formed the basis of Moondragon’s mental powers and Mantis’s empathic nature. After several years, while Moondragon continued on in the life of a priestess, Mantis was given a set of false memories of a childhood on the streets of Saigon and sent out into the world, where she experienced all the mysteries of humanity. As a result, Mantis was finally chosen to be the Celestial Madonna. Moondragon, it is explained, lacked a certain rapport with ordinary people—a conclusion the Priestess of Titan finds insulting.
Thor and Iron Man are then summoned outside by Hawkeye, who has discovered the Radioactive Man, the Titanium Man, and the Crimson Dynamo lying in the dirt, badly beaten. Iron Man seems especially concerned by the amount of damage his foes’ armor has sustained. The Crimson Dynamo comes to and reveals that they were searching for the Avengers after their abrupt disappearance when they were ambushed by Kang the Conqueror. Realizing that Kang must be making another attempt to kidnap the Celestial Madonna, Thor wonders when the villain will learn his lesson and accept defeat. The three Avengers decide to split up and search the area. Flying around high above the jungle canopy, Thor realizes that Mantis is on the verge of becoming something akin to a god and thinks back to Jane Foster’s ill-fated attempt to become a goddess of Asgard a few years ago. Spotting Kang in a clearing below, Thor swoops down and attacks him, feeling another berserker rage coming over him. Though he puts up a decent fight, Kang proves to be no match for the god of thunder and is beaten into unconsciousness. When the three Avengers then discover that each of them has captured a time-displaced version of Kang, they realize the fights were a delaying tactic and race back to the temple. When they arrive, Thor barely has time to call out a warning before Kang’s time-capsule materializes. Using his force fields, Kang is able to kidnap Mantis and escape, and his three doppelgängers slip away in the confusion. Thor is ready to pursue the villain to the furthest reaches of time and space, but Immortus appears and tells him to stand down. Having brought the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, and Agatha Harkness with him, Immortus finally opens the large crate, revealing Mantis inside, safe and sound. Laughing at his own cleverness, Immortus explains that Kang has actually kidnapped the Space Phantom, the sole subject of his kingdom of Limbo, who used his powers to trade places with Mantis.
Mantis then reveals the true destiny of the Celestial Madonna: to enter into a marital union with a member of the Cotati and produce a new lifeform—a hybrid of plant and animal who enjoys the best of both worlds. The Swordsman’s body has actually been reanimated by the eldest Cotati on Earth, who arrived with the Priests of Pama nearly 20,000 years ago, and Mantis has agreed to marry him. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch announce that it had better be a double-wedding because they’ve decided to get married too. Immortus is pleased and volunteers to officiate. Thor, as Avengers chairman, makes a motion that the team officially induct Mantis as a full member, to honor her and their time together. The other Avengers agree, and Mantis is truly touched. They all adjourn to the garden, where Immortus conducts a brief ceremony to unite the Scarlet Witch & the Vision and Mantis & the Swordsman/Elder Cotati in matrimony. Afterwards, Mantis and her husband transform into pure energy and ascend into the sky. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch decide on a more traditional honeymoon in French Polynesia. Moondragon flies the Avengers to Saigon to pick up their Quinjet, and the Vision and the Scarlet Witch part company with them there. Thor and Iron Man then fly Agatha back to New York in the Quinjet while Moondragon gives Hawkeye a lift in her spaceship. En route, they all discuss their strange experience over the ship-to-ship communicator. Upon arrival, the Avengers inform Jarvis of everything that’s happened. Moondragon decides that she will stay with the team for a while, so Jarvis prepares a room for her. Iron Man says goodbye and flies off to the Stark International complex on Long Island. The next day, Agatha Harkness and her cat head home, telling the Avengers that the Scarlet Witch has made a good start on her magical training.
Not long after, Thor is shocked to wake up and discover that everyone in the city has been unconscious for two days. Reports of strange occurrences start coming in from around the world, but then the Fantastic Four notify the Avengers that it was all part of an alien invasion plot that they have foiled.
August 1967 – Thor and Moondragon get to know each other as she settles into life at Avengers Mansion. Hawkeye seems to find her irresistibly attractive, though she clearly considers him to be crude and obnoxious. When Manhattan is rocked by a series of unnatural earthquakes, Thor leads Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Moondragon out to help rescue people from damaged buildings. Since the earthquakes seem to have two epicenters—one in Washington Heights at the north end of the island and the other in the Financial District on the island’s southern tip—the thunder god decides to split the team up. He sends Iron Man and Hawkeye to the south while he and Moondragon head to the north. There, they receive some help from the Human Torch and Medusa.
September 1967 – Hearing an explosion while flying over Manhattan one night, Thor goes to investigate and finds Hercules rescuing a young man from a burning tenement building. After summoning up a rainstorm to extinguish the fire, Thor joins Hercules and a police detective, Ralph Blumkenn, to discuss the matter. Blumkenn explains to Thor that, according to Hercules, the fire was caused by an elderly resident who used his gas oven to commit suicide while muttering about eternal life. This matches three previous suicides of people speaking cryptically about eternal life. Though initially skeptical that there’s some kind of conspiracy, Thor and Hercules agree to look into it. Not being much of a detective, Thor asks Odin for help, so Odin sends Sif to Earth. Thor and Sif are overjoyed to see each other again, but Hercules finds them annoying and goes off to solve the mystery on his own. Irritated, Thor takes Sif to the hospital to see Krista. They are relieved to find that Krista has finally emerged from her coma, fully recovered. Then, less than an hour after going off on his own, Hercules stumbles into the room looking utterly terrified and passes out. The thunder god rushes Hercules to Avengers Mansion and consults with Iron Man. When he comes to, Hercules goes berserk until Krista calms him down. Since Hercules’s memories of the past hour are fragmentary at best, he and Thor retrace his steps and are drawn into a terrifying encounter with a demonic being known as the Dweller in Darkness in its subterranean lair. The heroes refuse to give in to despair, however, and escape back to the light of day. Blumkenn meets up with them and reports that two patients at Bellevue Hospital were on the verge of committing suicide like the others but snapped out of it suddenly, for which he credits Thor and Hercules. Thor is shocked when Blumkenn says one of the patients was asking for him—a woman named Jane Foster.
Thor flies at once to Bellevue Hospital and storms into Jane’s room, only to find she has lapsed into a coma. Seeing her there, all of Thor’s old feelings for her come flooding back. Determined to maintain a vigil in the hospital, Thor steps down as Avengers chairman early, with Iron Man agreeing to take over for him. Knowing how much Jane has meant to Thor, Sif tries to be supportive. Hercules and Krista take up residence at the mansion and spend a lot of time together.
October–November 1967 – Refusing to leave Jane’s side while she lies in a coma, Thor neglects all other matters. Sif’s patience starts to wear thin, as it seems clear that Thor’s feelings for Jane are much deeper than Sif realized. Hercules and Krista visit the thunder god regularly, but he refuses to be cheered up. As the weeks pass, Jane’s condition slowly deteriorates.
