The Thanos Imperative #4

**** (four of five stars)

Favorite Quote #1:  "Surfer!  The Revengers are the enemy's big guns!"  "Interesting…when we next have a quiet moment, Richard Rider, we can discuss the definition of the term."  "Surfer just did deadpan trash talk."  "I know.  Can you believe it?"  -- Nova, Surfer, Quasar, and Nova, engaging in some light banter amid the chaos

Favorite Quote #2:  "We can take him!  Side by side, like we faced down Annihilus!"  "I seem to remember you dying when we did that!"  "Precisely!  What are the odds of it happening twice!"  -- Quasar, Nova, and Quasar, talking about the good ol' days

Summary
On Sanctuary, Lord Mar-Vell is torturing Namorita in an attempt to discover why she appears to be the most anomalous of the anomalous persons he's collected.  However, Nova and his strike force appear, disrupting the proceedings.  Ronan goes after the prisoners, Beta-Ray BIll and Guardian clear the engineering decks, and Nova, Quasar, and Silver Surfer take the fight directly to Mar-Vell.  Quasar disables Evil Giant-Man who's holding Namorita while Rich takes on Mar-Vell.  However, Mar-Vell reveals just how powerful he is, shattering Surfer's board and probing Rich's mind to discover that Rich is only there to save Namorita because she's his girlfriend and not because she's the Avatar of Death, as Mar-Vell originally suspected.  Meanwhile, in the Cancerverse, Peter rages at Drax for killing Thanos, and Drax defends himself by saying he couldn't help it.  Mantis defends Drax, saying that he had become an Avatar of Life and being in the Cancerverse -- where life rules supreme -- overwhelmed him.  However, the entire group is shocked to discover Thanos reconstituting himself, cell by cell.  Thanos, as he's knitting himself back together, explains that Death essentially rejected him when she returned him to life.  Drax attempts to kill Thanos again, but Thanos kills him first.  In "our" Universe, Mar-Vell senses Drax's death, given that he's an Avatar of Life, and realizes that the Avatar of Death from "our" Universe must be in the Cancerverse, since only an Avatar of Death could kill an Avatar of Life.  He and the Revengers teleport from our reality, leaving the heroes to pull themselves together.  Gladiator calls to Rich, telling him he needs to speak to Major Victory about Star-Lord and Thanos, who he informs Nova is still alive.  Surfer is on the verge of putting two and two together when Mar-Vell detonates an explosion, seemingly destroying Sanctuary.  In the Cancerverse, Alternate (since he's not really Evil) Vision explains that the death of the Avatar of Life has lit up Titan like a beacon.  To prove his point, a Scarlet Witch-led Revengers team arrives, destroying Vision.

The Review
As expected, DnA really kick things up a notch in this issue.  Our heroes plans fall apart, succeed, and then fall apart again.  DnA begin knitting together the two stories in a really clever way, with Mar-Vell sensing the death of Drax (the Avatar of Life) and thereby discovering that the Avatar of Death (Thanos) wasn't in "our" Universe.  You can tell they're setting up a pretty spectacular all-hands battle in the final issue.

The Good
1) It was pretty cool to see how crazy powerful Mar-Vell is.  From breaching Rich's gravimetric shields to shattering Surfer's board, he's a serious bad ass motherflarker.  It's also an interesting twist, because it makes you realize how poorly prepared (or overly confident) Nova and the strike force were in confronting Mar-Vell and the Revengers without exactly having a plan.  DnA use the heroes' fairly quick defeat at Mar-Vell's hands to re-balance the story in favor of the bad guys, after last issue had the heroes seemingly doing a pretty good job in moving the ball down the field.

2) The splash page of Thanos killing Drax was spectacular.

3) As I mention above, I thought DnA do a great job starting to bring the two stories together, with Mar-Vell sensing the death of Drax in the Cancervese and realizing Thanos is there.

The Unknown
1) When Mar-Vell takes down Rich, he promises "an eternity of living, inextinguishable pain, flowing from the many-angles of my masters."  I'm not entirely sure if he delivered that, though.  He's interrupted in doing whatever it is he's doing when he feels Drax die in the Cancerverse.  But, when Namorita asks Rich if he's OK, he doesn't really answer, asking how she is instead.  I wonder where DnA are going with this one.

2) I can't wait to see what happens in the aftermath of the detonation of Sanctuary.  I mean, presumably someone dies...