While it may say “Avengers #134 (April, 1975)” on the title line above — and, yes, that is that very issue’s cover (pencilled by Gil Kane, inked by Joe Sinnott, and probably touched up by John Romita) that’s displayed right above that — we’ll actually be beginning this post by looking at the preceding issue, Avengers #133 (whose cover by Kane, Dave Cockrum, and Frank Giacoia is shown at left).  That’s because the last time we checked in with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was in November’s post about Giant-Size Avengers #3, which, as you may remember, ended right in the middle of the extended storyline that today is generally known as the “Celestial Madonna Saga”.  And while covering more than one comic in a single blog post is hardly anything new around these parts, your humble blogger feels moved to point out that, even more than with most continued stories of this era, this one happens to be so information-dense, particularly at this juncture, that a brief synopsis could never, ever cut it. 

And so, here we go with a pretty deep dive into “Yesterday and Beyond…”, as presented by the monthly Avengers title’s regular creative lineup of writer Steve Englehart and artists Sal Buscema and Joe Staton… who begin this episode in a slightly surprising fashion, with an opening scene featuring an Avenger whom we readers haven’t seen much of lately, the Scarlet Witch:

As I mentioned before, prior to this issue Wanda Maximoff hadn’t made an on-panel appearance in a while; but, as you may recall, we did hear her voice briefly in Giant-Size Avengers #3 — and in a context which, based on the horrified reaction of the Avengers’ butler, Jarvis, suggested something had gone seriously wrong with Wanda’s witchcraft study sessions with Agatha Harkness (see panel at right; text by Roy Thomas, art by Dave Cockrum and Joe Giella).  There’s no sign of that situation here, however… and, as it happens, this is just the first of several discrepancies we’ll be noting between this chapter of our saga and its immediate predecessor… with the next (as well as the most glaring) coming up on the very next page…

Wait, isn’t there someone missing from this scene?  Based on the closing panel of GSA #3 (shown at left), there most definitely is… and it’s the original, android Human Torch.  Evidently, the Torch changed his mind about wanting to learn the truth of his and the Vision’s shared history almost immediately, and so had Immortus return him to the point in the timestream from which Kang had so rudely plucked him back in issue #131.  Or something like that.

Naturally, this wasn’t the way it was originally supposed to go.  And readers would eventually be offered an explanation — though it took until issue #136’s letters column, wherein Steve Englehart acknowledged several “rough edges” in regards to Avengers #132 and Giant-Size Avengers #3, both of which were scripted by Roy Thomas from Englehart’s plots. Among those edges is one we previously mentioned in our GSA #3 post — namely, the abruptness of Immortus’ late-in-story revelation that he himself is Kang, from further into the future– but here’s Englehart’s comments on the one that’s relevant to the present moment:

…Roy asked me to change my plot in #133 and remove the Human Torch, so as not to conflict with his new [1940s-set, Torch-co-starring] INVADERS book [which would launch with Giant-Size Invaders #1 in March, 1975, but he apparently forgot to make the ending of GSA #3 conform when he wrote it. Just take it that the Torch went back in time with the others of the Unliving Legion.

Got that?  Anyway, there’s one additional “rough edge” addressed by Englehart in his note that we’ll get to in a minute… though in case you’re wondering, it has nothing to do with GSA #3’s interchange between Wanda and Jarvis.  That said, I believe that that latter bit of discontinuity can also reasonably be laid at the door of the crossed-wires conditions that seem to have beset the production of this particular mini-run of Avengers stories.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll surely recall our post regarding Captain Marvel #37 from a few weeks ago — and thus, you know that Mar-Vell of the Kree is currently in the midst of a Moon-based adventure which, in addition to providing a good in-story reason for his not responding to the Avengers’ summons, will actually end up complementing the current Avengers storyline — the “Origin of Mantis” half of it, anyway…

As the Vision’s interior monologue continues, he muses over what he already knows about his past history, and how he and the Torch accidentally stumbled upon the startling revelation that they share the same synthetic body, though at different points in time.  And then, his thoughts are interrupted by another voice, speaking within his mind…

