The
Avengers are in a wrecked lab in
Avengers Mansion, standing over a fallen
Golden Age Whizzer, when
Scarlet Witch breaks through a wall with a bullet wound in her arm. She tells them that someone has found the
Serpent Crown they lost in
#149. But she collapses before she can tell them who.
Vision sends
Jarvis for a doctor, and carries his wife away to tend to her.
Beast also leaves to search for
Wonder Man who disappeared from the lab in
#153.
Whizzer wakes up and explains that when he fought them (also in that issue) he thought they were old enemies
Isbisa,
Future Man and
Madame Death he battled in the
All Winners Squad after WWII (in
All-Winners Comics #19 & 21). (In
#153 we also learned this was a hallucination caused by
Living Laser, who is the 1 who has taken the Serpent Crown.)
Iron Man asks
Wasp and
Yellowjacket to look after
Bob Frank while he and
Captain America track the Crown.
Shellhead took some readings of the Serpent Crown during
#147-149 and he can now track that energy via satellite. The pair are soon heading by
quinjet to California.
Hank and
Jan Pym have dinner with Bob Frank as he tells them how he came for help to a different set of Avengers in
Giant-Size #1. They saved his son
Nuklo from becoming a nuclear monster, and at the same time Bob discovered that
Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were also his long-lost children. At that time Whizzer collapsed from a heart attack. From his recovery bed he later viewed the wedding of
Pietro to
Crystal the
Inhuman in
Fantastic Four #150.
But when he got out of hospital (before
Wanda's marriage to Vision in
GS#4) he fell into depression and drink in the Bowery, where Wanda couldn't find him. Months later he awoke in a charity ward and pulled himself together. He tried to find out what the authorities had done with Nuklo. They tried to fob him off, but he used his super-speed to find a top secret document which revealed his son was a prisoner of the Army in California. And that's why he came here today.
Beast can't find Wonder Man, but he happens to give up the search just where
Wondy is lurking.
Simon Williams attacks, his voice and movements now normal, totally unlike the zombie-like version Beast had seen in
#151-153.
WM credits his awakening from a frozen state to Living Laser (
#153).
LL has now sent him to kill the Avengers. After that he'll go to join LL in California. (Simon believes he's justifiably obeying his saviour, but really LL is controlling him with the Serpent Crown (
#153 again).)
Hank McCoy does a bit of judo which results in WM knocking himself out against a wall. Beast notices Living Laser's charred footprints, and deduces that he's more powerful than he used to be (as we saw in
#153). He picks up Wondy's body and takes him back to the Mansion.
Meanwhile
Cap and Iron Man have reached another mansion in California which is occupied by the military, complete with tanks on the lawn. They don't respond to radio calls from the quinjet. A tank shoots the quinjet as they try to land, and the Avengers bail out.
IM uses a fancy ricochet shot with his
repulsor ray to hit Cap's shield, slowing his fall.
Steve Rogers wades into the soldiers, and IM finishes them off with an energy blast caused by merging his 2 palm repulsors. And he physically stops another tank.
More soldiers arrive but their leader holds them back. But it's only so that Living Laser (wearing the Serpent Crown) can bring them down. It appears he's working with the soldiers under renegade
Brigadier General Pollock.
As soldiers carry the unconscious Cap and Iron Man inside their base we hear that they intend to attack Washington (presumably expecting to take over the US). Living Laser gloats that he wants the Avengers here to witness his victory (so he must not really have expected Wonder Man to
kill them), especially Wasp who rejected his love in
#34-35. As well as the soldiers, LL's enhanced power, and the Serpent Crown, they expect to use Nuklo whom the government had put under Pollock's care. But the General had auctioned Nuklo's services, and Laser was the highest bidder.
Arthur Parks explains to the awakened Cap how he came to have his increased powers, before he found the Serpent Crown. He was in jail after his capture in
#79 when he read about the Serpent Crown of
Lemuria and determined to find it when he got out of prison. But when he
did get out he learned that the Crown had been found, and then lost in
CA#182. So instead he continued his laser experiments and incorporated laser energy into his body. He's now much more than a villain with a laser gun. He can fire laser blasts from his hands and generate images (which he used to make Whizzer fight the Avengers in
#153). (He doesn't mention that he can also materialise and dematerialise as we saw in
#153, presumably transporting himself as a beam of light.) (He also doesn't mention that he must later have heard of the Serpent Crown being used and lost at
Brand Corporation in
#149.)
Laser's rant is interrupted by the Beast bouncing in and knocking the Crown off his head, and Vision swooping in and flying off with it. The rest of the Avengers (except injured Scarlet Witch) also arrive. (Whizzer told them where to find Nuklo.) And allied with them is the fully-functioning Wonder Man. Iron Man is awake too, and repulsor-blasts LL as Cap breaks free of his captors. Wasp and Yellowjacket keep LL off guard with a swarm of ants.
But Pollock frees Nuklo and orders him to attack the Avengers. 1 blow knocks out Wasp, Wonder Man and Yellowjacket, but Living Laser as well. Pollock shouts at Nuklo's stupidity, so Nuklo hits him as well. Beast tries punching him but this has only 2 effects:- Beast gets swatted and Nuklo grows bigger than the house - he's absorbing energy as he did in
GS#1.
Iron Man attacks with a reverse-polarity repulsor ray, hoping that will drain Nuklo's energy as Scarlet Witch's hex did in
GS#1. But Nuklo just grabs him. The other Avengers recover to join Cap, but only to fight Nuklo, making him grow even more. And his growth is making his radioactive body approach critical mass, threatening to explode and take out most of Los Angeles.
Despite knowing that hitting him just makes him bigger, the Avengers attack (probably because they can't think of anything else). But then Whizzer zooms in and deliberately collides with his son. The contact miraculously causes and
implosion rather than an explosion, and the city is saved!
Both Nuklo and Whizzer are unconscious, and Nuklo has shrunk back down. The Avengers take them to a hospital.
The immediate fate of the Serpent Crown will be revealed in
#154.
Story #2Night vision
Writer:
Scott Edelman. Penciler/Inker:
Herb Trimpe. Colorist:
Irene Vartanoff. Letterer:
Irv Watanabe.
Synopsis
Vision wanders the streets worried about
Wanda's injury and his own possible lack of soul. But his sort of wandering involves ghosting up out of the road in front of a speeding milk truck and absent-mindedly going diamond-hard in front of it. The driver of the wreck is understandably not happy. The police take them both down to HQ ....
.... where
Whirlwind stages a prison break, intent on revenge on the
Avengers for his defeat in
#139. His tornado can't affect Vision's super-dense form, so Whirlwind whirls away instead. But Vision floats after him in super-light mode. He catches up and floats above the whirling villain. Then switching back to heavy he forces them both to crash to the ground, KO'ing Whirlwind.
Danny Cannon is taken back to jail. Vision promises the driver that
Tony Stark will pay for the truck. And he flies off to rejoin his team.