The Conservation of Angular Momentum

Quasar has been happily reunited with his girlfriend Kayla Ballentine following their long standing ordeal with the powerful Star Brand. After the power source was taken away by the Living Tribunal, Quasar had Doctor Druid use his power to erase all the trauma Kayla experienced while burdened with the power.[1] With the crisis over, Quasar and Kayla travel back to New York and recover the regenerative cocoon of Kismet so they can bring it to Project PEGASUS where the artificially woman can heal uninterrupted.[2]

There, Quasar is reunited with his friends the Squadron Supreme who have been living at the Project until they can find a way back to their native universe.[3] Also present is Blue Shield, who is still head of security at the facility.[4] Their visit is also coinciding with the transfer of the Angler to PEGASUS from the Vault to learn the origin of his powers.[5]

Brought into one of the labs, the scientists of Project PEGASUS begin examining the Angler. In order to get his costume off, they need assistance from Moonglow and her magical powers. Removing Angler’s mask, they are shocked to discover that he is a human partially transformed into a geometric creature.

Meanwhile, Quasar and Kayla are visiting with the rest of the Squadron Supreme and learning what they have been up to recently. That’s when the alarm goes off, and Quasar joins Blue Shield and the Squadron in answering it. He tells Kayla to stay in the rec room where it is relatively safe. When they find the Angler, he has been completely transformed into a geometric creature. Worse, he is so strong his angler weapon can cut through near invulnerable individuals like Hyperion and Power Princess. As Quasar helps pull everyone back, Moonglow uses her magical powers to show him the Angler’s origins. Apparently he was a soldier in Roxxon’s Nth Command who was dispatched to alternate realities to exploit their natural resources. During one such mission he encountered a being that transformed him into a partially geometric creature. Apparently the reason why the Angler first appeared on the scene and broke into the Four Freedoms Plaza it was to try and get the Nth Projector in the Fantastic Four’s possession in the hopes he could use it to somehow restore himself to normal.[6]

With casualties piling up, Quasar rushes everyone to the med bay before going back to stop the Angler for good. Meanwhile, the menace has made its way to the room where Kayla is hiding out. She warns the creature to stay back but when it doesn’t, she is shocked when she blasts the Angler away with a powerful energy blast, something that should be impossible now that she no longer has the Star Brand. That’s when Quasar arrives with a Nth Projector that has been stored at Project PEGASUS from his time working there and uses it to banish the Angler.[7] As he checks on Kayla, the portal re-opens and a massive geometric creature called Geometer emerges onto this world.

Recurring Characters

Quasar, Angler, Geometer, Kayla Ballentine, Kismet, Squadron Supreme (Hyperion, Power Princess, Skylark, Moonglow, Shape, Haywire),

Continuity Notes

1. The whole Star Brand thing is quite complicated to go over here. The details:

   • When Quasar was stranded in the New Universe he needed the power of the Star Brand to return to his proper reality. He brought the Brand back with him an inadvertedly transferred it to Kayla in Quasar #31.

   • From Quasar #36-47, Kayla had been kidnapped by various aliens who wanted to either steal or exploit the power of the Star Brand.

   • Ultimately, Kayla was tricked into turning the power over to a Deviant named Eriskingal who then tried to use the Brand to take over the multiverse. However, she was eventually stripped of the power by the Living Tribunal. See Quasar #49-50.

2. Kismet was seriously injured by the Star Brand in issue #49, forcing her to enter her regenerative cocoon.

3. The Squadron ended up stranded on Earth-616 following the events of Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe #1. They met Quasar in issue #16 of his series. As explained in Quasar #19, the Squadron’s Wizard Supreme is refusing to allow them to return home. They will eventually make it back to their own universe in Avengers Annual 1998.

4. Blue Shield was last seen in Quasar #8. After an encounter with the alien creature known as the Omnivore, he quit. Here, he states that he changed his mind.

5. Quasar remembers fighting Angler in the past, that was in Quasar #3. Kayla also mentions how she laid out Angler with the Star Brand. That was in Quasar #34.

6. Again, this happened in Quasar #3. The Nth Project was in the FF’s possession after they foiled a Roxxon plot to banish Earth’s heroes to another dimension in Captain America #289.

7. Project PEGASUS has had the Nth Projector since Roxxon left it behind in Marvel Two-In-One #57.