And here’s the last of those “rough edges” Steve Englehart felt obliged to acknowledge and account for in his Avengers #136 lettercol note.  In Giant-Size Avengers #3, we’d seen the Vision himself remark knowledgeably about these early incidents of the Torch being imprisoned in cement or under water (whether Vizh had previously reviewed the public record on these events on his own, or if the Torch himself had just then filled him in off-panel, wasn’t spelled out; but either explanation works just fine).  And so, it’s not really necessary for the Synchro-Staff to spill these particular beans here, leading Englehart to request that we readers “lay it to an excess of zeal that the Vision discovered the reason for his seizures twice.”

The thing is, though, that the Vision himself didn’t actually remember having the Torch’s experiences until shown them by the Synchro-Staff just now — so in that sense, there is something new happening here to justify the Vision’s dramatic reaction.  Honestly, I doubt that my younger self even noticed the (partial) redundancy with the earlier scene in GSA #3; in any event, it wasn’t anywhere near as obvious, or as confounding, as the Torch’s unexplained disappearance between that issue and this one, which I’m sure I did notice.

While I can’t claim to clearly recall my seventeen-year-old self’s original reaction to the Big Reveal that the mysterious “Hooded One” who’d popped up in a few brief scenes in recent issues was really Libra — that member of the Zodiac crime cartel whose claim to be Mantis’ father had kicked off off the first “Origin of Mantis” storyline about a year before this — it’s hard for me to believe that I could have been much, if at all, surprised.  Or that anyone who’d been following the series could have been, for that matter.  Libra was simply the most likely candidate, especially after Giant-Size Avengers #3 broke the news that he’d broken out of prison — and this issue’s cover, which went so far as to show us the back of Libra’s very blonde head, made the mystery’s solution even more obvious.  All in all, it was probably a mistake to make the revelation of the Hooded One’s identity the subject of the cover; besides it being far from the most dramatic or memorable thing that happens in this issue, the depiction is “symbolic” to the point of being misleading, given that none of the Avengers are actually on hand for it (in fact, at this point in our story none of them have ever even seen the Hooded One).  I get that it must have been hard for Marvel to come up with a winning cover concept, given that #133’s action mostly consists of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes passively watching what amounts to a couple of 3-D movie documentaries, narrated by a couple of talking sticks; but still.

Anyway, speaking of documentaries and talking sticks, it’s time for us to be getting on with “The [second, true] Origin of Mantis” — or, as Englehart has rather cheekily subtitled it, “The History of the Universe”…

With the arrival on panel of the “Year Zero” Kree, we encounter what seems to be a fairly serious coloring error — one that persists throughout the “Origin of Mantis” sequence in both this and the following issue.  Based on what had been established in 1969’s Captain Marvel #16, all the Kree originally had blue skin, not the Caucasian-mimicking “white” we see here.  (Ironically, the saga Englehart was concurrently scripting for Captain Marvel was about to make Kree skin color a major story point, beginning in issue #38.)

Six months later, when reader Ann Nichols raised this issue in the letters column of Avengers #139, she received the following straightforward reply:

Naturally, those “later CAPTAIN MARVELS” included the aforementioned #38, where several of the “Year Zero” scenes originally depicted in Avengers #133 and #134 were reprised — and where Morag and his followers were indeed colored blue, correcting the earlier error attributed to colorist Phil Rachelson.

And you’d think that would be that — except that in 2019, in the first issue of the History of the Marvel Universe miniseries (hmm, that title sounds familiar), writer Mark Waid provided Rachelson with an out.  Drawing on new information regarding the Kree’s early history that had been developed by his fellow scribe Al Ewing for the latter’s Royals series (2017), Waid included a caption that explained that “an eons-old race called the Progenitors experimented on the primitive Kree, creating blue-skinned Kree and a larger tribe of pale-skinned savages…”  From the statement’s context, it was clear that we readers were to take that “tribe of pale-skinned savages” as the very group seen first in Avengers #133 and #134.  And so, Phil Rachelson’s coloring choices in those issues were ultimately vindicated, a mere forty-five years after the fact.

Of course, at the same time it let Rachelson off the hook, Waid’s retcon threw Klaus Janson — the colorist who gave the early Kree the correct blue hue in Captain Marvel #38 — under the bus.  But, hey, that’s how it goes sometimes.  Comics, y’all!

The next day, the Skrull spaceship leaves Hala with representative groups of Kree and Cotati aboard.  The Cotati are dropped off first, on a nondescript planetoid none of the observing Avengers recognize; the ultimate destination of the Kree, on the other hand, is very familiar, indeed…

The Blue City — or its ruins, at any rate — had first been discovered by the Fantastic Four in the 13th issue of their title, back in 1963; but though the FF had indeed encountered the Watcher living there, the origins of the site itself had remained a mystery… until now, that is.

As the Synchro-Staff continues its narrative, we (and the Avengers) see how the Skrulls that come to retrieve the Kree are duly impressed by their achievement.  Upon their return to Hala, however, Morag and his company are unpleasantly surprised to discover that the Skrulls who concurrently picked up their competition are even more impressed by what the Cotati have accomplished within the same year…

The Skrulls are utterly horrified by the Kree’s actions.  “Skrulls may deal with barbarians,” declares Emperor Dorrek, “but we do not condone barbarism!  Now Hala shall be shut forever from our circle of favored worlds!”  Not so fast, retorts Morag.  Having gotten a taste of the Skrulls’ advanced technology, the Kree have no intention of going back — and if the Skrulls aren’t willing to give it, well then, they’ll just take it.  By force.

“Whatever did happen to simple stories?”  I dunno, Mr. Englehart, but you didn’t see me complaining fifty years ago… and you won’t see me doing so now, either.

Before jumping right into the contents of the next issue, we’ll pause to note that Avengers #134’s cover is every bit as “symbolic” (i.e., misleading) as #133’s was; still, the “Origin of the Vision” scene it references is at least a central event in the story, so I’m taking off fewer points for this one.

And now, our saga continues…

We can safely skip the next page’s recap of events, jumping back in right where we left off, i.e., with the Kree’s slaughter of the Skrulls…

The leap forward in time from the first chapter of “The Origin of the Vision!” to this second one is a pretty big one; 1939 to 1949 represents the entire Golden Age career of the Human Torch (and Toro), after all.  That said, the jump is certainly justifiable on its own terms, given that this flashback is about the origin of the Vision, and not a full history of the Torch’s career; on the other hand, I have to wonder if Steve Englehart wasn’t at least partially motivated to make this storytelling choice by a desire (or need) to avoid stepping on Roy Thomas’ Invaders-scripting toes.

Actually, from one point of view, the time jump isn’t just ten years, but fourteen — since the account of events we see recapped here, explaining just how and why the Torch disappeared in 1949, wasn’t actually “recorded” until the character’s short-lived Atlas-era revival, which kicked off in Young Men #24 (Dec., 1953)…

There are a number of significant ways in which the two main narrative threads of these issues — the Mantis origin and the Vision origin — may be contrasted with each other.  But I think the most striking is probably that virtually everything in the Mantis sequences is brand-new information, while the Vision/Torch material is all stuff that’s been put together from old comic-book stories… or at least that’s been the case up until the last tier of panels above, which reveals for the first time the circumstances of the Torch’s second disappearance, in 1955.  (Sub-Mariner #14 [Jun., 1969] had noted that the hero had vanished while on “a lone mission”, but hadn’t offered any details.)

But, speaking of the Mantis sequences, it’s time now for another one.  We rejoin the Synchro-Staff and the Avengers a century later than when we last saw them, in a time when the Kree pacifists have organized themselves into a priesthood… one that continues to hide the Cotati from the warmongering Kree government.  Still, priesthood or not, the government remains intolerant of the pacifists’ dissent, and so they contrive to create an incident in which the priests are assaulted in their own temple by a band of “ordinary citizens” (actually soldiers in disguise).  Using what looks a lot like Earth-type martial arts skills, the unarmed priests defend themselves…

Having provided the preceding account of events which, for the first time in the “Mantis” portion of our story, are actually already somewhat familiar to us readers — we’d gotten the Star-Slayer’s own version of his unfortunate encounter with the Kree priests back in issue #124 — the story returns to Earth, as Moondragon finally arrives at Avengers Mansion…

And here, finally, we come to the weirdness involving Wanda that Roy Thomas and company had jumped the gun in alluding to with that brief scene back in Giant-Size Avengers #3…

The storytelling in the last two panels shown above is, frankly, rather less clear than it ought to be.  We last saw the dangerously irradiated Torch “going nova” while airborne, several pages back; judging by Steve Englehart’s text for this page, I think we’re now supposed to infer that the hero’s falling body struck the earth at such speed that he was buried beneath the desert floor (said desert having been mentioned in the Torch’s dialogue in that earlier scene, but not actually depicted visually), and the Mad Thinker is now using his trident-device to indicate the precise spot to dig for him.  But what Sal Buscema has drawn looks more to me like it was intended to depict the Thinker using the trident to activate the trapdoor we see in the very next panel, since otherwise the implication is that the site where the Torch went down in ’55 is right next to where the Thinker has already built the elaborate subterranean facility into which he now carries his prize (which seems pretty darned unlikely, if you ask me)..

For the record, while the Thinker’s resuscitation of the Torch in his desert lab was shown in Fantastic Four Annual #4 (Nov., 1966) in a scene very similar to that depicted in the last panel above, the backstory about the villain finding the android in the desert is original to Avengers #134.  So I’m inclined to think that we have what amounts to a “Marvel Method” mishap here, with either Buscema having misunderstood the specifics of Englehart’s plot at the drawing stage, or Englehart having misunderstood exactly what Buscema had drawn when he wrote his final script.  Or, heck, maybe a bit of both.

The ship we (and the Avengers) are currently observing eventually travels to our very own Earth — surprise! — where, as Hawkeye correctly guesses, they seek out “good tropical terrain” for the sake of the Cotati…

Yeah, the notion that Asian martial arts traditions might owe their origin to “kung fu pacifist types” from outer space hasn’t aged terribly well.  It’s probably best taken in the context of its mid-Seventies cultural moment, when the notion that virtually all human cultures had gotten a boost from “ancient astronauts” at some point or other (as popularized by Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods?) was basically ubiquitous.

And that’s that for Avengers #134 — though clearly not for the Celestial Madonna Saga, which will wrap up next month with the one-two punch of Avengers #135 and Giant-Size Avengers #4.

You know, I can totally get why some fans might not be crazy about this particular run of Avengers stories.  Not only do the Avengers themselves not fight anyone for a couple of issues (and counting); they really don’t do anything at all except passively observe past events (and, sure, make a pithy comment or two; thanks, Hawkeye!).  Still, I enjoyed these comics immensely when I first read them, finding them fascinating in the way they both expanded the breadth and depth of the Marvel Universe (the Origin of Mantis) and also tied together disparate strands of pre-existing continuity (the Origin of the Vision).  Fifty years later, it’s all but impossible to revisit these stories and feel the same sense of discovery; even so, they continue to hold up as very entertaining reads, at least for me.

Of course, one of the major factors in these issues’ appeal for your humble blogger — the artwork of the Sal Buscema-Joe Staton team — was about to go away, as neither gentleman would be contributing their talents to the last chapters of the Celestial Madonna Saga.  Nor would Dave Cockrum, who’d impressively pencilled both of the previous Giant-Size episodes.  Would Steve Englehart be able to stick the landing without them?  We’ll all have the opportunity to answer that question for ourselves in February; I hope to see you then.