AVENGERS ANNUAL #19 Marvel Comics, 1990

I loves me the Terminus.

An alien ravager of worlds encased in a giant suit of armor, Terminus is a classic “big monster” bad guy who has tussled with the Avengers and The X-Men. There is no such thing as too many giant monsters in my opinion, so I’m a big fan. I’d like to see a Thunderdome-style cage match between Terminus and Red Ronin where they just hack the living bejeezus out of each other with giant chainsaws and polearms. Two giant monsters enter – one giant monster leaves! Do you hear me, Marvel? Make it happen!

Despite my affection for Terminus, I do not loves me The Terminus Factor, the four-part storyline that ran through Marvel’s Avengers annuals during the summer of 1990. The stories themselves were pedestrian and, as was often the case with annual books, the level of quality suffers in comparison to the regular monthly books. The annuals of that era were always written and drawn by somebody other than the regular creative team (in this case writer Roy Thomas and artist Herb Trimpe), which made for a jarring reading experience, and the page count was padded with lame back-up filler stories.

In a nutshell, the Terminus Factor features an ever-growing, ever-evolving Terminus monster who starts out small and fights Iron Man, gets bigger and fights Thor, then two Terminus monsters fight with the West Coast Avengers, and then a frickin’ HUGE Terminus tries to wipe out St. Louis and The Avengers. Don’t ask me to explain, I haven’t the will.

Our story begins with the combined might of the West Coast Avengers, the Great Lakes Avengers (yeesh), and the Regular Non-Sucky Avengers confronting a massive four armed Terminus who is floating above St. Louis.

Are we sure that’s St. Louis, Missouri? Looks more like Brownsville, Texas to me.

The combined Avengers Army takes the fight to the new Super Terminus, but that bastard is tough. Plus, he’s got this crazy energy lance thing that has some sort of psychedelic powers – it makes giant screaming blue heads appear over Earth’s cities. Trippy.

While the earthbound Avengers are getting their asses handed to them by Terminus, our homeboy Thor is lost in space without his magic hammer. It’s not a dignified situation for the God of Thunder, who falls victim to the gravitational pull of “yon planetoid” in a sequence that still cracks me up to this day:

Since this is a Roy Thomas script, everyone explains what is happening to them in real time. Thor has the presence of mind to describe to himself his situation right before he face plants into an asteroid. I’m going to try that next time I’m in a car accident: “That car--! Pulling out in front of me! Going faster - faster!! There’s no way to stop, no way to avoid it – looks like I’m going to --" SMASH!

Thor pulls himself together and realizes that since this planetoid has an atmosphere, he can speak – and if he can speak, that means he can SING! The guy’s got a song in his heart that he just has to let out! Actually, Thor starts chanting an ancient Norse rune spell in the planetoid’s thin atmosphere, and his magical sea shanty carries across the airless void of space to planet earth. Don’t ask – it’s Nordic magic, it doesn’t have to make sense.

The God of Thunder has such a lovely singing voice that Terminus blasts off into space, drawn into the cosmos by Thor’s siren song. It’s kind of like those cartoons where Bugs Bunny smells something cooking and follows the scent in a trance.

Once out in space, the Avengers blow up Terminus or turn him into a black hole or something and Thor gets his hammer back and everybody returns safely to Earth and it's high fives all around. The end.

Like I said, not the most gripping yarn.

Avengers Annual #19 gets points for giant monster action, Roy Thomas’s overwritten script, and Thor singing, but loses points for an uninspired plot, the Great Lakes Avengers, and twenty-odd pages of terrible back-up stories.

I was curious about Thor’s beautiful song, however, so I ran it through an online Ancient Norse/English dictionary. Turns out that Scandanavians of all eras are big fans of the super-group ABBA.

Question: What other music could lure a rampaging giant monster into space?

Answer: The Cher song Believe would have worked equally well.

"Do you beli-eeeve in life after love?"