AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH-WRECKER "Chapter Twelve: Desert Danger"

Art by Jack Kirby & Marie Severin

Read the Previous Chapter HERE

Chapter Twelve: Desert Danger

For many wasted hours, Captain America had been searching the vast Sahara desert.

“Three and a half million square miles,” rode the nagging thought with him; “or almost as big as the United States. It’s like searching from the East Coast. to the West Coast, and from Minnesota down to Texas, for the Storm Satellite Launcher of Karzz.”

First he had made wide sweeps over the great desert in the Quinjet, peering down. But when fuel. ran dangerously low, he had landed at a central spot, and then broke out the emergency jeep inside the plane. It’s six wheeled drive easily negotiating even loose sand, he had made overland forays in all directions, until even the jeep’s nuclear power unit—another Anthony Stark invention—ran low.

Finally, he had unpacked the radar gear stowed in the rocketplane to slowly scan outward in a radius of 500 miles--again by virtue of a Stark invention using radar waves that “bent” around the Earth’s curvature.

Cap heard a clicking from the parked jeep. His two-way world-wide radio phone was ringing. Cap picked it up and heard Henry Pym’s voice from a transoceanic liner. “Wasp and I are heading back. for Avenger headquarters.” He gave a quick resume of their skirmish against Karzz and the Vulcan Machine.

“Hmm. So it was another android double of Karzz in the South Seas, as well as in Antarctica.”

“Right, Cap. That means you’ll run into the genuine Karzz. After we reach headquarters and rejoin Iron Man and Hawkeye, we’ll all four of us rush to the Sahara.”

“Okay,” responded Cap. “But meanwhile, I’ll be searching for him myself. Over and out.”

Cap’s thoughts were not pleasant as he returned to his radar scan-of the Sahara. Three incredible future machines had triggered. off three ghastly earth dooms. Even if Cap did succeed in halting doom number four, Earth was hardly saved. Warning the authorities was hopeless. Who could stop the giant comet plunging through space toward Earth? Or the mile-deep heat device that would melt the colossal Antarctic ice cap and flood the world? Or the world-wide fusillade of volcanoes that would erupt, started off by the Vulcan Machine?

“But I still want to get my hands on that world-wrecker,” Cap grated -through his teeth. “He won’t escape to the future and finish his conquest of space. He’ll stay here to share the end of the world with us...so help me!"

With that vow burning through his veins, the star-spangled champion turned back to his radar screen, which now showed the outlines of an old abandoned fort, completely deserted, within a straggling oasis of drooping palms. Even the well had dried up, and the place was shunned by desert travelers. All this Cap knew from the comprehensive Sahara guidebook he had foresightedly taken along.

But where were Karzz and his rocket? Out in the hot open desert itself, where the sun’s blazing. glare made radar images faint and undeterminable?

Suddenly, remembering an odd thing, Cap swung the screen back to old Fort Shahib. How could that one slender tower he had seen shine like bright metal? All the rest of the fort was stone grey with age.

Peering closely and tuning the image sharper, Cap sucked in his breath. That was no tower; it was the huge nose of a rocket sticking up within the high outer wall of the fort. 

He tossed away the dehydrated K-rations he had been eating, which had been reduced to compact lozenge size by Anthony Stark’s science magic. Slinging his survival kit over one shoulder, his shield over the other, he jumped in the jeep and spun off across the wasteland.

With smooth sand before him like the natural race-tracks of Daytona Beach or the Utah Flats, Cap was able to shift his nuclear jeep into its top speed of 100 miles an hour for the three-hour trip to Fort Shahib, some 300 miles south.

It was the south-central Sahara, the most desolate area, spotted with just a few widely scattered Bedouin camps and crossed by only one long-unused camel trail of the old Arabian nomads. It was doubtful if anyone from the outside world had been here in fifty years.

Endless burning sand, rippling in the wind, stretched before Cap’s squinting, sun-dazzled eyes. He fumbled beside him and slapped a pith-helmet on his head; otherwise he’d go glare-blind in an hour.

Heat rose in invisible, suffocating waves from the shiny sands. Cap kept telling himself the temperature was only 120 degrees. He did not dare look at the windshield thermometer. If he found it registered 150 degrees, the shock might undermine his grim determination to endure the hell-hot inferno he was crossing.

He drank sparingly from his water supply, but when he picked up the canteen again and upended it, it was empty, dry. Hurling it down, he licked his leathery lips and drove on for what was another eternity, though his lying watch said only two hours had passed.

The noonday sun pitilessly poured its furnace heat down on him. Cap suddenly jerked up and swung the jeep around.

“A Nazi machine-gun nest!” he exclaimed. “What’s it doing here today, long after the war? They’re opening fire. . . .”

As at the Avenger memorial ceremonies, Cap leaped out of the jeep, shield forward, and charged. Sand flew under his feet as he warded off the hail of bullets and hurled himself headlong, his fist cracking on...nothing.

He sat up, spitting the sand out of his mouth, dazed.

“A mirage? Delusion? Take hold of yourself, boy. You're cracking up.”

He drove on, but images again swam before he eyes...and faded. Once he glanced beside him in happy astonishment to see Bucky sitting there. But that image, too, faded....

“I'm an Avenger,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “An Avenger does not crack up, hear me? if I flip my lid now, I’ll let down my Avenger pals...and the whole world...and twenty thousand future worlds.... Hang on...hang on!

He was singing “twenty thousand future worlds, baked in a pie.... What will Karzz do with them? My, my, my!” when the ramparts of the tort rose over the horizon before him. His maniacal laughter choked off.

“Karzz’s hangout,” he muttered, and once again he was Captain America, the First Avenger, alert for danger and tuned for action.

Cannily, he drove up behind the screening palms of the oasis, cutting off a direct view from the fort, hoping to surprise Karzz. He belly-crawled through, the sand, brushing aside lizards and other creatures of the desert. Soundlessly, he wriggled among stone debris where one portion of the old fort’s wall had collapsed.

Skilled in the tactics of unseen and unheard approach, Cap congratulated himself that he could have surprised a platoon of Nazis in the fort it they had been there, as he raced silently through the front gates.

“Bon soir, Captain America! Why did you go to all that trouble sneaking in?” a mocking voice greeted him. It was Karzz, pointing at a monitor screen atop an electronic box. “You have been under surveillance ever since your vehicle first approached the old fort.”

Cap conquered his first surge of disappointment. Swiftly his eyes took in the wide courtyard and the tall rocket standing on end with a gantry tower around it. Turning back to Karzz, Cap’s eyes narrowed. Was the faint purplish aura of his force-shield missing for some reason? Was he vulnerable?

