The Avengers are up against a brand new kind of threat, and Black Panther is ready to borrow a Hail Mary play from Men In Black, to incredible effect
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Avengers: Mech Strike #1 by Jed MacKay, Carlos Magno, Guru-eFX, VC’s Cory Petit and Carlos Lao, on sale now.
The Avengers have gone up against some truly incredible enemies throughout their long history in the Marvel Universe. To deal with them, they’ve had to employ all manner of methods to subdue, entrap and defeat various supervillains, alien invaders and cosmic entities. Usually, winning a fight against any sort of skyscraper-sized monster is going to come with a lot of fanfare in the form of energy blasts and explosions. Occasionally the day is saved through less extraordinary measures, though rarely are those means as gruesome as what Black Panther has just borrowed from Men in Black.
Avengers: Mech Strike sees the team going into battle against a horrifying new threat, one that towers over nearly the entire city of Cleveland as it annihilates and consumes anything it can get its claws around. The heavy hitters do what they can to bring the beast down while the rest of the Avengers work on evacuating any civilians caught in the fray, but all of their efforts seem to be barely an inconvenience for the beast. Worse than that, some of their attacks even look to be making it stronger, as the massive monster drains the gamma radiation from the Hulk and shrugs off direct hits from Captain Marvel. Black Panther watches from a nearby rooftop, working out just what he needs to do to end the fight before it gets any worse. He tells the others that he has a theory, and there’s only one way he’ll be able to prove himself right. Unfortunately, that involves staring down the creature they’re up against and diving headfirst into its gaping maw.
It might look like the worst idea imaginable, but T’Challa mostly knows what he’s doing — or at least he’s confident enough in himself that he’s willing to find out. After seeing their ally chomped down by the beast, the other Avengers continue battling it the best they can. Captain America warns Iron Man not to get too close, though he isn’t able to do much in this fight himself. With the Hulk out of commission, they need some serious firepower to hold off the monster.
Thankfully, Thor is there with the assist in the form of an epic bolt of lightning right to the monster’s face, which surprisingly seems to put it on the ropes. Of course, the Avengers have already seen it absorb energy attacks and heal itself, but even Spider-Man can see that the fight is about to be over. The kaiju wretches in pain before crashing to the ground. Thor gloats that he’s bested the beast but Captain America is quick to point out that it simply ate something it couldn’t stomach.
Black Panther’s vibranium suit proved poisonous to the creature, even if they didn’t quite know what it was yet. As shocking as T’Challa’s last-ditch effort was, it’s a move that many readers are more than familiar with — in only a slightly different fashion. Seeing a hero jump down the gullet of a giant alien should be more than familiar to anyone who has seen 1997’s Men in Black. The film, centered around a shadowy secret agency that protects the world from extraterrestrial threats, starred Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K, a veteran of the MIB with nothing left to lose. Alongside Will Smith’s Agent J, the two hunted down an intergalactic terrorist who just so happened to be a twenty-foot cockroach with a weaker stomach than its appearance would imply. To keep the alien invader from leaving Earth with an entire galaxy in its pocket, Agents J and K faced the creature head-on.
In a last-ditch effort to defeat the monster, Agent K convinced the bug to eat him. Of course, being swallowed whole by an insect isn’t all that bad when you have a hand cannon that can turn entire city blocks inside out, which is exactly how Agent K both escaped his gruesome fate and saved the world in the process. This isn’t to say that Black Panther is secretly a Men in Black fan, but there isn’t any proof that he isn’t one, either.
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