By Dan Slott, Christos N. Gage, Khoi Pham, Sean Chen & 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 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…
At one time in recent years Norman Osborn (the original Green Goblin) had, through various machinations, replaced Tony Stark as America’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 and the planet was almost lost to an insidious Secret Invasion by alien Skrulls.
After executing the Skull leader on live TV, Osborn’s popularity skyrocketed, and when Stark was inevitably fired the former villain got his job. Slowly at first, he began to exert overt control over America: 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 coterie of criminals and impostors.
Eventually however the madman’s reach exceeded his grasp and Founding Avenger Henry Pym took back the hallowed name and formed his own squad of champions to restore both the team’s reputation and his own.
In the past the periodically mentally unstable Dr. Pym created the roles of Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath and Yellowjacket to fight crime, disaster and injustice, but since the Skrulls killed his former wife (she was actually only mutated and lost in another dimension: it’s comics and nobody dies forever) he’s been calling himself The Wasp in her honour…
Aided by the mystic machinations of Wanda Maximoff, the once-reviled Scarlet Witch, Pym reluctantly gathered a disparate group of veterans and neophytes under his banner. Former Young Avengers Stature and a juvenile Vision joined Hercules, child prodigy Amadeus Cho, U.S. Agent and faithful butler Edwin Jarvis in a reorganised, revitalised gang which was soon augmented by robotic siren Jocasta, forcibly encoded with the lost Janet Van Dyne‘s brain patterns and memories.
This fact has generated a few problems: for a start she was 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 yet again…
The presence of the Scarlet Witch soon draws her twin brother Quicksilver back into the fold, but even after defeating an attempt by Osborn’s H.A.M.M.E.R. agency to shut them down and surviving a fractious quarrel with the Fantastic Four, Pym’s Avengers are far from settled into their new role.
That might be due to the fact that the Witch is actually a subversive impostor: the team’s oldest foe pursuing a Machiavellian and deadly personal agenda…
Plotted by Dan Slott and written by Christos Gage, this all-action volume collects Mighty Avengers #27-31 (September 2009-January 2010) and opens with a history lesson from the hidden race known as Inhumans.
Illustrated by Khoi Pham & Allen Martinez, the flashback shows how current monarch Black Bolt and his cousins Medusa, Gorgon and Karnak impossibly overthrew the reigning king – the most powerful Inhuman ever born – because he overstepped his authority and stole the race’s most puissant weapon The Slave Engine.
The device was created to balance the scales should the teeming hordes of humanity ever attack the pitifully small race of outcasts but the complacent and too-soft King deemed it an abomination and hid it from his fellows.
Although defeated and banished he would not return it, and for his crime his name was stricken from all records and was forever ‘Unspoken’…
Now, uncounted years later, U.S. Agent and Quicksilver are in Tibet amidst rumours that an unknown Inhuman might be allying with unfriendly power China. Having married into Black Bolt’s family the super fast mutant instantly recognises the towering figure for who he really is and panics…
Elsewhere Pym is conducting a tour of the Avengers new HQ. The Infinite Avengers Mansion is an immeasurable trans-dimensional palace with doors that can open into anywhere…
Back in the Himalayas, U.S. Agent’s fears of a Sino/Inhuman pact are laid to rest when China’s entire metahuman military division The People’s Defense Force is deployed to attack the trespassing Unspoken… and soundly thrashed in mere moments…
Over the intervening years the dethroned, pro-human king – exiled with only a few mentally deficient, slavish Alpha Primitives for company – has suffered agonies of loneliness and is now resolved to trigger the Slave Engine and destroy humanity, whilst back at the Infinite Mansion Stature has her suspicions about Wanda confirmed when she sees the Witch intercept and delete Quicksilver’s SOS alarm call.
However before she can warn anybody the plucky teenager is mystically gagged by the gloating sorceress…
As the China crisis worsens, Stature finds a way to circumvent her handicap and invites some old Young Avenger pals to the mansion for a party, hoping the inevitable rambunctious chaos will give her an opportunity to act. The ploy works especially well since Clint Barton (former Hawkeye and current New Avenger Ronin) gatecrashes the bash and instantly attacks the woman who once killed him…
Pym meanwhile is oblivious to all mundane events. Having reconciled with FF leader Reed Richards he is embarking on an exploratory foray into Macrospace, intent on growing beyond the limits of the universe in search of new discoveries…
As Hawkeye and the Young Avengers inconceivably drive off the faux Witch in the Infinite Mansion, the battle is almost lost in the East where the Unspoken has finally unleashed his race’s ultimate weapon: a crystal compound which turns humans into Alpha Primitives…
At home, free to speak at last, Stature tells the assembled heroes of Quicksilver’s alert and they immediately deploy to Tibet…
Sean Chen, Mark Morales & Craig Yeung take over the illustration as Pym escapes the boundaries of Reality and meets the conceptual being Eternity, whilst back on Earth Jarvis calls in even more Avengers for the upcoming battle against the Unspoken.
Tragically, most of them are susceptible to the Inhumans’ mutagenic weapon and the army of heroes seems destined to fail, until Pym dramatically returns.
His conference with the personification of Universal Life proved fruitful as Eternity promoted him to the position of Earth’s Scientist Supreme. Now armed with confidence, knowledge, imagination and terrifying technology, he begins the Avengers counterattack…
Another remarkably self-contained, clear-cut and astonishingly engaging Fights ‘n’ Tights adventure, this sterling tome also offers a gallery of covers and variants by Khoi Pham, Crimelab’s Allen Martinez & John Rauch and Howard Chaykin: perfectly exemplifying all that’s great in fanciful, all-action superhero storytelling.
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved