Look! There’s a water tower on the cover!
Most important part of these issues? Herc shaves.
Second most important: Thor bonks Herc on the head. Except that that is NOT Thor…
Ares and Hera are pissed off about Hercules recently being promoted by Zeus from demi- to full-God, so they have a contest to see who can make him the most miserable. For his part in it, Ares possesses Thor for most of issue #349. The spell is broken when Crystal manipulates Mjolnir’s hammer’s power to summon lightning, and literally blasts Ares out of Thor’s body.
So Crystal doesn’t actually lift the hammer, but she does wield it. No explanation is made for how she can do that–or how Ares can effectively lift the hammer since he, not Thor, is controlling Thor’s physical body. Making it even more complicated, it’s Eric Masterson–while Thor himself is still trapped by Mephisto.
Meanwhile…
Proctor was introduced in Avengers #344. He’s Dane Whitman (Black Knight) from another Earth, he’s in love with Earth 616’s Sersi. He doesn’t appear in this story, but he is behind the scenes. If you’re a big Kree fan, the Kree military leader Galen Kor makes his first appearance in these issues.
He hires the Starjammers to assassinate Black Knight–at the direction of Proctor.
The scene is obviously taken from Star Wars.
Black Knight gets stabbed by Raza and we’re led to believe he’s dead but we’re never really fooled.
We’re not even concerned. Black Knight is an awful character. Wish he really had died.
And the Starjammers try to get Binary to rejoin their team.
A back-up story in #350 inflates the issue so it can be more of a celebration and cost more money. It’s a harmless and funny story about Jarvis and Marilla, Luna’s nanny.
Oh! And they move into the new mansion….
For the complete history of the MU, year by year, go here.