Avengers 299 - Inferno

Captain America seeks help from Reed Richards but instead finds Franklin has been kidnapped.

Avengers #299

Writing: Walter Simonson
Layouting: John Buscema
Finishing: Tom Palmer
Lettering: Bill Oakley
Coloring: Max Scheele
Editing: Mark Gruenwald
Editing in Chief: Tom DeFalco

The real Captain America returns to New York as demons come through the portal and finds the New Mutants dealing with them so he sets off to find more help. Elsewhere in Olympia the Eternal known as "the Forgotten One" is told of the demons and sent to New York to deal with the threat. In Connecticut Nanny has detected a powerful mutant and sends the Orphan Maker to kidnap the child and kill the parents; however the child is Franklin Richards and his parents survive because of a force shield around their bed. Captain America arrives and joins them in pursuing the ship to New York. Nanny's ship is brought down in the park where all four heroes converge but Nanny has a second helper in armour - Franklin.

There is still no team of Avengers put back together and only a few steps towards one. There's a strong hint that the Eternal called "the Forgotten One" will be joining (and also taking a name that will make my prose easier) but otherwise this issue feels more like it should be billed as "Captain America Team-Up" as he briefly works with the New Mutants and then two retired members of the Fantastic Four rather than seeking out new members.

The sequence in Times Square serves to bring Cap and the reader up to speed on the basics of the Inferno crossover as well as showing just how pointless it is to pretend to be anything but Captain America with Cannonball easily working out who he is. More surprising is the sudden use of Nanny from the pages of X-Factor even though Walter Simonson was drawing that book.

Nanny continues to have an unclear motivation but also there's some strange lapses in logic. Franklin is sleeping with his parents when he's kidnapped but for some reason the Orphan Maker is able to spread a sleep dust and lift Franklin out of the bed yet when he fires a gun there's a forcefield in the way. There's nothing indicating Sue Richards has heard Franklin's cries or that it's somehow automatically triggered and the result is the Orphan Maker has done a kidnapping but failed to live up to his codename. All the problems with Nanny continue here and make for some rather uninteresting scenes. However it does result in one of my all time favourite lines in comics as the Forgotten One shouts out:

He is not my son, egg with a voice. But if he tries to slay his own parents, he is a monster! And slaying monsters is why I am here!

Nanny is not too pleased.

Overall this issue feels stunted. Nanny just isn't that interesting a villain and with both the Avengers lacking a team and New York facing a demonic invasion this whole plot feels like a needless sideshow.