December 1967 – Thor’s vigil is interrupted when Krista charges into Jane’s hospital room and informs the thunder god that Hercules is fighting for his life against a monster of some kind in Times Square. Angered, Thor launches himself out the window and flies to the scene, where he finds a hairy, hulking brute called Armak on a rampage. As they engage with each other, Thor is surprised by Armak’s strength and savagery. Their brawl takes them to the top of a skyscraper construction site, where Armak gets the upper hand and starts choking Thor to death. Luckily, Armak is distracted by a woman down below yelling through a bullhorn. She calls him “Arnold” and begs him to stop. Thor punches Armak in the jaw, sending him plummeting to his death. Satisfied that the battle is over, Thor flies directly back to the hospital, leaving Hercules to deal with the situation on the ground.
Jane finally regains consciousness and recognizes Thor. Heartsick, the thunder god vows to be ever at her side. However, she has not responded to any of the experimental treatments her doctors have tried, and Thor knows she is dying. Later, while Jane is sleeping, Thor goes to brood on a nearby rooftop and is accosted by Firelord, the former herald of Galactus whom Thor and Hercules freed from servitude two years ago. Enraged by Firelord’s apparent ingratitude, Thor responds with extreme violence, and their fight causes tremendous property damage before they finally agree to parley. They head to Avengers Mansion, where they find Iron Man, Krista, and Jarvis in the conference room. Firelord then explains that he stumbled upon a portal to the Dark Dimension, where he encountered Loki, who was ranting about his plans to conquer Asgard. The god of mischief revealed that he had absorbed Dormammu’s mystic essence when it was blasted through his mind by the Evil Eye of Avalon last year. As soon as he was able, Loki took refuge in the Dark Dimension and studied Dormammu’s mystic secrets. Iron Man then reports that he’s just heard from their friend Tom Fagan up in Rutland, Vermont, who said that Loki had vanished that morning, to be replaced by the teenaged boy who disappeared after last year’s Halloween party. Stunned by these revelations, Thor realizes that Loki must have escaped into the Dark Dimension almost immediately after being left in Rutland, leaving behind a hapless doppelgänger in his place. Firelord suggests that Loki sent him back to Earth specifically to alert Thor of his brother’s plot and offers to help save Asgard. Thor is torn, knowing that honor demands he stand with the Avengers against Loki’s threat but wanting nothing more than to race back to be with Jane.
After learning from Krista that Sif and Hercules have gone off on some kind of quest together, Thor takes a walk around the neighborhood, trying to decide which course of action is right. His mind is made up when he saves a small boy from a runaway truck and realizes that all of humanity needs his help. However, upon returning to Avengers Mansion, Thor finds the entire building surrounded by an impenetrable force field. He deduces that Loki must be responsible, intent on depriving the world of its greatest champions. Following a brief visit with Jane in the hospital, Thor flies to Washington, D.C. and attends a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. They inform him that similar force fields are imprisoning all known superheroes—clearly Loki wants to fight Thor one-on-one. Within minutes, Loki’s invasion begins, as legions of Asgardian warriors emerge through dimensional portals just like the one Firelord encountered. Thor flies out and confronts the Asgardians on the Arlington Memorial Bridge, wondering why Odin has permitted this incursion. When Loki appears, Thor is struck by the changes in his adopted brother wrought by Dormammu’s malign influence.
Loki orders dozens of his warriors to attack Thor, but the thunder god ends up generating a vortex that blows them off the bridge into the Potomac River. Loki mocks Thor’s efforts, revealing that he was responsible for Armak’s rampage. He then blasts Thor the entire length of the bridge with the eldritch flame from his burning sword. Thor is astonished by Loki’s newfound might. A ragtag group of soldiers then rolls up, led by General Sam Sawyer, who says it’s the best the Army can do on such short notice. Thor knows they will be no match for Asgardian warriors, and he is soon proved right as a terrible battle ensues. While Thor keeps Loki busy, Army demolition experts blow a hole in the bridge. Unfortunately, Loki conjures up a force field that keeps his forces from falling into the river. Unable to counter such magic, the Army retreats while Loki laughs maniacally.
As night falls over the city, Thor argues with General Sawyer over tactics and strategy. He is horrified by Sawyer’s willingness to drop a nuclear bomb on the Asgardians if nothing else will stop them. Unexpectedly, Asgard’s Grand Vizier materializes and informs Thor that Odin has embarked on a sojourn on Midgard in mortal form and, to make matters worse, has placed a spell of forgetfulness over himself. Thus, no help can be expected from the All-Father; Thor must stand or fall alone. Within the hour, the thunder god leads a commando squad into Loki’s encampment near the Lincoln Memorial, only to be captured immediately. With a mere gesture, Loki imprisons Thor and the commandos in a crystalline prison, then raves about how he will conquer the world at dawn.
When the sun rises several hours later, Thor senses that the spell making the crystal structure unbreachable is weakening. With great effort, he is able to smash through it with Mjolnir. He and the commandos then find Loki fighting with Firelord, who has somehow escaped the force field surrounding Avengers Mansion. Thor punches Loki in the face and challenges him to single combat, saying he will be branded a coward for all time if he refuses. Naturally, Loki agrees, knowing he need only keep Thor away from his enchanted hammer for sixty seconds, whereupon the thunder god will revert to his vulnerable mortal form. However, Thor has noticed that his brother’s voice and manner are becoming more familiar, meaning Dormammu’s influence is wearing off. Thus, Thor fights furiously as the seconds tick away. Finally, with mere moments to spare, Thor manages to box Loki’s ears so hard it knocks him out. Snatching up his hammer, Thor declares victory. With Loki’s defeat, his spell over the Asgardian warriors is broken, and they hail Thor as their prince. General Sawyer and his soldiers are relieved, but Thor only feels saddened that his relationship with his brother has come to this. Soon, the warriors take Loki back to Asgard to be imprisoned, and Krista decides to return home with them. The Grand Vizier, on the other hand, elects to remain on Midgard awhile and takes a room at Avengers Mansion.
With the crisis passed, Thor resumes spending most of his time with Jane in the hospital. Her condition continues to worsen, and Thor knows the end is near. Eventually, the thunder god learns from Jarvis that Steve Rogers has taken up the mantle of Captain America again and retrieved his costume and shield from the mansion’s storage vault. Thor is relieved that his teammate has finally sorted out his identity problems. A week or so later, Thor puts in an appearance at the Avengers’ sixth annual Christmas charity benefit, along with Iron Man, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, and Moondragon. He then races back to the hospital to watch over the woman he loves.
Notes:
January–May 1967 – Black Spectre wreaks havoc in the United States in Daredevil #109–112 and Marvel Two-In-One #3, during which the Avengers remain behind the scenes.
June 1967 – Disillusioned after the Secret Empire affair, Captain America calls it quits in Captain America #176. Thor and the Human Torch join forces against the Lava Men in Marvel Team-Up #26. All concerned remain unaware that Jinku’s visions were projected into his mind by They Who Wield Power. Thor and his fellow superheroes fight Ultron-7 while attending the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver in Avengers #127 and Fantastic Four #150. The Avengers’ battle with Kang the Conqueror then follows in Avengers #128–129 and Giant-Size Avengers #2. The timestream disturbances in the late 20th century that Kang refers to are the result of the “time bubble” (which stretches from 1995 to 2010) that Thor (among others) will investigate in Avengers #296–297 and Fantastic Four #337–341.
