A pair of young women are out on a road trip and stop at a diner in Dinosaur, Colorado to use the restroom and get some. As one of the women heads into the washroom, her friend sits down and orders two coffees. That’s when one of the locals tries to whisper a warning to her. Seeing how strange everyone is acting, she asks what’s wrong. Her friend meanwhile, calls her ex-boyfriend to chew him out for cheating on her while she is in the restroom. When she touches the cracked mirror, it leaks onto her hand. Freaking out, she wheels back into a stall door, which crumples under her weight. Outside, the locals suddenly turn to stone. Moments later, the two women start to scream as their car outside crumbles to dust.

Meanwhile, the Dark Avengers — Ms. Marvel (Karla Sofen), Hawkeye (actually Bullseye in disguise), Spider-Man (Mac Gargan and the Venom symbiote posing as the wall-crawler), Wolverine (actually his son Daken), and Ares — are in the Louisiana bayou hunting down the Man-Thing. Bullseye is impressed when Ares cleaves the creature in half with his battle axe and this leads to bickering about who had the worst father. Venom then shocks everyone by feeling sorry for the Man-Thing. That’s when a HAMMER unit arrives with the Sentry (Bob Reynolds) for clean-up.

Later, when they return to Avengers Tower in New York, Victoria Hand is waiting with another mission. This annoys Bullseye, who complains about how much harder they have been working since becoming Avengers and demands that they get a break.[1] He also wants to know where their boss, Norman Osborn, is as he he hasn’t been around recently.[2] He accuses Karla of doing something to their boss, and incredibly, the two start flirting with one another. When Mac expresses discomfort about this, Bullseye gets back on track and complains about how Gargan’s medication is making him far too passive to be affected in the field. This, at least, Victoria agrees with. Again, questions are raised about Osborn, this time from Daken. When Victoria says that their boss has a lot of other work on his plate, Daken can smell that she is lying.[3] That’s when Osborn shows up clad in his Iron Patriot armor.

When Victoria raises her concerns about his well being, he ignores her and wants to know what the Avengers next mission is. She tells them that the daughter of the Secretary of State has been missing for two days. This is being asked as a favor, and Osborn realizes that he has to do this as the Secretary is on the committee that provides funding for his operation. They are given a dossier on Betty Simpson and Veronica Robbins, who were last seen road tripping into Dinosaur, Colorado where they have seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth. These two are just the latest of a series of disappearances of people who pass through the area.

Iron Patriot finds this interesting and worth investigating and send the Sentry ahead to go and check it out. After Bob flies off, Victoria tries to get Norman to explain why he was locked in the lab for two full days. He says he was working on modifications to his armor and when she asks him to take off his helmet so she can look at his face, he refuses. While they wait, Karla continues her seduction of Bullseye. He is reluctant to hook up with her after her recent fling with Noh-Varr, who went AWOL shortly thereafter.[4] She insists that she didn’t make him do it and Bullseye’s resistance melts away as Karla strips off her Ms. Marvel costume while walking to her room.

Moments later, the Sentry arrives on Dinosaur and begins looking around this seemingly ordinary small town. However, once on the ground he discovers that the place is deserted. As he calls out for anyone around, his hand suddenly starts to glow painfully. Moments later, the Sentry explodes. Norman then mobilizes his Avengers and a HAMMER strike team to head to Colorado immediately. On the way there, Mac worries that they can’t stop whatever is powerful enough to destroy the Sentry and the Iron Patriot couches him.

When they arrive in Dinosaur, everything suddenly goes black. When Norman Osborn can see again, he has been stripped naked and appears to be in Hell. Sitting on the throne surrounded by the Beyonder, Zarathos, Mephisto, and the Enchantress is the Molecule Man (Owen Reece) who mocks Osborn’s position as Director of National Security.[5] Scoffing that, in this most vulnerable of moments, he is not in charge of anything at all.

Recurring Characters

Dark Avengers (Iron Patriot, Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Spider-Man, Ares, Sentry), Molecule Man, HAMMER (Victoria Hand), Man-Thing

Continuity Notes

1. Bullseye says that he wasn’t worked this hard when he was with the Thunderbolts. The skilled assassin was forced into working on the Thunderbolts from Thunderbolts #110 until Norman Osborn formed this team in Dark Avengers #1.

2. Norman has locked himself in Tony Stark’s Iron Man vault since last issue. Osborn has always had a tenuious grip on his sanity as told in Amazing Spider-Man #40. He has been treated for his mental health since Thunderbolts #110, but has been slipping recently and began hearing the voice of the Green Goblin in his head in Dark Avengers #8. We’ll later learn that this is actually Loki manipulating Osborn to launch a war against Asgard as we’ll see in Siege: Prologue #1.

3. I don’t see how Victoria is lying since Osborn has been pretty busy at the time of this story. He’s basically in every Dark Reign crossover issue, pretty much.

4. Noh-Varr had joined the team when they were first formed in Dark Avengers #1. Karla seduced him into her bed in issue #5 and he went AWOL the following issue. For more on what happened to Noh, check out Dark Avengers Annual #1.

5. The entities around the Molecule Man are merely constructs, as we’ll discover next issue.