With their benefactor Tony Stark near death after a recent trauma, various Avengers assemble at his bedside, including inactive members Captain America and Thor, the latter of whom recruits heart specialist Dr. Santini to treat Stark; however, neither the Avengers nor Stark’s SHIELD guards are able to prevent Stark’s abduction by Kang’s Growing Man. The Avengers pursue it to Kang’s far-future home, where Kang reveals that Stark was merely bait since he wanted the Avengers all along; he has already recruited their absent member Black Panther, who urges the others to hear Kang out. After returning Stark to his hospital bed, Kang explains about Grandmaster’s challenge, the Game of the Galaxies, with the fate of Kang’s love, Ravonna, and the survival of Earth itself at stake, and the Avengers agree to be Kang’s champions. As the game begins, Thor, Cap and Goliath meet their Grandmaster-empowered opponents, the Squadron Sinister.
Kang’s beloved Ravonna remains suspended between life and death since sacrificing herself to save him. Hearing Kang wish for power over life and death, the Grandmaster appears and offers to give it to him if he defeats Grandmaster in a chess-like game of champions. To prove his power, Grandmaster wipes two of Kang’s guards from existence. Departing to give Kang preparation time, he warns that he will return in a year and that Earth will be destroyed if Kang loses.
The Squadron Sinister are obviously inspired by (and loosely patterned after) DC Comics’ Justice League of America, specifically JLA founders Green Lantern, Superman, Batman and Flash. A heroic alternate-reality version of the Squadron known as the Squadron Supreme, retroactively revealed in SqS #9, ’86 as the inspiration for Grandmaster’s creation of the Squadron Sinister, would go on to become perhaps the most popular and successful inter-company imitation of its kind ever. This issue’s letter column addresses the controversial conversion of Hawkeye into the new Goliath and explains Marvel’s motivation for the switch: Hawkeye was then considered the least marketable core member of the Avengers in terms of his identity and powers, partly because archer heroes tend to be regarded as second-stringers, and a 2-to-1 majority of reader mail was lobbying to drop him from the book; but the character was a favorite of series writer Roy Thomas because of his colorful personality, so they compromised by keeping the character but giving him a new identity with more spectacular powers. Ironically, many fans vocally disliked the change, and he was eventually turned back into Hawkeye.