July 1967 – The saga of the Celestial Madonna continues through Avengers #130–137 and Giant-Size Avengers #3–4. The creature in the labyrinth is, of course, the Frankenstein Monster—or rather a simulacrum created by Kang for his Legion of the Unliving using Immortus’s time-manipulation devices. This one is based on the Monster as he was in 1898 before entering suspended animation for the second time. Wonder Man is likewise a simulacrum based on Simon Williams just before his apparent death in 1963, and the Original Human Torch simulacrum is based on the flaming android just before he deactivated himself out in the desert in 1955. Rather than sending him into the past, the crafty Immortus merely disintegrates the fake Human Torch like the rest of the Legion of the Unliving, but the Avengers are none the wiser. It is finally revealed in Avengers West Coast #50 that the Vision and the Original Human Torch are two separate entities. (Later revelations to the contrary are considered non-canonical here.) When Iron Man departs from Avengers Mansion on the splash page of Iron Man #74, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch are erroneously shown instead of Moondragon. The people of Manhattan are rendered insensate for two days by alien invaders in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3.
August 1967 – Earthquakes strike Manhattan in Marvel Team-Up #28, courtesy of a pair of disgruntled scientists being manipulated by They Who Wield Power. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four remain behind the scenes.
September 1967 – The thunder god’s solo adventures finally resume in Thor #229 and following.
December 1967 – Firelord’s activities during his sojourn on Earth remain largely an Untold Tale of the Original Marvel Universe. Presumably, he kept to himself most of the time. Steve Rogers’ return as Captain America occurs in Captain America #183. Loki’s failed invasion of Earth brings us up to Thor #234.
Jump Back: Thor – Year Five
Next Issue: Iron Man – Year Six
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Let the tale be told of… The True History of the Mighty Thor!
January–March 1967 – Thor splits his time between fighting crime in New York City as the Asgardian god of thunder and working as a physician in his mortal identity of Donald Blake, M.D. In addition to caring for the retired superhero known as the Whizzer, still recuperating from his recent heart attack at Avengers Mansion, Don regularly checks on the young Asgardian woman Krista, who remains in a coma in a Manhattan hospital, the result of an ordeal in Hades over a year ago. Having rented an apartment for himself in the city, Thor finds himself once again spending more time in his mortal guise and has little contact with Asgard. Periodically, the thunder god travels to Rutland, Vermont to visit his adopted brother Loki, who appears to be in a near-catatonic state. Thor also attends the Avengers’ regularly scheduled meetings, along with Iron Man, Captain America, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Swordsman, and Mantis.
Thor is frustrated when the subversive organization Black Spectre continually gets away with carrying out offensive pranks and outrageous sabotage, such as inciting a race riot at the Statue of Liberty, installing a swastika atop the Washington Monument, draping Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in black shrouds, and carving Adolf Hitler’s face into Mount Rushmore. S.H.I.E.L.D., which assists the government with repairing all the damage, assures the Avengers that it’s doing all it can to stop Black Spectre.
April 1967 – Thor agrees to once again serve as Avengers chairman, taking over for the Vision. As a prince of Asgard, he enjoys being in charge of the team, though he finds many of the routine administrative duties rather tedious.
May 1967 – The Avengers receive a message from Black Spectre claiming that they have an atomic bomb hidden somewhere under Manhattan, which they threaten to detonate if the Avengers interfere with their overthrow of the U.S. government. Soon after, the terrorist group invades Washington, D.C. and storms the White House, only to be defeated by Daredevil and the Black Widow. Thor is relieved when the bomb threat turns out to be a hoax.
June 1967 – At Avengers Mansion, Thor joins Iron Man, the Vision, and the team’s butler, Edwin Jarvis, in trying to talk the disillusioned Captain America out of abandoning his costumed identity. Thor insists that Cap is the epitome of the noble warrior and nothing could be more glorious, but Cap counters that such sentiments are better applied to Asgardians than the men of Earth, where things are more complicated. Ultimately, Cap does decide to retire, leaving his costume and shield in a storage vault beneath the mansion. Though disappointed, Thor respects his teammate’s decision.
While taking a taxi to the hospital to check in on Krista, Don Blake sees a flaming message in the sky from the Human Torch, requesting that Thor meet him atop the Statue of Liberty. Curious, Don tells the driver to pull over and finds a shadowy alley where he can transform back into the god of thunder. When he arrives, Thor is surprised to find the Human Torch is there with Molto, the Lava Man. Mortally wounded, Molto warns them that his tribe’s fanatical witch-doctor, Jinku, has convinced their king to use a weapon commandeered from the Mole Man to cause every volcano on earth to erupt simultaneously. Molto fled to the surface to try to find Thor, only to be cut down by the radioactive energies from Jinku’s staff. He explains that Jinku, inspired by strange visions, is convinced the Lava Men will succeed in taking over the world. With his dying breath, Molto reveals that Jinku and the king are planning to test the device on Mauna Loa in Hawaii at any moment. Thor is saddened by his friend’s demise, but with no time to spare, he uses Mjolnir to generate a space-time vortex that carries him and the Human Torch to Hawaii, where they find Mauna Loa is already erupting. Thor immediately digs a deep channel in the ground to divert the lava flow away from a nearby village and conjures up a tropical storm directly above the summit. Using his enchanted hammer, Thor then tunnels down to Subterranea and confronts the Lava Men. The Human Torch follows, but the two heroes are soon knocked unconscious by the witch-doctor’s deadly staff. When he comes to, the thunder god finds he has reverted to his mortal form. Don realizes that Jinku must have tried to use Mjolnir as a power source for his world-destroying weapon. Not seeing the Human Torch anywhere, Don assumes the Lava Men must have killed him. He clambers up the side of the gigantic machine and retrieves his walking stick, immediately changing himself back into Thor. Wading into the Lava Men’s vast army, he is heartened when the Human Torch arrives on the scene along with hordes of Subterraneans. A fierce battle ensues with over half-a-million combatants, but with Thor and the Human Torch on their side, the Subterraneans eventually win the day. Before returning to the surface, Thor again gives the defeated Lava Men a stern warning to live peaceably in their own realm. The Human Torch is eager to brag to his teammates about his epic adventure, though as far as Thor is concerned, he was pretty useless.
Thor is sitting down to dinner at Avengers Mansion with Iron Man, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Swordsman, and Mantis when the Inhumans Gorgon and Lockjaw suddenly materialize in the room. Gorgon is annoyed that the Avengers are not ready to leave for the Great Refuge to attend the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver, but this is the first the team has heard of it. Apparently, Quicksilver neglected to invite them, much to the Scarlet Witch’s chagrin. Nevertheless, she decides that they will attend in any case. Iron Man sets up a video link to the Inhumans’ royal palace so the Whizzer will be able to watch the ceremony, since he has come to believe that Quicksilver is his son. The Avengers then fly around the world to the Himalayas in a Quinjet while Gorgon and Lockjaw teleport home. When they arrive, they are greeted by the rest of the royal family—Black Bolt, Medusa, Crystal, Karnak, and Triton—as well as the Human Torch, the Thing, Mister Fantastic, and Susan Richards. Mister Fantastic introduces the Avengers to Agatha Harkness, an elderly woman who helps take care of his two-year-old son, Franklin Richards, who lies in a coma. When Mantis asks about what appears to be a huge, grotesque statue in the center of the city, Medusa explains that it is actually a giant android called Omega, which Black Bolt’s brother, Maximus the Mad, created in order to weaponize the Inhumans’ prejudice against their servant class, the Alpha Primitives. After being deactivated, the android was left in a public square as a memorial. Triton insists that Black Bolt has instituted many reforms since that fateful day.
Several hours later, Thor joins the others for a royal banquet in a large stadium, from which Quicksilver is conspicuously absent. To cheer up Crystal and entertain the crowds, Thor, Iron Man, the Human Torch, the Thing, and Medusa put on an impromptu exhibition of their superhuman powers. However, Iron Man and Medusa fall under some form of mind control and attack the section of the stands where the Alpha Primitives are seated. The pair is quickly subdued and then lapses into unconsciousness. The Alpha Primitives start yelling accusations at Black Bolt, only to be shouted down by the Inhumans around them. The Alpha Primitives then leave the stadium in protest, and the festivities are quickly brought to a close. Thor realizes the situation in the Great Refuge is less rosy than the royal family made it seem. Later, he meets with Mister Fantastic and Black Bolt to discuss the situation, with Triton interpreting for his silent king. The meeting is interrupted when the Swordsman and Mantis raise the alarm—Omega has come to life and kidnapped Crystal.
Thor, Mister Fantastic, Black Bolt, and Triton rejoin the others and see that Quicksilver has finally deigned to make an appearance now that his bride is in danger. Through Triton, Black Bolt suggests that the Avengers, being impartial observers, may have better luck questioning the Alpha Primitives about Omega’s reactivation, and Thor concurs. Quicksilver leads his former teammates into the caverns where the Alpha Primitives live, only to lose his temper and attack them, demanding that they return Crystal at once. Mantis forces Quicksilver to stand down, but they both suddenly fall unconscious. Thor quickly determines that their symptoms match those of Iron Man and Medusa and calls for the Avengers to retreat back to the surface. The Alpha Primitives become a rampaging mob, but Thor keeps them at bay with bolts of lightning from his hammer. Outside, the Avengers find the other heroes carrying Maximus on a stretcher. Though he appears to be unconscious as well, Maximus leaps up as soon as the Alpha Primitives emerge from the caverns, grabs a blaster, and opens fire on them. In the ensuing melee, Maximus, Gorgon, Karnak, Triton, the Swordsman, and the Human Torch abruptly fall unconscious as well. Finally, Omega strides across the plaza to the remaining heroes and reveals himself to be Ultron-7 in disguise. The murderous robot explains that Maximus brought the severed head of Ultron-6 to the Great Refuge after the Vision defeated him a few years ago and eventually fused his circuits with the Omega android, giving him Omega’s psychic abilities, which he has used to incapacitate the unconscious heroes. Ultron-7 then turns those abilities against all his enemies, intent on destroying their minds. His scheme backfires, though, as his psychic energies inadvertently awaken Franklin Richards from his coma. The boy lashes out at the source of the attack with his mysterious mutant powers, obliterating Ultron-7’s computerized brain. Thor and the others then look on happily as the Richards family is at last reunited.
The next day, as heralds fly over the Great Refuge blowing their horns to summon the guests to the wedding ceremony, Thor realizes that neither he nor Iron Man are particularly eager to attend the festivities due to their own star-crossed love lives. The thunder god reminisces about his love affair with Jane Foster and complains of how circumstances always seem to be keeping him and his new paramour, the goddess Sif, apart. Iron Man admits ruefully that he lost his heart to Pepper Potts, who is now married to his best friend, and has been searching for someone to replace her ever since. Noting that not everyone can be as lucky as Quicksilver and Crystal, Iron Man suggests they head to the palace. The wedding proceeds with no further disturbances, and at the conclusion of the ceremony, Lockjaw teleports the newlyweds off to their honeymoon. A huge celebration follows, which Thor enjoys tremendously despite the Inhumans’ peculiar customs.
The Avengers then return to New York, arriving at the mansion shortly before midnight. The Fantastic Four stop by on their way home to say goodnight. However, a sudden storm forms overhead, unleashing a series of deadly lightning bolts that strike the roof. Thor immediately launches himself into the sky and tries to dispel the storm, only to find that it resists his influence. He is startled when Agatha Harkness reveals herself to be a powerful sorceress by dissipating the storm with a magical incantation. She then informs the Fantastic Four that she will no longer be serving as Franklin’s nanny, for the time has come for her to take on a new charge—the Scarlet Witch. The Avengers are shocked, but the Scarlet Witch admits that she has long wanted to study true witchcraft and accepts Agatha as her tutor. As the Fantastic Four depart and the Avengers enter the building, Thor authorizes Agatha to take up residence there. He and Iron Man are then distracted when the Swordsman becomes distraught after Mantis abruptly ends their romantic relationship. Before they can resolve the situation, the Avengers are drawn outside by a commotion in the street. They find an intensely bright light shining down on the mansion from what appears to be a new star in the sky. Suddenly, their old foe, Kang the Conqueror, materializes and announces that the star is a signal indicating that the 20th century is ripe for conquest.
Using 41st-century robots called “Macrobots,” Kang easily defeats Thor, Iron Man, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, the Swordsman, Mantis, and Agatha Harkness and takes them prisoner. The time-traveling despot then explains that the “newborn star” heralds the appearance of the legendary Celestial Madonna, who is to mate with the most powerful man in the world and produce a child who will conquer the universe. Kang is determined to be that man and to rule the heavens through the child. Due to strange disturbances in the timestream in the late 20th century, he was unable to determine the exact date the star would manifest itself, so he left a temporal monitor behind during his first incursion four and a half years ago. And although the historical records of the 20th century that have survived to Kang’s era are fragmentary at best, the positioning of the star above Avengers Mansion suggests that the Celestial Madonna is either the Scarlet Witch, Mantis, or Agatha Harkness. In order to solve that riddle, Kang teleports his prisoners to a laboratory hidden inside an ancient Egyptian pyramid, derisively leaving the Swordsman behind. He then conducts a battery of tests on the women while Thor, Iron Man, and the Vision struggle to escape the paralysis beam that renders them helpless. Fortunately, the Swordsman is able to pull himself together and mount a rescue mission, apparently led to the pyramid by Agatha’s telepathy. Kang dismisses the threat of the Swordsman, though, revealing that he designed the pyramid himself while ruling Egypt as the pharaoh Rama-Tut and left a vampire named Amenhotep behind to guard it. Upon entering, the Swordsman inadvertently releases the vampire, though it soon stumbles out into the sunlight and is disintegrated. Unconcerned, Kang seals Thor, Iron Man, and the Vision inside Macrobot exoskeletons, revealing his plan to send them out to kill key government personnel in the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China, after which a strategically placed neutron bomb will set off a global nuclear war. With that, Kang loads all his captives into his time-capsule and flies to the United Nations building in New York City.
