Avengers Forever #8 (July 1999)

It's that time again! It's time to join the Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes in their greatest battle yet! Their battle against Immortus has crossed time, space, and cheese sandwiches! Last time, the members of the time-tossed Avengers made their way through the temporal tyrant's stronghold, where they got attacked by their own pasts. It was mainly a character-centered issue. So, where do we go from here? Let's find out in Avengers Forever #8!

The cover is a Carlos Pacheco, Jesus Merino, Steve Oliff, Tony Kelly, and John Roshell piece. It's a really cool cover, in my opinion. It depicts Immortus seemingly pulling apart the Vision and Jim Hammond, the Original Human Torch. It's a cool hint to what we're going to get from this issue. We're going to learn some shocking secrets about the Avengers' pasts.

"The Secret History of the Avengers"
Writers: Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern
Penciller: Carlos Pacheco
Inker: Jesus Merino
Colorist: Steve Oliff
Letterers: Richard Starkings, Albert Deschesne
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor-in-Chief: Bob Harras

The story begins with Hawkeye throwing a tantrum with the Synchro-Staff that he obtained in the last issue because he can't get it to work. Clint is like "That's it, I'mma break it!", and the staff screams, revealing that it's a Space Phantom.

Hank Pym, Master of the Obvious.

The Phantom tries to flee by shapeshifting, but since he's outside the time-stream, his power is useless. Yeah, you can bet that Phantom feels real stupid right now.

The Avengers demand he explain why Immortus wants Rick Jones dead. After all, that's the reason why they're all here in this little adventure. The Phantom then tells his tale. 

Not long after Kang became Immortus and started investigating the timestream, the man was visited by a certain trio.

Even in Limbo, religious folks will come to your door.

Yes, the Time-Keepers. You may be familiar with them if you watched Loki on Disney+. Immortus agreed to become their agent, working to protect the timestream. The Space Phantoms were basically Immortus's own agents. Where did the Phantoms themselves come from? Well, they were created from beings that would find themselves lost in Limbo (Remember, Limbo touches every point in time and space). The properties of the place makes those beings forget who they are over time. Even Immortus is not immune to this effect. Technology provided by the Time-Keepers help prevent him from becoming a Phantom himself.

Captain Marvel is able to confirm with his Cosmic Awareness that the Space Phantom is not lying. This particular Phantom is tired of being Immortus's toady, thanks to him putting this Phantom through...quite a lot. In fact, this Space Phantom is the very same Phantom that tried to break the Avengers up back in Avengers (1963) #2. Immortus himself then allied with Baron Zemo, the Enchantress, and the Executioner in Avengers (1963) #10. This comic was Immortus's debut. 

Giant-Man points out that Thor saved an entire planet full of Space Phantoms once, in Thor (1966) #281-282. The Space Phantom reveals that was another lie, made to strip Thor's hammer Mjolnir of its ability to travel through time. 

Now, I know what you are thinking. "Wait, Immortus is a time-traveler. Why doesn't he just prevent the Avengers from forming? Heck, why not even prevent the original Avengers from being born?" Well, the thing is, Immortus prefers to work through guile rather than brute force like his previous self. After all, if someone is unaware they're being manipulated, they can't resist it. Not to mention that the Avengers are also rather critical to humanity's development. And finally, Immortus has developed a bit of a fondness for Earth's Mightiest. It can be argued that this developed from a respect he had for them back when he was Kang.

Anyway, Immortus continued monitoring the timestream. All seemed well...until the Time-Keepers came to visit. And they were none too happy, thanks to the events of the Kree-Skrull War. It was during that event that Rick Jones first manifested the Destiny Force, the ultimate power that lies in all of humanity. 

“I HAVE THE POWEEEEEEEER!”

Basically, the Destiny Force will allow humanity to reach the stars and become an unrivaled power in the universe. There is a dark side to that, though. According to the Time-Keepers, this will allow humanity to destroy the universe. Even in futures in which humanity travels through the stars with peaceful intentions a la Star Trek will result in intergalactic destruction. 

It's here that Hawkeye makes a frightening implication...based on what we learn here, it's possible that Immortus has been manipulating the Avengers...since nearly the team's entire existence up to that point.

It's a terrifying implication. And even worse..it's plausible. Immortus is certainly capable of it. The Space Phantom certainly believes so, as the Time-Keepers believe that humanity is the single most dangerous people in the universe. Not hard to see why. Inhumans, Deviants, Eternals, mutants, all born from the human genome. Giant-Man sees a hole in this, though. Quite a few of the Avengers' encounters with Immortus have involved two Avengers in particular, two members who have become quite popular in recent years: the Vision and the Scarlet Witch.

