Avengers World: Ascension


By Nick Spencer, Al Ewing, Marco Checchetto, Stefano Caselli, Dale Keown & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-629-8

Post-Infinity, the reshaping of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes into an unbeatable legion of justice continued in new title Avengers World which became the core title from which all other associated series would derive direction. Of course, that’s pretty much irrelevant if all you want is high stakes, high octane Fights ‘n’ Tights fun in the traditional Summer Blockbuster manner…

During the Origin Bomb bombardment by planetary sculptor-turned-probationary Avenger Ex Nihilo (see Avengers: Avengers World and The Last White Event), large parts of the planet were subjected to forced, random and rapid evolution. It was just the start of a season of extraordinary and escalating crises…

The most recent outbreaks brought an Avengers stealth team consisting of Shang-Chi, The Falcon, Black Widow and Wolverine to the Pacific island of Madripoor to investigate a hyperfast civil war. On arrival they discovered the entire place had been stolen.

Mystic ninja clan The Hand, at the behest of new chief The Gorgon, had enacted a ritual whose collateral effects enflamed the populace but whose true purpose was to awaken the unbelievably vast dragon the island rested upon. The heroes were too late to stop it taking flight wearing Madripoor as a hat and were trapped upon it as the Wyrm flew towards mainland China.

High over Southeast Asia, Shang-Chi challenged The Gorgon to single combat only to be cruelly beaten and tossed over the edge into the void…

Simultaneously Nightmask, Hawkeye, Spider-Woman and Starbrand were dispatched to Velletai in Italy. When the town’s entire population vanished a Continental super-team was deployed, but soon after arrival contact was lost. Exactly the same thing happened with the Avengers team, too.

Under Velletai, the American squad found a City of the Dead where the restless departed all screamed inside Starbrand’s head…

At S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ Bruce Banner had deduced that the newly autonomous nation A.I.M. Island was the crux of the cluster of contemporary crises. He also realised the rogue state’s landmass was changing shape and size so Captain America sent in relative neophytes Bobby “Sunspot” Da Costa, Sam “Cannonball” Guthrie and alien hybrid Izzy “Smasher” Kane (latest Superguardian of the Shi’ar Empire and granddaughter of Golden Age Earth hero Captain Terror) to investigate.

They were quickly captured and Smasher suborned to A.I.M.’s cause…

Scripted by Nick Spencer, Ascension collects issues #6-9 of Avengers World and Avengers #34.1 (spanning July to November 2014) and opens as a back-up team consisting of powerhouses Thor, Captain Marvel and Hyperion are teleported into A.I.M.’s capital city Barbuda by freshly recuperated new recruit Manifold. Illustrated by Marco Checchetto and colourist Andres Mossa, the action commences as a wave of A.I.M. warriors attack…

It is a bitter moment for Hyperion who was plucked from inter-dimensional limbo by the secret society’s Scientist Supreme Andrew Forson to spend an immeasurable time as an agonised guinea pig in the futuristic citadel. However it’s not his torment there that troubles him but the memory of having survived the death of two worlds and his new role as father-figure to a new race which developed in the distant Savage Land as the result of the recent Origin Bomb bombardment…

As the battle intensifies distracted Hyperion blasts his way into the heart of Forson’s lab to find the Scientist Supreme again ripping open doors between dimensions and is astounded by the incredible offer the maniac has the sheer audacity to make…

Before he can respond, however, the mind-warped Messenger (nee Smasher) intercepts and physically throws him off the island, with Thor and Marvel unceremoniously ejected in similar manner soon after…

Stefano Caselli illustrates the next chapter as attention switches to Madripoor where Falcon, Wolverine and Black Widow are helpless to save the rioting population from their own destructive panic. The Airborne Avenger soars off to find the missing Shang-Chi but is lured off the steadily progressing dragon-island and meets a most unlikely band of allies…

Smooth operator Xian Zheng rescued the defeated Shang after The Gorgon threw him off Madripoor with an astounding flying fortress dubbed The Circle but he is only the point man for a new direction in crisis-management by the Chinese Government…

The People’s Republic has formed its own covert peacekeeping force – S.P.E.A.R. – in response to S.H.I.E.L.D., but now employs a team of super-champions to deal with strictly Chinese problems…

As an army of mystic warriors riding small dragons attacks The Circle, the spy chief activates The AscendantsWeather Witch, Saber, Vector, Devastator and Sun Wukong, the Monkey King: demonstrating to Falcon and the watching world that the new China will take a back seat to no one…

Checchetto returns to limn the third chapter set far below Velletai. When the mission went dark, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill circumvented the Avengers’ lack of mystic resource by seconding neophyte wizard Sebastian Druid to find out what was going on.

