The object that was stolen from the army convoy was a Cosmic Cube. Thanos has a Cosmic Cube now. I don’t know what that means, but I recommend exchanging it for a Cosmic Sphere so that he can go Cosmic Bowling.

Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2), Issue #6 [October, 2012]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Zodiac (Part 6)”

Yeah, whatever. The cover is filled with nerds. Go get laid, nerds.

Maria “Cobie Smulders” “Robin Scherbatsky” Hill asks the “Avengers” to “assemble”. It looks like a veritable Who’s Who of all the members who weren’t good enough to be involved in this story. I recognize, like, four. Reed Richards is there looking important and neutered. Spider-Man poses up front with his good side sticking out. Wolverine is crouching like he’s taking the biggest dump of his life.

Maria Hill is running things while Captain America is away. The members look concerned. Captain America is never away! He’s always everywhere at once! Something must be up if Cap is tied up for more than 45 minutes.

“We have been the victims of a cosmic level breach,” Hill explains, “A being called Thanos entered Earth atmosphere less than two hours ago and left here with an item we must retrieve–”

Everyone already knows Thanos. I’ve even heard of Thanos and I can’t even name six characters on Archer. Let’s see, there’s Archer. Chris Parnell. Aisha Tyler. Bob Burgers. Rickon Morty.

The whole room is like “oh damn” and “what”. Hill can’t give much more info than that, but just know that the item is very dangerous and expensive and cube-shaped. Stop asking questions and find the item that she can’t even tell you anything about. Hill then tells them to hold on while she gets a call in the middle of sentence. A sentence that would’ve ended with something like “planet go boom, kablooey, flush, bubble, glub”.

The call is from Tony Stark and the rest of the dream team; they want to speak to the Z-List Avengers through a Stargate portal. Hill chides the drunkard about relaying information without Security Clearance Level 9,000,000 (Tony Stark is Clearance Level -12), but he doesn’t care and he says more secret stuff about it. Stuff like “the army had the cube first”.

Spider-Man points out that Hulk is behind them. Did they know that Hulk was behind them. The answer is a resounding “oh, hey there Hulk”. Also, per Stark, Hulk is there to “shove the Cosmic Cube up Thanos’ butt”. I actually didn’t make that one up, surprisingly.

Reed Richards wants to be involved! “You’re going to need more of a team than that,” he states, trying wedge himself into the situation like a self-important, neutered dingus. Stark tells him they have the Guardians of the Galaxy, so shove off. What they need from him, and all the other shiftless Avengers, to “batten down the hatches” on Earth. In other words, stay out of everyone’s way.

When Stark asks them all if they need anything at the moment when they’re available, someone who I think might possibly be Captain Marvel asks “What does a Thanos with a Cosmic Cube do?”

GREAT QUESTION! If you didn’t think of “fuck everything up forever” then maybe you shouldn’t be on any Avengers team for the rest of your ignorant life.

Thanos is on PLANET MOORD (lol), HOME OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BADOON (lolol). He is preparing for the inevitable mission from the Avengers of trying to steal the Cube from him. He kindly lifts a Badoon leader up by the neck and kindly asks him to have his people stop the Avengers before they arrive or else they’re all dead Badoon meat. AND IF THEY DO ACTUALLY STOP THEM, and they had better, then Thanos promises them that they will become so powerful in the galaxy that even the Skrull and the Kree will bow to them. Even the SKRULL! Even the KREE!!

The “good” Avengers team is flying toward, uh, Planet Moord in their quinjet. All except Thor, who opts to fly outside of the jet. He’s two feet away from it, holding his hammer in front of him in a foolishly non-aerodynamic manner. One little slip and that fucker is going to pound its way right through an engine! And I’ll laugh, and oh I will laugh!

Tony Stark loves visiting space. So many things to do and see! Lots of science stuff. Hawkeye hates visiting space. He’s not a man of science, just a man of bows and arrows.

Hulk doesn’t like it either. He’s crammed in the corner like luggage, ready to SMASH! at any moment.

Black Widow doesn’t really trust the Guardians. Tony Stark is optimistic.

