Writer: Kurt Busiek
A little distance away from the battle Madame Masque arrives. She has with her the real Ionic lock. The one she gave the Avengers in Thunderbolts #44 was incomplete and was missing the final intensifier unit. Madame Masque decides to wait until Nefaria defeats the Avengers and Thunderbolts so she can use the Ionic lock on Nefaria and then all her enemies will be defeated.
Near Nefaria's castle the Ionic bomb launches. Atlas and Wonder Man still feeling a little strange from having their powers messed with by Nefaria decide to go after the bomb. The Avengers distract Nefaria while Atlas and Wonder Man go after the Ionic bomb as it proceeds further into the sky. Atlas discovers he can also fly in his Ionic form like Wonder Man.
While the Avengers and Thunderbolts continue to fight Nefaria, Madame Masque is approached by the bio-duplicate that survived who once fought alongside the Avengers called Masque. The bio-duplicate tries to convince Madame Masque to help the Avengers but it doesn't work so Masque takes the Ionic lock and goes after Nefaria herself. Nefaria sees Masque before she can fire the Ionic lock and is disintegrated much to Iron Man's horror. Madame Masque watches her bio-duplicate die and sees the Ionic lock that fell to the ground and finally realises that Nefaria is the enemy. Taking advantage of Nefaria's shock of seeing another of her, Madame Masque fires the Ionic lock at Nefaria. He laughs saying the blast didn't effect him at all but he starts to slowly leak Ionic energy. The Avengers and Thunderbolts redouble their efforts to exploit his weakness.
In space Atlas and Wonder Man reach the Ionic bomb that's going to cover the world in Ionic energy making the people that survive susceptible for Nefaria to control. Wonder Man remembers that he was in a similar situation before where he died. Wonder Man tries to defuse the bomb but has no luck. The bomb is about to go off and Atlas thinks they have only one chance to do something.
Down below the Avengers and Thunderbolts watch as a wave grows outward from the Ionic bomb in space until finally it stops. Wonder Man and Atlas dissipated into the Ionic bomb control the ball of Ionic energy until it becomes smaller and smaller.
Nefaria now fully enraged and now completely green and leaking much Ionic energy flies into the sky to go after Atlas and Wonder Man. Nefaria leaking large amounts of Ionic energy and no longer in control of himself he explodes.
Falling from the sky is Atlas and Wonder Man who are glowing with Ionic energy. Their bodies were overloaded with Ionic energy more than their bodies could handle. Songbird and Iron Man go to retrieve them.
Madame Masque goes to sneak away but Mach-2 realises that she's escaping the scene. He thinks she deserves not going to jail because she helped save the world and goes to give her something that can plug into a phone so she can reach the Thunderbolts on a secure line. Just in case she wants to talk to someone since they do have a psychiatrist on the team. Madame Masque declines the offer and leaves knowing that she doesn't want to be a criminal anymore but is still wanted by the law and isn't quite sure what she will do now.
The Avengers and Thunderbolts attend to Atlas and Wonder Man and the Aftermath of the battle while an epilogue shows a different Hank Pym in a pub.
Comments: A whole issue that is basically a fight between the Avengers and Thunderbolts versus Nefaria. A satisfying conclusion to the crossover even though the crossover turned out different than I expected and I wanted a little something more. Ultron Unlimited was much more interesting in Avengers than this epic battle has been with Nefaria even though they are around the same scale. Probably because I like Ultron more as a villain and that Nefaria costume never really caught on with me. As always the art was done well, too bad its Perez's last issue.
Individual characters get their moments through out this issue. Warbird taking charge of a small group of avengers, Atlas and Wonder Man as they try to defuse the Ionic bomb. Atlas's thoughts were particularly good dealing with feelings of failure in the past that have been dealt with in Thunderbolts before. With defusing the bomb if he died he would be able to go out a hero actually doing something right.
Once again I enjoyed Madame Masque's character and wasn't all the surprised to see the bio-duplicate called Masque show up. I'm disappointed that it appears Madame Masque won't be showing up anywhere else anytime soon. If she only accepted Mach-2's offer she could have shown up once more. I just hope the next time Madame Masque shows up she's presented just as interesting and not as a lame villain because some writer didn't bother to check what happened to her.
I wonder if this will have any permanent changes on Atlas's powers before he had to have someone or a vehicle to move around in but here he could fly in his ionic form like Wonder Man.
Overall I'm glad the crossover is over while it has been enjoyable I'm looking forward to see more Scourge and subplots in Thunderbolts and the Avengers can get back to their regular schedule of stuff.
Thunderbolts and all associated characters are the property of MARVEL COMICS TM&©2003.