Suddenly he plunged forward in a crouch, to find out.

Karzz stood unperturbed. “You are the incomparable man-to-man, face-to-face, toe-to-toe slugger that no other man on earth is a match for…except one,“ he said.

He touched a stud on his belt and a figure dashed out of a barracks doorway nearby.

Cap’s driving plunge had ground to a halt, in utter shock. The man coming toward him in a crouch, legs churning powerfully, had a round shield in front ...a uniform of red, white, and blue design . . . a winged cap...

“It’s me!” choked Cap. “Another Captain America!”

“Your android double. While you were supposedly sneaking in, my electro-scan ray was X-raying you inside and out, feeding the data into a bio-computer, which then built up a carbon copy of you, so to speak. His body and mind are exactly like yours. So, in a sense, my body-guard is...Captain America!”

Karzz finished with a devilish laugh. “Now see if you can defeat...yourself.”

Recovering from his first shock, Cap sprang forward to meet his twin’s charge. Like super football-players, two powerful figures came together with bruising. impact, their shields clanging together so loudly that the vibrations made a dozen loose bricks fall out of the crumbling wall nearby.

They both reeled back. It was almost like a parody in pantomime, the two actors doing everything the same, and reacting exactly alike.

In unison, they swung the world‘s mightiest fists at each other, to meet the world’s toughest chins. When Cap suddenly flung his shield to slice at his opponent’s legs, the second Captain America also sailed his shield in a perfect block shot, knocking Cap’s shield aside.

When Cap ran to retrieve it, his double leaped head-long to tackle him around the legs and they both crashed to the ground. Both without shields, they wrestled and tumbled. in the dirt. When Cap pulled a judo trick to hurl the android back, his double promptly rolled on his back and footed Cap away as he charged.

Karzz had watched the furious battle with an amused grin. “Very entertaining, but I have work to do. While you’re busy fighting with yourself, Captain America, I'll start the countdown for my Storm Satellite.”

The alien flipped over switches on a control board near the rocket then began counting: “Ten...nine...eight...”

It was now or never for Cap, if he hoped to stop earth doom number four—whatever it was—from being launched.

He tried a desperate ruse, facing his android double and gripping his shield as if to sling it at him again.

“Seven...six...five ...”

Cap flung the shield, but not at the android. It went to the side, at one of the stone walls of the courtyard.

Puzzled at this move, the android hesitated a moment, watching the flying shield. It was at this instant that Cap hurled himself forward, taking the android unawares and flattening him with a driving shoulder in his solar plexus. He heard synthetic bones crack within the artificial man.

“Three...two...one...”

Cap went over the fallen android, straight toward Karzz at his controls, with a flying leap.

“Ignition!” Cap heard, just before he smashed into the control box and tipped it over with a crash, staggering Karzz back.

Did Cap Stop Karzz?

Or, Will Thursday's Chapter Live Up to its' Title...

The Avengers' Darkest Hour!

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AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH-WRECKER "Chapter Nine: Sunken Sabotage"

Art by John Buscema & Vince Colletta

Read the Previous Chapter HERE!

Chapter 9: Sunken Sabotage

Meanwhile, Captain. America was driving the Quinjet away from the South Pacific. He had left Goliath and the Wasp on a centrally located island, whence their search for the third Earth doom would begin. 

As the speck disappeared in the blue skies, the Wasp turned to Goliath. “What a search we've got ahead of us, High Pockets! There are hundreds -of islands, small and large, in this group. On which one is Karzz the Conqueror operating?”

“He’s probably not even here yet,” Goliath answered. “Remember that on our flight here, Cap picked up Iron Man.’s radio call, telling how they had found Karzz there with his Infrared Beamer. So he can hardly be here with his Vulcan Machine.”

“Then that means we have to wait for him,” said the girl, happily. “In that case, Big Blue Eyes, why don’t we pitch a little woo?” ‘

Her arms encircled him and her lips drew close to his, temptingly. But his lips began to move upward, out of reach.

“Oh, you spoiler!” she pouted. “Why did you shoot up to your ten-foot size and frustrate me?”

“Because this isn’t the time or place for the Romeo and Juliet bit,” retorted the giant. “After all, 'We’re on Avenger business.”

“Oh, fine!” said the disappointed girl. “You and your sense of duty! Here we are alone on a desert isle—well, a tropical isle—and what’s on your mind? Anything but romantic thoughts. Sometimes I could kick you, Henry Pym.”

“You couldn’t reach that high,” said Goliath with grin. Then he became serious. “Listen, Wasp. Its possible that Karzz came here first, before going to Antarctica, and left the Vulcan machine operating under automatic or remote controls. So -our hunt should begin immediately. That’s why there’s no time for moonlight and roses.”

“Okay,” sighed the girl. “What’s the plan?”

Goliath was now shrinking back to human size, but he didn’t stop there. “Shrink down with me, Wasp,” he called from her knee. “In insect size, we can visit the islands one by one and find out what’s cooking in the alien’s pot.”

Willing herself to reduce, the girl also began shrinking until both of them stood in a towering forest—of grass.

Almost immediately, a lumbering tiger-beetle charged them. from under a rock.

“Look out!” yelled the Wasp.

The tiny Ant-Man, with the strength of a Goliath, met the charge with a swinging fist that cracked the beetle on its snout. It paused dizzily. This gave Ant-Man time to grasp its hard shell at one side and heave mightily. The beetle flipped over on its back, helplessly waving its legs in the air.

“Have fun working your way upright,” said the miniature Goliath. He turned to the Wasp. “You can shoot out wings at will and fly, but l need a flying steed of the insect world, like the Flying Ant I once used.”

He pointed upward. “And why not a classy type like the one up on that flower?”

Above them, a butterfly drank of the blossom’s nectar, its gauzy wings slowly opening and closing, oblivious to the world in its ecstasy of feasting. Putting a finger to his lips, Ant-Man began climbing the stalk of a nearby flower that towered higher than where his quarry ‘perched. '

When he reached the topmost blossom, he stood on the petals and leaped, straight down onto the butterfly’s back. Like a bucking bronco, the startled butterfly flapped into the air, twisting and darting wildly.

“You won’t shake me off,” sang out Ant-Man, his legs straddling its thorax and his hands holding onto the edge of its carapace. After the butterfly had exhausted itself, the micro-man reached and seized its two feathery antennae at the base, letting them slide through his hands until he gripped the ends tightly.

“My reins,” he called down. “The butterfly will be sensitive to the slightest pull right or left and turn that way.”

