All-New, All-Intelligent Avengers #146 – ‘All the Efforts You Have Made’

Posted on by phil.wrede
In the hidden underground lair beneath his Long Island mansion, Justin Hammer (“played” here by an action figure of Jeff Goldblum from the Jurassic Park movies) orders his subordinates to seize the android Jocasta, from whose brain he intends to build his LLM “A.I.” bot. The title of this comic, “All-New, All-Intelligent Avengers Presents… ‘All the Efforts You Have Made’,” is visible at the top of the image.
Before the gangster Hammerhead (who reveals in dialogue that he and Hammer are, indeed, related) can make a move, the on-loan Doombot delivers a strong punch to the back of his impenetrable head. Hammer is shocked by this apparent betrayal!
As Hammerhead and the Doombot square off, the robot tells Jocasta to escape, that its master (and namesake, Doctor Doom) would not abide Hammer’s plan for her.
Jocasta escapes from the subterranean prison, while across the city, Spider-Man looks for her, and actually spots her as she soars into the sky on her boot jets.
Spider-Man contacts the Black Widow with this news; she, along with the Fabulous Frog-Man, and Ironheart, has already captured the Hobgoblin (who, along with Hammerhead, originally kidnapped Jocasta from Avengers Tower).
The Hobgoblin offers up all the information he knows about Jocasta’s kidnapping without putting up more of a fight.
Outside of the Baxter Building (headquarters to the Fantastic Four), now-former-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Kate Neville (now “played” by an action figure of Emily Van Camp from her role in the MCU) sneaks inside through a secret entrance. In the building, Reed Richards and Sue Storm-Richards face off against Kl’rt, the Super-Skrull, who has just arrived from the Negative Zone.
To stop Kl’rt’s servant, Nihilus, from egging him on further, Ben Grimm picks up the little demon and walks away. Reed tries to explain to Kl’rt that humanity would like to trade for some of the Negative Zone’s resources.
Reed’s argument for the benefit of the Negative Zone’s palladium to the people of Earth falls on deaf ears. Johnny Storm finds Neville as she tries to walk through the Baxter Building’s hallways unnoticed.
The credits for the comic strip, citing the Unsplash users whose photographs were the background art, the use of fonts by Blambot, the ownership of Marvel by Disney, the creation of Marvel characters by actual human beings, and the figure and certain background photography/script/lettering by me, Phil Wrede.

It turns out Miles Morales was right, all those months ago, when he worried about how unrestricted palladium mining in the Negative Zone would be felt by the beings already living there. If only Jay Hansen and S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t tried to cut the Avengers out of the palladium action; maybe Reed and Sue would be having a productive conversation with the Super-Skrull, instead of what feels like (spoiler alert, maybe?) a prelude to a super-powered brawl?

How exactly Justin Hammer thought he was going to keep Jocasta captive long enough to extract her entire brain with (apparently) only a Doombot and his cousin for backup is a question to which only he knows the answer.

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