After a night full of nightmares, the Avengers are drawn to the Blue Area of the Moon. However, the once sterile Kree city is now home to a vast garden. Can the Avengers learn the secrets of the Garden, and its inhabitants, the Cotati, before it’s too late? The issue comes from writer Al Ewing, artist Pepe Larraz, color artist Marte Gracia and letterer Joe Caramagna!
Tony Thornley: Hey Allison! So that was quite an issue to get things rolling with Empyre. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, even with the teases we got from Incoming! and the recent Road to Empyre one-shot.
Allison Senecal: PHEW! That was not what I was expecting at all from this, but maybe that’s the stretched Covid schedule getting to me. Incoming! seems like a year ago, but what a way to pull us back in.
You Say Potato, I Say Cotati
TT: I know this issue was written well before the pandemic, but it’s like Ewing knew we’d have a big break between Incoming! and this story. We open with Tony Stark having the worst nightmare of his life. Not that we’d know that right away. This opening scene is actually the beginning of the Kree/Skrull War, which began with the Kree slaughtering not Skrulls but the Cotati, their vegetable sister species. You pointed out something interesting to me about these Kree?
AS: Marvel have, and I say this super begrudgingly, done a pretty decent job of keeping us caught up on all the details for an event that really wasn’t seeded (aha!) until December. Between the vision here and the one-shot you mentioned, I’m more or less remembering exactly what I should for this. AND YES. I’m thinking Morag and Avell must be the ancestors of the Rogg and Vell Kree dynasties? I certainly would like it, as this paints Avell in a much (ok slightly – they’re all rampant imperialists, I know, I know) less sinister light than Morag, with him tossing in a last ditch questioning of the Cotati slaughter.
TT: I didn’t even notice that on the first read through! I did make the connection between Morag and the planet named after him in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It looks like the connection you made is more significant, because the planet Morag has no Earth-616 counterpart. But Morag the Kree has shown up before in Avengers #133, during the original Celestial Madonna saga. Given his imperial nature I have to think the Yon-Rogg connection is a given.
AS: I completely forgot that he was already a named character, honestly, so that is also very cool!
When Tony wakes up here, one of his first thoughts is of Immortus, which may be interesting framing considering the rest of the issue, or a simple callback to how Tony knows about the Kree and Cotati in the first place. I’ll come back to that thought process later. I assume Tony’s new digs are one of the Celestials from early in this Avengers run. I haven’t touched that series in ages. Anywho, he gets a call from the rest of the Avengers, who are on their way to the (formerly) Blue Area of the Moon after receiving a telepathic (oo) SOS. Enter the…”Green” Area of the Moon.
TT: I love that Ewing makes like four deep cut references in a row in the first half dozen pages. But oh I hope this change to the Blue Area sticks after Empyre is over. This is so cool! It’s like those computer generated pictures of what would happen if all of humanity disappeared from Earth. Tony IMMEDIATELY makes the connection to his vision. I feel like that should have been a red flag but… well, we’ll get into that in a bit. Because the team pretty much is immediately attacked once they disembark the Quinjet.
The Swordsman, The Greatest Avenger You Never Knew
AS: Is it a Kree sentry, is it a toothy maw? A little of both? It’s huge and terrifying, and may as well be an anti-Avengers sentinel as quickly as this thing sweeps the floor with the whole team. Enter: THE SWORDSMAN, in what is a very very cool-looking double-page spread from Larraz and Gracia. He beheads the creature, kicking the team into gear, and they quickly (too quickly?) dispatch the rest of the monstrosity. Hmmm….
TT: SWORDSMAN! I love this new space pirate design! So Swordsman calls the monstrosity a Kree/Skrull hybrid… but I don’t know if I buy it. I mean, if it were any writer but Ewing, maybe. But this creature controlling the Kree Sentry? I’ve never seen Skrulls use anything like that before. Know what it does look like though? A vegetation monster.
Am I off base there?
AS: Not even a little bit! It totally reminded me of a tendriculos (I had to go look at my DnD Monster Manual because I couldn’t remember which scary plant monster I was thinking of) or something. Definitely seems Cotati and not Skrull… I didn’t really consider the control angle, but that does seem like what the dynamic was, eh. The “beheading” didn’t really stop the machine bits from going. There is surely something weirder going on here. The new Swordsman design is SO GOOD, and good to see he is a better space pirate dad than Corsair. Cough.