He demonstrated, making the butterfly turn gracefully into an immelmann turn and then zigzag gently on even keel.

The Wasp now came flying alongside under her own power.

“If it were a horsefly,” she said in a tinkling voice, “you’d be a horseman. What are you on a butterfly—a butterman?”

Ant-Man smiled wanly. “Nice try, Wasp. But I can’t be cheered up. There’s too much at stake here. Now, let’s go. There’s nothing suspicious on this island, so it’s on to the next one.”

Guiding his gaily colored mount upward, Ant-Man headed for a nearby island, with the Wasp pacing him. A prevailing breeze increased their speed and blew them swiftly across the intervening waters.

They circled over the small atoll, finding it barren of any human habitation or any man-made structure.

“We drew a blank here,” said Ant-Man. “On to the next island...and the next...”

They lost count of the tropical isles they visited, some inhabited by natives, some thriving with modern industry, but none of them harboring the slightest sign of an alien machine at work.

They had no survival kits along, for they could not have reduced those to tiny size. But they drank of flower nectars, sweet and satisfying. And when tired, they slept for a short time snugly in tulip-like blossoms, cushioned with soft pollen. All the Avengers had trained themselves to do without sleep for longer stretches of time than other people could endure.

"Feeding his butterfly mount at a lily-like “drinking trough,” Ant-Man felt discouraged. “Are we on a wild-goose chase trying to locate our alien friend?”

Flying over the next island, they looked down into a crater. “Many of these islands are volcanic in origin,” the pointed out. “Very few are live volcanoes, however. “This one is deader than a doornail. . . .”

BLAMMMM!

At that moment, with a deafening blast, the supposedly dead volcano split open and erupted flame and smoke.

“Quick!” gasped Ant-Man. “Fly higher.”

Gaining altitude, they escaped the molten lava discharge that now scorched through the air and showered the surrounding Waters with fiery sparks. .

Ant-Man jerked his winged steed around as another blast sounded to the north. “Another volcano erupting,” he said, and then stared -incredulously. One after another, a string of volcanic islands stretching into the distance blew their tops.

“Great heavens!” cried the Wasp. “It’s as if a string of firecrackers were being set off.”

“Right” yelled back Ant-Man above the thunderous dln. “And set off by...Karzzz, the Conqueror!”

“What?”

“The other three dooms, he said, would involve water, air, and fire. Well, if this isn't ‘fire’ I’ll eat it.” He snapped his fingers. “Idiots, that’s what we are. The clue was right in front of -our noses all the time. Wasp, where does the name Vulcan come from?”

“Why, the ancient legend in Greek mythology of an underground god...Ah, I get what you’re driving at. Karzz and his Vulcan Machine must he down below.”

“Right,” said Ant-Man again. “And that first volcanic island that erupted may mark where he’s operating. Let's go. We’ve got to take a chance and run through the fiery hail of the eruption, down to the island itself.”

As they flew downward, great globs of molten lava sailed by, along With a blast of heated air.

“We’ll be cooked alive by the time we get there,” gasped the Wasp, her skin red from heat. “Maybe we haven’t got a chance.”

“Keep going!” snapped Ant-Man. “Our small size is our salvation. It’s like insects flitting through a hail of shells and bullets, with little chance of a direct hit.”

And so, somewhat the worse for wear, they gained the sanctuary of the island’s jungle, at a spot where no forest fire had yet started, and where no rivers of molten lava had flowed.

“Down there,” pointed Ant-Man, “is a cave. It all adds up that Karzz is here, underground. In we go....”

They were thankful for the dim coolness of the cave and the outside thunders of the volcanic barrage were muted as they went in deeper. When the outside sounds were nearly inaudible, the Wasp stopped to hover in the air with a hand to her ear.... The Ant-Man heard it too.

Ahead of them sounded a deep low rumble. “It sounds like a machine all right, a big one,” said Ant-Man excitedly. “Time now to switch to human size and explore the cave system further.”

Moments later, in their normal stature, Henry Pym waved farewell to the butterfly he had been riding before. Then he took the Wasp’s hand and trotted along the winding passageways that linked a maze of natural caves under this island.

The rumble grew louder, and became a low roar. The tunnels widened out now, and they eventually stepped into a huge central cavern from which the sound reverberated. At first, in the dim underground lighting, they could see nothing except a vague hulking shape.

Then it took form as a pattern of machined parts—huge pipes, an enormous piston pump, a bulging chamber that glowed with nuclear fires, and what looked like an electronic computer system controlling it all.

“The Vulcan Machine,” breathe. the Wasp. She clutched Pym’s arm in sudden alarm. “Look…handling the master push buttons . . .”

“Karzz?” muttered Pym. “This is mighty peculiar. How could Iron Man report him in Antarctica, if he’s here?”

The Answer to That and Other Questions May be Found at Hero Histories On Friday in...

Chapter Ten: Doom Machine!

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AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH-WRECKER "Chapter Eight: Ice Menace"

Art by Don Heck

Read the Previous Chapter HERE!

Chapter Eight: Ice Menace

It was night when a sleek winged bullet rocketed southward, reeling oil’ thousands of miles and continuing past the southern tip of South America over the vast watery wastes at the bottom of the world. Only one hour later, night gave way to clay as they passed into the months-long polar daytime.

Ramparts of glistening ice rose -on the horizon, spreading to the right and left as far as the eye could see. The White Continent...Icebox of the World...Frozen Hell...it had been called many things in the past by hard-bitten explorers.

An enormous ice cap covered a land one and a half times the size of the United States. Uninhabited for countless ages, Antarctica had only within the past decade acquired a population of a few hundred permanent residents in scientific outposts.

“Belgium has a population density of 758 people per square mile,” commented Goliath, “while Antarctica has 1200 square miles per person. How are we ever going to find one small. being, Karzz, in that immensity?” At the controls, Cap angled the rocketplane down and flipped the toggle switch for the retractable skids to start lowering.

“A good question,” he admitted. “However, Iron Man has flying locomotion and can quickly search in all directions from any single point, so I’ll let him and Hawkeye down at the center of the continent.”

“That’s about -the coldest spot, too,” said Hawkeye with a shiver, and he drew his parka’s furred hood over his head. “Iron Pants is lucky, Wearing a heated tin suit. For me, it’s just Shiverville.”

“Keep talking and you won’t freeze,” said the Wasp soothingly. “I estimate the hot air you produce in one hour could heat a city.”

“Don’t bug me, Bug Girl,” retorted Hawkeye.

