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Avengers: No road home #2: Review

Feb 2019
Al Ewing, Paco Medina

Story Name:

(no title given)

Review & Comments

Rating:
4 stars

Avengers: No road home #2 Review by (March 2, 2019)
Al Ewing, Mark Waid and Jim Zub share the writing again. I'll cycle their names in our credits.

So this story has turned into a familiar 1 of splitting into teams to hunt the maguffins.

My thoughts about the Hawkeye ending were that it was probably a delusion arranged by Oizys. Hawkeye doesn't know how he got here, and doesn't remember losing his thumb. Voyager didn't send him with Hulk. And Oizys is with him and Wanda thinking "Hmmm" at the moment they are ported out. Next issue will show that I'm not completely wrong about this.

Far Shore was 1st mentioned (several times) in the 2017 Ultimates series as the place outside the multiverse where the avatars of previous multiverses wait. I'm far from sure that's the same as "the farthest point of life and death" as described in Av#690 when Voyager took Challenger there. However Av#690 does add that "beyond, there is only mystery", and Ultimates #100 says 1 of the avatars is missing because he "journeys into the mystery". And they're both written by Al Ewing.

The 4 chars introduced here are indeed mentioned in Greek mythology as some of Nyx's children. Dolos is Apate's male counterpart but not her twin. Indeed they may not even have the same parents. I believe Oizys' serpent-form is an invention here.

Most of the references to Nyx in myth concern her involvement in the creation of the world and being the mother of many early beings. The only other story I know involves Hypnos, and Zeus being afraid of her. Zeus' wife Hera got Hypnos to put her husband to sleep so that she could do something bad to his bastard son Hercules. Angry Zeus went after Hypnos who fled to his mother Nyx. Zeus was afraid of her so he left Hypnos alone. The idea of Nyx being locked away by Zeus is an invention here, as is the stolen Night Shards.





 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Avengers: No road home #2 Synopsis by Rob Johnson
We begin with a flashback to before last issue. Voyager has Challenger prisoner on the Far Shore and is making him watch the current doings of the Avengers with her. She hopes this will inspire him as it did her to do good. At the moment he still doesn't get it. But then a burst of agony passes through them. Voyager focuses her screens on Mount Olympus in time to see Nyx (Night) attack with her children.

Zeus tells swift Hermes to go fetch Hercules, but Hypnos (Sleep) casts dust to send him to sleep and then stabs him with a Xiphos sword. Apate (Deceit) tackles Artemis and Dolos (Trickery) faces Athena. Apollo (the Sun God) challenges Nyx herself but is strangled by her long black hair. She claims that Zeus long ago banished her until "the Sun was parted from the Earth", but now she's free because that's what recently happened. (Voyager realises this was when Challenger and her father Grandmaster moved the Earth in the No Surrender arc of Avengers.)

Nyx says that the Olympian Gods have degenerated so they are no match for her. She claims to have given them "the unknown and the unknowable" and they wasted it. So now she lets Zeus succumb to her 4th child, the serpentine Oizys (Misery) who infects him with despair. Nyx tries to get Zeus to tell her where he hid the Night Shards he took from her soul. He says 1 is with an ally in a place of knowledge, the 2nd with an enemy in a place of dreams, and the 3rd in a far-off paradise. But he refuses to say more and predicts that Hercules will bring the Avengers to stop her. So she breaks his neck. And causes darkness to descend on the universe.

And Voyager leaves Challenger to go assemble some Avengers to fight Nyx.

Throughout this we've had a voiceover by Hawkeye explaining how a simple (but highly skilled) archer like him survives fighting alongside gods and superheroes. It can't just be luck but he doesn't know what else it is. And if he stopped to think about it he wouldn't be able to do it.

We now move to the present where Voyager has gathered Hawkeye, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, Spectrum and Vision alongside Hercules and accidentally Rocket Raccoon, and brought them to Olympus. They found all the Greek Gods dead except Athena who managed to tell Herc it was the Queen Of The Night who did it, she whose name must not be mentioned. Scarlet Witch explained to Hawkeye that she is called Nyx, at which point Nyx appeared and poked her fingers through Wanda Maximoff's head.

Clint Barton's voiceover continues as the action unfolds. As usual he acts instinctively and fires 3 blast arrows at the Night Goddess. The explosions at least startle her. Hercules and Vision attack. Clint watches her dodge their fists and eye-beams, and takes care with his next shot to aim at where he figures she *will* be. But Nyx punches Herc out and then slips out of the grasp of Hulk so that a blast Rocket aimed at her hits the Green Goliath instead. And she mentions that with the shards of her soul scattered across the universe she is at her weakest, and these so-called Avengers can't even defeat her in *that* state.

Clint takes time out to see how Wanda's doing. The Witch says she's blind. Voyager creates a portal so she can pop her fist out to hit Nyx in the face, but Nyx slashes her with her clawed fingers. Spectrum is hidden within Vision's body and suggests they should attack together. Hawkeye is having a crisis of confidence which makes him unable to act. But he doesn't realise that it is Oizys whispering in his ear, and also probably making Wanda give up. Vizh tries his solar blasts again without much effect. But then Spectrum pops her energy-form out and adds her power. Nyx is staggered and Hercules punches her out of the area. Nyx says that was more like it.

But Voyager realises it's a distraction. Va Nee Gast overheard all about the Night Shards and guesses that Nyx has sent her children (except Oizys) to find them. And she can sense where they've gone so she forms portals and sends the Avengers through in small teams:- Hercules by himself, Hulk with Rocket, Spectrum with Vision. It looks like Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch are another team but I think Oizys diverted *them*.

Voyager is left with Nyx and Oizys. The Night Goddess muses that Va Nee's power to find people (and things) as well as transporting them could be useful.

We now get a strange continuation where Clint Barton awakes in a hospital bed alone, not knowing how he got there. He remembers the fight with Nyx that we saw above, and assumes that there must have been a later battle in which he got injured He feels reasonably OK. But when he lifts his right hand he finds it bandaged with the thumb obviously missing. A bit of a disaster for an archer! He thinks again about how he's relied on luck, and now it's run out.

And then his troubles mount as Hulk pulls back the curtain. He warned Barton last issue what would happen if he ever got him alone. (Hulk hasn't forgiven Hawkeye for killing Bruce Banner in Civil War II. Even though Bruce asked Clint to do it.)



Paco Medina
Juan Vlasco
Jesus Aburtov
Yasmine Putri (Cover Penciler)
Yasmine Putri (Cover Inker)
Yasmine Putri (Cover Colorist)
Letterer: Cory Petit.
Editor: Tom Brevoort. Editor-in-chief: C. B. Cebulski.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Hawkeye
Hawkeye

(Clint Barton)
Hulk
Hulk

(Bruce Banner)
Scarlet Witch
Scarlet Witch

(Wanda Maximoff)

Plus: Apate, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), Dolos, Hermes, Hypnos, Nyx, Oizys.

> Avengers: No road home: Book info and issue index

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