By Steve Morris
Under the Earth, the trio of Emma Frost, Black Panther and Ant Man are investigating some monster murders. They’ve been tracking radiation to a particular point, which appears to be inside the corpse of a giant subterranean creature. Lucky Scott Lang gets to investigate, in what could form the basis of a successful crime procedural series at FOX. It looks like hundreds of monsters have been murdered underground, in a reveal which is only missing a panel of Black Panther putting on sunglasses as he delivers his killer last line.
In a New York which seems remarkably well-recovered from getting nullified last issue, the Steak Crew & Spidey are tracking another Mindless One, who is running wild through a skyscraper. It must take incredible reflexes to webswing through a cramped office.The Mindless One jumps out the building and lands, Zorro-like, in the backseat of Nick’s flying car. It gets subdued with tentacles (Nick, you really need to explain what drove you to install those in your car) and Fury shoots it a few times just to be sure.
Fury questions the Mindless One to find out if it was responsible for killing The Watcher, starts to get some answers, and so promptly ejects from the car and then blows it up for no good reason. It explodes over the river, killing the Mindless One and ending the interview session before any real answers were given. Nobody seems to mind, though, which is yet another reason why this investigation really should’ve been handled by someone who knows what an “investigation” is. Where’s Jessica Jones when you need her?
In a different plane of reality, Frank Castle worries about standing “out in the open” on a tendril of endless purple infinity. Strange has conjured some birds to go seek out some more murder victims, which they promptly do as Punisher wonders why he’s here at all. As they locate a body of another giant monster, we find out – so he can stick his hands inside it, gross, and fish out another one of those big green bullets.
Back on Earth, definitely-Nitro and his leather-wearing female partner watch on as the Mindless Ones develop the stage of Mindfulness where they start quoting college-level poets and philosophers. First comes Gertrude Stein, then comes Marx, and then they’ll set up their very first proboards account, mark my words. The duo are also evolving, apparently, but they cannily stand solely in shadows – no lack for choice of shadows in a Mike Deodato Jr comic – so we can’t see any of it.
But wait! It turns out Nitro isn’t Nitro after all, but some dude wearing a blanket on his head! They also have a third member of their team sat on a bench, apparently dying or evolving or something. He looks a bit like The Thing. Our blanketed man rubs the giant eye he stole recently and says he can’t get it to open, which betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of anatomy.
Anyway, the Avengers have found out their secret base, so they surround the group and demand they surrender. They don’t. The Mindless ones jump out a window, followed by the woman – Exterminatrix, she’s called, which I think is also the name of a movie you can find playing every night at 1am on SyFy. Her superpower is to jump out of windows and shoot guns, which makes her perfect for the aforementioned Messr Deodato Jr.
While she does that, the other two slowly descend via the staircase. Hopefully Exterminatrix can string this out long enough for two slow walkers to make it down 300 flights of stairs, although her tactic of “run at the Avengers” seems ill-advised. The main plan, it seems, is for blanket man to point his eye at people and… results?
Happily it starts glowing as soon as they get outside and come face to face with the Avengers, who probably didn’t need to put out the call for quite so many people to come help them take out, like, five Mindless Ones. Even Kitty Pryde is there! Honestly this was overkill. As they demand that blanket dude and blue Thing surrender, blanket man takes off his ‘disguise’ to reveal himself as…. The Orb!
Go wikipedia him. He’s got a giant eyeball for a head, and now he’s got a giant eyeball in his hand. He describes it as a “bomb”, which will apparently go off and cause something to happen. The Orb also has a six-pack, which is hugely impressive for a z-lister. He must’ve been water-loading over the last few days to ensure he’d look his best when he did his big blanket reveal thing.
Not many comics end like this, but many of Jason Aaron’s comics do.
To Be Continued!
Original Sin #2
Written by Jason Aaron
Pencilled by Mike Deodato Jr
Coloured by Frank Martin
Lettered by Chris Eliopoulos
Steve Morris runs this site! Having previously written for sites including The Beat, ComicsAlliance, CBR and The MNT, he can be found on Twitter here. He’s a bunny.
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