Avengers Forever vols. 1 & 2

I expressed a certain amount of skepticism towards the need for this title’s existence when it was first announced.  Sure, I liked Jason Aaron’s run on “Avengers,” but was it good enough to warrant a second ongoing series as well?  The answer from a publication standpoint is “Yes” as this title is crossing over with its parent as part of the “Avengers Assemble” event.  So the events of vols. 1 & 2 become required reading for those invested in that storyline.  Even if they don’t turn out to be absolutely essential to understanding what’s going on in the crossover, these volumes still offer more of the outsize crazy fun that has characterized Aaron’s run to date.

Vol. 1, The Lords of Earthly Vengeance spins out of one of the teasers from “Avengers #50” back in vol. 9.  Specifically, the one which had a Deathlok recognizing Robbie “Ghost Rider” Reyes as an Omniversal Avenger and promptly whisking him off on a trip through the multiverse.  Their first stop:  Earth 818, where there is only the Wasteland patrolled by War Machines who serve at the beck and call of the Black Skull.  He’s a variant of the Red Skull who has his own symbiote and he’s every bit as nasty as that combination implies.

Robbie and Deathlok put up a good fight initially, but soon find themselves at the Black Skull’s mercy.  His plan is a simple one:  Torture them to find out what they know about the multiverse and take that information back to his buddies in the Multiversal Masters of Evil.  The only thing he hasn’t counted on is the resistance led by one of the few heroes left in this universe.  That’d be the science-mongering, hard-drinking, size-changing technologist known as Tony Stark and his robotic ant partner Shellhead.

This take on Stark is only the tip of the iceberg for the alternate-universe versions of familiar Marvel heroes you’ll see in these two volumes.  As I mentioned in my review of Aaron’s latest volume of “Avengers,” anyone who has made it this far is going to find these new crazy takes – Hello there, Infinity Thing! – entertaining due to their over-the-top nature.  His version of Stark certainly works here and gets a fair amount of development across these two volumes.  Better still is the version of Doom Supreme seen at the end of the first volume and given a backstory and motivation that manages to make him come off as more monstrous and ruthless than the one we’re all familiar with.

Unfortunately the writer pushes his luck too far when it comes to challenging Robbie over the course of this first arc.  It’s clear he wants to set the Black Skull, and by extension the Multiversal Masters, as a big threat for this storyline.  He does that by cramming way too much torture and suffering into the second issue in an effort to break the character.  In addition to just being unpleasant, it feels like the writer is trying to force a plot point rather than let it happen naturally.  It’s a point that feels like it would be difficult to make work in regular circumstances, and it fails here because it ultimately feels unnecessary to the main story given how easily the Black Skull (and the “others”) are dispatched here.

Perhaps Aaron could’ve made things work if he’d developed Robbie’s mental state more over the course of these two volumes.  Except that the Ghost Rider and Deathlok wind up getting shoved into the background for the majority of vol. 2, The Pillars.  That’s because this volume isn’t so much concerned with telling an ongoing story as it is showing us really cool variants of more familiar Marvel Heroes.

Are you ready for the Sky Panther, who fights across worlds against the intergalactic threat posed by the Killmonger?  How about several versions of Steve Rogers thrust together in a room and forced to fight against unknown oppressors day after day?  Or a version of Thor hounded by Mjolnir as a constant reminder of his unworthiness, who is taken under the tutelage of Lei-Kung the Thunderer to become the next Iron Fist?  Then there’s the Carol Danvers who toils against the Victorian-era oppression fostered by the Dark Phoenix in a world where no one is allowed to fly?

All of these are really solid takes on the characters, giving them all satisfying introductions and making sure we want to see more of them in “Avengers Assemble.”  If anything, I continue to be surprised by how the writer still has more to say about Thor after writing his adventures for the better part of a decade.  This includes the Kev Walker-illustrated story at the back of the volume, even if its inclusion here feels more like an afterthought than anything else.

Best of all these, however, is the spotlight on the version of Stark introduced in vol. 1.  As one of the “pillars” of the Avengers, they need a version of him to lead the army they’re putting together.  The problem is that they only find broken versions of this particular hero.  The means by which they find a solution to this may be a little simple, but it’s very much in keeping with the spirit of the character.

Vol. 2 wraps up with a story that sees Aaron coming back to finish what he started with Robbie in the first volume.  He’s working with some shaky foundations here and that means we get a mediocre wrap-up as the series sets up “Avengers Assemble.”  It’s your standard tale where our hero feels he has to sacrifice himself to save everyone, which means he goes off to fight the bad guys by himself.  You’ve seen this kind of story play out before and this one doesn’t do things any differently, right down to the predictably heroic sacrifice one character makes at the end.  Given how solid the character spotlights in this volume were, this final issue is a real let-down.

Art in these two volumes is handled by two artists:  Aaron Kuder and Jim Towe.  Kuder makes the stronger impression of the two with his solid and detailed linework, which gives the heroes and the actions they engage in real definition and weight.  He’s also very much in synch with the writer when it comes to the kind of craziness he’s asked to showcase on the page, which is a trait shared by fellow artist Towe.  While this is a good thing, and Towe’s art isn’t bad, there’s a softness to it that has me feeling the impact of the art less than I did with Kuder.  It’s still solid work, particularly in the two issues he does in the first volume.

Admittedly, these two volumes of “Avengers Forever” stumble at the end when it comes to setting up the event they’re leading into.  Before then, they’re a fun trip through the multiverse filled with memorable variants that wind up having more to offer than the twisted “What If?” circumstances of their origins.  I’d really like to see Aaron do more with them in “Avengers Assemble,” even though I can’t quite shake the feeling that they may wind up just being cannon fodder we care about in the end.  Even so, these volumes did have their merits even though I can only see them being appreciated by people who have followed the writer’s “Avengers” run up to this point.