With Marvel NOW launching soon, its probably a good idea to prime some lapsed readers into the ins and outs of what's happening in the Marvel U.
What better way to recap the week, the Marvel's own recap pages!
THIS WEEK!: 1st august 2012...........all recaps courtesy of Marvel Comics.
AVENGERS ACADEMY
GIANT-MAN recently relocated the academy to the newly refurbished and reinforced West Coast Avengers compound and opened its doors to any super-powered teen in search of training.
Due to the danger of the escalating Avengers/XMen war, GIANT-MAN and TIGRA decided that the school was not safe anymore, and closed the Avengers Academy effective immediately.
Billionaire superhuman youth JEREMY BRIGGS, AKA the ALCHEMIST, has set up an organization dedicated to finding alternatives to what he considers the harmful hero/villain paradigm perpetuated by the Avengers.
He has persuaded some Avengers Academy personnel, including inaugural student VEIL and former teacher, JOCASTA, to join his cause.
AVX___AVENGERS vs XMEN
The Phoenix Force has been fragmented, with portions inhabiting five prominent XMen: CYCLOPS, EMMA FROST, COLOSSUS, MAGIK and NAMOR.
They have used that power to reshape the world for the better, but the all-consuming nature of the Phoenix Force still threatens to corrupt them.
The Avengers have turned to HOPE, the Phoenix Force's intended host.
In an effort to manage the cosmic force, CYCLOPS, frustrated at the Avengers' attempts to intercede and disrupt his plans, begins a worldwide manhunt to locate Earth's Mightiest Heroes and take them off the board.
NAMOR, having learned of the Avengers hideout in Wakanda, launched a massive attack in an attempt to permanently eliminate the team of heroes.
The Avengers came at Namor with everything they could muster and defeated the Atlantean king.
However, as NAMOR fell, his portion of the Phoenix Force was divided up between the remaining members of the Phoenix Five, increasing their power.
The Avengers have now all fallen back to the mystical city of K'un Lun, where they intend to prepare HOPE for the dangerous fight ahead.
AVENGING SPIDERMAN
Ace pilot CAROL DANVERS was flying PETER PARKER to Boston to visit his AUNT MAY when they collided mid-air with ROBYN HOOD!
ROBYN is a suspected bank-robber on the run from National Federal Bank.
Now CAPTAIN MARVEL and SPIDER-MAN are trying to sort things out between ROBYN, the bank and their private security team of men in robot suits but they just learned that shooting ROBYN causes her to absorb the energy and grow 50 ft tall!
DAREDEVIL
Courtesy of Daily Bugle:
"Knight in Shining Armor": Latveria issues statement regarding IRON MAN's incursion into the country, allegations of DAREDEVIL detainment.
"MATT MURDOCK Missing?": Manhattan's favorite blind lawyer, MATT MURDOCK, has been suspiciously absent from the legal (and singles!) scene. Could this have anything to do with the rumors that he's DARDEVIL?
"Remembering JANET VAN DYNE": Heiress, Avenger and wife to GIANT-MAN (HANK PYM).
DEFENDERS
The Concordance Engine: This strange machine has been found by our intrepid Defenders in numerous places around the world--beneath the marvelous Wundagore Mountain--in an Atlantean excavation site that hid the relics of a great battle--and now rumors of another in the mysterious city-state of Z'Gambo in the heart of the African rainforest.
This machine can warp reality.
It can resurrect the dead.
And a team of superhumans fought and died protecting one long, long ago.
The lone survivor of that battle was JOHN AMAN, the PRINCE OF ORPHANS, a human weapon of immense power and mystery.
AMAN acts as the Engine's global protector and he will not suffer fools like our Defenders gladly. He somehow activates the Concordance Engine and the Defenders seem to white out into oblivion...
HAWKEYE
HAWKEYE became the greatest sharp-shooter known to man.
He then joined the Avengers.
This is what he does when he's not being an Avenger.
That's all you need to know.
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN
A group of villains consisting of the MANDARIN, EZEKIEL STANE, and JUSTINE HAMMER united to carry out a series of attacks throughout the planet.
Their actions led to both the government and the world in losing faith in TONY STARK, and his ability to protect the planet as IRON MAN.
With Hammer Industries taking control of STARK'S Iron Man capabilities, STARK purged the armor from his body.
Meanwhile, JAMES "RHODEY" RHODES, whose death was previously faked, emerged as the new IRON MAN and has been meeting STARK'S enemies head on.
STARK, however, discovered that MANDARIN is actually inside his head--literally able to control, or at least to push STARK, in directions he chooses.
Under the villain's manipulations, he's been working tirelessly side-by-side with brain-damaged rival EZEKIEL STANE to produce machines of mysterious design.
In order to meet MANDARIN's demands, he's requested certain materials essential to the project's completion.
The long-gestating Stark Titanomech--a massive weapon of destruction more powerful than anything STARK has ever before conceived.
X-FACTOR
For a time, MADROX was an interdimensional pinball, ricocheting from one parallel world to another before finally being sent home by another universe's DR STRANGE.
Unfortunately several of the villains he encountered en route were dragged along for the ride.
While they cool their heels in an abandoned movie studio in LA, MADROX has been chasing down leads on a murder case in Seattle, and GUIDO and MONET went on a date that ended very badly.
X-MEN
What appears to be monsters have been popping up around the world, and STORM has brought her security force to investigate and confront them.
The first few died and decomposed immediately upon being hit, but PSYLOCKE confront the giant mutant discovered outside Quebec City, convincing him to come with the XMen peacefully.
On board the XMen's mobile base, STORM and COLOSSUS get into a heated debate regarding STORM's acting outside of CYCLOP's authority.
Upon discovering that this "proto-mutant" speaks Russian, COLOSSUS brings in his sister Magik to help communicate with him.
His name is ISTER and he is a clone of an older species of mutants that survived the Black Plague.
They were hunted down out of fear to extinction.
Now, these "proto-mutants" are being cloned and let loose on the world.
In a secret laboratory, the man responsible for bringing back this race of proto-mutants, DAVID MICHAEL GRAY, remotely terminates ISTER...but not before PSYLOCKE finds the location of the lab from within ISTER'S mind.