Avengers, The #158

Issue Details

Synopsis

"When Avengers Clash!" The Vision has just finished a battle against the reanimated statue of the Black Knight, ending with the statue being destroyed. When Wonder Man and Scarlet Witch enter the room, Wanda asks Wonder Man to hold her while she recovers from the attack. This causes a jealous streak in the Vision, who sees Wonder Man -- the person whom the Vision's own brain patterns are based on -- as a threat to his marriage to Wanda and attacks him. As the battle rages on, the Scarlet Witch goes to find the other Avengers, who are just recovering from their battle with the Black Knight statue. They arrive just as Wonder Man has succeeded in landing a thunderous blow to the Vision. Iron Man breaks up the fight threatening to suspend both of them if they continue to battle. When Jarvis intervenes with a request for help, he also asks if there is anything he can do to help dispose of the ruined statue of the Black Knight. This leaves Iron Man to wonder what is becoming of the team before calling them all together for a meeting. Meanwhile, in a research community in the Canadian Rockies, researcher Franklin Hall, gifted with gravitational powers, has control over the entire community. When it's learned that one of the other scientists named Joe has contacted the Avengers. In an effort to stop such things from happening again, Hall uses his powers to lift Research City high into the air. He then is about to kill Joe when Joe's wife Judy, a woman that Hall favors, begs for him to stop. He agrees and orders Joe be locked up. Meanwhile, another woman, Raquel, seeks to replace Judy as the object of Frank's attraction. Later that night, Judy arrives with a costume she designed for Frank, and he explains to her that while working on a means of creating a teleportation system, he was jolted with an anti-gravity that endowed him with the powers he has now. Putting on the costume she has prepared, Franklin rechristens himself Graviton and attempts to seduce Judy. However, with the Avengers sneaking onto the floating Research City, Judy plays along until Raquel bursts in and warns Graviton of the Avengers' intrusion. Graviton uses Judy as a human shield and blasts the Avengers out of his room. As Judy attempts to escape, she is knocked out by Raquel, who sees this as the ideal situation to curry Graviton's favor. As the battle rages on, the Avengers find that Graviton is a challenging foe, as he can alter the gravity of any object. He easily downs the Vision, makes Captain America's shield so heavy that it cannot be lifted and so on. When the Avengers appear to have the upper hand, Graviton makes the roof of the building collapse on his attackers knocking them all out due to the resulting cave-in. With the Avengers defeated, Graviton vows to use his powers to take over the entire world.