With a roar of the braking rockets at the nose, the rocketship slid smoothly to a stop in a snowfield. ‘With compact survival packs on their backs, Iron Man and the fur-suited Hawkeye stepped out into the icy blast.

“Good luck!” came from the rocketplane as it soared away again, rising steeply and vanishing in the blue sky.

Iron Man looked at his built-in wrist thermometer. “Hmm…only forty-seven degrees below zero,” he informed. Hawkeye. “A comparatively balmy day for the Antarctic.”

“Anybody who calls that balmy is balmy,” said. the archer. “let’s not just stand here and freeze by inches. Get going, and take me along.”

As agreed on before, Iron Man hooked a short length of chain from his belt to Hawkeye’s parka belt, then took oft. The jet-thrusts from his boots formed frozen-vapor plumes behind them.

“Keep your eyes peeled in all directions,” said the Golden Avenger. “If the Infrared Beamer, whatever it is, is anywhere near the size his ultramagnet was on Mount Everest, We ought t-o spot it miles away.”

But they saw nothing, though Iron Man swung in ever-widening circles that gradually covered large areas in the interior of the ice-locked continent.

“As bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard,” Hawkeye granted between cold blue lips.

Iron Man suddenly swung on a straightaway. “I have a hunch that Karzz may be operating along the coast instead of in the interior,” he said. Upon reaching the shoreline of sheer icy cliffs towering a mile high in places Iron Man and his passenger swung to follow the edge bordering the cold seas. They passed high over several scientific outposts, immediately recognizable by their quonset huts or low wooden barracks.

After skirting Antarctica’s rim. for hundreds -of miles, Iron Man turned sympathetically toward Hawkeye, whose skin was frosted, while tiny icicles hung from his hood over his eyes.

“I’m snug in my steel air-conditioned suit but you’re exposed to the frigid winds, Hawkeye. Want to land and build a fire to warm up?”

“N-no, I f-f-feel gr-great,” lied Hawkeye through chattering teeth. “The Wasp always s-says I’m c-c-cold-blooded anyway so th-this is my n-natural element. Keep going, Shell Head. I’m t-t-t-tough.”

Occasionally they passed a penguin flock, strutting comically. At times, skua gulls flapped past. No other animal was seen, for even the Arctic fox and polar bear would succumb in this bitter land where temperatures. could at times plunge to 130 degrees below zero. where bare, wind-swept mountain peaks rose above the monotonous Whiteness, straggling green lichens and mosses grew, and a few hardy insects were known to survive on that food.

Looking down, Iron Man suddenly saw a strange thing. “Look, Hawkeye. Tractor tread marks, but how big!”

Hawkeye gave a long low whistle as he squinted. “The tracks are a hundred fee-t wide. What kind of icemobile could be that big?”

They saw the answer soon, toll-owing the trail over the horizon. There, moving along in strange nuclear-powered silence, was a tractor-tread “tank” as big as a Warehouse. On top was a mast surmounted by a huge searchlight—from which shone forth no light at all. Yet beyond at the coast, the ice cliffs were melting into a Niagara of water that cascaded boilingly down into the Antarctic sea.

Iron Man flipped over a chest-stud, activating his long-range Telstar radiocom transmitter. “Calling Captain America. Located Infrared Beamer. Will try to sabotage it. Over and out.”

“Infrared rays are heat-beams, of course,” said Hawkeye. “Karzz is using that gizmo to melt the edges of the ice cap, but Why? If he wipes out a few scientific camps on the way, how would that be an earth-doom gimmick?”

“One way to find out is to land,” said Iron Man, swooping down; “and I mean on the machine itself.”

He had seen the plastic bubble “pilot’s room” at the front end of the Cyclopean tank. Within it sat Karzz himself, manipulating a complex electronic control board. He seemed too preoccupied to notice the two flying figures that landed feet-first nearby on the hull.

“Let’s take a quick potshot at him right off,” muttered Hawkeye, pulling an arrow from his quiver with numbed fingers.

“Right,” agreed Iron Man. “Maybe we can surprise him and blast him to Kingdom Come before he knows what happened.”

“Three...two...one...fire!” was Iron Man’s countdown.

Hawkeye let loose with the nuclear-tipped arrow, whose miniaturized explosive power was a fraction of that of an A-bomb, but still had enough blast force to pulverize a battleship.

At the same time, Iron Man extended one gauntlet and let fly with five whining rays from his fingertips, each an energy beam in different octaves of the electro-magnetic scale, with enough combined power to shatter a mountain.

The exploding arrow and multiple smash-beams reached the plastic bubble at the same time, creating a pyrotechnical display that hurt the eyes. But when. the smoke cleared, nothing had changed.

“Not even a scratch on his plastic bubble,” cursed Hawkeye. “Not an atom knocked off.”

And now Karzz was staring out at them with a mocking leer. His amplified voice came from a horn above the bubble.

“Bon jour! I expected Avengers here sooner or later. To satisfy your natural curiosity, this Infrared Beamer was constructed on my home planet by my cohorts, using seventieth-century science technology, then it was tele-transported across the time barrier in the wink of an eye to twentieth-century earth.”

“What is your aim with this buggy?” demanded Hawkeye. “Why melt ice here? Or are you going to make ice cubes for a dinosaur-sized cocktail? If this is a menace to earth, I'm a monkey’s uncle’s second cousin.”

“Then harken, anthropoid throwback,” returned Karzz bitingly, "to some Antarctic statistics. The south-polar ice cap holds ninety percent of the frozen water on earth, a total of eleven million cubic miles. If all that were melted to flood into the swollen oceans of earth, it would raise the general water level six hundred feet.

Iron Man and Hawkeye gasped.

“This would drown seventy-five per cent of earth’s major seaports under the new sea level,” Karzz recited, “and would flood inland for a thousand miles in many non-mountainous areas. The dry-land area. of earth would be reduced. to only the highlands and mountain chains, about one-tenth of. the present land area.”

Karzz grinned mirthlessly at them. “Needless to say, at least halt the human race would drown, and the rest would starve, with "all farmlands sunken underwater.”

iron Man controlled his shuddering nerves. “All well and good, but it will take you a hundred years to melt all the ice down by circling the Antarctic coast time after time.”

“True,” agreed the alien conqueror from the future. “But underneath this lnfrared Beamer is a projector radiating a ‘heat current’—I can explain it in no simpler terms—that is pouring all through the ice and building up its charge. When this reaches its peak, enough heat will be stored. ‘ to melt the entire ice cap, releasing trillions of gallons of newly formed. water into the ocean system of earth.”

“That would also create a gigantic tidal wave and smash all ships at sea!” gasped Iron Man.