Well, it's not necessarily the Vision that interested Immortus, but the Scarlet Witch. She is the Nexus Being of Earth-616. As such, any offspring she has could potentially rock the cosmos. And not as in "performing an epic rock show".

Although, Wanda's children becoming intergalactic rock stars would be a cool story. 

Immortus saw an opportunity to prevent this when observing the budding romance between Wanda and the Vision. Hey, Wanda's a living being, Vision's a sentient machine, BOOM! Wanda can't make a baby with a machine, problem solved! Thing was, at the time, Vision was bit too reserved to woo the winsome witch, so he provided some "encouragement" in the form of the events of Avengers (1963) #107-108 and #133-135. Eventually, Immortus would help further along his manipulations by playing minister to Wanda and Vision's wedding in Giant-Size Avengers #4. 

Wasp points out that eventually, Wanda did have children anyway: Thomas and William, who would be reborn as the Young Avengers known as Wiccan and Speed. That's because destiny does not like to be thwarted. 

(Wave finger)

When Wanda had her children, Immortus had to act to avoid the wrath of the Time-Keepers. He discovered that Wanda had unknowingly called upon two fragments of the soul of the demon Mephisto in the creation process. He secretly aided the demon and his agent Master Pandemonium in reclaiming the shards, which happened in Avengers West Coast #52.

Eventually, Immortus would manipulate Earth's governments into dismantling the Vision, which happened in West Coast Avengers #42-43. In issue #45, the original Human Torch's creator, Phineas Horton, claimed that he did not recognize the inner workings of the Vision. But wasn't Vision built from the Torch, you may ask? Well, supposedly. The thing was, the Phineas Horton that appeared in that issue...that wasn't Horton. That was another Space Phantom posing as Horton. Which makes sense, as in Avengers #135 (February 1975), it was established that Ultron had killed Horton because he refused to reprogram Jim Hammond to be Ultron's slave.

Yeah, I bet you're all confused. Well, we have to look at the events of Fantastic Four Annual #4. 

TORCH FIGHT!

In that comic, a villain called the Mad Thinker had found the inert body of the original Torch and used it in battle against Marvel's First Family. Torch on Torch Kombaaaaat! Anyway, James Hammond refused to be used for murder. He was shut down again by another villain called Quasimodo. The FF left his body behind. It's here that Immortus shows up with the Forever Crystal (Remember that?). He uses the Crystal to basically duplicate the inert android. 

So yeah, there were now two Jim Hammonds. One was taken by Ultron-5 to be made into the Vision in Avengers #135, while the other would be used by the Thinker in a scheme against the Torch's former sidekick in Sub-Mariner #14. The funeral of the Torch was shown in West Coast Avengers #50 (the same issue saw Jim Hammond's revival). The earlier mentioning of the Vision's disassembly, and the revival of the original Torch was all part of a plan by Immortus to mess with Wanda's mind. The goal was to weaken the bonds she had to her children, which would have allowed Mephisto to reclaim them.

Yeah, it's a lot. And I love this stuff! We next jump forward to the 90s, during the events of one of my favorite Avengers stories. We've visited this event before in my blog. The event? Operation: Galactic Storm.

Immortus feared the consequences of the Avengers hanging out in space during that event. So, he uses the mind of Iron Man to make him lead a team of Avengers to kill the Supreme Intelligence in revenge for his decimating his own empire.

This angered the Time-Keepers, as they felt Immortus had screwed up. They showed a future of the Avengers building outposts to aid the Kree after they were decimated. This would lead to the first Terran Empire shown in issue #1. Destiny does not like to be thwarted. Immortus then saw another chance to prevent this future in the coming of Onslaught in Onslaught: X-Men. He had to keep the Avengers occupied until they seemingly died fighting the psychic amalgam. So, he concocted the events of the notorious storyline known as...The Crossing.

The Crossing, like Operation: Galactic Storm, was another big Avengers crossover storyline from the 90s. It involved the Avengers' book as well as Force Works, Iron Man, and War Machine's books. The difference between the two stories is that Operation: Galactic Storm does not suck. From what I understand, The Crossing is hated by Avengers fans as it basically was everything wrong with 90s superhero comics. Convoluted, bad artwork, the works. 

We do finally get a bit of action at the end, when the Avengers are ambushed by Immortus and Yellowjacket. The temporal tyrant assures Yellowjacket he'll get his timeline where he never reverts to being Hank Pym...if he can save humanity at all.

This issue is definitely one of those stories that is better read as part of the whole storyline than on its own. It's a giant exposition dump, exploring much of Avengers' history, with a very scary implication.