With the time-capsule rendered invisible by a cloaking device, Kang dispatches the Macrobot containing the Vision, only to watch him be defeated by the Swordsman, who has been joined by Hawkeye and a mysterious stranger. Deciding to cut his losses, Kang pilots the time-capsule to Peking, China, where he sends out the Macrobot containing Iron Man. Again, his scheme is foiled by the Swordsman, Hawkeye, and their unknown companion, now joined by the Vision. Enraged, Kang abandons his plan to go to Moscow and sends the Macrobot containing Thor out to recapture Iron Man and the Vision. As the cloaking device is deactivated, Vision is able to phase inside and free the Scarlet Witch, Mantis, and Agatha. The two younger women immediately join the battle, though they bicker constantly. Thor takes a beating inside the Macrobot, but his teammates manage to immobilize it long enough for the mystery man to open it up, releasing the thunder god. The enigmatic stranger then confronts Kang, who reveals him to be his own future self, living once again as Pharaoh Rama-Tut. As the two men start fighting each other, a strange wave of hallucinatory images wash over the Avengers—dreamlike images of the past, present, and future. Suddenly, Kang realizes that Mantis is the Celestial Madonna and announces that if he can’t have her, no one will. He fires his ray gun at Mantis, but the Swordsman leaps in front of her and is mortally wounded. Rama-Tut tackles Kang, and as they struggle, they inadvertently activate the time-capsule, which dematerializes. The Avengers are shocked and horrified by this sudden turn of events. The Swordsman dies in Mantis’s arms, cursing himself as a failure. The sorrowful Avengers honor their fallen teammate, then take his body back to New York. When they arrive at the mansion, Jarvis informs them that the Whizzer has moved on, showing them a morose farewell note he left behind. The Scarlet Witch is very upset by it. Thor encourages everyone to get some much-needed rest.
July 1967 – Over the next few days, Thor agrees to serve another term as Avengers chairman and Hawkeye continues to hang around, though he won’t commit to formally rejoining the team. He’s not shy, though, about claiming credit for convincing Steve Rogers to adopt a new costumed identity. Mantis requests permission to take the Swordsman’s body to Vietnam for burial, since she has decided to return home rather than remain with the Avengers. Thor grants her request, offering to have the team accompany her and try to unravel some of the secrets of her past. Mantis is touched by such generosity. The Scarlet Witch begs off, saying that Agatha Harkness is insistent that she continue her education in witchcraft without delay. Vision is also reluctant to go, concerned that he has had panic attacks in the heat of battle a few times now, but Thor and Iron Man assure him that they will look out for him. Hawkeye agrees to go along, so the five heroes are soon aboard a Quinjet on its way to South Vietnam.
After spending a night in Saigon, the Avengers fly their Quinjet to the abandoned temple of the Priests of Pama, where they battled the Star-Stalker several month ago. There, they conduct a simple funeral for the Swordsman and bury him in a shady spot in the garden. Afterwards, they are drawn into a confrontation with the Radioactive Man, the Titanium Man, and the Crimson Dynamo, who are chasing a terrified local man. The trio claims that they are considered heroes in that region and were punishing the man for beating his wife. Iron Man loses his temper and charges at his foes, intent on settling some old scores, but Thor forces him to stand down, citing jurisdictional issues. The Avengers return to Saigon, where they broadcast a worldwide appeal for Captain Marvel or Rick Jones to contact them, since, like the Priests of Pama, Captain Marvel is of Kree origin and might be able to shed some light on the situation. When no answer is immediately forthcoming, they decide to check out some of the places Mantis remembers from her childhood. However, her memories turn out to be at odds with the facts, leading Mantis to start questioning her sanity.
Another day of investigating leads the Avengers to Saigon’s warehouse district, where Mantis remembers working in seedy bars and brothels. But again, no one there recognizes her. Suddenly, they are set upon by the Radioactive Man, the Titanium Man, and the Crimson Dynamo, accompanied this time by an armored Vietnamese man calling himself the Slasher. Given that they are now in Saigon, Thor refuses to back down, so a fight breaks out. The thunder god focuses his efforts on the Titanium Man while his teammates deal with the others. In the course of the battle, it is revealed that the Slasher recruited his associates by claiming to be a Viet Cong sympathizer whom the Americans were harassing, but when he drops his bag of stolen diamonds, the Titanium Man realizes they were duped by a petty criminal and calls an end to the fighting. The communist supermen withdraw, leaving the Avengers to turn the Slasher and the stolen diamonds over to the local authorities. The following day, the Avengers meet up with Steve Rogers in his new identity as Nomad. He reports that he’s just wrapped up his first case, for the most part—he’s just waiting for the last two members of the Serpent Squad to turn up somewhere so he can apprehend them. After a battle with the villains on a Roxxon oil rig in the Pacific Ocean, he and the Sub-Mariner were pursuing Warlord Krang when he heard the Avengers were in Saigon and decided to pay them a visit. Nomad is surprised to hear of how the Swordsman sacrificed his life to save Mantis, given his criminal past. Thor and Iron Man both find their friend’s new black-and-gold costume to be somewhat off-putting but are glad that he seems to have put the Secret Empire scandal behind him. A few minutes later, Jarvis radios the team to report that there’s been no word from Captain Marvel but news outlets are reporting that the fugitive Serpent Squad members have been spotted in Los Angeles. With that, Nomad bounds off, promising to keep the Avengers posted on how his mission turns out.
A moment later, without warning, Thor finds himself teleported to a series of stone catacombs in the timeless dimension of Limbo, where he is taunted by the echoing voice of Kang the Conqueror. Thor tries to smash his way out of the labyrinth but finds that something has neutralized the power of his enchanted hammer, though he is still able to change into Don Blake. He soon encounters a lumbering monster that appears to be stitched together from various corpses. Don panics and strikes the creature with his walking stick. It retaliates by trying to strangle him. Don quickly turns back into Thor, and the thunder god easily bests the grunting, growling monster. Realizing that his mute foe is as much a pawn in Kang’s game as he is, Thor lets the creature go and follows it as it shuffles off down the corridor. The thunder god grows frustrated when he somehow loses the monster in the labyrinth, but then he finds Iron Man lying motionless on the floor. Unable to detect any signs of life, Thor vows to wreak terrible vengeance on Kang and all his minions. Soon finding Kang in the labyrinth, Thor attacks him but is unable to penetrate his personal force field. The thunder god is shocked when Wonder Man comes to Kang’s defense, revealing that he was brought back to life by technology belonging to someone called “Immortus.” The battle between Thor and Wonder Man is inconclusive, but the tide turns when the monster reappears, accompanied by the long-lost original Human Torch, whom Thor remembers encountering briefly during World War II. To Thor’s relief, the monster and the Torch refuse to obey Kang’s commands and declare the fight at an end. As Kang sputters in impotent rage, Vision steps out of the shadows, his left arm badly damaged. Wonder Man finds he is reluctant to attack the Vision, and Thor realizes it must be because they share the same brain patterns. Thor leaps at Kang, battering his force field with Mjolnir as a berserker rage comes over him. Unable to withstand the onslaught, Kang initiates a time-shift in order to escape. After the villain has dematerialized, Thor calms down and is astonished by the Vision’s revelation that he and the Human Torch are, in fact, the same android. Vision believes that this is the explanation for his panic attacks—certain circumstances were triggering residual memories of being entombed or submerged for long periods to prevent his former self from flaming on. However, they still don’t know how or when the metamorphosis took place.
