Empyre #4: A Bouquet of Betrayals

Now Teddy Altman, a.k.a. Hulkling, may be part Skrull and part Kree, and he may be the figurehead ruler of the united Skrull and Kree Empires.  But he was raised on Earth in human guise, he’s battled for Earth as a Young Avenger, and most of his friends including the boy he loves are terrestrial.  So why is he suddenly prepared to use what the Skrulls call “the Pyre” and actually blow up our Sun, destroying all life in our Solar System as a necessary “sacrifice” to stop the Cotati?  Captain Marvel smells a green alien rat, and immediately scans Hulkling to expose him as an impostor—but for some reason her Universal Weapon (which once belonged to Ronan the Accuser) can’t detect him as such.  What’s going on?

Well, whatever it may be, The Human Torch and C.M. aren’t about to stand by and let Earth become a cosmic charcoal briquette at the hands of an Avenger.  They soon end up battling The Hulkling’s entire entourage, including Super Skrull.  When The Hulkling commands the royal conjurer Mur-G’nn to remove Johnny Storm and the good Captain, she does so—but doesn’t so much annihilate them as she teleports them away somewhere else.  And just where do they end up?  Back on Earth, in the apartment of Billy Kaplan, a.k.a. Wiccan—Hulkling’s aforementioned boyfriend! 

Meanwhile, back at the Avengers Mountain (“The Avengers Mountain,” already), Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic, gets the latest status update from Johnny, who conveys the news to Tony Stark, who has been busy building himself—get this, would you believe a new set of blue armor with a Fantastic Four symbol in the chest plate?  Tony calls this a problem-solving exercise. Does the sometime Golden Avenger think he’s going to induct himself into The Fantastic Four now?  And does Iron Man’s new armor contain a razor and clippers that would relieve Reed of that eyesore of a beard and haircut?

We don’t really get to see Reed’s full reaction to this, because we have other business in Wakanda, where a pitched battle with the Cotati is in progress—and The Invisible Woman, The Thing, She-Hulk, and Mantis slip through the battle lines under the cloak of Sue Richards’s powers to confront Sequoia and the reanimated Swordsman. 

Not only does this tête à tète prove futile, but one member of the would-be diplomatic party has a secret.  When She-Hulk unfetters a gamma blast that Sue manages to block with a force field to protect herself and Mantis while The Thing goes flying, the jade giantess reveals that she is not She-Hulk at all, but a Cotati in She-Hulk’s skin.  Back at the beginning of our saga, when the Cotatis supposedly “helped” She-Hulk with her physical Hulking-out and her loss of intelligence, what they were really doing was an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” on her, replacing her with a plant monster that attacks Bashful Ben! 

Sequoia refuses to call off his war between plant and animal life, and teleports away with The Swordsman.  Meanwhile, back in New York, a divining conjuration by Wiccan informs him, The Torch, and Captain Marvel that whoever that is giving the Skrulls and the Kree their marching orders, it is not Hulkling.  The aliens may have fooled C.M.’s Universal Weapon, but they can’t fool the enchantments of Wiccan, who declares with utter certainty that the one that Johnny and the Captain battled was not…the boy that Wiccan MARRIED before this whole fracas got started!  So what Wiccan and Marveldom Assembled want to know now is, just who is that sitting on the throne aboard that flagship?  Judging by the ending of last issue, I’ll bet I know—and so do you!