He divined that the site was a “spirit trap” built by Entropy-worshipping Cult of Yagzan but now being used by a being of malign power, and as the tale resumes the kidnapped Starbrand meets it head on…

Control of the Dead City has been usurped by infernal Avengers’ arch-foe Morgan Le Fay and, as she crows over her immensely powerful juvenile captive, elsewhere Hawkeye, Spider-Woman and Nightmask battle revenant legions until fortuitously rescued by the team they came to save…

Despite being cut off from the surface Euroforce was able to stay alive and gather intel for a counter attack and, although Swordswoman, Tumult, Sliver, Tiger and Mikhail Zamorska, the Baby Killer are strangers to the Avengers, their leader is not.

Black Knight Dane Whitman is an honoured past member of the World’s Mightiest Heroes who combines high tech weaponry with ancient magic. His take on the situation is crucial to the counterattack but despite the combined teams’ best efforts Le Fay makes her move and opens the doorway to doom in Zagreb, Munich, Madrid, Athens and Paris…

The ongoing series of extinction events reaches critical mass in #9 as Caselli illustrates ‘Operation Bar Fight’ which initially returns to Barbuda where Avengers Sunspot and Cannonball are being cosseted and feted by the A.I.M. in a vain – and expensive – attempt to “turn” the mutants into willing adherents.

Everything changes when, aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, Agent Phil Coulson finds a captured robotic Jocasta unit has spontaneously reactivated and begun dictating a message from the future…

Forson’s incredible technological breakthroughs are the result of collaboration with a faction of A.I.M. based decades ahead of now and Tomorrow’s Tech Terrorists are funnelling future advancements to today for reasons S.H.I.E.L.D. can only guess.

Hill risks destroying Sunspot and Cannonball’s cover, contacting and ordering them to find Forson’s time machine and use it to glean useful data from the future.

Hill has always been worried by the young mutants’ cavalier attitudes and frat boy silliness, but never more so than now when the fate of humanity is in the hands of two hormonal idiots with no sense of self-preservation…

Luckily she has no idea just how serious the mission is as the lads materialise in a fantastic alien-populated metropolis where master assassin Taskmaster is waiting for them…

The killer might not need to do anything as the two goons hit a bar for a quick drink and manage to start a riot. Thankfully the time-linked Jocasta unit is there to save them and amidst a fusillade of blaster bursts she drags them to meet the real reason for their temporal jaunt.

Now all the danger-loving buffoons have to do is rescue five extremely dangerous and rebellious kids: the children of today’s greatest heroes collectively known as The Next Avengers…

To Be Continued…

The chronal chronicles take a pause here, but the Fights ‘n’ Tights furore doesn’t end as this titanic tome closes with ‘The World in His Hands’ from Avengers #34.1 by Al Ewing, Dale Keown, Norman Lee & Jason Keith; taking a long hard look at extra-dimensional superman Hyperion…

Wrapped up in the tense search for a young boy abducted by a minor-league super-villain, the twice tragic history unfolds of a hero who is the last survivor of not only his ultra-advanced birthworld but also the alternate Earth which subsequently fostered and reared him…

More a collection of tantalising set-ups, introductions and prologues than an actual narrative adventure, this light confection of action and spectacle will nonetheless intrigue and astonish lovers of cosmic Costumed Dramas, and the tome also offers a potent covers-and-variants gallery by Neal Adams & Paul Mounts, Mark Brooks, Gabrielle Dell’Otto, Ryan Stegman & Edgar Delgado, Keown& Keith and Chris Bachalo.

Promising a stupendous clash and climactic conclusion (sometime, somewhere else) this is a book best appreciated by dedicated fans rather than occasional or casual readers, but if you’re a consumer with a little patience the eventual payoff that follows this collection will certainly be worth the wait…
© 2014 Marvel. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.