Suddenly, they are all teleported to another part of the structure, what appears to be the throne room of an enormous castle. There, they find Rama-Tut with a similar-looking man called Immortus. Hawkeye and Mantis also materialize, along with Iron Man’s body and an unconscious fellow in black known as Midnight. Immortus assures the Avengers that Iron Man’s death is merely an illusion—the flow of time for the golden Avenger has been slowed down to such an extent that he is merely between heartbeats. Immortus reverses the effect, and Iron Man revives instantly, unaware that any time has passed since he collapsed. After restoring the Vision’s arm, Immortus dispatches Kang’s so-called Legion of the Unliving—the monster, Wonder Man, Midnight, Baron Heinrich Zemo, and the Ghost of the Flying Dutchman—back to oblivion. Rama-Tut thanks the Avengers for their help preventing Kang from causing chaos while chasing after the Celestial Madonna, then teleports himself away. Immortus then offers to facilitate the Human Torch and the Vision’s quest to learn the secrets of their past, saying he is sympathetic to their plight because, as the Avengers may have guessed, he is the same man who was once Rama-Tut and Kang. He assumed the name Immortus, he explains, after taking over the dimension of Limbo, where time is not linear. Furthermore, he offers to enable the rest of the Avengers to uncover the ancient secrets of the Celestial Madonna and how that legend has shaped Mantis’s life. Thus, he hands what he terms a “synchro-staff” to both the Human Torch and the Vision and sends them off into the timestream, explaining that, because their secrets are of recent vintage and still able to affect the course of present events, they must go on their journeys through time alone. Immortus hands another synchro-staff to Thor, saying that it’s fine for the others to accompany Mantis since their quest will lead them into the distant past. The enigmatic master of time then activates his machines again, sending Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Mantis into the psychedelic lightshow of the time-vortex.
The four Avengers soon find themselves flashing phantom-like through vast expanses of space and time while the synchro-staff telepathically narrates the events they are witnessing. First, they see the earliest events in the recorded history of the Kree race, when a delegation of Skrulls arrived on the planet Hala and proposed a contest between the Kree and sentient, telepathic plant-creatures called the Cotati to determine which would serve as the planet’s official representatives in subsequent trade negotiations. A Kree tribe was transported to Earth’s moon through a naturally occurring space warp at the edge of the solar system and there built the city within what the Fantastic Four have dubbed the Blue Area of the Moon. However, when the Skrulls chose the Cotati based on the garden they created, the tribal leader of the Kree, a barbarian named Morag, led his warriors to attack the aliens and slaughtered them. The Kree then plundered the technology of the Skrull spaceship, built a fleet of their own, and soon started the Kree-Skrull War, which has raged off and on for millions of years. Then, several centuries later, the Avengers see how pacifist Kree monks known as the Priests of Pama, who had developed their psychic abilities alongside a unique form of martial arts, entered into an alliance with the surviving Cotati. When the leader of the Kree Empire, the Supreme Intelligence, exiled the pacifists to a remote prison planet, the Cotati telepathically lured the Star-Stalker there. Using their martial-arts skill, the monks drove off the Star-Stalker, then warned the Supreme Intelligence of the threat it represented to Hala. Ultimately, the Supreme Intelligence agreed to the monks’ proposal to spread out across the galaxies in small groups to stand as sentries on all known inhabited worlds. The Priests of Pama then smuggled the Cotati to these remote outposts, where the plant-creatures could live in peace within their temples. One such temple was built on Earth, in the region now known as Vietnam. Thor notes to himself that this accords with what the Star-Stalker told them last year. Mantis realizes with a start that the Cotati garden is where they buried the Swordsman. Suddenly, the four Avengers find themselves materializing in that very garden, where they are met by Mantis’s father, the international criminal mastermind known as Libra, and the Swordsman, seemingly alive and surrounded by a greenish glow. A small spacecraft lands nearby and Moondragon disembarks. Thor, Iron Man, and Mantis remember meeting her last December and know her to be a friend of Captain Marvel.
The Swordsman prompts Moondragon to tell the Avengers of her origins, and the heroes are struck by the many parallels between her tale and what they’ve learned of Mantis’s youth. Then, Immortus emerges from a portal to the time-vortex, bringing along a large crate, and leads everyone inside the temple’s main building. Telling the Swordsman to carry on, Immortus disappears into the time-vortex again to search for the Vision. The Swordsman and Libra then explain that both Mantis and Moondragon were chosen as potential candidates for the Celestial Madonna and, when circumstances permitted, were taken to remote monasteries to be raised by the descendants of the Kree pacifists. The ultimate goal of the girls’ training was to enable them to communicate with the Cotati—the first non-Kree ever to do so. This formed the basis of Moondragon’s mental powers and Mantis’s empathic nature. After several years, while Moondragon continued on in the life of a priestess, Mantis was given a set of false memories of a childhood on the streets of Saigon and sent out into the world, where she experienced all the mysteries of humanity. As a result, Mantis was finally chosen to be the Celestial Madonna. Moondragon, it is explained, lacked a certain rapport with ordinary people—a conclusion the Priestess of Titan finds insulting.
Thor and Iron Man are then summoned outside by Hawkeye, who has discovered the Radioactive Man, the Titanium Man, and the Crimson Dynamo lying in the dirt, badly beaten. Iron Man seems especially concerned by the amount of damage his foes’ armor has sustained. The Crimson Dynamo comes to and reveals that they were searching for the Avengers after their abrupt disappearance when they were ambushed by Kang the Conqueror. Realizing that Kang must be making another attempt to kidnap the Celestial Madonna, Thor wonders when the villain will learn his lesson and accept defeat. The three Avengers decide to split up and search the area. Flying around high above the jungle canopy, Thor realizes that Mantis is on the verge of becoming something akin to a god and thinks back to Jane Foster’s ill-fated attempt to become a goddess of Asgard a few years ago. Spotting Kang in a clearing below, Thor swoops down and attacks him, feeling another berserker rage coming over him. Though he puts up a decent fight, Kang proves to be no match for the god of thunder and is beaten into unconsciousness. When the three Avengers then discover that each of them has captured a time-displaced version of Kang, they realize the fights were a delaying tactic and race back to the temple. When they arrive, Thor barely has time to call out a warning before Kang’s time-capsule materializes. Using his force fields, Kang is able to kidnap Mantis and escape, and his three doppelgängers slip away in the confusion. Thor is ready to pursue the villain to the furthest reaches of time and space, but Immortus appears and tells him to stand down. Having brought the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, and Agatha Harkness with him, Immortus finally opens the large crate, revealing Mantis inside, safe and sound. Laughing at his own cleverness, Immortus explains that Kang has actually kidnapped the Space Phantom, the sole subject of his kingdom of Limbo, who used his powers to trade places with Mantis.
