Avengers (vol. 2) #1
Awaken the Thunder!
The trickster god known as Loki finds himself high above Earth struggling to remember who he is and where he has come from. Looking down at the planet below him he wonders where how he can exist in a world without an Asgard or an Odin.[1] Still he senses that Thor — the bane of his existence — is on the mortal world below him and vows to destroy him once and for all.
Heading down to Earth, Loki is drawn to an archeological dig in Norway headed by Donald Blake. He and his team have just uncovered an body carrying a massive hammer sealed in a massive chunk of amber. Both Blake and Loki recognize the man trapped inside as Thor.[2] Loki tries to blast his half brother, but the spell does nothing but panic the scientists who decide to contact SHIELD and have them dispatch the Avengers. Loki finds the name familiar and decides to head to the United States to find out who they are.[3]
Loki ends up off the coat of Manhattan to the newly opened Avengers Island, headquarters to Earth’s newest team of super-heroes. The trickster is first drawn to the bedroom window of the Scarlet Witch, who is in the process of unpacking her things. She is visited by her mentor in the art of witchcraft, the sorceress known as Agatha Harkness. Wanda is excited to be part of the Avengers and her attraction to Captain America exasperates Agatha who finds her student’s girlish behavior unbecoming. Soon they become aware of Loki’s spying presence, prompting the trickster to move on before he is found out. In the next room he finds another new recruit, the Swordsman, preening in the mirror. Loki doesn’t like his vanity and moves on.
In another room, he finds a man exercising but finds him uninteresting as he is a normal mortal. In yet another room he comes upon the feline Hellcat watching TV. Her less than human appearance interests him. However, he is surprised when another — the android Vision — phases through the floor to see if there is anything she needs. Hellcat is startled at first but decides to have the android let her massage his back so she can brush up on her skills. Even though the Vision doesn’t need a massage, he allows her to do it anyway.
In the training room, Loki finds Captain America running through a session. He is angry and venting his frustrations, lamenting about how his whole life has been taken away from him. Peering into the Captain’s mind, Loki sees that he is the living legend of World War II and fought against the Nazis. After years of dormancy, Captain America was revived recently to stop the menace posed by Master Man, leading Steve Rogers to learn that the life he had been living was nothing more than a lie.[4]
While in the meeting room, government agent Henry Gyrich and SHIELD director Nick Fury take a tour of the facility.[5] The two bicker with one another over the protocol, equipment, and the lack of ethnic diversity on the team. That’s when they receive the call for assistance from Norway. When Doctor Blake finally gets through to Fury, he reveals that he has discovered what appears to be the Teutonic god of thunder.
Elsewhere in the compound, the Scarlet Witch has changed into costume and finds the Vision recharging in the hallway. He decides to take her down to the lab to meet his creator, the inventor Hank Pym and his girlfriend Janet Van Dyne.[6] While introductions are made, Hank’s latest creation — a robot named Ultron — upsets Janet when it refers to her as “mother” and demands that Hank have it stop calling her that. That’s when the alarm goes off, prompting Wanda and the Vision to see what’s up. They are joined by the other Avengers — Captain America, Swordsman, Hawkeye, and Hellcat.
They quickly take a Quinjet to Blake’s archeological dig in Norway. There, Blake shows off the massive Viking hammer they just freed from the amber, Thor’s enchanted hammer Mjolnir. He then asks the Avengers to help free Thor from his amber prison. Attacking the material individually doesn’t even crack it. So Captain America has the Vision phase his shield into the amber and when the Scarlet Witch uses her hex powers tandem with this, they manage to shatter the amber freeing Thor who is somehow still alive after being trapped for thousands of years. However, Captain America recalls how the Vikings were barbarians and asks the Avengers to be ready for anything.
That’s when Loki appears out of nowhere and convinces the disorientated Thor that he was the one responsible for freeing him and that the Avengers are his enemies. The Avengers try to hold their own against the thunder god, but Thor is much too powerful. However, when Thor recovers Mjolnir his mind suddenly clears and he remembers that his half-brother Loki is a liar and turns against him. In the ensuing battle, the Scarlet Witch uses her hex powers on Loki causing one of his spells to backfire, banishing the trickster into a dimensional vortex. In the aftermath of the battle, Captain America explains who the Avengers are and asks how Thor became trapped. The thunder god doesn’t remember much, all he remembers is an onslaught, a sacrifice, and suspects that he was the victim of Ragnarok — the twilight of the gods. Cap doesn’t buy any of this and worries that Thor is too dangerous to leave on his own, and so he convinces him to join the ranks of the Avengers. Thor gladly agrees to join and the team yells off their battle cry “Avengers Assemble!”
Meanwhile, Loki ends up in an empty void where he is surprised to see the Enchantress who suggest they work together. However, Amora has no interest in the Avengers, only the Scarlet Witch, whom she claims is her daughter.[7]
Recurring Characters
Avengers (Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Swordsman, Hellcat), Loki, Enchantress, Agatha Harkness, Donald Blake, Jane Foster, SHIELD (“Nick Fury”), Henry Gyrich, Hank Pym, Janet Van Dyne, Ultron
Continuity Notes
Here it is implied that Loki remembers life on the Prime Marvel Universe, suggesting that he is the original Loki. He is not. As revealed in Heroes Reborn: The Return #1-4, Loki is a construct like many of the villains that are featured during the Heroes Reborn run. This is a pocket dimension created by Franklin Richards following the events of Onslaught: Marvel Universe #1, where he transported all the heroes who sacrificed themselves to stop Onslaught. They won’t have any memories of their past lives until much later. It should be noted that this entire story is a poorly reinterpreted version of the Avengers formation from Avengers #1.
Unlike most of the other Avengers, this Thor isn’t the Thor from Earth-616, but a construct created on this world as a stand-in. The real Thor won’t appear until Avengers (vol. 2) #9. Why this stand-in was needed is never really explained. For the record, only Captain America, the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Vision, Hank Pym, and Janet Van Dyne are originally from Earth-616. Everyone else are constructs created by Franklin Richards.
Here, Loki states that Thor is the son of Gaea. This is true on Earth-616. Where Gaea, the goddess of the Earth, gave birth to Thor as explained in Thor Annual #11.
This is a recap of the events of Captain America (vol. 2) #1-5. In this pocket dimension, Captain America was active during World War II. When Cap protested the use of atomic bombs Operation: Sleeper was initiated that had Steve Rogers made to forget his past life. He was set up with an ideal family with Life Model Decoys posing as his wife and child. When his old memories were reactivated he soon discovered that the life he had been living for years was nothing more than a lie.
This is not the real Nick Fury, but a Life Model Decoy put in his place by the Son of the Serpent, as we’ll learn in Captain America (vol. 2) #11.
Janet Van Dyne appears here as a normal human for the first time since she was transformed into a more insectile form in Avengers #394. It’s later explained in Avenger Annual 2001 that when Franklin sent everyone to Counter-Earth he “corrected” things by changing various heroes to more recognizable forms. One such reversion was restoring Janet Van Dyne’s humanity.
The Enchantress’ claim that the Scarlet Witch is her daughter is later dismissed as a falsehood in Avengers (vol. 2) #12.
Topical References
Hellcat’s TV is depicted as a CRT television that needs an antennae to pick up a signal. This should be considered topical as this is an outdated technology.