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Avengers #310

Nov 1989
John Byrne, Tom Palmer

Story Name:

Death in Olympia


Synopsis

Avengers #310 synopsis by T Vernon
Rating: 4 stars
In Asgard, Odin has detected that Thor has accompanied humans into the Negative Zone and he knows not what danger he may be in so he dispatches the Warriors Three to find Thor and render unto him such aid as he may require….

In Olympia, Thor battles Blastaar while trying to protect the unconscious Sersi from him. Thor hurls Mjolnir but the villain is able to deflect it as he is all-powerful in the Negative Zone. Blastaar then disintegrates Sersi with a blast as she lies in Thor’s arms. Thor flies into a rage and hurls himself at his foe….

Elsewhere in the city, Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, frees himself from the rubble and rescues Captain America as well. They see the flashes of battle in the distance and Namor rushes to join in; Cap ponders Namor’s being the fiercest warrior but lacking in common sense. Cap heads in that direction and encounters She-Hulk in a crater, just coming around. She informs Cap that the bad guy is Blastaar just as Thor and the baddie, locked in combat, come flying off the top of the tower and plummeting toward the ground. Namor flies down and seizes Thor as Blastaar uses his power to slow his descent….

In New York, witnessed only by a drunken derelict, a portal opens in the air and a dapper gent in a white suit steps through and heads on toward his business [It’s Loki. It’s always Loki if Thor is anywhere near.]

The Avengers surround their foe and She-Hulk asks Blastaar how he came to be there. Blastaar reveals that after a battle with Annihilus he was cast adrift in the Negative Zone and eventually drifted to Olympia where he was rescued by the Eternals and healed of his injuries by Thena. He repaid them by disintegrating them all. Then the villain quickly takes down Thor, Shulkie, and Namor, leaving only Cap to face him. And face him he does, his shield deflecting the baddie's blasts so that Blastaar switches to destroying a tower, sending it crashing toward Cap. Suddenly, the falling debris is destroyed by a mace and the Warriors Three have arrived; as they make sure Thor is unharmed, Blastaar, knowing he is outmatched, flees. But the villain is surrounded by odd wisps of energy, picking him up and hurling him back and forth into buildings until he is subdued. Then the wisps resolve themselves into the Eternals. Blastaar tries to blast them once again but Ikaris, not to be fooled twice, punches the bad guy’s lights out. Sersi explains to the puzzled Avengers that Eternals control their bodies down to the molecular level and it took them a while to pull themselves together and return. And Gilgamesh is recovering, having been too long away from the city. Thena expresses her pride that one of the Eternals would serve side-by-side with the Avengers, hoping it may happen again soon. Cap wants to know how Olympia came to be lost in the Negative Zone. Sprite confesses that, when the machines that kept the Eternals’ city from the eyes of mortals were malfunctioning, he “repaired” them so that they would be far outside the world of mortals. As they prepare to send the city back to Earth, the Warriors Three ask Thor if he would return to Asgard with them but he declines, preferring to stay in Midgard….


 

Review / Commentaries


Avengers #310 Review by (September 14, 2024)
Comments: Part three of three parts. Thor previously encountered Blastaar in THOR #268-270. Loki’s appearance is a foreshadowing of the upcoming “Acts of Vengeance” event. Gilgamesh leaves the Avengers here; his next appearance is in AVENGERS SPOTLIGHT #35, a solo adventure.  

Review: An epic conclusion to the story arc brings back the Eternals, though I am on record as saying they should have remained in a separate continuity. And what was up with Gilgamesh? He spends his final three issues as an Avenger in a coma and then Thena says, “Ahh, he just got homesick” and everything’s okay again? And that’s that. One of the shortest-serving Avengers is gone, never to be missed, as he added very little to the team, being merely a big humorless strong guy whose sudden illness supplied the team with a nice three-issue story arc and little more.

And Cap’s judgment of Subby as lacking common sense is valid so far as it goes but anyone who can go toe-to-toe with the Hulk can forgo strategy for the most part.



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Holy smokes, Batman!
(The Boy Wonder)

Tom Palmer
Tom Palmer
Christie Scheele
Paul Ryan (Cover Penciler)
Tom Palmer (Cover Inker)
? (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Layouts: Paul Ryan. Letterer: Bill Oakley.
Editor: Howard Mackie. Editor-in-chief: Tom DeFalco.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Captain America
Captain America

(Steven Rogers)
Loki
Loki

(Loki Laufeyson)
She-Hulk
She-Hulk

(Jennifer Walters)
Sub-Mariner
Sub-Mariner

(Namor McKenzie)
Thor
Thor

(Odinson)
Warriors Three
Warriors Three

(Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg)

Plus: Sprite, Thena.