The annual featuring the Avengers and the Justice League of America Squadron Supreme follows up on their “tense” team-up in Avengers #5-6 and offers a good old-fashioned “split into smaller teams to defeat the Big Bad’s threat” story, while the Silver Surfer/Thor Annual from around the same time features one page with the Avengers, with Cap in full acrobat mode.
We start with this page in classic team-up headshot style, which I absolutely adore (taking me back to the classic JLA/JSA team-ups)…
…with Justice expressing his admiration for Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, while Firestar listens patiently.
Speaking of these two, it’s curious where this story fits in to the regular Avengers title: Their presence, and the absence of Warbird, suggests that this story takes place after Avengers #7, in which she quit and the two Young Reservists were activated. But also in that issue, Cap’s pointy shield was destroyed by a Kree warrior (as confirmed in issue #8), yet it looks fine in the group training scene below. (There’s a Marvel No-Prize waiting for anyone who can explain this!)
When Justice arrives (late) and uses psychic blasts to destroy the battle drones, Cap explains the purpose of the exercise.
Gulp indeed, young man.
Vision lets him off the hook a little when he says that he was able to collect all the data he needed, and notes that Justice may have even added a little surprise to the proceedings. Justice is overjoyed, while Cap tries to rebuild the team’s reservist ranks.
The alternate-universe Swordsman and Magdalene (both first seen in Avengers #343) appreciate the offer but feel strange being around Avengers from Another World, a general impression with which Cap sympathizes (his displacement being more Timely, of course).
It is at this point that the astral image of Moonglow, the resident magician of the Squadron Supreme, appears pleading for help, to which the Avengers immediately respond. While Cap tries to moderate Hawkeye’s complaint about repeatedly having to rescue to Squadron after they’ve been brainwashed, he has to counsel further reserve after they’re captured by a Squadron member who may very well have been brainwashed.
Hyperion’s warning and the group’s combative pose do little to dispel that impression.
(Compare the page above, pencilled by Carlos Pacheco, to George Pérez’s beautiful splash page from Avengers #5—two brilliant artists tragically no longer with us, Pacheco taken long before his time—both gorgeously colored by Tom Smith.)
As Clint gloats—hardly virtuous but perfectly understandable—Cap puts the team on guard, preparing for the worst. But when Moonglow tells Hyperion she summoned the team, he throws a “my bad.”
After Power Princess tells the Avengers they managed to trace the source of their mind control from Avengers #5-6, Hyperion justifies and apologizes for being suspicious—and hypothesizes about why his team might be so susceptible to manipulation (on this Earth, at least)—before shaking on it with Cap, who must be relieved not to have to fight these guys again.
Before long the two teams find this guy, the source of their problems, whom we glimpsed at the end of Avengers #6, and about whom Clint refreshes us on the history (starting with Avengers #109, in which Cap did not appear aside from the cover—gotta sell the books, right?).
Like many comic-book egomaniacs, Imus Champion wants to prove himself to… well, himself, by defeating the Avengers and the Squadron Supreme, so he forces them to play along by planting nerve gas bombs around the world, which he will detonate unless they find him and stop him (and no contacting anyone else for help). (Mwa-ha-ha!).
The collected heroes acknowledge Champion’s sincerity and credibility, and then decide to split up in a way that assuages each team’s lingering suspicions about the other (even though, as Cap and Hyperion whisper to each other, they don’t like it).
Oh Firestar, you can do so much better… especially seeing that she is the one who manages to send a message for help.
After various duos and trios among the collected heroes fail against Champion, Cap leads his New Kooky Quartet for one last try.
Champion uses one of Hawkeye’s arrows to trigger Skylark’s sonic scream to take care of the three heroes who aren’t Cap, but our hero struggles through with a mere nosebleed—and a smashing headache, I would imagine—and treats Champion like all the oversized blowhards he’s faced in the past (most notably Thanos).
But Champion avoids physical confrontation, resorting to a trick up his sleeve (or thereabouts), and takes appropriately oversized gratification in his victory.
He suddenly finds “honor” in deciding to set off the bombs as promised, but finds they do not work, thanks to the colleague to whom Firestar sent a message to earlier some friendly ants. Champion accuses the heroes of cheating, but Cap reminds him the terms were imposed on them, so they were never bound to follow them, and instead they did what heroes do.
After Cap “persuades” Champion to give in—not without a final “you haven’t seen the last of Imus Champion!”—Firestar shows humility in deflecting credit for the win…
…but is silently proud of herself after receiving accolades from Cap himself during his post-game analysis.
At the end, Tony and Magdalene find a way to send the Squadron Supreme back to their own world—except Haywire, the one member who was not based on a JLA character, and whom Squadron writer Len Kaminski wanted off the team before their next adventure—as well as sending Magdalene and the Swordsman off to find a new world.
Finally, we have one page from 1998’s Silver Surfer/Thor annual, in which the Avengers respond to an emergency alarm, with the exposition praising both Cap’s acrobatic prowess and quick reaction.
Of course, the “UFO” is none other than the Silver Surfer, who is seeking Thor to team up on a mission of common interest… you can read more for yourself using the links below.
ISSUE DETAILS
Avengers/Squadron Supreme Annual 1998: Kurt Busiek and Len Kaminski (writers), Carlos Pacheco (pencils), Matt Banning, Vince Russell, Al Vey, Bob Wiacek, and Paul Neary (inks), Tom Smith (colors), Richards Starkings, Dan Lanphear, and Comicraft (letters). (More details at Marvel Database.)
Collected in: Avengers Assemble Volume 1 and Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe.
Silver Surfer/Thor Annual 1998: Tom DeFalco and J.M. DeMatteis (writers), Ramon Bernado (pencils), Mark Pennington (inks), Tom Smith (colors), John Costanza (letters). (More details at Marvel Database.)
Collected in: Silver Surfer Epic Collection: Sun Rise and Shadow Fall and Thor Epic Collection: The Dark Gods.
THE VIRTUES OF CAPTAIN AMERICA 
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