“Precisely,” gloated Karzz. “I’ve thought of everything.”

“Except one thing,” barked Hawkeye. “That two Avengers will wreck your giant water-wagon, one way or another...starting now!”

“You will never have the chance,” came back coldly, “for you will be wiped out . . . now!”

“Get behind me, Hawkeye!” yelled iron Man. tensely. “My armor is impervious to any of his ray-forces.”

“Except one,” reminded Karzz, “the rust-ray.” And touching his belt studs, Karzz shot forth the same ray that on Mount Everest had begun to crumble away Iron Man’s suit, layer by layer.

iron Man did not retreat, with Hawkeye huddled behind him. He took the full brunt of the droning ray—yet nothing happened.

 “You’ll notice,” said Iron Man evenly, “that no red dust is forming through superfast rust action. You see, Karzz, before coming here I did some lab work and devised a plastic-spray coating to protect my steel suit from your ray.”

“Clever,” came Karzz’s microphonic voice in grudging admiration. “Well, no matter. If I cannot destroy you, neither can you bother me within my impenetrable Infrared Beamer machine.”

“We’ll see about that, you overconfident creep,” scoffed Hawkeye. Turning to Iron Man he said, “Fly me in the air I’ve got a couple of fancy arrows to try on his motorized tin can.”

Iron Man complied, soaring hundred feet up with Hawkeye. “But can you shoot while dangling in the air like this?” he asked.

“It’s some trick,” admitted Hawkeye, trying to fit an arrow to his bow while his body twisted in the wind. But finally he aimed downward.

Whung....

“The acid arrow,” said Hawkeye. “Its head contains energized radioactive fluoric acid that can eat through glass or stone.”

The arrow landed on the top of the machine with a wet thud, spreading a yardwide stain all around. A bubbling hiss arose, but as the moments passed the fumes danced away impotently.

“All it did was clean dirt oft‘ the metal,” said Iron Man, shaking his head.

“What kind of superalloy is that?” growled Hawkeye, stunned. “But we’ve got to get inside and sabotage that jalopy. Here goes with my diamond-drill arrow.”

Spang....

Down sped a bulky arrow whose whirling diamond point was driven by a tiny transistorized electric motor. It could drill its way through ten inches of armor plate while barely being slowed. down.

When it met the hull below, it poised on end, grinding away while upheld by the torque of the spin. But gradually its speed diminished. Wobbling like a top that was running down, it finally fell flat.

Hawkeye’s face also fell, while a string of imprecations came from his lips. His fury was not lightened by the mocking, amplified voice of Karzz from his plastic bubble: “Why waste your ingenious arrows, bow-twanger? My machine is coated with a layer of neutronium, a metal made of densely packed neutrons, and ten times harder than mere diamond. Your Stone Age devices are pitiful toys.”

“That clown from the outer cosmos doesn't know it,” rasped Hawkeye, “but his deadliest weapons are those  cornball clichés. If people heard enough of them, the human race would commit mass suicide.”

“My turn,” said Iron. Man, jetting them both away from the mighty machine. “See that glacier ahead? Karzz is going to skirt close past one side of it...and I've got ideas.”

Before reaching the glacier, Iron Man deposited Hawkeye on a flat snowfield. “I’ll leave you here. This is a one-man job.”

“Give him the works,” Hawkeye called after the flying figure.

The Golden Avenger soared above the gigantic glacier, beside which even Karzz’s great machine was a tiny mite. All the while, Iron Man had been rheostating up his power-units. His finger poised over a push button on his chest controls.

“Here goes,” he muttered. “An ultrasonic sound wave above the range of human. hearing, but rated at a million decibels. Nothing crystalline can stand up against it.”

As the invisible vibrations struck the glistening glacier, giant cracks appeared at the top and spread. fanwise down the sides. Awesomely, in majestic slow motion, the colossal chunk of ice split with a thunderclap, collapsing into a landslide of pieces bigger than houses.

Countless megatons of the crystalline debris crushed down squarely on top of the Infrared Beamer as it churned past, until it was buried from sight.

Circling in the air, Iron Man held his breath and listened. Not a sound. came from under the ice heap. “I think you hit the jackpot,” came Hawkeye’s thin shout from the distance. “You put Karzz on ice—for good!”

RrrrRRRRR.....

The silence was broken by the sound of tractor treads grinding powerfully. Ice chunks were hurled aside as the seventieth-century tank came crawling out from under broken glacier.

“I—I don’t believe it,” gasped Iron Man, in devastated disappointment. “Not even a dent or a scratch.”

A derisive chuckle, amplified into stentorian volume, came rolling from the machine. “Was there something in my way?”

But now the alien’s voice -turned ugly. “I see I'll have eliminate you two. You annoy me, like mosquitoes.”

The huge machine suddenly wheeled around and straight for a small figure standing unprotected the snowfield. The treads crunched forward, gathering speed.

“Hawkeye!” screeched Iron Man in horror.

“Great balls o’ fire!” choked Hawkeye, rooted to the spot as the machine loomed closer, like a juggernaut. “Karzz is going to run me down!”

The archer broke from his paralysis of fear and began running, futilely. The churning behemoth behind him gained steadily.

Like a comet, the Golden Avenger was streaking down from the sky, piling on all the jet power he could muster. But he had a longer way to go than the machine, to reach Hawkeye.

Death flew alongside Iron Man. Which of them would reach Hawkeye first?

...Find Out Thursday in...

Chapter Nine: Sunken Sabotage!

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Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker

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The RetroBlogs Summer Blogathons March On...

Art by Jack Kirby & Frank Giacoia

...as we continue the re-presentation of the never-reprinted very first Marvel Comics prose novel from 1967. The Avengers Battle the Earth Wrecker by Otto Binder, with four chapters per week both here and our "brother" RetroBlog Hero Histories (where you'll find the next chapter tomorrow!)

Feature Comics #71

We've wound up our re-presentation of the only multi-issue/multi-title crossover between two Golden Age Heroines at, (where else?) our "sister" RetroBlog Heroines!
You can read all three chapters (with two stories per chapter) HERE!

And, tomorrow begins our annual week-long Beach Read re-presentation of a book-length Gothic graphic novel at another "sister" RetroBlog, True Love Comic Tales!

The Fun Never Stops During RetroBlogs' Summer Blogthons!

AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH-WRECKER "Chapter Six: Montaintop Battle"

Read the Previous Chapter HERE!
Chapter Six: Mountaintop Battle

Re-entry came now as they slammed into Earth’s atmosphere. The leading edges of the craft's wings began to glow cherry-red. But the molybdenum-tantalum alloy skin of the Quinjet could withstand any air-friction temperature as they slanted down toward the towering white-capped Himalayas. When aerodynamic control came back, at mere supersonic speed, Iron Man skillfully maneuvered the ship through cloud banks and mists in the mountain system to keep hidden from watching eyes on Mount Everest.

A burst of rocket power at level flight sent them gliding down into a snowfield just below the rim of Everest’s peak. They landed on the retractable skids that had been lowered, plowing up a spray of snow.

“Parkas, anyone?” asked Iron Man, pointing to the fur suits stashed in ceiling receptacles. “It’s cold outside, Well below zero.”

“I expect enough action,” said Cap grimly “to be plenty Warm.” The others nodded.

“Hawkeye and Iron Man will stay here as planned,” said Cap after they stepped out. “The other three of us will approach from three directions. Goliath and Wasp will assume their fighting forms at their own discretion. Okay, this is it....”

With an unvoiced exchange of glances that said “Good luck,” Goliath, Captain America, and the Wasp spread out a hundred yards apart and slowly advanced up toward the ramparts of the peak. They all shivered in the icy winds, but as Avengers they were inured to hardships and discomforts that would incapacitate other people.

Cautiously, they looked over the final ridge. The mighty magnet machine came into sight first, towering high and surrounded by its eerie nuclear glow. Then, as their sight came to eye level, they saw Karzz...facing them with a mocking smile, he swung his gaze to each of them.

“Dumbkopfs,” he greeted them sneeringly. “Did you think to sneak up on me unawares? My ultramonitor saw your craft approach and land. I presume you have come to play the same game Iron Man did. The game of 'Save the Earth', which you will lose.”

He waved at his monstrous machine.

“You won’t wreck my ultramagnet, which is pulling the giant comet into its proper collision course with Earth.”

“Even from yards away, they could see his frosty eyes flash defiantly.

“Five against one, but I can easily hold you off. Earth science pitted against mine is like an atom pitted against a star.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Captain America gratingly, and then he raised his voice to shout, “Avengers Assemble!”

Goliath had already assumed his giant ten-foot size, and he ran forward to pick up a huge boulder weighing at least a ton. Mighty muscles propelled it straight at Karzz, who turned to face the oncoming juggernaut without flinching.

Incredibly, striking the force-field aura in front -of him, the hard stone shattered into countless pieces.

“Yes, we know you’re shielded from the front,” came Captain America’s voice behind him. “But Goliath’s move was only to make you face that way, while I—”

Having raced across the wind-swept rock at his super-Olympic pace, Cap was already within reach. In one head-long plunge, he hurled his body straight at Karzz’s back, ready to send him off his feet with a knockout blow.

Klang!

Though Karzz had not turned, Cap’s shield met another kind of invisible shield and bounced back, nearly knocking out Cap himself.

Slowly turning, Karzz said softly, “After Iron Man taught me that I was vulnerable from the rear, naturally I fixed up my force-field shield to curve all around me. I am now invulnerable from all sides…voilà!”

His hand went to his belt. “Now, spangled Avenger, let us see if your shield can save you from my repertory of weapon rays.”

Lurid beams sprang forth—purple, red, green, blue—each carrying a different form of destruction. But Cap’s shield, coated by Anthony Stark’s inventive genius with a superalloy impervious to known forces, deflected them all. Cap drove forward again. and slammed into Karzz’s force-field aura with such muscle-driven power that Karzz—force-field and all—was shoved back several yards.

“Ach du lieber, what manner of man is that?” said Karzz, startled.

Cap was not just making a grandstand play. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen Goliath lumbering toward the giant magnet. He had distracted Karzz from turning and noticing.

Reaching the machine, Goliath put his great arms around one of the steel-truss support legs and heaved mightily. Could he topple the gigantic contraption? Metal groaned as Goliath grunted, straining every massive muscle.

Karzz heard, and whirled as Captain America bounced back again from his force-shield. “Colossal fool!” shouted Karzz. “My dis-beam will turn you into a puff of nothingness.”

He touched a stud on his belt and the ray sprang forth, disintegrating rock close to Goliath.

“My next shot,” Karzz warned, “will get you....Yeow!”

The last was a pained yell as something sharp jabbed into his hand before it pressed the dis-beam button. Something tiny flew before his face, buzzing angrily.

“Some earthly stinging insect,” he muttered. Then. his eyes opened wide. “But it seems to have human form!” he gasped.

“Meet the Wasp,” shrilled a thin voice. “A member of the Avengers. I have the ability, as you can see, of shrinking to insect size.”

“But my force-shield,” said Karzz in a puzzled tone. “How did you get past it?”

“Simple,” buzzed the tiny girl. “I suspected that it’s only a half-shell, stretching down -to the ground. But where the ground is uneven, there are small crevices under the edge of the shield. I slipped through one.”

She had been hovering before his face, vibrating her gauzy wings. Now she swooped down, calling back, “I stopped you from shooting your dis-beam at my man. And now, to keep you too busy to oppose the other Avengers . . .”

A series of howls came from the alien, and he began doing a wild dance as the Wasp’s sting-ray from her wrist device stabbed him again and again, all over his body. 

Seeing this, Captain America jumped up and yelled: “Hawkeye! Iron Man! The Wasp is entertaining Karzz. This is our chance to wreck his ultramagnet. Come on.”

Hawkeye and Iron Man came charging, grinning at the cavorting figure of Karzz, trapped with the tiny stinging girl inside his own protective energy shell. Cap joined them, and they raced up to where Goliath was still heaving away but unable to overturn the huge machine.

“Karzz has only a flat shield above it,” said Iron Man, pointing to where another meteor, drawn down by magnetism, spanged off the force-field there. “He has no complete shell around. it, as with himself. That means we can wreck the unshielded machine from down here.”

With that, Iron Man rheostated up his transistorized power and shot a thin laser-beam from a finger of his right-hand gauntlet. The beam began slicing through steel struts as if through butter.

Hawkeye was already joyfully pulling an arrow from his quiver. “Watch the blast arrow do its stuff,” he sang, letting fly, whizzing between struts into the heart of the machine, the bulbous tip of the arrow exploded violently, shattering wires and causing short-circuit sparks.

Unable to help directly in the destruction, Captain America pointed out key sections of the machine for Iron Man and Hawkeye to aim for. “And keep "heaving, Goliath,” he called out. “The whole structure is weakening fast.”

With one last Herculean effort, the man-mountain lifted one support leg clear of the ground. Then, as Iron Man burned through a connecting cable, Goliath yanked the entire leg away.

