AVENGERS #129-135 and GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #2-4 (1974-1975): The Celestial Madonna Saga/Origin of Vision

Widely recognized as one of the top 10 Avengers storylines of all time, This is where Steve Englehart really gets to go nuts.  It begins with Swordsman helping the team fight Kang and ends in Giant Sized Avengers #4 with Vision and Scarlet Witch getting married.

It starts at a fevered pitch and never slows down. (And look carefully at that splash page: Did you know Bill Mantlo started as a colorist?)

Kang shows up and says that a light above Avengers’ Mansion indicates that one of them will become the Celestial Madonna. So he kidnaps everyone except Swordsman. Because even Kang knows Swordsman is a stupid character. (And note that Kang sticks the ladies into tubes.)

Englehart arrived at Marvel after a stint with DC where, for the Justice League of America, he wrote about a green chick named “Willow” who was described as a human who went into out space to have a child.  So she was a “space mom,” or, put differently, a celestial madonna.

Then he kind of brings her over to The Avengers as “Mantis” and tells the same story.

Neat, huh?  And the Marvel editors had no idea what he was doing.

With The Avengers out of the way, Kang starts his evil plot.

Swordsman isn’t completely alone, though. Hawkeye returns to Avengers Mansion, and Rama Tut also offers to help. Which I don’t understand because Rama is another iteration of Kang himself, isn’t he?

Time travel makes my head hurt.

Anyway, so there’s three un-captured heroes. Hawkeye knows they’re the lamest of the bunch.

…Next to Wasp. Seriously? She can shrink and shoots force blasts. What can you do, Hawkeye? Plus she designs costumes and look at what you’re wearing.

And now this becomes the most complicated storyline in a comic not written by Grant Morrison.  I’ll try to hit the high notes here, but it’s almost impossible to summarize it because every page has something important.

Not only did Rama Tut time travel to help himself, but so did Immortus. Who is also Kang.

Kang really just wanted Mantis, who is the one that according to prophecy was destined to become the Celestial Madonna, and thus whose husband, in turn, was prophesied to be the most powerful man of all time.  Naturally, this makes Kang want to get married.  But when he is losing the battle he decides to kill her rather than let anyone else have her, but Swordsman saves her and dies in the process.

Yay!  Swordsman is dead!

And that’s just a few issues in. We’ve got a loooong way to go. Swordsman died in Giant-Size Avengers #2, so now we return to Avengers #130 where there’s a funeral.

Why am I the only one who is happy that Swordsman is dead?

He’s buried in Vietnam, and some villains crash the funeral.

Lots of fighting. And then more exposition about Mantis. A lot of it is reiteration, because her story has been so confusing so far.

It’s also useful to remind us that we’re still in the middle of her Celestial Madonna saga, since the fighting at the funeral was distracting and kind of random. Future Avengers events will have similar interstitial fights.

And speaking of random interstitial fights….

The team takes on The Legion of the Unliving next, who were summoned by Kang.

Note that the original Human Torch is among them. This is important, because a key part of the Celestial Madonna story involves Vision occupying the old Human Torch’s android body.

A little trivia: Way back in 1942, Marvel Mystery Comics featured the Legion of the Dead/Legion of the Undead, which was basically a team of gravediggers who used zombies to protect themselves/fight crime.

But this version has nothing to do with that old version.  It’s just kinda neat.

The Legion of the Unliving seems like a precursor to the Legion of Monsters.

I loved these guys.  Even though their comic actually sucked. But then, I also loved their most controversial iteration…

I’m one of the few comics bloggers who speak out in defense of Frankencastle every chance I can.  These are comic books.  If you can’t take risks with the genre, and blow shit up, you’re not doing it right.

Here’s what I said about it a long time ago, on my other site:

I know that the idea of Punisher becoming a monster was ridiculous but Frankencastle is one of the unsung heroes of 2010 in my book.  The fantasy of the story was no more fanciful than the pseudorealistic over-the-top violence of Garth Ennis’ run on the character, which is widely regarded as the best Pun-run of all time.  It’s comic books people.  It’s supposed to be fantastic, fanciful, and unrealistic.  That’s what makes Jonathan Hickman’s S.H.I.E.L.D. so cool.  You can’t tell me you can’t accept Frankenpunisher but you can accept a radioactive spider?  I hope superhero books stay super and take risks, like Rick Remender did with Frankencastle.  If anything, he might have stayed at the party too long (the story arc could have been abbreviated by a few issues, and the drawn out Dakken arc didn’t amount to much of anything) but that’s the execution, not the idea.  The idea—to revive the legion of monsters and to make Frank Castle do something other than take pot shots at drug dealers—was fanfrickintastic.  Same thing with Red Hulk, by the way.  The first 7-10 issues of that book were incredible, ridiculous, glorious violence. It deteriorated as it went on, but again—that’s execution, not concept.  I want more of that.  More super stories, less attempts to make superheroes “real.”  If I want “real” I’ll stare at my dwindling bank account.

Back to the Celestial Madonna saga: During the battle with the resurrected Wonder Man, Vision gets damaged.  

And to get fixed, he gets transferred into…

Yes, he gets fixed by being transferred to the body of the original Human Torch, who, along with Frankenstein, switched sides from Kang’s Legion of the Unliving to help The Avengers.

Oh yeah, and along the way Ultron got involved.  We get a detailed origin of Vision, so we see Ulton in the past putting Simon Williams’ brain patterns in Vision’s Human-Torch body.

And Mad Thinker revives the original Torch.

We also learn that not only are Kang and Rama the same person, but Kang also later becomes Immortus.  So now the same guy is fighting himself three times.

And just because none of this is enough, Moondragon yanks a bunch of the team into a space battle that sows the seeds for the Kree/Skrull war.

Scarlet Witch has been training with Agatha. And she uses her new powers to kick Moondragon’s ass.

AND we learn that Moondragon was raised partly by Thanos, and shares a lot of common past with Mantis, who has a space-element to her origin. In fact, both were trained to become Celestial Madonnas, but Mantis’ memories were erased.

See what I mean by complicated?  It kind of sets the standard for the history of the Marvel Universe.

Okay, we’re almost done.

In Giant-Size Avengers #4, Dormammu gets involved (it kind of doesn’t matter why) and Swordsman gets green and glowy. Dormammu is competing with Umar for something (I have no idea what because I’m so confused at this point) and tries to get her to fight Vision but instead he marries her.

So far, just about everyone ever in an issue of Avengers has shown up, except for…

Seriously? Now this is just getting silly.

Mantis and Swordsman also marry, so Immortus presides over a double wedding.

And then Mantis and Swordsman turn into energy together.

Yay! Swordsman was dead and came back but now he’s gone again! I hate Swordsman!

Also: A letter from Mary Jo Duffy in #132.