TT: Oh man, Swordsman is great here. We get a recap of his history. It’s seriously bonkers and I’m amazed that Ewing and Larraz actually make it accessible and interesting. Swordsman has a long long history with the Avengers. In just 83 total appearances since 1965 (for comparison Hawkeye, who debuted a year earlier, has appeared in comics over 1500 times) he has:
- Trained Hawkeye as a child
- Joined the Avengers
- Betrayed the Avengers
- Fell in love with Mantis
- Died
- Merged with a Cotati
- Was resurrected
- Married Mantis
- Fathered the Celestial Messiah
- Became an energy being
- Became buddies with Thor
- Was resurrected again (but only for the Chaos War)
And now apparently has been raising his son Sequoia on the Blue Area of the Moon. Did I miss anything?
AS: Damn, that about covers it. What a busy dude. We don’t see Mantis here besides in a flashback panel, and I am really hoping she turns up in this event. She deserves it after the mess the MCU’s (James Gunn, if we’re being honest) made of her. People should get to see just how cool her comics counterpart is.
TT: Swordsman gives the Avengers a super-inspiring (at least to Iron Man) tour of the Green Area, and Quoi (love the new design bud!) joins them partway through. I really fell in love with Swordsman here. It’s too bad that the whole thing felt SUPER sinister to me the whole time. It’s not just me, right? Something feels off?
AS: Sequoia (Quoi, if you’re a bud) seems to have grown into an intriguing mix of the two, and I wonder what that means going forward as far as his true intentions. Telepaths are tricky and Daddy-o hasn’t exactly had the greatest track record (see “betrayal” on above list – he also tried to beat Clint to death so there’s that). The flipside of that is the Cotati have always taken their lumps in the past, so….shrug? Should we feel some kinda way if they ARE up to something?
TT: I mean, just like Carol points out here, they were warned by a pair of sleeper agents to “Beware the Trees” back in the Incoming! one-shot. Plus just like you said MANTIS IS A TELEPATH. So… I don’t know. I’m super torn because I feel very sympathetic towards the Cotati, but it also feels weird. I mean, here’s two Cotati bigwigs singing Kumbayah and telling the Avengers that the real enemy is on their way to invade Earth but Iron Man says “yeah, despite what you’re saying, we should trust them.” It feels at least a little fishy. A big part of that is Stark’s narration.
Tony Stark, Man Of… Faith?
TT: Before we get into this, I have to say I haven’t liked Tony Stark this much in a long time. This is probably the best Tony’s been written since… the Fraction run maybe?
AS: I have never read an Iron Man solo. I’ve encountered Tony (not you, Tony, you’re great) when he’s on Avengers teams, in event comics, or being a **** about mutants. I’m surprised, but not, that Ewing wrote the first Tony I’ve ever liked. That said….how much of this is actually Tony Stark? I mean it obviously is but maybe also a little…not?
TT: Here’s the thing for me about what you just said and Tony being the absolute perfect narrator for this issue
Tony Stark is a pushover. He is by far the easiest Avenger to manipulate. I mean, the issue started with Tony talking about a vision Immortus gave him. In the Marvel Graphic Novel Emperor Doom, Hawkeye was able to break free of mind control easier than Iron Man was. He was manipulated by Kang and Immortus to turn on the team in the Crossing. Hell, it was done recently by an Artificial Intelligence THAT TONY HIMSELF PROGRAMMED in Dan Slott’s Iron Man run. So to see Tony Stark, Man of Science, gradually become a man of faith, specifically faith in Quoi and the Cotati, over the course of this issue?
I will be SHOCKED if he’s not being manipulated. He’s the guy who rallies the team at the end of the issue, while most of the rest of the team is rightfully expressing doubts about what Quoi and Swordsman are telling them… I don’t know. I could be wrong.
AS: I couldn’t even remember that much about the whole Immortus situation, but yes! When I saw that name at the start of the issue I was like hoooo boy. I mean, heck, Tony just got ego-heckled into being an easy hack for Black Cat a couple weeks ago.
TT: Hah! That’s right!
AS: The dude’s easy! Haha.
Yeah, there must be something else going on. Between Swordsman defeating that plant creature super easily (in what is otherwise a paradise), the potential telepathy in play, and Tony weeping inside his suit at Thor making it rain – what! This will no doubt be something Tony and Carol get into it over at some point. I was a little surprised she agreed so readily, but considering her upcoming solicits, oy. Who knows. I’m thrilled that we don’t really know all about Empyre still. Before this issue I was like “ah yeah Skrulls and Kree invading Earth, sure, yeah, just why”, but now? Very intrigued.
TT: Agreed!
AS: Now for the Fantastic Four’s side of events I guess! Should be interesting after this…
Marvelous Musings
- For an issue that was mostly set-up, recaps and exposition, I sure enjoyed it
- DANG, Larraz is good
- I feel like the final page twist might have landed better if Empyre: Fantastic Four had released today too.
- Instead we have to wait two weeks! *shakes fist*
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
