While the three Avengers and Rick Jones try to determine their next move, Carol Danvers arrives. It seems she's still security chief at the Cape (we haven't seen her since Captain Marvel#18). This, then, is Carol's first encounter with the Avengers, a team she'll eventually join. After a quick debriefing, the Avengers (and Rick) return to their Quinjet to pursue Mar-Vell. Although Rick has no particular idea of where the Sentry has gone, he recaps the history of the Kree for the Avengers, relating how they created the Inhumans and the battles the Sentry & Ronan had with the Fantastic Four, then Captain Mar-Vell's arrival, his battle with the Super-Skrull, death of Una and bonding to Rick Jones. There's also a recap scene where Mar-Vell declares he now fights for Earth instead of the Kree, set right before Una's death -- but that never happened. I always assumed there must have been such a moment in Mar-Vell's history, but nope. You might wonder why the Inhumans & Super-Skrull are worth bringing up in a history of the Kree; future chapters of this storyline will make it clear this is foreshadowing.
The Quinjet flies back to New York and parks in Avengers Mansion, but the team find a recorded video message waiting for them - it's from Goliath, who answered a call from the Wasp to help her and Hank Pym in Alaska; Goliath has already gone to investigate so the Avengers (and Rick!) race past Jarvis to help their friends.
In Alaska, Goliath meets up with the Wasp at an icebreaker ship; she explains how she and Yellowjacket (Hank's identity at the time) came to Alaska to study the effects of oil drilling on local wildlife. During their exploration, they found an island covered with jungle lying in the Arctic Circle. As they flew closer to the island, Hank began to feel a strange sensation; trying to protect the Wasp, he knocked her away (is this technically the first time Hank hit Jan?), then fell into the jungle. Goliath insists on continuing the investigation solo as he's still reeling from breaking up with the Black Widow and never getting anywhere with the Scarlet Witch, concluding therefore that he "can't work with women around." On the island, Goliath defeats a large simian creature, but then Ronan appears from the trees and fires a beam from his Universal Weapon which stuns the hero. And Sentry#459 is with him! What a coincidence that this seemingly unrelated Avengers case is actually the next phase of the villain's plan!
The Quinjet soon follows Goliath, bringing the Vision, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Wasp and Rick. Unfortunately, the Kree have done something to Goliath to sap his willpower, placing him under the control of Sentry#459. While Goliath and the Sentry fight the Avengers, Ronan hangs back inside his base on the island, where Captain Marvel is kept as his prisoner. This gives Ronan someone to monologue to as he describes the 'evo-rays' which created the island (they seem pretty similar to the Organization's weapon from Captain Marvel#10). The goal is to reverse the Earth into "the state in which the Kree first found them, eons ago" and in so doing, eliminate humanity from existence. These evo-rays have also affected Yellowjacket, who has been transformed into a hulking caveman who now steps forward to threaten the Wasp!
Thoughts: We're two chapters and the only Skrulls have been glimpsed in Rick's recap, but we'll get there... again, at the time this would have seemed like just another Avengers story, just one which seemed to be tying up loose ends from Thomas' Captain Marvel. This is a fine super hero comic, but there's better yet to come.
Next: The Kree-Skrull War continues in Avengers #91!
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