The New, Improved A.I.M.

 

By 1990, writer Mark Gruenwald appeared to have coordinated the Captain America and Quasar books to bring more of a focus to Advanced Idea Mechanics (aka A.I.M.), the criminal organization which advanced its agenda of world conquest in the pages of both Tales Of Suspense and Strange Tales and, of course, is known for its creation of the Cosmic Cube as well as the Adaptoid. But times change--and with the elimination of the ambitious M.O.D.O.K. (with the assistance of the Serpent Society), AIM's new Chairman of the Board, Alessandro Brannex, assembles prospective clients in order to make a shocking announcement that fundamentally changes AIM's mission statement and reorders its priorities to reflect a more practical use of its research and development scientists and resources--an announcement which no doubt stuns the collective criminal factions present, as well as we longtime readers.

In addition, AIM has improved on MODOK with the creation of another "mental organism" unit (hopefully taking greater care to ensure its loyalty and subservience to its makers):

As for AIM's pitch, all assembled appear to be receptive but holding off on placing any orders for the time being (though having no objections to sticking around for the free refreshments). But two in attendance are ready to approach Brannex with a lucrative offer involving a certain pair of quantum bands, an offer too good for Brannex and his Board to pass up.

AIM being AIM, our two clients have been identified as aliens, whom we recognize from the pages of Captain Marvel and The Avengers as Kree bio-scientist Dr. Minerva and the Kree soldier Captain Atlas. Considering their interest in Quasar's wrist bands, no doubt they won't complain if AIM sells them the real thing rather than duplicates; but as for how AIM will go about obtaining them, Brannex has already indicated that MODAM will get its "her" chance to shine.

And she seems pretty eager to take a crack at it, doesn't she?

Death(urge), and Rebirth!

 

As a companion piece to the PPC's recent profile on Quasar--the 1989 hero patterned after Bob Grayson, the early 1950s adventurer known as Marvel Boy--we now circle back to take a closer look at those on the seventh planet whose existence paved the way for both characters: the doomed inhabitants of the Uranus colony, who welcomed Prof. Matthew Grayson and his infant son following their desertion of Earth in 1934. It was Prof. Grayson who would later renege on his decision to leave Earth to the mercies of tyrants and warmongers, outfitting his son to undertake missions on the world of his birth in order to help man "see his way to peace and righteousness." Until Quasar began appearing in his own series, the Uranians served as little more than supportive backdrop for the Graysons, the mystery of their existence on Uranus seemingly dying with them when their story is resurrected in late 1975 by writer Roy Thomas*, who returns a vengeful Marvel Boy to Earth as the Crusader.

*The details of Prof. Grayson's backstory have been modified several times in retellings, which added a middle name for the character as well as a previous surname. Thomas has chosen to use "Horace" as Prof. Grayson's given name.

With Bob Grayson's wrist bands coming into the possession of Wendell Vaughn, who fell into depression following his resignation as head of security for Project Pegasus, his father sees an opportunity to alleviate that state by suggesting Wendell undertake a mission to Uranus in order to gather more information about the bands' operation and capabilities. It's a mission, however, where Quasar will also discover his destiny, as well as the truth behind the destruction of the Uranian colony.

The Erstwhile Marvel Man

 

During the early 1990s, there were a number of stories in The Avengers which featured the man we eventually came to know as Quasar, who as Wendell Vaughn actually dates back to the late '70s but who had gone through a refit or two by the time he joined the Assemblers. I was admittedly on auto-pilot when reading the book during that period--its 300th issue having not quite capped a sudden spiral downward in quality and direction following the departure of writer Roger Stern, while its story, despite its forced appearance of affirmation, conveyed an impression of the book and its team as being rudderless. And so I could be forgiven for accepting Quasar in the Avengers lineup at face value, as new Avengers stories from that point on were rifled through fairly quickly, rather than being read with interest and anticipation on my part. (Remember the times when we were eager to sit down with a new comics story?)

That being the case, it's not surprising that I've found myself going over in my mind Quasar's beginnings as the informal successor (if that's even the right word) to Marvel Boy, and wondering: When exactly did this man join the Avengers? Yet as we'll see, "joined" may be a misnomer in the sense of how we've come to regard new members being inducted into and being presented as part of the Avengers lineup.

Demolished!

When you take into consideration the fact that the story of the character known as Deathlok--the cyborg assassin/military operative tracking his targets in a not-too-distant post-apocalyptic future--took place not in his own series, but as a mid-1970s feature in the Astonishing Tales title, you would have to consider him something of a success story at the time, having managed to establish a steady readership even on a bi-monthly publication schedule that would delay each story installment for an interminable sixty days. Reader loyalty appeared far from the mind of Editor Marv Wolfman, however, when the final Deathlok story hit the stands in 1976*, without warning or acknowledgment of its cessation--its cover giving every indication of continuation for the series.

*As it happened, the last issue also coincided with the end of the Astonishing Tales book itself.

Certainly not the first issue to end a publication run abruptly and leave a big question mark hanging over its place on the spinner rack as to the resolution of its current storyline. (Silver Surfer #18 being one such example that comes to mind.)

Yet Deathlok's sudden disappearance following his encounter with the mysterious individual called Godwulf would be followed up with several spotty appearances that would have him interacting with individuals and timelines which existed nearly a decade before his own dismal future--appearances taking place in three separate titles in a span of over six years, though given that length of time it perhaps comes as no surprise that there seemed to be no story plot in effect that would tie these instances together coherently. Still, thanks in part to the covers being produced for those appearances, it's to Deathlok's credit that his character was still capable of attracting reader interest.

In essence, each story would make use of Deathlok as both a deadly threat and a victim of the circumstances he'd found himself in, as seen through the eyes of the respective books' writers at the time: David Kraft, Marv Wolfman, Mark Gruenwald (with Ralph Macchio), and J.M. DeMatteis. It was DeMatteis who would finally break the cycle of Deathlok "guest-starring" in Marvel continuity and make an effort to resolve his situation in his own timeline--but stringing together his prior appearances in the past to get to that point would take some doing.

...And He Shall Crush The Stranger!

Having recently seen the fate of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--alien conquerors whose return visit to our planet was challenged and repelled by the Fantastic Four--it might be interesting to pay a visit to the laboratory world of the enigmatic Stranger and learn what others have been trapped and imprisoned there, without hope of reprieve or escape. We know that at one time, both Magneto and the Toad shared that unfortunate fate, and were only able to return due to an experiment conducted by Dane Whitman, the future Black Knight, which inadvertently retrieved the two; but thanks to writer and stalwart Marvel researcher Mark Gruenwald, we'll discover that there have been many other Marvel characters who have ended up in captivity on the Stranger's world, which has been a handy if unofficial holding area for characters whose prior stories have conveniently left the door open for their reappearance but haven't yet been followed up on by other writers.

But most interesting of all is the catalyst for bringing them all out of mothballs in one story, himself a character who, like the others, found himself in creative limbo--the Over-Mind, ready to resume his path to conquest and eager to destroy the one he blames for ending his mission of crushing the universe. The Over-Mind was rather handily dealt with by the Stranger when the former made his move to fulfill his original mission; but escaping his fate, his form and power were eventually co-opted by a collective of six psychics who had been former captives of the Secret Empire, and the character segued to the pages of The Defenders. Yet shortly before the Defenders were reorganized and rechristened, the Over-Mind simply disappeared from the book without explanation, summarily dropped from the roster and never referred to in the mag again.  (And not long after an issue is dedicated to the psychics coming to terms with their new existence as the Over-Mind and being formally accepted for "membership" by the others in the group.  Seems like a lot of trouble to go through, only to then jettison the character.)

When we encounter the Over-Mind in Gruenwald's tale, he's regained his faculties and apparently looking to settle the score with the Stranger with a vengeance. And having enthralled various members of the Squadron Supreme to do his bidding, he arrives at the Stranger's lab world to exact that vengeance in full.

Whence Comes... Terminus?

Well before gaining notoriety in episodes of The Walking Dead, the name of Terminus had already been assigned by Marvel to an alien foe of gargantuan proportions--a ravager of worlds that had travelled to Earth in order to scavenge the planet of its "spoils," as he would put it. Yet in his first two blink-and-you-missed-him appearances in 1984-85, his name was apparently all that Marvel was prepared to give this mega-threat--revealing next to nothing of his origin, his history, his power, or how he acquired such a fearsome reputation, while having him dealt with rather handily by those heroes who encountered him. Terminus, for a brief time, was one of the most deadly threats on a planetary scale that mankind had ever faced--while also, incredibly, one of the most easily dispatched.

As to whether Terminus would be explored in more depth, those first appearances seemed to render the matter open and shut--that is, the door for his return left wide open after his debut in Fantastic Four, only to be slammed shut in The Avengers.

Terminus first makes planet-fall while one of the FF's trusted friends, Wyatt Wingfoot, enjoys a last bit of R&R as he prepares to become Chief of his tribe, but is stopped in his tracks by a deadly beam of energy slicing through the landscape--a beam that goes on to cut a wide swath over the entire country. What Wyatt and the FF will soon discover, however, is that the beam's path of destruction was designed to announce the arrival of Earth's conqueror.