Avengers #200

Avengers #200

Originally released in 1980

Written by Jim Shooter, George Perez, Bob Layton, and David Michelinie

Art by George Perez

For any kind of creative endeavour, reaching a multiple of a hundred is a big deal.  I'm just writing this blog for fun, but even I felt a sense of pride upon reaching the hundredth and two hundredth entries.  It seems like it would feel even better if it was part of a business, as it means that a title was popular enough to justify keeping it running for that long.  With that in mind, I have no idea why such a milestone issue for the Avengers was fumbled so badly.

For whatever reason, this story has four writers working on it - you'd think that, at one point, one of them would have spoke up and said that this was a really bad idea, though maybe so many writers are credited because nobody wants to take credit for it.  The story starts with Ms. Marvel, a.k.a. Carol Danvers, preparing to give birth, which is especially weird since her pregnancy began only three days ago and she has no idea who the father would be.

The reactions of the team are mixed. Some, like Donald Blake (who was the secret identity of Thor at the time) or Captain America, see it as a mystery that needs to be solved, while others, like the Wasp and the Beast, coo over the infant and treat it like a perfectly ordinary birth.  Meanwhile, Carol hates all of this.

As various Avengers discuss love and romance, including Jocasta (a robot whose AI was based on the Wasp's mind) wondering if she'll ever be able to feel love, the baby grows to being about two years old in a manner of hours.  Ms. Marvel wants nothing to do with him, calling him "that thing", and as he ages, he just grows more and more unsettling.

While this is going on, New York City appears to be caught up in some sort of warp in time and space, as its residents are transported to various corners of the Earth at different years, and historical figures, dinosaurs, and alien races are appearing throughout the city.  The two events (the appearance of Ms. Marvel's "son", who is going by Marcus, and the time and space troubles) are connected, and as we find out more about Marcus, the more disturbing it gets.

Marcus is the son of Immortus, the future version of Kang the Conqueror.  Immortus rules over the dimension of Limbo, a place outside of time and space, but he grew lonely, and with his machines, he made a woman fall in love with him, eventually giving birth to Marcus.  Immortus and his lover eventually ceased to exist, but as Marcus was created in Limbo, he couldn't leave.  Setting out to be reborn on Earth, he pulled Carol into Limbo, spent weeks trying to woo her, and then "with a subtle boost of Immortus's machines", he made her love him.  Once he used Immortus's machines to put his essence inside her, which would allow him to be reborn outside of Limbo, he wiped her memories and sent her back to Earth.

This description is skin-crawling alone - Ms. Marvel was abducted, brainwashed (more or less being drugged), raped, and had her memory wiped, being forced to give birth to the child of her rapist, who is also her rapist himself, while having no idea how this could have happened.  Making it even more disturbing is that Marcus is treated as though he's a sympathetic figure who was trying to avoid an eternity of solitude, rather than the disgusting monster that he should by all rights be treated as.

In order to undo the damage to space and time, Marcus has to go back to Limbo, and making this plotline even more awful, Carol has fallen in love with Marcus and decides to go to Limbo with him.  Despite the Avengers explicitly being told that Immortus's machines can be used to alter the thoughts of others, and that Marcus has explicitly done this to Carol in the past, they only briefly question if this is a good idea before waving goodbye to Carol as she is sent to another dimension.

If it was established that the Avengers were also being manipulated by Immortus's machines in order to go along with this, that would be one thing, but when Chris Claremont rightfully tears into this story in the next year's Avengers Annual, the idea isn't brought up.  The story of this issue is treated like a romance when it's as far from the idea as you can humanly get, and I have to question what the hell any of the four (FOUR!) writers were thinking when they agreed that THIS should be the story of the Avengers' two-hundredth issue, that THIS should be how Ms. Marvel is written out of the series.

The only compliments that I have about this story are that George Perez's artwork is good (though that shouldn't come as a surprise) and that it's got a great team of Avengers for the brief time that they're working together (replace Jocasta with Black Panther and it would be perfect in my eyes) - the rest of it is utter garbage, and I honestly struggled to find any positive qualities about this issue.