Reaper’s vortex transports the Avengers to his abyss, where they land on an outcropping of rock. The Unquiet Dead descend upon them, but Hercules disperses the ghouls by grabbing the chain that links them all and tossing them away. The skull of one ghoul remains, biting Dane when they try to question it. Dane destroys the skull with his photonic sword. Watching via scrying flame from his chamber, Reaper prepares the subway captives for the Ritual of Summoning. The Avengers follow the Unquiet Dead, who lead them to Reaper’s mansion. At that moment, with his prisoners encased in cocoons, Reaper transforms his captives into the Legion of the Unliving, zombie versions of deceased Avenger foes. After the Avengers enter Reaper’s mansion, the Legion attacks, quickly overwhelming the Avengers.
The Unquiet Dead include the animated corpses of Flight 417’s passengers, slain in Av #352, ’92. Subsequent to the revelation that neither Nefaria nor the Shostakov Red Guardian had ever died, the Legion members here were identified as imposters, normal human victims of the Reaper’s reanimated as empowered zombies. While the script repeatedly identifies the Legion’s Black Knight as Nathan Garrett, including Garrett’s nephew/successor Dane recognizing him as Nathan, the script also refers to the zombie as the original Black Knight, a term more properly applied to Percy of Scandia, and the zombie Knight as drawn and colored here and in the next issue looks more like Percy than Nathan.
