Yesterday and Beyond…

While the Avengers have been away, the Scarlet Witch has remained at the mansion to continue her training in witchcraft with Agatha Harkness. Wanda succeeds in using her hex powers to animate a chair.[1] However, the process weakens her forcing Harkness to destroy the chair when it begins running amok.

Meanwhile, the other Avengers are still in Limbo following their battle with Kang the Conqueror and his Legion of the Unliving. For liberating his home, Immortus has agreed to reveal the secrets behind the origins of both Mantis and the Vision. To this end, he gives the team two Synchro-Staffs that will guide them through time and space to find answers. However, he insists that the Vision’s quest will have to be done alone. Soon the Vision goes alone while Thor, Iron Man, and Hawkeye accompany Mantis on her own journey.[2]

While light-years from Earth, Moondragon receives the Avengers call for Captain Marvel. Since Mar-Vell is preoccupied with other matters, Moondragon decides to return to her homeworld to learn what Earth’s Mightiest Heroes want.[3]

At this time, the Vision finds himself hurtling through time and space and spends the voyage contemplating the mysteries of his life. For some time he thought he was the creation of Ultron, until his recent encounter with the original android Human Torch revealed that they are both the same person.[4] That’s when the Synchro-Staff begins speaking to him as a guide through his journey through time. He is first brought to November 1939, where Phineas Horton reveals his newest creation to the press. When it is revealed that the android will burst into flame when exposed to air, it is declared a menace. Horton, who hoped to cash in on his invention, was then forced to seal the Human Torch in concrete. However, the substandard building materials allowed air to get in, causing the Torch to escape. The android then ran amok in the streets, little understanding its powers and the world around it. Seeing people in fear, the Torch then lept into a nearby swimming pool to douse his flames, making him a prisoner of a local mobster named Sardo.[5] Seeing all this confirms the Vision’s theories that his recent freeze-ups in battle were due to these traumatic memories from his long-forgotten past.[6] With all this revealed, the Synchro-Staff then takes the Vision onward through time to reveal more secrets.

Back on Earth, the strange green-glowing apparition of the Swordsman continues his meeting with the hooded man who has come to Saigon to find the Avengers. This hooded man turns out to be none other than Libra of the Zodiac Cartel. He is concerned about the fate of his missing daughter, Mantis. However, the entity assures him that she will return as it is her destiny.[7]

At that very moment, Mantis and the other Avengers are being taken across time and space by another Syncro-Staff to uncover her own origins. It reminds them that they will only be observers of what has happened in order to preserve the time stream. They are then transported to the Kree homeworld in year zero of that culture’s calendar. There they see that the Kree culture was one of the primitive barbarians that glorified war and violence.[8] In this time they were ruled by Morag, the most powerful barbarian of their tribe. The Kree shared their world with the Cotati, a race of sentient plants that communicated through telepathy. Since the Kree were strictly meat-eaters, the two races did not interact with one another.

One day, life for both races changed forever when a saucer ship from the Skrull empire arrived in their world. Onboard was the Skrull emperor, Dorrek I, who had come to offer the inhabitance on this world a place in their galactic empire. However, discovering two sentient races, the Skrull decided that they would only share this privilege to only one. In order to determine which race was worthy, a contest was made. Taken to Earth’s moon, the Kree and the Cotati were given resources and a whole year to construct a city to prove their worth. The Kree used the building materials and technology to construct a massive city, which the Avengers recognize as the ruins where the Watcher now calls his home.[9]

On the other hand, the Cotati used their natural abilities to create a lush forest on the moon’s bare surface. Fearing that the Skrulls would favor the Cotati over them, Morag and his followers slaughtered the Cotati. When the Skrulls returned and saw this act of barbarism they refused to allow the Kree into their empire. In response, Morag and his people slaughtered the Skrull envoy. Morgag then rallied his followers to learn the Skrull’s scientific secrets so they could take their fight to the stars. The Synchro-Staff concludes by telling the Avengers that within decades but the Kree would eventually reverse engineer the Skrull technology and launch an attack on the Skrull homeworld that kicked off the millennia-long Kree/Skrull war.[10]

When the Avengers ask what this has to do with Mantis, the Synchro-Staff informs them that the answer will become apparent as they continue their journey through time.

