Two Avengers Just Recreated The Classic Fastball Special

Spoilers for Empyre #1 by Al Ewing, Dan Slott and Valerio Schiti below!

Individuals work together to come up with strategies to help them achieve their goals. The X-Men have one of the most effective and famous of these strategies, the Fastball Special. And now the Avengers have just appropriated it in Empyre #1.

The Fastball Specialhad its first appearance in 1976 in the pages of Uncanny X-Men #100 during a fight between, ironically, the original X-Men created by Stan Lee and the “all-new, all-different” X-Men created by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum. The move consists of a larger, stronger hero–like Colossus–launching a smaller hero–like Wolverine–from a distance either at a target or into a larger melee. Since its first appearance in 1976, the move has been co-opted by dozens of other pairs of characters, from Howard the Duck to Squirrel Girl.

In Empyre #1, The Avengers are fighting alongside the telekinetic plant-based race, the Cotati, against the invading forces of the now-unified Skrulls and Kree. The savage She-Hulk is given a hammer by the Cotati-possessed Swordsman. The hammer allows Jennifer Walters to fully control her powers. A short time later, the Swordsman asks her to help him with a move that he describes as “the petal flies on the breeze.” She-Hulk knows it by another name: the Fastball Special. She uses the move to launch Swordsman directly into the Super Skrull.

The remainder of the story in Empyre #1 consists of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the Cotati fighting off the combined fleets of the Kree and Skrulls. But all is not as it seems. As Thor uses his magical hammer, Mjolnir, to disable the fleets, the Cotati reveal themselves as the real aggressors. The Cotati Celestial Messiah announces his intention to “take back the universe that was always ours!”

Over in Uncanny X-Men #100, the issue is more well known for an even more famous X-Men event: The death of Jean Grey (the first one, anyway). After the fight, the combined forces of the X-Men must escape a space station orbiting the earth. With their space shuttle disabled, someone must pilot the shuttle through a solar flare to get home safely. Jean Grey volunteers, but dies passing through the solar flare and upon reentry. And, in Uncanny X-Men #101, from Jean Grey’s ashes rises the Phoenix.

The Fastball Special is an iconic move created by an iconic pair of characters. The move, and its many variations, have entertained audiences for over 40 years and helped define the X-Men. Other teams should steal it more often. Perhaps we’ll see it again in forthcoming issues of Empyre.