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All You Need to Know – New Avengers #42 and Mighty Avengers #15

Okay, so I was minding my own business on the week of June 25th, seeing as it was my birthday and whatnot when I was DELUGED by Avengers titles.  Everyone Marvel could think of came out that week, leaving me no choice but to read all of them.

Let's start at the beginning, the two major Avengers titles of Mighty and New.  Mighty is about how the Skrulls got Hank Pym and turned him into the Time magazine cover and Initiative director guy we know today and New is about how the Skrulls got Spider-Woman and the Skull Empress got into her position of power and directed her little infiltration group.  Apparently, the Skrulls have a ceremony where placing a towel of blood over their body gives them a quick recap of issues to date and gives them a dual identity.  They seem to be taking in the new persona so to speak while keeping their own personality; thus Hank Pym can act in the best interests of both the Skrull empire by forming the Fifty States Initiative (which I'll get to later) and fit in amongst his peers.  SHIELD/HYDRA/Skrull Empress Jessica Drew takes us on a recap of how the Skrulls have been manipulating things since I'm going to assume right before Avengers: Disassembled.  Talk of the VIBRANIUM mines comes up as THE ONLY THING THE SKRULLS CAN'T FIGHT BACK AGAINST so the Savage Land group comes in as trying to destroy the Vibranium stores there. Talk about all the mutants comes up as they try and turn a race war to their favor, pitting humans against mutants, something they want to do to the super-human community at large, thus Civil War.  This... is a lot of things for the Skrulls to be responsible for.

Anyhoo, more recap goes down as Jessica Drew joins the Avengers, asks Madame Hydra for money for continuing her double agent clause (money? really?), yadda yadda.  In the end, Pym calls to tell her that they're going to Genosha to go put the Scarlet Witch down.  The Skrull empress gives the kill order and OH BOY THINGS FADE TO A WHITE PAGE.

So, For New Avengers #42, all you need to know is that the Skrulls have been pulling the strings on nearly everything and have a HUGE WEAKNESS TO VIBRANIUM, making the Black Panther tie-in possibly essential at this point.

Okay, Mighty Avengers #15 continues in recap fashion to show Hank Pym at his new teaching job which is where Bendis put them after Disassembled, which makes my early thoughts of New Avengers stuff wrong, so now I'm confused.  Well, I'm sure when Secret Invasion Chronicles comes out, things will be a lot smoother and no one will have to make a flow chart.  Man, I hate it when comics make me feel like an idiot for not learning their timeline...

ANYHOW, Pym is doing a lectures at Cambridge as I think that's where they put them.  Jan's apparently getting drunk at parties.  Hank's either resentful of this or just as mad as me that a former Avengers chairwoman has really let herself go in the name of her 'fashion design business'.  The arguement is weak as it seems to paint Jan as a drunk harpy and Pym as a disapproving shut-in, showing us that years of comics and storylines keep them coming back to an age old arguement.  Waking up in his office chair to find Jan moved out, he grumbles about this 'classy' move while the next page shows him sleeping with one of the students from his lectures.

Someday, we'll get a new angle on these two, I swear.

So the young blonde student is completely facinated by Pym's Avengers days, personal life and powers and pumps him for information he gives gladly.  When he brags about how he and the boys could totally detect a Skrull at 30 paces, the girl's had enough and frankly so have I.  Telegraphed a mile away, the girl shapeshifts into an awesome Skrull and beats the crap out of him.  Jan drops by at the right time to see this young semi-nude blonde chick at Hank's place and just tells the chick she could do better.  OH JAN.

For the record?  The 'very ex-husband' comment Janet makes is a little awkward since those two have been divorced for quite some time; Johns or Austen I think tried to get them remarried tried to get them remarried but it didn't work out.

The Skrulls create a new Pym who does all the stuff we've seen until now, putting him back on top by giving him ambition that, let's face it, our old Hank Pym didn't have.  He goes back to his buddies after the Ultron storyline in Mighty Avengers and tells them how to defeat Stark's armor.  Since the Skrulls are all set to go, Pym gives Janet a 'new growth formula' that's probably something horrible.

All you really need to know for Mighty Avengers #15 is that last bit, that Janet Van Dyne now has some sort of evil formula in her hands that she might think is some new way for her to become Giant Woman (which she already did during the 'Venom Bomb' storyline).  So maybe you don't need to know that.

Right!  So those are the big two, reminding me a lot of those episodes mid-season that get a lower budget so they resort to a 'remember when?' recap show.  Mind you, that Vibranium thing is big, but... that's a lot of 'previously in the Avengers'.