By Dan Slott, Khoi Pham, Rafa Sandoval, Stephen Segovia, Paco Diaz, Harvey Tolibao & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3746-7
One of the most momentous events in Marvel Comics history occurred in 1963 when a disparate array of individual heroes banded together to stop the Incredible Hulk. The Mighty Avengers combined most of the company’s fledgling superhero line in one bright, shiny and highly commercial package.
Over the decades the roster has continually changed until now almost every character in their universe has at some time numbered amongst their colourful ranks.
In recent years, Norman Osborn (the original Green Goblin) had, through various machinations, replaced Tony Stark asAmerica’s Security Czar: the “top cop†in sole charge of a beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom, especially in regard to ultra-technological threats and all metahuman influences…
Under Stark’s tenure a Superhuman Registration Act had resulted in a divisive Civil War amongst the costumed community with tragic repercussions, but the nation and the world were no safer.
At one stage the planet was almost lost to an insidious Secret Invasion by alien Skrulls leading to Osborn’s succession and the former villain’s exerting overt control over America by instigating an oppressive “Dark Reign†which saw the World’s Mightiest Heroes driven underground. To cement his position Osborn actually replaced the Avengers with his own hand-picked team of criminals and impostors.
From that particularly troubled time comes this fast and furious compilation collecting issues #21-26 of Mighty Avengers (2009) and material from Secret Invasion: Requiem wherein Stark/Iron Man’s lack of leadership and poor judgement during the crisis has led returned founding-member Henry Pym to seize control of the Avengers.
What You Need to Know: the Skrulls are shape-shifting aliens who’ve bedevilled Earth ever since Fantastic Four #2 and they’ve long been a pernicious cornerstone of the Marvel Universe. After years of humiliation and defeat the metamorphic malcontents finally hit on a winning plan, and to this end they gradually replaced a number of key Earth denizens – most notably superheroes and other metahumans.
When the plot was first uncovered it led to a confrontation between Earth’s champions and a Skrull ship full of what appeared to be old friends – some of whom had been dead for years. Were they escaped humans or yet another army of newly undetectable super-Skrulls? With no defender of the Earth knowing who to trust the planet almost fell to a determined massed onslaught…
With all stories written by Dan Slott, ‘How I’ll Remember You’ (illustrated by Khoi Pham & colourist Chris Sotomayor) opens proceedings as robotic Avenger Jocasta looks through the copious wardrobes of Janet Van Dyne whose ultimate sacrifice ended the Skrull assaults. Although the Wasp died, her memory patterns were encoded in the very confused robot and the conflicting data is beginning to cause a few problems…
For a start she is increasingly drawn to Pym, a man Jan was married to for years and a bi-polar genius who has just changed his powers and identity again. In the past Dr. Pym created the roles of Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath and Yellowjacket, but now he’s calling himself the Wasp…
The 3-part ‘Earth’s Mightiest’ begins with ‘The Smartest Man in the Room’ (inked by Crimelab Studios’ Allen Martinez & Danny Miki) and sees two survivors of the decimated Young Avengers sifting through the rubble of the group’s iconic Mansion when the long-gone Scarlet Witch appears. The last time she was seen her madness caused the deaths of many team-mates and the dissolution of the Avengers, but now the enigmatic figure seems intent on putting the band back together.
As well as now commanding all of America’s covert agencies and military resources under his umbrella organisation H.A.M.M.E.R., Osborn also has his own suit of super-armour. As Iron Patriot he leads a hand-picked team which includes Greek War-God Ares, golden superman Sentry, a new Marvel Boy and seemingly familiar heroes Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man and Wolverine (played by criminal killers Bullseye, Moonstone, Venom and the clawed mutant’s deeply disturbed son Daken) on high profile missions as part of a prolonged charm offensive.
Whilst Iron Patriot leads his ersatz team in media-hogging missions, the juvenile Vision and Stature are manipulated by the Scarlet Witch into joining Hercules, child genius Amadeus Cho, U.S.Agent, the Hulk and even faithful butler Edwin Jarvis as they petition Pym to reorganise and revitalise the Avengers.
