Description

“Metamorphosis” — Deep beneath the ocean floor, the Avengers fight a battle they are slowly, inevitably losing. The avatar of Cha’sa’dra is not merely powerful — it is patient, and the supernatural heat it radiates is doing what brute force cannot: draining the team one by one. Quasar, Captain America, and the Black Panther fall first, the heat simply too much for flesh and will to withstand. She-Hulk and Namor follow. Above it all, Jinku watches from his ledge and delivers his indictment again — slower this time, as if savoring it — recounting the ancient betrayal he believes the Avengers committed when they killed his god.
Thor and Gilgamesh are the last ones standing. They work in grim concert, driving the ceiling down onto the creature and burying it beneath tonnes of rock — a moment of real triumph, shattered almost immediately when Cha’sa’dra simply tears its way back out of the rubble. Gilgamesh, never one to calculate when he can charge, launches himself at the monster alone, defying Thor’s warning, delivering blow after devastating blow while declaring himself the warrior of a thousand names, the dragon slayer, the unconquered. Then he is hurled across the cavern and does not get up. He does not move. He does not breathe.
The tide turns from an unexpected direction. The heat in the cavern begins to lift. The Avengers start to rouse. And when Jinku commands Cha’sa’dra to finish them, the monster simply stands there — unresponsive — as a chorus of golden voices rises from the shadows. The Lava Men who had turned to stone, dismissed as dead or lost, were neither. Their petrified shells were chrysalises. Freed from the corrupting magic of Cha’sa’dra, they have evolved into something entirely new — luminous, golden, and clear-eyed. One of them places a hand on Jinku’s shoulder, and the transformation passes through him too. The rage drains out. The grief shifts into something quieter. He looks at his new hands and feels no pain for the first time in centuries.
Jinku apologizes. Captain America accepts it — and immediately turns back to Gilgamesh, who still has not moved.
Above ground, Avengers Island teeters on a dissolving column with Edwin Jarvis broadcasting into the void. Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman arrive first, Susan projecting a force field wedge beneath the island’s pontoons until the strain begins to overwhelm her. Wonder Man arrives with the West Coast Avengers just in time, his impossible strength bracing the island from below while Susan, freed from bearing the full weight, wraps the crumbling column in a spiral of invisible force — not to hold it together, but deliberately allowing it to fall apart in a controlled, deliberate sequence.

Writer: John Byrne
Penciler: Paul Ryan
Inker: Tom Palmer
Letterer: Bill Oakley
Colorist: Christie Scheele
Editor: Howard Mackie
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco