Mighty Avengers #23

Overall- This issue is the final part of Dan Slott's first storyline as the writer of Mighty Avengers. We begin with Iron Man taking command of the Avengers from Hank Pym... Ahh, it's good to see that Tony is still acting the part of the egomaniac, even with the God of Chaos, Chthon slowly conquering the Earth. Hank tries to get the Avengers to stay at his side, but most of the team is all too happy to follow Tony's orders. Tony takes U.S. Agent and Hercules and goes off to destroy Chthon's base of power, Wundagore Mountain.

Attacking Wundagore brings Chthon, who is less than pleased that his mountain is being assaulted. Chthon attacks the heroes and stops them from doing any further damage. The Scarlet Witch speaks to Bruce Banner telepathically, which releases the Hulk, who attacks Chthon. Although Hulk manages to stagger Chthon, not even Hulk's power can stop Chthon. Pym tries a frontal assault against Chthon, but he meets with no success, until he realizes that Chthon, like all spell-casters has to actually SAY the words to his spells in order for them to work. Pym reconfigures his Ant-Man helmet to affect the language center of Chthon's brain, which causes him to just spout random gibberish. Unable to string words together in a coherent manner, Chthon is left powerless.

Unfortunately for the Avengers, Chthon manages to jump out of Quicksilver's body and take control of his lackey, Modred. Before Chthon can begin to wreak some more havoc, Vision manages to trap Modred/Chthon in the magical Darkhold book... Please don't ask me to explain how... Let's just leave it at that!

Pym manages to reunite Quicksilver's mind and body, and everyone on Earth realizes that it was Pym who was responsible for defeating Chthon, which restores Pym's name and disassociates Pym from Skrull Pym, who was pretty much the human face of the Skrull Invasion. With that, the Scarlet Witch appears and teleports the Avengers back to where ever they were before the mess with Chthon started. This issue concludes with us discovering that the Scarlet Witch was never actually involved with assembling this bunch of Avengers at all, it was actually Loki, the Asgardian God of Mischief and sex changes, who assembled the team!

Nice move by Dan Slott at the end of this book. With Loki pulling the strings, this comic could go in a number of different directions. It also means that Loki is acting in direct defiance of Norman Osborn and the whole stupid "Dark Reign" thing Norman set up. That could also prove very interesting down the road. For a score, I'll give this comic an 8 1/2 out of 10. I really wasn't enjoying the first 2 issues of Dan Slott's Mighty Avengers run, but he totally redeemed himself in this comic. I'll be looking forward to finding out who will be staying on this team, as well as discovering what Loki's true intentions are.