Avengers (2023 series) #32

At the beginning of this series the 7 (not quite the same as the current 7) Avengers were told by the time-traveller Kang The Conqueror about a Missing Moment, later called the Grail, that he was contending against Myrddin for. There were upcoming Tribulation Events that needed to be overcome to attain the Grail. The 1st such was the Ashen Combine. The team defeated them and gained their spaceship the Impossible City as an orbiting base. The IC remembered being the home to other heroes before the AC took it over and muddled its memory. Meanwhile Myrddin had created his own version of the Avengers called the Twilight Court, based on Arthurian knights. But Myrddin got impatient in #29 and lost his Court in a cosmic vortex in exchange for a short cut to the Grail. However the Avengers followed him in #30, later joined by Hyperion, and they all found themselves in the remnants of the Battleworld of Dr Doom's Secret Wars, populated by zombie superheroes. And last issue we learned how Myrddin was Kang himself because only he was a suitable opponent for himself.

Myrddin/Kang has already activated the Grail and it is building up the power to create a new universe for him to conquer, unfortunately at the expense of destroying the current 1. The upcoming event is already sensed by some like Galactus, Dr Strange, Clea and Phoenix (Jean Grey). And also 7 others.

As our 8 heroes battle zombies Vision asks Hyperion how he's getting along with repairing 1 of the worlds that the Ashen Combine previously wrecked (see #18). Unfortunately there seems no end of super-zombies from multiple realities, and they can't get through them to take the Grail from the villain. Black Panther being King Of The Dead doesn't seem to carry any weight with these Grail-powered corpses. Captain Marvel, Iron Man and Vision do get near him but Kang bats them away like flies, and even Hyperion is bested.

Meanwhile the Avengers have left Cyclops and his Alaska-based X-Men to look after the Earth in their absence, with the use of the Impossible City. Cyclops and Temper have defeated a Hydra group in Antarctica but there's a very big bomb about to melt the Ross ice shelf. The City agrees to teleport it into space. Juggernaut and Magik have KO'd Gigantus in Australia. In the Savage Land Kid Omega and Psylocke have foiled Garokk's scheme to create a super-volcano. But then the City reports it's being invaded and the X-Men lose contact with it.

In the City its plastoid Man-Slayer avatars rush to the defence but are easily dealt with. But the IC can't tell anything about the invaders, who don't understand why it doesn't recognise them. 1 of them with an armoured body starts to repair the 'wounds' to its system but it resists the invasive touch because of what the Ashen Combine did to it. The metal 1 says he *designed* these systems. He now realises that the City has been made to forget them to the extent that it can no longer perceive them. And its very name was stolen from it, and that name was Camelot.

Kang tosses Hyperion aside as the Avengers continue to fight zombies of recognisable super-chars. Panther suggests they need to unite in an attack to destroy them all, and he has a plan for a bomb. He points out that Scarlet Witch has access to vast primordial energy and CapM can manipulate such energy. And he's sure Iron Man has already thought of how to turn it into a bomb. Tony Stark admits he has and he asks Wanda Maximoff to telepathically transfer the detail from his mind to that of Carol Danvers. CM tells everyone to gather round her as SW delivers the power. And she detonates it leaving the place strewn with zombie bones.

But Myrddin is unfazed and just summons up even more zombies. Captain America (Sam Wilson) thinks their only chance left is a sacrifice play - all of them charge towards Kang and hope 1 of them survives long enough to kill him. Storm thinks the Avengers are better than that. But their discussion is cut short by the arrival of the Impossible City. It tells them the armour that Cap A is wearing (since he was gravely injured during the One World Under Doom event) is quantum entangled with the Ship so it was able to follow the link. It's capable of that and much more since its builders have returned to restore it to its full self. It reveals that it is Camelot and it was created to be the stronghold of the 'Arthurian' Twilight Court, who we now see.