All-New All-Different Avengers #12: Review

Jul 2016

Mark Waid, Mahmud Asrar

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All-New All-Different Avengers #12 Review by Rob Johnson (August 5, 2016)

The original Nega-Bands shared by Rick Jones and the original Captain Marvel enabled them the wearer (who was always the 1 on Earth) to initiate a swap with the other (in the Negative Zone). The Nega-Bands here are a copy made by Annihilus, but being a faithful copy they have the same properties. Including allowing the 2 partners to communicate with each other. I don't think they ever tried giving the bands to someone else to see if the swapping/communicating was transferable as here.

It doesn't say why bombarding the power core with an enormous amount of 'positron energy' caused it to explode. However positrons are anti-electrons, and *if* the Neg Zone is made of antimatter then this would be the standard comics ploy of giving something more energy than it can handle.

Annihilus used the Nega-Bands to open a portal from the Neg Zone to the positive universe (through which he was going to fire the Blackstar Cannon). Mjolnir can't usually cross dimensions to return to its mistress, but Vision reckons that lingering Nega-Band energy from the ex-portal weakened the dimensional barrier. I reckon that the swapping link between Iron Man and Thor played a part too.

The Civil War II issues which follow this feature individual cast members. #13 and #14, at least, don't contain any of the characters our sites follow so I won't be uploading them. A brief summary follows:-

#13 stars the Vision. The synthezoid is unhappy that Kang controlled him twice in recent issues, and decides to kill him as a child - regardless of the consequences to time. But 1st he justifies the issue as a CWII tie-in by discussing the ethics with Ulysses - because the Inhuman foresees future misdeeds so that Captain Marvel can prevent them. We see that Black Panther and Spider-Man have industrialised U's visions by building a machine to feed him data about current events. (This suggests that this story takes place after Tony Stark explained in CWII#4 that's how U's precog worked.) (Since nobody knows Spider-Man is scientist Peter Parker, shouldn't it be PP who helped build the machine?)
Vision uses the time machine in the Baxter Building basement to find out when and where (and in what timeline) Kang was born. He goes back to Pharaoh Rama-Tut/Kang's time and gets the build date of *his* time ship. Then he goes then to find Kang and gets info about his birth from his helmet. And from there to the infant in his cradle.
Along the way he has been fought by a mysterious black wraith, which now turns up by the cradle-side. It points out that it was the battles which led Vision to the time ship and the helmet. It now whispers a secret to our hero, which causes Vizh to take baby Kang somewhere/when rather than kill him.

#14 features the new Wasp Nadia Pym. It concludes the bit from this issue where Russian cops come to take her back, but they're really agents of WHISPER (Maker's goons from New Avengers).
Then the 2 Wasps see Civil War unfold on the news up to Hawkeye killing Bruce Banner. Nadia can't understand this - these are her heroes fighting each other.
She retreats to a lab in the Microverse hidden in a piece of jewelry. Jan follows her but finds that weeks have passed in that environment. Nadia has built a device which should make Ulysses' predictions 100% accurate, then the heroes won't have any reason to fight. But it blows up, and Jan persuades her that it wouldn't have solved the problem even if it worked.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

All-New All-Different Avengers #12 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

Last issue the Avengers escaped from the Negative Zone but unfortunately Spider-Man got left behind with Annihilus.

Vision has the Nega-Band and flies with it towards the tower which brought down their spaceship. Tony Stark explains that the tower's destructive beam is powered by another Nega-Band. And with 2 of them Vision can swap places with someone stranded in the Neg Zone. The synthezoid grabs the other wristband and puts them on. Captain America (Sam Wilson) wants to go instead, but Vision clashes his wrists together. Instantly Miles Morales appears in his place, with the wristbands on.

Stark immediately takes the Nega-Bands. Vision recharged his batteries from this planet's positive sun, but he won't last long over there. Iron Man intends to take his place. But Vizh can communicate from the Neg Zone to the holder of the Bands to say that Annihilus' Blackstar Cannon still has enough power to fire into the positive universe. He suggests they send Thor to destroy it.

So she takes the Bands and hops on over. A blow from Mjolnir sends Annihilus reeling. And the flung hammer .... hardly dents the cannon because of the peculiar physics of the Neg Zone. Now it is Thor's turn to report back to Vision (who of course gained the Bands in the swap). And Vision tells the others they need another plan.

Time for an interlude with the Wasps. In #10 we left Janet Van Dyne taking newbie Nadia Pym with her on a mission to defuse a bomb that would take the East coast of the US into the Microverse. Now in the White House they've just been congratulated by the President for a job well done, and apparently Nadia did most of the work.

Now Jan takes her fashion shopping, to a posh restaurant and then a donut shop. Then a visit to a museum dedicated to Henry Pym! Then eating ice cream in front of the Lincoln Memorial while Jan says she's fine with Nadia being a Wasp too. After all her father Henry invented the shrinking process. But then Jan gets a call from Jarvis to say that some men from the Russian Consulate have just turned up at her house looking for Nadia.

Back to the main action. The Neg Zone is affecting Thor as Stark tries to figure out what to do. He hits on the idea of sending Ms Marvel over to shrink (not as far as we know using Pym particles) and get inside the machine. No sooner said than done. Tony takes the Bands when Thor arrives so Kamala finds herself talking to him. But when she finds the power core she reports signs of radiation sickness.

Iron Man wants to take her place because his armour will shield him. But Nova grabs the Bands off him, saying that it's his fault they are here because they came to help him look for his father (and his suit's radiation-proof too). He takes MsM's place where he bombards the power core made of Neg Zone material with positron energy until it explodes.

Now Nova is stuck with Annihilus. But Cap has a plan. Thor swaps over again, and throws Mjolnir a long way. Meanwhile Iron Man dons the Neg Bands. He can now communicate with Thor but she tells him to wait for her command. At the right moment the Golden Avenger takes her place to find Annihilus slamming into him. But more importantly Mjolnir is flying back to where its mistress was and is almost there. As it whizzes past IM grabs it and is wrenched away from the Neg Zone lord. The enchantment on the hammer then takes it across dimensions to Thor's hand, taking Tony Stark with it.

The Avengers are still stuck on an alien planet with lots of other aliens whose spaceships were also struck down by the tower. Now that the tower is dead they can all escape if they can get their ships working again. With Vision translating for everyone they all combine efforts to get as many ships functional as possible.

Vizh then gives 1 last message to the aliens. In return for having rescued them from Annihilus' prison world he asks them to keep a look out for information about Sam's missing father Jesse Alexander of the Nova Corps. Then they fly back to Earth.

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