Some time back, we mentioned Reed Richards calling out scientific inaccuracy mid-story in Fantastic Four #248 (and come to think of it, he would do the same the very next issue, although there's an in-story explanation for that one too!) and some other time back we mentioned looking for today's book, which we've...got today, I suppose. From 1989, Avengers #307, "Metamorphosis" Written by John Byrne, pencils by Paul Ryan, inks by Tom Palmer.
An attack by the Lava Men has left the Avengers' current headquarters, the artificial island Hydrobase, stranded high above the water on a pillar of rock, and it's starting to crumble! Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman are the first to arrive to help, but as Sue points out, the island weighs thousands of tons! Her force field is able to stabilize the tipping Hydrobase until Wonder Man arrives to help...which, as we've mentioned, shouldn't have worked, at all! Reed lets scientific inaccuracy slide, for the moment, although I suspect his teeth are grinding, and has Sue make a force-field spiral around the rocky pillar. Which still wouldn't be resolved this issue...
Looks like a printing plate shifted on that page...Meanwhile, the main team of Avengers (and reservist Sub-Mariner, who came to help and got dragged in) is still fighting Jinku, the witch-doctor of the Lava Men, and his giant lava monster. Their god Cha'sa'dra had been one of the demons that attacked the Avengers around issue #300, an Inferno crossover, and had died in battle; which killed most of his worshipers and left the rest as immobile stone statues. The fight's not going well, since Jinku has turned up the heat far past the point where the team's human members could stand it; although, as was often the case, Quasar probably should've been fine: his bands could protect him in deep space and should have there. The Eternal Forgotten One, Gilgamesh, gets punched out so hard that was pretty much it for his Avengers tenure; then the battle is abruptly ended when the statue Lava Men reveal they had merely been transforming into a new, better form, without the corrupting influence of their "god."
I don't think the new gold Lava Men were ever seen again, were they? I even feel like regular Lava Men were still seen later, too. This issue feels like Byrne was kind of trying to push through this storyline to clear the decks for whatever he actually wanted to do on the book, although most of the rest of his run here was the Acts of Vengeance crossover and then a multi-part Spider-Man guest-spot. His Avengers West Coast run is more memorable.
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I know the Lava Men showed up in the 400th anniversary issue briefly, but didn't they also show briefly or at least a mention during Busiek's run? No? Probably not.
I know we talked on and off about Wondy's belt rockets, and looking at that particular picture, Stark must've somehow, probably with Pym's Particles, fitted a couple nuclear reactors in it to give it that amount of boosting power. So I'm thinking, if Wonder Man's grip had slipped, the force of those rockets would've bounced him straight up in the air like a sling-shot.
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