It's that time of the week where I get to wax lyrical about books I love, and if you have been following this blog then know what's coming next.
If not then where have you been? I am writing about the best Avengers run of all time!
So get comfy, settle in because after Infinity there's only one way to go.
And it ain't upwards.
Last time we were with Earth's Mightiest Heroes they had fought off the oldest race in the universe, and liberated Earth from the clutches of The Mad Titan Thanos.
All in all a very successful day's work. But there's no rest for the wicked, so the Avengers & The Illuminati get ready to go again.
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| Library Copy Of The Avengers |
The Avengers starts off with a much needed party. Earth has been saved. The Builders are defeated. If you can't party after pulling off the mother of all victories then when can you party? But across time things are playing out that will impact the present. When a future Iron Man appears in the middle of the festivities rambling about rogue planets the party is officially over. The Avengers have a mission. Stop the celestial body hurtling through time and space from hitting the earth. I mean in all fairness I suppose not doing anything and carrying on with the 'We Saved Earth Celebrations' would have made the party itself a bit redundant.
The thing is though when you deal with the future, it knows things. Things going on in the background. Things which The Avengers don't know. And our future Iron Man is preparing to give Tony the perfect present for any little boy named Stark. A weapon.
Elsewhere A.I.M are busy being a nuisance. Using a device called the Auger, which allows them to pull things from dying Earth's, A.I.M are wanting all that they can get from these dying worlds. What they don't expect to find are The Avengers. Not our Avengers though, these are alternate Avengers based on the founding six members (General America, Iron Monger, Thorr, a lobotomised/sociopathic Hulk, Ant-Man and Wasp). Theirs was also an Avengers world, just not a particularly nice one. After breaking out of A.I.M containment these alternate Avengers decide to explore, fry some bystanders, you know the usual tourist stuff. If you think The Avengers Machine is going to stand by idly while some evil alternates are running around then you might want to think again.
As for The Illuminati, they are surviving. Atlantis is destroyed, Wakanda a smouldering ruin. Attilan has literally fallen. As Namor and T'Challa enjoy some quite alpha-esque banter the Prince of the Broken and The King of The Dead use a device called The Mirror to observe other worlds. The Mirror allows The Illuminati to monitor the past of these alternate earths, but also in some cases to see the future. The aim of this voyeuristic reconnaissance is to see if they can find something, anything that may help them not just stop The Incursions, but stop the death of the multiverse itself. Initially they find multiple earths with their own Illuminati, each actually doing significantly worse than they have been (although our Illuminati have certainly benefited from being spared the decision by other circumstances so far). It's certainly enough to make you lose hope. Then they see something different....
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| Entry for UK Top 10 films from The Times Digital Archive on 29 August 1998. |
Before getting into the something different however, we must cut back to The Avengers. Our ones. Not the evil ones.
The thing with keeping secrets is eventually you are going to get found out. If you're a guy like Tony Stark as well, the designs of your fellow Illuminati are likely to bleed into your own.
What doesn't help in that situation is having a brain like Bruce Banner on your team, who might just recognise these homages creeping into Stark's work. So when they're both alone Bruce calls Tony to the conference room of Avenger's Tower. These two geniuses need to talk. Because the others might be fooled, but Banner knows what it all means. The Illuminati have reformed.
The darkness cannot hide secrets forever though. When the light touches them all will be revealed. And that time is now. In the aftermath of Jason Aaron's Original Sin (which I may cover at a future date, but really for the purposes of this blog it sits on the periphery) Steve Rogers remembers everything. He remembers being summoned to Wakanda. He remembers The Incursions.
He remembers the shattering of the Infinity Stones. And he remembers The Illuminati wiping his memories. Assembling a small team to breach Stark's lab Captain America decides it's time the truth will out. In a journey across time the legacy of The Avengers will be seen.
Before we go however there's one loose end I need to tie up. The Illuminati have seen something different in The Mirror. On another world the seven greatest heroes of the Anti-Heroic Age form The Great Society to fend off an Alien invasion.
These heroes eventually become aware of The Incursions, and start to fight back, successfully repelling two Incursions witnessed by The Illuminati. As Namor and T'Challa share a joke they notice something alarming. The Mirror had been showing them the past, but now it showed the future. Standing face to face in a future Egypt are The Illuminati and The Great Society. What's crueler than fighting villains to save your world and the multiverse? Fighting heroes.
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| Library Copy Of The Avengers |
This volume for me begins Act 2 of Hickman’s story. In a lot of ways it’s the most focused and personal of the collected editions. Hickman brilliantly uses this to create the juxtaposition between Tony and Steve. Everything Hickman has been building towards starts here.
And things will get worse before they get better.
Because after the rise came the fall.
The Avengers Machine was broken.
The unthinkable had been done.
Now?
Everything dies.
Library Copy Of The Avengers
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