“Timber!” yelled Cap, and they all scurried back, as the towering machine began to sway and slowly topple. It crashed full length with a resounding thud that shook the whole mountain. Electric discharges flashed. through the wreckage.

“I guess the stinging party is over,” sang out the Wasp, flitting down under the edge of Karzz’s force-shell and rejoining the other Avengers. “Good work, boys. No more supermagnetic force is pulling that giant comet toward Earth.”

“No, but it doesn’t matter...now,” snarled Karzz, approaching and rubbing the bumps the Wasp had raised on his face with her stinger. “I neglected to inform you that my ultramagnet needed only ten more minutes of operation since you arrived to pull the comet into an unalterable collision course with Earth, at top speed.”

He grinned devilishly. “And our battle took eleven minutes before you wrecked it. In other words, Avengers, you failed to stop the approaching Earth doom. To quote from Earth’s French language...c’est la guerre.”

The Avengers looked at each other, dismayed. Karzz had held the trump card. after all.

“But just why are you here to destroy Earth?” queried Captain America.

“Yes,” said Iron Man. “Yon boasted to me that you were Karzz the Conqueror, and spoke of the many galactic worlds that fell to you. Why are you switching from conquest to destruction of Earth?”

“You may as well hear my story, since you can’t stop me anyway,” answered Karate, his frosty eyes mocking them. “I am from your future, some five thousand years from now. Call it the seventieth century, by earth reckoning. My home world, in that future time, was in the solar system of the star you call. Vega. First, as a master-mind of warfare, I conquered, my own planet and people. Then, building a space warfleet, I swept out and took over all of our solar system. But even that did not satisfy me.”

He waved an arm dramatically, as if to include the universe.

“I organized an inter-galactic fleet of war rockets and drove out among the nearby stars. World after world fell before me and became part of my grand cosmic empire. At each planet it was veni, vidi, vici.”

“I came, I saw, I conquered,” murmured Iron Man, as it he were in school.

“Alexander, Napoleon, and Hitler were pikers compared to you,” said Hawkeye. “Throw in Genghis Khan too.”

Ignoring him, the alien Warlord went on. “In time, spreading out from my corner of the .Milky Way, I ruled half the galaxy---a total of ten thousand inhabited worlds.”

“Ten thousand Worlds?” murmured Cap in awe. It was on a scale so vast the human mind could hardly comprehend it. 

“I was still young,” continued Karzz, “and my ambition was no less than conquest of the entire galaxy with its twenty thousand inhabited planets—but something blocked my plans.”

“Aha!” spoke up Hawkeye. “You ran into a world tougher than yours, with a warfleet you couldn’t lick, eh?”

“Jawohl,” spat out Karzz, his face darkening. “This other world had a technology superior to my own. They had superscience weapons that decimated my fleet, crushed my power, and smashed my hard-won empire.”

“That world,” whispered Cap, suddenly drawing in his breath...“was it called—Earth?”

The others started, in blinding insight.

Will "Blinding Insight" Enable The Avengers to Save the Planet on Monday at Hero Histories in...

Chapter Seven: Four Earth Dooms!

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Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker

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AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH-WRECKER "Chapter Five: A Job for The Avengers"

Read the Previous Chapter HERE

Chapter Five: A Job for The Avengers

Another “iron man” charged his opponent, back in America at Avenger headquarters. Captain America, head lowered and shield up, was charging Hawkeye, who was pulling his great bow to its utmost.

The Avenger “Gladiator Games” were on, a planned aftermath of the Memorial Meet. Millions of TV viewers thrilled to see these modern gladiators battling one another to sharpen their fighting skills.

It was not, of course, a battle to the death. The rules were that the male Avengers would pair off, round robin, and each try to gain a point over his adversary, while the Wasp kept score.

It would be a point for Hawkeye if one of his arrows could send Cap’s shield spinning out of his hands involuntarily. A point would be made for the star-spangled stalwart if he got close enough to Hawkeye to wrest away his bow.

Hawkeye’s bowstring twanged, releasing his invisible plastic arrow. If Cap didn’t see it in time, the arrow’s deflecting blow would knock his shield away by sheer force.

But Cap’s keen ears caught the whistle of the shaft through the air and in a split second he used trigger-trained muscles to dodge and let the unseen arrow whine over his head.

Hawkeye’s right arm became a blur of motion as he reached back into his quiver for arrow after arrow, releasing them with the rapidity of a machine gun. A smoke arrow made Cap cough, but a whirling sweep of his shield quickly cleared the air.

An electric arrow touched the shield and sent a 500-volt jolt through it—only Cap wasn’t holding it. He had quickly dropped it to the floor, letting it bounce up neatly back into his hand, receiving none of the shock meanwhile.

The bolo arrow with its weighted cords swung through the air and caught Cap around the ankles, pitching him forward for a tumble, during which he might—Hawkeye hoped—lose the grip on his shield. But Cap rolled with his fall, turned a complete somersault while kicking off the entwining cords, and came back on his feet still charging forward.

But the outcome of this contest was never to be known.

“Hold it, you two!” rang out a voice, as a golden form smashed its way in through a window. “Save your fighting for Karzz the Conqueror.”

Landing neatly on his feet near the TV cameraman, Iron Man waved. “The show’s over. Sign off and clear out, all of you. The Avengers have a job to do.”

“But listen,” protested the TV producer, running forward angrily. “We were promised a full hour’s show. Think of our disappointed audience—’

“I’m thinking of them, all right,” retorted Iron Man, “and of everyone else on earth. There won’t be any TV shows again…ever…unless the Avengers handle a certain emergency without delay. Now, don’t ask for details. We don’t want to alarm the public. Just clear out…pronto.”

Cap placated the producer by promising to resume the show some other time; then he told the viewers that the “second half” of their program would be shown at a later date.

When outsiders were gone, Cap faced Iron Man. “Out with it, Avenger. This must be a top priority emergency.”

Iron Man extended an arm and brushed some red dust off. “It’s top priority, double in spades,” he said, then explained the situation. The other Avengers listened with widening eyes.

“And so,” finished Iron Man, “we’ve got to defeat Karzz the Conqueror and—well, corny or not—save the world.”

“Hmm,” said Cap. “You told us he refused to tell why he wanted to destroy Earth. But just how is he going to do it? Any idea?”

“That superelectromagnet of his must have something to do with it,” Iron Man answered. “But just how it could wreck the world is anybody’s guess.”

“Baloneyville!” snorted Hawkeye. “That’s all it is. That kook from outer space hasn’t the power to smash a whole planet. He’s pulling a way-out bluff.”

The phone rang at that moment. Captain America picked it up.

“I’m Dr. Thomas Polton of Mount Palomar Observatory,” said the voice at the other end. “I thought you Avengers should hear this before I released it to authorities or to the public. An amazing celestial phenomenon has occurred….”

The speaker paused, as if still overwhelmed by what he had to say. “A giant comet has suddenly appeared from the remote regions beyond the solar system. It is racing toward earth and gathering tremendous speed. If it strikes earth….”

He took a breath and went on calmly—too calmly: “Collision with the giant comet would cause world-wide earthquakes and destroy half of civilization. And at its fantastic rate of acceleration, it will arrive within ten days.”

His voice changed to a bewildered huskiness. “The whole thing is against all cosmic chance. It upsets all the laws of astrophysics, all the theories of galactic events. I know you will think I’m overimaginative, but it’s almost as if that comet were being—well, being drawn toward Earth by some powerful force.”

“Thank you, doctor, for the warning.” Captain America put down the phone slowly and faced the others. “There you have it. Karzz’s supermagnet must be pulling down that giant comet. That’s the way he plans to destroy Earth.”

“What were you saying before, Hawkeye?” said the Wasp.

“Like I was saying,” returned Hawkeye with a crooked grin, “that guy’s no kook and it’s not a bluff. His threat is for real.”

“So what are we waiting for?” demanded Goliath. “We go to Mount Everest, lick Karzz, wreck his magnet and stop the comet. Simple as ABC.”

“Yes, except for D through Z,” warned Iron Man “which will be all the unknown superscience tricks he may still have up his sleeve. It’ll be tough, with a capital T.”

“Just the way we like it,” said Cap, drawing himself up, his blue eyes smoldering. “The Avengers have never yet met their Waterloo—and never will!”

“Corny,” said Hawkeye, “but true, Dad. Or as I would put it—we’ve never bombed yet against any overambitious adversary and we won’t goof off this time either. Let’s go.”

Captain America stared at him frostily. “I give the group decisions around here, Hawkeye. But since I can’t think of anything better to say”—he clapped Hawkeye on the shoulder—“let’s go!”

The five Avengers strode out of the exhibition hall and down a corridor to an elevator, which took them to the roof. Here rested a rocket plane similar to the X-15, but of an even more advanced design, which had come from the “invention factory” of Anthony Stark when he wasn’t busy as Iron Man. It was specially designed to transport the Avengers anywhere on earth in minimum travel time.

“If you run into Stark,” said Cap to Iron Man, “tell him thanks for his rocketplane.”

“I never seem to see him around,” said Iron Man truthfully, smiling behind his mask. The other Avengers had never known that the Golden Avenger and Anthony Stark were the same man.

Within the craft, each Avenger had their own individual foambacked G-force seat. Iron Man sat at the controls, with Captain America as his co-pilot. For take-off at any time of the day or night, Stark’s staff constantly kept the craft’s fuel tanks filled with liquid fluorine and hydrogen, the most powerful chemical propellants known to rocketry.

Iron Man looked at the read-out dials of the automated check-out devices. “All systems go,” he said. He activated the stud that programmed the proper trajectory into their computerized guidance system. Destination—Mount Everest. Then he barked: “Ten…nine…eight…”

Knowing his job, Captain America plugged in the “live mode.”

“Seven…six…five…” Iron Man armed the fuel pumps. “Four… three… two…”

Cap pressed the “non-abort” button.

“One…zero!”

Iron Man flipped the main engine toggle switch.

With a roar, the fiery propulsion engine burst forth, shoving the craft vertically upward from its upright gantry. “All systems go,” gasped Captain America as the mounting G-forces rose to their peak. “Oxygen, green. Thrust, nominal.”

“Yaw, pitch and roll errors negative,” took up Iron Man. “Ship going into proper pitch-over angle into level flight, at ninety miles altitude. We’re on our way.”

Looking down through a big bottom-side window, they could all see the broad sweep of Earth’s curvature below, and portions of the surface through banks of fleecy clouds—the views that many astronauts had exclaimed over as being awesomely “beautiful” and indescribable. Soon they were speeding over a great sea.

“The Pacific looks calm today,” ventured Hawkeye by way of small talk.

“The Atlantic,” corrected Cap.

“Huh?” grunted Hawkeye. “Well, you brain-boys made a mistake. If I know my geography, the Himalayas are nearer to America by going west around the world.”

“True,” nodded Iron Man. “But by going east, we take advantage of the Earth’s rotation under us, which without any expenditure of fuel, rolls the Himalayas a thousand miles toward us during the flight. So in astronautical or spaceflight terms, the longest distance between two points is the shortest. We’ll be there in exactly 53 minutes and 33.6 seconds.”

“I dig it. But it’s crazyville.” A malicious gleam came into the bowman’s eye. “Say, Cap, back in your day during your first career, how long did it take to go halfway around the world—by ox cart?”

“You know we had planes then,” said Cap, but his voice muted in wonder as he recalled the primitive craft of the time. “The fastest piston-plane speed during World War II was 469 miles an hour, made by a German Messerschmidt. Later, when Howard Hughes made a flight around the world in less than eighty hours, it was considered a Jules Verne feat. Today, we can do it in about eighty minutes in orbit or by space trajectory.”

Soon after this, Iron Man warned: “Five minutes to landing. What’s our course of strategy, Cap?”

“I’ve been mulling it over,” the spangled leader answered slowly. “It doesn’t pay to reveal all our forces at once—we should hold some in reserve. Karzz already has Iron Man’s number with his rust-ray; so the Wasp, Goliath, and I will confront our enemy first. Then, if reinforcements are needed, Hawkeye and Iron Man will join in.”

“Always robbing me of glory,” grumbled Hawkeye. “What if you three don’t need help?” He knocked his knuckles against his forehead as if chiding himself. “What am I worried about? Insect Girl, Elephant Boy, and Star-Spangled Grampa…how can they win without help? So just call on the Ace Archer of the Ages and I’ll save the day. You can help too, Rust Pot.”

Iron Man said nothing, wincing at the word “rust.” Witheringly, the Wasp spoke up. “If all your arrows had points as sharp as your wit, Hawkeye, they’d be too dull to pierce a chunk of butter.”

If the others, thought Iron Man to himself, had met Karzz, they would not be bantering so light-heartedly.

They would find out soon enough what they were up against…

...as will we all, on Thursday, in...
Chapter Six: Mountaintop Battle!
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Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker
by Otto Binder
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