Exiles #54

Publisher
Marvel
Year
2005
Month
1
LastChanged
1/17/2024 9:33:10 PM
Rube Goldberg

Summary

  Earth is observed from space. On the streets of Manhattan, Goldberg mutters to himself and is shocked to see the Exiles standing in front of The Bagel Hole. Kevin wonders what's the worst that could happen if they don't complete their mission, and the owner tries to push them off, since they're scaring his customers, but Namora intimidates him. Calvin asks about the cheese danish, and he says the last one's in the window. He goes inside and calls the police. Clarice says the Tallus wants them to buy the danish; Barnell thinks it's ridiculous to think the world depends on a pastry.

  Namora says it's a variation of the Seahorse Effect: a popular theory that if a seahorse flaps its fins in the Pacific, it can cause a chain-reaction culminating in a tidal wave in the Atlantic. Heather says it's like the Butterfly Effect, and that med school taught her everything is connected: Calvin is about 200 pounds, but his pituitary gland, the size of a grape, could kill him. Calvin defensively reminds her the healing factor he mimicked from Wolverine will keep his glands "glandy" for ages. Namora says the foolish air-breathers can easily forget how connected everything is, but underwater you feel the continuum pressing in on you at all times. She's sure the Tallus is on to something. Barnell is freaked by all this talk of tidal waves and killer glands and warns Calvin that the danish is probably a time bomb, but he enters the shop, buys the danish, and takes a bite. The team teleports away.

  Goldberg sees and is unnerved; he enters the store and asks for his usual: coffee and a danish, but the last one was just sold. He goes berserk and pulls a gun, which he had planned to take to the office for a killing spree, but now it starts early. Just then the police pull up: the owner had called them to get rid of the mutants. Goldberg shoots one.

  On a nearby rooftop, Daredevil faces off against a mad scientist, Collier, who's mad because nobody takes him seriously, so he plans to blot out the sun with a canister of nanospores. Daredevil senses he doesn't really want to do this and tries to calm him, but he hears a gunshot and rushes away, telling "Collins" to wait till Thor arrives. Collier, insulted again, opens the canister.

  Daredevil nabs Goldberg and tells the policeman that his partner's heartbeat is strong: he'll live. The bagel shop owner points out the tornado that's formed above them; Daredevil says that's officially out of his league.

  Thor arrives and uses his power to try to dispel the storm, ignoring Collier's warning that his spores amplify atmospheric conditions. Thor has called on the jet stream, and Collier realizes that will cause a world-wide stink-bomb for three days, and there's no way to stop it.

  In orbit, the Shi'ar see Earth's atmosphere turn to smog; Deathbird thinks her sneak attack has been discovered, and the humans have poisoned the planet to make it undesirable. She calls off the attack and goes in search of another pleasure planet to conquer.

  Danish; gunman; Daredevil; mad scientist; Thor; smog; Deathbird: it's an oddball chain of events, like a Rube Goldberg machine.

  The Exiles land on a medieval world; their clothes and memories are transformed, and they believe themselves to be of that world.