In their own ship, Rocket Raccoon doesn’t really trust the Avengers. The rest are optimistic. Plus, with both a Hulk and a Thor, you can’t go wrong! *a loose hammer smashes into the cockpit window*

A bug-type Guardian asks Gamora what was going on between her and Thor back in the Avengers Tower. It was awkward and weird. Gamora insists that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about whatsoever and also shut the fuck up.

Chris Pratt Quill tells Rocket to keep his Earthling bigotry to himself for once in his filthy raccoon life. “We need Earth in one piece, and I think the Earth heroes need to see why,” Quill says, implying, in my opinion, that Earth heroes aren’t convinced that Earth is all it’s cracked up to be?

Stark pops in rudely with his portal thing. “Hey, guys, how much longer? I have a vaguely claustrophobic Hulk on board.”

Well, good thing Thor’s hammer slipped out of his hands and struck the cabin, causing explosive decompression and sucking Hawkeye right out the plane! He fell to his death, but at least Hulk is getting some fresh air.

Hawkeye is actually fine I guess, and the plane isn’t actually destroyed (unfortunately), but they get ambushed mid-flight by a Badoon warship! They’re all like “what da hell is goin’ on derr”. They’ve been tracking them with their oh-so sophisticated technology. Technology such as one of those pirate telescopes and an astrolabe. And a digital watch.

“We’re trapped in a stasis field,” Quill complains, “They’re going to pull us on to their ship and execute us.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Stark jumps in, always so goddamned helpful, “Guardians stand down. Thor, can you hear me?”

Thor can’t hear anything because, as a god, he has no time to dedicate his ears to Earthling pipsqueaks like Tony Stark. The dude is already flipping his hammer around read to pound Badoon faces into ugly ground beef. Iron Man joins him. Time to really fuck these guys up. Yeehaw. Woop woop. Come to Poppa.

Of course, the Guardians were told to stay put, but do they listen? No. They never listen, do they? And the Guardians tell the Avengers to lighten up. This is what they do. They Guard the Galaxy. What do you do? Avenge? Avenge what? Exactly.

Iron Man is peeved, and his arrogant companions really are getting in the way here. The Badoon outnumber them. The Badoon are outsmarting them. There are a lot of actiony panels that are really not worth describing. Lots of things exploding and lots of Avengers whining. That is, of course, until Hulk decides to bust through Kool-Aid style and starts slapping these guys around with his big ol’ titties.

“Banner gone! Hulk smash!” Yes, yes, very threatening.

Captain America hits one of them with his flying shield. It barely mattered. But you’ve gone and done it. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GUY IS GOING TO GIVE THE GUARDIANS OF AN ENTIRE GALAXY A STERN LECTURE NOW. They. Told. All. Of. You. To. STAND! DOWN! THE AVENGERS ARE HANDLING THIS!!!!

Iron Man whines at them. He had a plan! He didn’t bother telling any of them ABOUT the plan, which was completely foolhardy and not very cool at all, honestly, but it was a plan nonetheless. Something about Trojan Horsing around. Yeah, maybe it wasn’t a very good plan anyway.

The funny thing here is that, plan or no plan, Hawkeye hits one of these Badoon guys in the wrist with an arrow, which causes him to accidentally bump this giant red button that opens the airlock. Just this enormous zit of a button on the control panel that could be easily pressed by accident constantly. It’s the largest button on the control panel by a very large margin. Easy to hit too. Just sucking every single individual out into the cold vacuum of space.

Now hear me out on this one: lmao

They’re all gripping their throats and flailing. What a sad display this is. Not so super after all, huh? Can’t even withstand outer space. Just a bunch of cucks.

And, meanwhile, Thanos’ Cube starts glowing! It starts glowing! Yes! YES! YES!

Final Thoughts

Thanos’ Cosmic Cube has been activated and every single atom of oxygen is leaving Captain America’s body (or molecule of dioxygen, if you will). Today is a good day.

The post Avengers Assemble (Vol. 2), Issue #6 – “Zodiac (Part 6)” first appeared on Tom Writes About Stuff.