Mantis then reveals the true destiny of the Celestial Madonna: to enter into a marital union with a member of the Cotati and produce a new lifeform—a hybrid of plant and animal who enjoys the best of both worlds. The Swordsman’s body has actually been reanimated by the eldest Cotati on Earth, who arrived with the Priests of Pama nearly 20,000 years ago, and Mantis has agreed to marry him. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch announce that it had better be a double-wedding because they’ve decided to get married too. Immortus is pleased and volunteers to officiate. Thor, as Avengers chairman, makes a motion that the team officially induct Mantis as a full member, to honor her and their time together. The other Avengers agree, and Mantis is truly touched. They all adjourn to the garden, where Immortus conducts a brief ceremony to unite the Scarlet Witch & the Vision and Mantis & the Swordsman/Elder Cotati in matrimony. Afterwards, Mantis and her husband transform into pure energy and ascend into the sky. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch decide on a more traditional honeymoon in French Polynesia. Moondragon flies the Avengers to Saigon to pick up their Quinjet, and the Vision and the Scarlet Witch part company with them there. Thor and Iron Man then fly Agatha back to New York in the Quinjet while Moondragon gives Hawkeye a lift in her spaceship. En route, they all discuss their strange experience over the ship-to-ship communicator. Upon arrival, the Avengers inform Jarvis of everything that’s happened. Moondragon decides that she will stay with the team for a while, so Jarvis prepares a room for her. Iron Man says goodbye and flies off to the Stark International complex on Long Island. The next day, Agatha Harkness and her cat head home, telling the Avengers that the Scarlet Witch has made a good start on her magical training.
Not long after, Thor is shocked to wake up and discover that everyone in the city has been unconscious for two days. Reports of strange occurrences start coming in from around the world, but then the Fantastic Four notify the Avengers that it was all part of an alien invasion plot that they have foiled.
August 1967 – Thor and Moondragon get to know each other as she settles into life at Avengers Mansion. Hawkeye seems to find her irresistibly attractive, though she clearly considers him to be crude and obnoxious. When Manhattan is rocked by a series of unnatural earthquakes, Thor leads Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Moondragon out to help rescue people from damaged buildings. Since the earthquakes seem to have two epicenters—one in Washington Heights at the north end of the island and the other in the Financial District on the island’s southern tip—the thunder god decides to split the team up. He sends Iron Man and Hawkeye to the south while he and Moondragon head to the north. There, they receive some help from the Human Torch and Medusa.
September 1967 – Hearing an explosion while flying over Manhattan one night, Thor goes to investigate and finds Hercules rescuing a young man from a burning tenement building. After summoning up a rainstorm to extinguish the fire, Thor joins Hercules and a police detective, Ralph Blumkenn, to discuss the matter. Blumkenn explains to Thor that, according to Hercules, the fire was caused by an elderly resident who used his gas oven to commit suicide while muttering about eternal life. This matches three previous suicides of people speaking cryptically about eternal life. Though initially skeptical that there’s some kind of conspiracy, Thor and Hercules agree to look into it. Not being much of a detective, Thor asks Odin for help, so Odin sends Sif to Earth. Thor and Sif are overjoyed to see each other again, but Hercules finds them annoying and goes off to solve the mystery on his own. Irritated, Thor takes Sif to the hospital to see Krista. They are relieved to find that Krista has finally emerged from her coma, fully recovered. Then, less than an hour after going off on his own, Hercules stumbles into the room looking utterly terrified and passes out. The thunder god rushes Hercules to Avengers Mansion and consults with Iron Man. When he comes to, Hercules goes berserk until Krista calms him down. Since Hercules’s memories of the past hour are fragmentary at best, he and Thor retrace his steps and are drawn into a terrifying encounter with a demonic being known as the Dweller in Darkness in its subterranean lair. The heroes refuse to give in to despair, however, and escape back to the light of day. Blumkenn meets up with them and reports that two patients at Bellevue Hospital were on the verge of committing suicide like the others but snapped out of it suddenly, for which he credits Thor and Hercules. Thor is shocked when Blumkenn says one of the patients was asking for him—a woman named Jane Foster.
Thor flies at once to Bellevue Hospital and storms into Jane’s room, only to find she has lapsed into a coma. Seeing her there, all of Thor’s old feelings for her come flooding back. Determined to maintain a vigil in the hospital, Thor steps down as Avengers chairman early, with Iron Man agreeing to take over for him. Knowing how much Jane has meant to Thor, Sif tries to be supportive. Hercules and Krista take up residence at the mansion and spend a lot of time together.
October–November 1967 – Refusing to leave Jane’s side while she lies in a coma, Thor neglects all other matters. Sif’s patience starts to wear thin, as it seems clear that Thor’s feelings for Jane are much deeper than Sif realized. Hercules and Krista visit the thunder god regularly, but he refuses to be cheered up. As the weeks pass, Jane’s condition slowly deteriorates.
December 1967 – Thor’s vigil is interrupted when Krista charges into Jane’s hospital room and informs the thunder god that Hercules is fighting for his life against a monster of some kind in Times Square. Angered, Thor launches himself out the window and flies to the scene, where he finds a hairy, hulking brute called Armak on a rampage. As they engage with each other, Thor is surprised by Armak’s strength and savagery. Their brawl takes them to the top of a skyscraper construction site, where Armak gets the upper hand and starts choking Thor to death. Luckily, Armak is distracted by a woman down below yelling through a bullhorn. She calls him “Arnold” and begs him to stop. Thor punches Armak in the jaw, sending him plummeting to his death. Satisfied that the battle is over, Thor flies directly back to the hospital, leaving Hercules to deal with the situation on the ground.
Jane finally regains consciousness and recognizes Thor. Heartsick, the thunder god vows to be ever at her side. However, she has not responded to any of the experimental treatments her doctors have tried, and Thor knows she is dying. Later, while Jane is sleeping, Thor goes to brood on a nearby rooftop and is accosted by Firelord, the former herald of Galactus whom Thor and Hercules freed from servitude two years ago. Enraged by Firelord’s apparent ingratitude, Thor responds with extreme violence, and their fight causes tremendous property damage before they finally agree to parley. They head to Avengers Mansion, where they find Iron Man, Krista, and Jarvis in the conference room. Firelord then explains that he stumbled upon a portal to the Dark Dimension, where he encountered Loki, who was ranting about his plans to conquer Asgard. The god of mischief revealed that he had absorbed Dormammu’s mystic essence when it was blasted through his mind by the Evil Eye of Avalon last year. As soon as he was able, Loki took refuge in the Dark Dimension and studied Dormammu’s mystic secrets. Iron Man then reports that he’s just heard from their friend Tom Fagan up in Rutland, Vermont, who said that Loki had vanished that morning, to be replaced by the teenaged boy who disappeared after last year’s Halloween party. Stunned by these revelations, Thor realizes that Loki must have escaped into the Dark Dimension almost immediately after being left in Rutland, leaving behind a hapless doppelgänger in his place. Firelord suggests that Loki sent him back to Earth specifically to alert Thor of his brother’s plot and offers to help save Asgard. Thor is torn, knowing that honor demands he stand with the Avengers against Loki’s threat but wanting nothing more than to race back to be with Jane.