She even approaches the out-of-favour Iron Man…
The boy Cho – “seventh smartest person on the planet†has deduced that a Chaos Cascade is warping the laws of physics and threatens humanity but whilst Osborn’s Avengers are wasting time fighting the catastrophic symptoms, the young genius has come to someone potentially even sharper to help tackle the cause…
Pym deduces that the crisis has originated in the mystic provinceof Transia and he’s right. On haunted Mount Wundagore the cursed mystic Modred has been working to bring Cthon, god of Chaos to Earth through the terrifyingly puissant tome the Darkhold.
By the time the scratch-team reach the Balkan ground zero however, the mage has succeeded in his task and the demon deity strides the Earth in the once-comatose body of the Witch’s brother Quicksilver…
‘The Writing on the Wall’ opens with a Cthonic crisis slowly wrecking the planet, even as the extremely unwelcome Iron Man strong-arms his way onto the team and straight into a knock-down, drag-out tussle with the ever-irascible Hulk. Pym and the rest of his ill-fitting squad ignore them and instead brave Modred’s lair where the size-shifting scientist gleans a possible solution.
It all has to do with Quicksilver’s mind and soul which are now trapped in the pages of the discarded Darkhold…
The first epic concludes with ‘Three Little Words’ when, in final battle with the disunited defenders, the smugly omnipotent Cthon stupidly underestimates the devious subtlety of the Shrinking Man’s science…
In the happy aftermath with the demon-god banished and both Quicksilver and the World restored, the Scarlet Witch disappears again, taking with her a dark and very damaging secret…
On a high, the Mighty Avengers decide to stick together in ‘Chasing Ghosts’ (with art by Rafa Sandoval, Roger Bonet Martinez & John Rauch) as the provocatively intransigent Witch orchestrates a distracting clash with Nazi bee hive-mind Swarm whilst her obsessed mutant speedster brother Quicksilver desperately tries to catch a few moments alone with his estranged and oddly acting sister.
Meanwhile Osborn (who is also secretly conspiring with a Cabal of super-villains including Asgardian God Loki, gang-boss The Hood, mutant Emma Frost, Taskmaster, Sub-Mariner and Doctor Doom) finally acts to remove his Avenging rivals by sending H.A.M.M.E.R. troops to shut down Pym’s trans-dimension laboratory/citadel…
With the lab slowly detaching from the Real World and Pym’s impossible, hush-hush dream project critically endangered, the embattled heroes split up as the final story-arc ‘Mighty/Fantastic’ (illustrated by Stephen Segovia, Paco Diaz, Harvey Tolibao, Noah Salonga, Jean-Francois Beaulieu & June Chung) finds The Wasp forced into conflict with one of his oldest friends and allies.
By most people’s standards Reed Richards is the Smartest Man Alive, but when he is asked by Pym to return a device which could save the dissolving extra-dimensional lab, the leader of the Fantastic Four makes a big mistake by saying no and even questioning the erstwhile Ant-Man’s intellect and stability.
Of course you realise this means war….
Desperate and really ticked off, Pym and his team launch an assault on the FF to regain the urgently needed doodad in a tension-drenched caper dubbed ‘The Baxter Job’ which culminates in a spectacular, impossibly even-matched fracas and a delightfully off-beat but apropos ending in ‘You Can’t Get There from Here’…
Remarkably self-contained and clear-cut for a book so mired in multiple complex continuities, Earth’s Mightiest offers a huge amount of fun, thrills and tense suspense which will delight fans of Costumed Dramas.
This sterling tome also offers a gallery of covers used and unused from Khoi Pham, Marko Djurdjevic, Crimelab Studios’ Allen Martinez, Dave McCaig, Danny Miki, Dean White, Jason Keith, and a Dark Reign teaser ad by Daniel Acuña.
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.