Thoughts and Speculations on Avenger's World
By guest writer Zeno
This is a spoiler filled article. Read Avenger's World 1 first.
Johanthan Hickman's Avenger's World is meant to be a jumping off point for new readers. The story itself goes back to plot threads from Hickman's pre-Infinity issues. It started with Pods.
Pods
In the early issues we met a character called Ex-Nihilo. He is what is known as a Gardener. He tried to create new life on the planetary scale. Each pod appears represents a different aspect of life. Without going in to the details. Certain of these pods were destroyed before the Infinity story and some still exist. This article will only deal with Consciousness, Self-Defense, Evolution and Reproduction. In this issue there are three different missions going on at three difference locations.
Each is related to one or more of these evolution pods. Each will be discussed.
1. Mandripoor
One group is at Mandripoor. This is mission is related to the Reproduction Pod. The Pod was confiscated by the Hand when it feel in Japan. In Avenger Volume 5 issue 4 we hear that despite the around the pod being quaranited the Hand,led by Gorgon escaped. Shang-Chi is personally infiltrating the Hand base in this issue while the rest of the group is patrolling the island. We discover near the end of the issue that gorgon is using the pods in conjunction with his powers to turn the entire island into a living dragon. Gorgon's power is turning living beings to stone. Just like his mythical counterparts. However here is doing the opposite. He is transforming land into a living being.
Since this is a reproduction pod and since the legend was that the island may have a part of a dragon,we can assume the pod is allowing him to recreate the creature who once lived.
2. AIM Island
The second time is at AIM Island. We know from issue 17 that Aim captured the Self Defense creature who came from the pod of the same name. Therefore we can guess he plays a part in this story. SHIELD has discovered that the seismic activity is from the acceleration of the Earth's ecology. This however comes from the pod that was found in Canada and that affected Validator. This was seen in Avengers 10. It seems in some way to be working with the AIM's Self Defense Pod. The details of all this working are still not clear.
3. Italy
In Italy people in a small town have disappeared. What is going on during this mission is less certain but I will speculate. Since all of the occurrences deal with pods it seems a reasonable guess that this plot thread/mission does also. The pod that seems to be working here is the Consciousness Pod. This pod was supposedly destroyed back in Avengers 9. However either the pieces were self aware and came back or it was somehow put back together. Their are good reason to believe that this is the Pod operating. First that pod was in Croatia,which is clear closer to Italy than any of the others. Secondly the object communicates with Star Brand who is the one who can hear it. This is because is Star Brand's power comes from the same source as the pods. Secondly it transports the heroes the old city of the dead. This is poetic for a object that was thought destroyed. Star Brand also accidentaly destroyed it while it tried to communicate with,which it is doing in this issue. It is still not clear if this pod acting alone or with the other three pods mentioned earlier. It certainly seems possible. As for the other pods it is not quite clear what role they will serve in this story.
Conclusions
Hickman's Avenger's World is a interesting story but it requires background knowledge from many issues in the last year. Hopefully this brief article will help new readers with understanding the meaning of the events. The next article on this will deal with more speculation. Particularly regarding the design seen at the beginning of the issues.
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