After learning from Krista that Sif and Hercules have gone off on some kind of quest together, Thor takes a walk around the neighborhood, trying to decide which course of action is right. His mind is made up when he saves a small boy from a runaway truck and realizes that all of humanity needs his help. However, upon returning to Avengers Mansion, Thor finds the entire building surrounded by an impenetrable force field. He deduces that Loki must be responsible, intent on depriving the world of its greatest champions. Following a brief visit with Jane in the hospital, Thor flies to Washington, D.C. and attends a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. They inform him that similar force fields are imprisoning all known superheroes—clearly Loki wants to fight Thor one-on-one. Within minutes, Loki’s invasion begins, as legions of Asgardian warriors emerge through dimensional portals just like the one Firelord encountered. Thor flies out and confronts the Asgardians on the Arlington Memorial Bridge, wondering why Odin has permitted this incursion. When Loki appears, Thor is struck by the changes in his adopted brother wrought by Dormammu’s malign influence.
Loki orders dozens of his warriors to attack Thor, but the thunder god ends up generating a vortex that blows them off the bridge into the Potomac River. Loki mocks Thor’s efforts, revealing that he was responsible for Armak’s rampage. He then blasts Thor the entire length of the bridge with the eldritch flame from his burning sword. Thor is astonished by Loki’s newfound might. A ragtag group of soldiers then rolls up, led by General Sam Sawyer, who says it’s the best the Army can do on such short notice. Thor knows they will be no match for Asgardian warriors, and he is soon proved right as a terrible battle ensues. While Thor keeps Loki busy, Army demolition experts blow a hole in the bridge. Unfortunately, Loki conjures up a force field that keeps his forces from falling into the river. Unable to counter such magic, the Army retreats while Loki laughs maniacally.
As night falls over the city, Thor argues with General Sawyer over tactics and strategy. He is horrified by Sawyer’s willingness to drop a nuclear bomb on the Asgardians if nothing else will stop them. Unexpectedly, Asgard’s Grand Vizier materializes and informs Thor that Odin has embarked on a sojourn on Midgard in mortal form and, to make matters worse, has placed a spell of forgetfulness over himself. Thus, no help can be expected from the All-Father; Thor must stand or fall alone. Within the hour, the thunder god leads a commando squad into Loki’s encampment near the Lincoln Memorial, only to be captured immediately. With a mere gesture, Loki imprisons Thor and the commandos in a crystalline prison, then raves about how he will conquer the world at dawn.
When the sun rises several hours later, Thor senses that the spell making the crystal structure unbreachable is weakening. With great effort, he is able to smash through it with Mjolnir. He and the commandos then find Loki fighting with Firelord, who has somehow escaped the force field surrounding Avengers Mansion. Thor punches Loki in the face and challenges him to single combat, saying he will be branded a coward for all time if he refuses. Naturally, Loki agrees, knowing he need only keep Thor away from his enchanted hammer for sixty seconds, whereupon the thunder god will revert to his vulnerable mortal form. However, Thor has noticed that his brother’s voice and manner are becoming more familiar, meaning Dormammu’s influence is wearing off. Thus, Thor fights furiously as the seconds tick away. Finally, with mere moments to spare, Thor manages to box Loki’s ears so hard it knocks him out. Snatching up his hammer, Thor declares victory. With Loki’s defeat, his spell over the Asgardian warriors is broken, and they hail Thor as their prince. General Sawyer and his soldiers are relieved, but Thor only feels saddened that his relationship with his brother has come to this. Soon, the warriors take Loki back to Asgard to be imprisoned, and Krista decides to return home with them. The Grand Vizier, on the other hand, elects to remain on Midgard awhile and takes a room at Avengers Mansion.
With the crisis passed, Thor resumes spending most of his time with Jane in the hospital. Her condition continues to worsen, and Thor knows the end is near. Eventually, the thunder god learns from Jarvis that Steve Rogers has taken up the mantle of Captain America again and retrieved his costume and shield from the mansion’s storage vault. Thor is relieved that his teammate has finally sorted out his identity problems. A week or so later, Thor puts in an appearance at the Avengers’ sixth annual Christmas charity benefit, along with Iron Man, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, and Moondragon. He then races back to the hospital to watch over the woman he loves.
Notes:
January–May 1967 – Black Spectre wreaks havoc in the United States in Daredevil #109–112 and Marvel Two-In-One #3, during which the Avengers remain behind the scenes.
June 1967 – Disillusioned after the Secret Empire affair, Captain America calls it quits in Captain America #176. Thor and the Human Torch join forces against the Lava Men in Marvel Team-Up #26. All concerned remain unaware that Jinku’s visions were projected into his mind by They Who Wield Power. Thor and his fellow superheroes fight Ultron-7 while attending the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver in Avengers #127 and Fantastic Four #150. The Avengers’ battle with Kang the Conqueror then follows in Avengers #128–129 and Giant-Size Avengers #2. The timestream disturbances in the late 20th century that Kang refers to are the result of the “time bubble” (which stretches from 1995 to 2010) that Thor (among others) will investigate in Avengers #296–297 and Fantastic Four #337–341.
July 1967 – The saga of the Celestial Madonna continues through Avengers #130–137 and Giant-Size Avengers #3–4. The creature in the labyrinth is, of course, the Frankenstein Monster—or rather a simulacrum created by Kang for his Legion of the Unliving using Immortus’s time-manipulation devices. This one is based on the Monster as he was in 1898 before entering suspended animation for the second time. Wonder Man is likewise a simulacrum based on Simon Williams just before his apparent death in 1963, and the Original Human Torch simulacrum is based on the flaming android just before he deactivated himself out in the desert in 1955. Rather than sending him into the past, the crafty Immortus merely disintegrates the fake Human Torch like the rest of the Legion of the Unliving, but the Avengers are none the wiser. It is finally revealed in Avengers West Coast #50 that the Vision and the Original Human Torch are two separate entities. (Later revelations to the contrary are considered non-canonical here.) When Iron Man departs from Avengers Mansion on the splash page of Iron Man #74, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch are erroneously shown instead of Moondragon. The people of Manhattan are rendered insensate for two days by alien invaders in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3.
August 1967 – Earthquakes strike Manhattan in Marvel Team-Up #28, courtesy of a pair of disgruntled scientists being manipulated by They Who Wield Power. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four remain behind the scenes.
September 1967 – The thunder god’s solo adventures finally resume in Thor #229 and following.
December 1967 – Firelord’s activities during his sojourn on Earth remain largely an Untold Tale of the Original Marvel Universe. Presumably, he kept to himself most of the time. Steve Rogers’ return as Captain America occurs in Captain America #183. Loki’s failed invasion of Earth brings us up to Thor #234.
Jump Back: Thor – Year Five
Next Issue: Iron Man – Year Six
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