Avengers #318
A Vengeful God!
The Avengers have been searching for the Infinity Union, a powerful cosmic device stolen from the Stranger by the space pirate Nebula. When Spider-Man finds the device, he accidentally triggered it, giving Nebula the power she so craved. Teleporting the Avengers and the Stranger onto the bridge of her ship, Nebula now gloats over how she has achieved ultimate power thanks to the wall-crawler. In a show of power, Nebula uses her new abilities to temporarily wipe the Stranger from existence over and over until the strain of being destroyed and recreated makes the powerful cosmic being black out.
When Captain America refuses to back down, Nebula decides to deal with Earth’s heroes directly by appearing in the room as a giant. The Avengers attack by piling onto Nebula’s giant form, but she is so powerful she can shrug off their attacks. As the Avengers fight in vein, Nebula’s right-hand-man Gunthar wonders if his worth to her has come to an end. Despite the impossible odds, the Avengers continue to fight on. Captain America tries reasoning with Nebula, thinking that she wouldn’t just destroy the entire universe.
Back at Avengers Headquarters, Quasar and Jarvis wake up after getting knocked out by a security monitor that Nebula overloaded with her power.[1] As they try to make sense of what happened to them, reality suddenly blinks out of existence for a brief moment.
They are not the only ones to experience this as the Avengers aboard Nebula’s ship also experience a moment of non-existence as they retreat back to regroup and figure out a plan to stop their foe. As the spasms continue to grow, the Stranger recovers from Nebula’s earlier attack. Spotting Gunthar hiding in some rubble, the enigmatic entity grabs him and demands that the Rigelian explain how Nebula managed to tap the power of the Infinity Union. Gunthar explains that after they stole the Union from the Stranger’s home world, Gunthar performed surgery on his master that implanted a receiver in Nebula’s brain that allowed her to tap into the power source and channel it through her body. This is not much to go by, but it gives the Stranger an idea on how to stop Nebula and he teleports away.
Meanwhile, the Avengers have been pushed back into a room filled with automated weapons that suddenly come to life and start attacking them. After Spider-Man, Starfox, and Iron Man are incapacitated by the weapons, Nebula appears and decides to kill the rest of the team with her bare hands. Unable to fight back against her, Captain America orders another tactical retreat.
At that moment, the Stranger finds the Infinity Union and upon examination realizes he will need help to stop Nebula. Contacting the Avengers telepathically, the Stranger explains that he is going to change the Infinity Union’s frequency, briefly cutting Nebula off from the power, and instructs them to remove the brain implant when she is temporarily de-powered. Despite Captain America’s concerns that doing so would kill their foe, the Avengers realize they have no choice in the matter. When the Stranger attempts to change the frequency, he is also blasted by its powerful energies. Regardless, this cuts Nebula off from her power source, allowing Sersi to get close enough to use her transmutation powers to pull the implant from her brain. This successfully cuts Nebula off from her power and when she tries to flee the scene, she is nabbed by Spider-Man. That’s when they are contacted by Gunthar who tells them that the Stranger had been seriously injured.
In the aftermath of the battle, all the injured are taken down to the medical bay. While Iron Man and the Stranger both recover from their injuries, Starfox is not so lucky and has to be placed in a stasis chamber. Eros’ injuries disturb Spider-Man as he comes to realize that the types of foes the Avengers fight tend to play for keeps. Conferring with the Stranger, everyone agrees that in order to prevent Nebula from achieving her goals, the Infinity Union must be destroyed.[2] While everyone is distracted, Gunthar takes the opportunity to get close to Nebula and teleport the both back aboard their ship where they make a quick getaway.
However, Captain America figures it will be a while before they have to worry about Nebula being a threat. With that, the Stranger teleports the Avengres back to Earth, where they are reunited with Quasar and Jarvis. After explaining everything that happened, Spider-Man decides to leave. On his way out, Captain America stops him as he has come to reconsider the idea of having the wall-crawler on the team after seeing the web-spinner out of his depth in battle. Spider-Man has come to the same conclusion himself and both agree that this is the right decision, still Captain America says it was a pleasure to fight by Spider-Man’s side. After Spider-Man leaves, Cap is relieved that letting the wall-crawler down was much easier than it could have been and hopes that tomorrow is a lot more relaxed.
Recurring Characters
Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Quasar, Thor, Vision, Sersi, Spider-Man), Nebula, Stranger, Starfox, Gunthar, Edwin Jarvis
Continuity Notes
Here, Jarvis is depicted without an eye-patch. his is because he suffered a serious eye injury after receiving a severe beating from Mister Hyde during the Masters of Evil’s siege on Avengers Mansion back in Avengers #273-277. Jarvis goes back to wearing it again in Avengers #319. This discrepancy is probably due to different creative teams not being on the same page about Jarv’s injury. However, it’s later explained away in Avengers #326 where Jarvis mentions how his doctor had advised him to stop wearing the eye patch for a few hours a day so he can build up the strength of that eye.
The Stranger refers to Nebula as the granddaughter of Thanos. This is something that she first claimed back in Avengers #260. This is later refuted by Thanos himself in Infinity Gauntlet #1-6. Later, in Gamora #1-5 and Silver Surfer: Rebirth #2, it is revealed that Nebula’s actual connection to Thanos was that he raised her as an adopted daughter early on in his career. Nebula’s motivation for claiming to be his grandfather is unexplained at she has made contradicting details regarding her true lineage as seen in Silver Surfer Annual #5 and Nova (vol. 2) #1. I have a theory on all of this here.
