Here begins the “Dark Reign” arc for this series. Osborn holds a press conference to announce that he’s rebooted The AI, which he’s moved to a secret base in the middle of nowhere.
The U-Foes are representing the Avengers Initiative in North Carolina, fighting a team made up of former Avengers Initiative instructors (Tigra, Gauntlet, etc.) and the New Warriors. After that battle, Tigra busts into Brother Percy Grimm’s hotel room and sadistically breaks his bones for being part of Osborn’s team. So I guess she’s feral again? She leaves a note.
Trauma is keeping Penance in a state of memory loss so that they can control him.
Dazzler fights some music-themed villains who go by the name “Heavy Meddle,” which could have been much more fun if it weren’t done with so much gravitas. She beats them down and they go join the Initiative.
The Negative Zone prison is overtaken by Blastaar’s army, and Taskmaster/Hood send in a team to clear them out, but they’re all killed. Don’t worry, it’s all D-listers you don’t care about, several of whom I never bothered to tag, and who you probably can’t even name. Several are those music-dudes from the Dazzler sequence. That initial wave was intended to be a suicide mission. Komodo leads a second wave, which succeeds, but the surviving AI members now know that they are considered expendable.
This is all fine. It’s better than fine, actually, it’s all done very well. It’s just an awful lot to cram into one issue, which makes it hard to really connect with this book. On top of that, the issue-to-issue continuity of these stories isn’t always an “every month” check in, which makes it even harder to feel anything for these teams.
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