Recurring Characters

Avengers (Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, the Vision, Mantis), Agatha Harkness, Immortus, Libra, Swordsman (Cotati), Space Phantoms (unidentified), (in flashback) Phineas Horton, the Human Torch, Anthony Sardo, Morag, Dorrek I

Continuity Notes

1. The Scarlet Witch’s hex is referred to as a mutant power here. However, Wanda is not actually a mutant, as revealed in Uncanny Avengers (vol. 2) #4-5. That story reveals that she was experimented upon by the High Evolutionary while an infant. In order to cover up his work he made it so that future genetic tests would have her register as a mutant.

2. What the Avengers don’t know is that this is all part of a grand scheme by Immortus to manipulate the destiny of the group. The “Synchro-Staffs” used here is actually Space Phantoms in disguise as part of this manipulation. These details and more are revealed in Avengers Forever #9.

3. The reason why Mar-Vell is unavailable is that he is involved in the trial of Uatu, Earth’s Watcher. See Captain Marvel #36-39.

4. Ultron did have a hand in the creation of the Vision, which was first detailed in Avengers #58 and will be expanded upon in more detail next issue. The revelation that the Torch and Vision are the same beings was revealed in Giant-Size Avengers #3.

5. Other than saying that this all happened in Marvel Comics #1, this narrative does a shit job explaining other important details:

   • It’s not explained how an inventor from the 1930s could even create an android to begin with. As we’ll learn in Avengers Annual #21, Horton once worked for Timely Industries, which was a front for Kang the Conqueror who was active in the early 20th Century under the guise of Victor Timely. This inadvertently gave Horton access to the advanced technology needed to create an android.

   • Also, per Marvel Comics #1000, Horton received backing from the “Scientists Guild” which were actually the rogue scientists known as the Enclave.

   • Sardo’s full name is not revealed here. His first name is identified in Saga of the Human Torch #1.

   • It’s also not clearly explained how the Torch manages to eventually gain control of his flame. This happened when Sardo attempted to douse the Torch in acid.

   • The Torch’s origins have also been expanded upon in Marvel Age #130-130/Marvels #0, Saga of the Original Human Torch #1, Marvels Project #1.

6. The Vision has choked up in battle in Avengers #118, 122, and Giant-Size Avengers #2.

7. This is not the Swordsman, who died in Giant-Size Avengers #4. In Giant-Size #4 it is revealed that this is a mental projection created by one of the Cotati.

8. The Kree are all depicted with Caucasian skin in this story. However, the is mostly a coloring error, see below.

9. The Kree city on the Earth’s moon was first seen back in Fantastic Four #13.

10. The Avengers had first hand experience in the most current skirmish in this seemingly endless conflict in Avengers #89-97.

Continuity Errors

• The Skrulls are depicted as having red blood. In subsequent stories, they are depicted as having green blood, particularly in the Skrull Kill Krew series and the Secret Invasion event. This story predates all of these instances and is only an error on a technicality.

Issues with the Kree Skin Color

This issue depicts that Kree in this story as having a caucasian complexion. However, the majority of Kree (such as those featured in this story) should have blue skin. This appears to have been a coloring error as, next issue, the narrative refers to the Kree as blue-skinned even though the apparent coloring error persists.

When these flashback sequences were later reprinted in Marvel Saga #9, the color corrections were made and every Kree was depicted with blue skin. However, Road to Empyre: The Kree/Skrull War #1 and Empyre: Avengers #0 would go on to further clarify that while the majority of the Kree seen here were indeed blue skins, a number of them were white — particularly Morag.