After touring the team’s Trophy Hall, new Avengers Justice and Firestar arrive late for a Playroom training session, where their teammates and visiting honorary members Swordsman & Magdalene are battling mechanical practice drones. After an overeager Justice ends the exercise early by smashing the drones, only to learn the exercise was designed to stop the drones with minimal damage, Captain America asks Magdalene and Swordsman to upgrade to reserve membership but they decline, as they still feel out of place in this reality. A mystical distress call from the Squadron Supreme’s Arcanna summons the Avengers to Project: PEGASUS, where the Squadron have just fought off another attempt to control their minds. The two teams trace the mind-control energy to the estate of criminal billionaire Imus Champion, who admits he was behind the Corruptor’s recent mind control of the Squadron and says he now wishes to test himself in battle against the combined Avengers-Squadron forces. To ensure the heroes play along, Champion has planted lethal nerve gas bombs in major cities that will detonate if the heroes fail to defeat him, or if they are detected leaving his estate or communicating with the outside world. Wielding a host of exotic mystical and technological artifacts, Champion defeats the Avengers, Squadron and Scarlet Witch’s conjured-up defender Wonder Man, but Giant-Man and his ant allies wreck Champion’s machinery before he can detonate his bombs, and the other heroes recover in time to help Giant-Man secure Champion’s surrender and arrest. Justice and Captain America credit Firestar with the victory since she had summoned Giant-Man undetectably by asking local ants to contact Pym. Finding a dimension-spanning Nth Projector in Champion’s arsenal, Iron Man suggests using it to help the Squadron return to their home reality. After days of modifications by Iron Man and Magdalene, the projector is ready, but Haywire decides to stay behind, saying there’s nothing left for him back home now that his girlfriend Inertia is dead. Once the Squadron has left, Magdalene and Swordsman depart via the projector as well, seeking an Earth where they will feel more at home.
Avengers battle Corruptor-controlled Squadron (Av #5, ’98). Champion tries to control Squadron’s minds (p). Hawkeye teaches Champion archery (Av #109, ’73).
This one-shot serves as the Avengers’ 1998 annual, it being Marvel’s practice at the time to do one-shots co-featuring various pairings of characters instead of conventional annuals. The upstairs Trophy Hall, referenced in Av #6, ’98 and introduced here, will be expanded and fully identified by name as of Av #24, ’00. While the hall’s Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver marionettes are replicas of puppets from Av #181-187, ’79, their costume colors do not match the originals; Quicksilver should be in his classic blue costume, not green. The Casket of Ancient Winters came to Avengers Mansion in Av #5, ’98. The Porcupine armor was placed on display in Avengers Mansion in Cap #315, ’86. The stylized energy armor and sword conjured by Dr. Spectrum in this story are an homage to similar accessories conjured by Green Lantern (Dr. Spectrum’s DC counterpart) in the DC Comics mini-series Kingdom Come. Haywire was originally slated to die in the opening pages of SqS #1, ’98 since that one-shot’s writer didn’t want the character, so Kurt Busiek suggested having him stay behind in this story instead of killing him off. Haywire died anyway in his next story, Av:CQ #1-8, ’01-02.
