Empyre #0: A Garden of Earthly Destruction

The #0 “prelude” issue of the Empyre miniseries focuses on The Avengers because the storyline spins mostly out of classic Avengers sagas that I was there to read when they were brand-new.  By way of background, then, a little history lesson.

The Skrulls of the Andromeda Galaxy were not always the warlike species who have been trying to invade Earth and feuding with The Fantastic Four since the very beginning of Marvel Comics (Fantastic Four #2.)  Long ago, they were somewhat more like the Ferengi on Star Trek, preferring to absorb other worlds into their empire through economic manipulation.  When they came to the planet Hala in what we know as the Greater Magellanic Cloud, they found two emerging sentient species:  the barbaric humanoid Kree and the mobile telepathic plant race of the Cotati.  In trying to decide which of the native species of Hala would receive their technological favors (and incidentally become the Skrulls’ new vassals), the Skrulls staged a contest.  Members of the Cotati were taken to a distant planetoid to create something out of the available resources and a bit of Skrull tech.  Members of the Kree were taken to Earth’s Moon before humans evolved on Earth to do likewise.  Whichever group impressed the Skrulls more with their achievements would be the winners. 

So, the Kree built the awesome city with the artificial atmosphere on our Moon, which The Fantastic Four discovered in FF #13.  Said city was the home of The Watcher and the surrounding atmosphere also made that area of the Moon a fit new home for the Inhumans as of FF #240.  The Kree believed their magnificent city would impress the Skrulls much more than anything that the walking broccoli stalks could do.  They were wrong; the Skrulls were much more taken with the fabulous garden that the Cotati created on their planetoid.  The Kree were outraged.  Back on Hala, they turned on both the Cotati and the Skrulls, slaughtering all of the plant beings and murdering the Skrull delegation.  They then stole the Skrulls’ technology, used it to give themselves a Forbidden Planet-like brain boost, and became an interstellar empire of their own—and the Skrulls’ mortal enemies.  That was the beginning of the conflict between the Skrulls and the Kree that has raged on and off to this day, frequently with Earth in the crossfire.  Got that?  Okay, the foregoing will weigh heavily on everything that follows. 

That’s the backstory.  In the present, Iron Man wakes up from an inexplicable dream about the above related history to learn that The Avengers have received a distress call from the Moon.  Up there on the Moon, the team lands in the vast garden—which has become a jungle—of the Cotati.  (Wait a minute—the Cotati jungle is on our Moon?  The original story by Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema didn’t have it on our Moon; they put it on a faraway planetoid somewhere.  Wait for the review; I’ll show you.)  They haven’t been there for more than a few panels when they are attacked by a Kree Sentry Sinister with some tentacled monstrosity for a head.  But joining them in battle is a familiar ally with a sword, who lops the creature off the top of the Sentry and enables the Avengers to take down the automaton.  The other Avengers quickly fill in The Ghost Rider about who has come to their aid.  It is none other than the body of The Swordsman, reanimated by a Cotati intelligence—the being who married Mantis and thus fathered the Celestial Messiah!

At once, the Swordsman/Cotati leads The Avengers further into the lunar jungle, where his offspring, Sequoia, or “Quoi,” is waiting for them.  Sequoia is preparing to complete the growing of the jungle, which he says will be where all life in the universe is somehow “redeemed” and the Cotati paradise will come into being—this, with help from a storm that Thor summons to speed the job along.  With the jungle watered and its growth thus accelerated, Sequoia reveals just how it was that the Sentry that The Avengers battled was merged with something organic.  It signifies the unity of two of the most ancient enemies in the cosmos, the Kree and the Skrulls, under a new figurehead with leaders of the two races behind him.  That figurehead will turn out to be someone The Avengers know very well.  He is, in fact, one of their own.  And he is bringing the battle to Earth.

It is Iron Man—curiously, not Captain America—who gives the rousing inspirational speech and the battle cry of “Avengers Assemble!” to spur Earth’s champions into mobilizing for the defense of our planet. 

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the galaxy, we find a spaceship with the other major combatants in the coming conflict.  There is one power on Earth even more renowned across the universe than The Avengers, one group whose deeds are spoken of with wonder everywhere that intelligent life is known to exist. 

Their number and their symbol is…”4.”