A synchro-staff tasked with revealing Mantis’ origins continues to guide Hawkeye, Iron Man, Mantis and Thor through ancient interstellar history, revealing secrets of the Cotati, the Kree and the Skrulls, including how Kree pacifists founded Earth’s Priests of Pama and established a garden of sentient Cotati, the same garden where the Avengers recently buried the Swordsman. Meanwhile, a second synchrostaff guides the Vision through secrets of his past life as the android Human Torch, and Moondragon comes to Avengers Mansion, where she and Jarvis prove unable to contact the Avengers in Vietnam. Moondragon tries to convince Scarlet Witch to accompany her to Vietnam and investigate, but the Witch – darkly changed in voice and manner by her ongoing sorcery studies – refuses to go along, mystically wards off a curious Moondragon’s telepathic probing, then returns to her studies with Agatha Harkness. Back in Vietnam, as their time trip ends, the Avengers and Mantis materialize in the present-day version of the priests’ Cotati garden, where they find Libra and a green, glowing version of the Swordsman promising more explanations.
Ancient Skrulls approach Hala’s primitive Kree and Cotati peoples, offering advanced technology for resources, and stage a contest to see which race will represent Hala in the Skrull alliance. Fearing they will lose, the Kree massacre the Cotati people, and when the Skrull party objects, the Kree slaughter them and steal their technology (Av #133, ’75 fb). The slain Cotati’s bodies release seed pods that produce new Cotati who spend centuries in hiding, developing telepathic powers but gradually losing their physical mobility (1). The warlike Kree use stolen Skrull technology to build an interstellar empire locked in endless war with the Skrulls. In the Kree year 476, an emerging Kree pacifist movement is persecuted and driven underground, where they hone their martial arts and mental abilities. The long-hidden Cotati forge an alliance with these pacifist Kree (2). The Kree pacifists form an organized philosophy run by priests and based in a temple where they hide the Cotati. The pacifists repulse an unprovoked Kree military assault on their temple, but the Supreme Intelligence (SI) uses this as an excuse to exile the priests to a dark, barren prison world (3). The Cotati guide the planet-destroying Star-Stalker to the priests’ prison world, where the priests find a way to defeat the creature using molten lava (4). The Priests warn the SI of the Star-Stalker and offer to disperse in pairs to all known inhabited worlds to act as guardians against its threat. Skeptical of the threat but glad to be rid of the priests, the SI agrees, and the Priests spread across the cosmos in teams of two, secretly taking the Cotati with them. Priests Son-Dar and Teress travel to Earth and settle in what will become Vietnam, planting a garden of Cotati there (5). In 1949, the Human Torch and Toro are captured by gangsters wielding flame-retardant, paralyzing chemical Solution X-R. The Torch is buried in the Nevada desert, where atomic tests accidentally revive him in 1953 (YM #24, ’53). His powers becoming unstable, the Torch says goodbye to Toro in 1955 and flies back into the desert, where he tries to destroy himself in a burst of nova flame (6). Mad Thinker finds the inert Human Torch in the desert (7). Mad Thinker revives the android Torch, pitting him against new Human Torch Johnny Storm and Storm’s FF partners and their allies Wingfoot and Lockjaw. The android Torch turns against the Thinker, whose computerized aide Quasimodo blasts the android, seemingly fatally. The Thinker flees and the FF leave the Torch’s inert body in the Mad Thinker’s lab (FF Ann #4, ’66). Ultron-5 breaks into the Thinker’s lab (8). Immortus sends the Avengers and Mantis back in time (Av #133, ’75).
Some of the “fb” flashbacks retell previously seen events, adding new, additional information.
