Avataars: Covenant of the Shield #2
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeAvataars: Covenant of the Shield #2 — titled 'Wild Kingdoms' and cover-dated October 2000 — serves as the narrative engine of Marvel's most ambitious sword-and-sorcery world-building experiment of the early 2000s, introducing the bulk of the Eurth cast in a single issue. The second chapter delivers the first appearances of the Dreadlord, the Goblin King, the Six Most Sinister (Eurth's Sinister Six analogs — Huntsman, Jolt, Mysterium, Sandstorm, Talon, and Tentaclus), and Simon Magnus's Brotherhood-analog faction, making it the single densest issue in the mini-series for new-character debuts. Its fantasy-mirror approach to the Marvel Universe — mapping every major hero and villain onto a coherent medieval mythology — represents a genuine creative experiment in alternate-world storytelling that predates the broader 'What If the Marvel Universe were fantasy?' genre exercises that followed. The series as a whole, and this issue in particular, also stands as a document of Marvel's late-1990s financial crisis: a truncated three-issue prologue to an ambitious twelve-issue saga that the market never got to see completed.
In "Wild Kingdoms," Captain Avalon and his allies push deeper into the fractured realms of Eurth, confronting strange champions and foes as they race toward the fabled Dreadkeep. With the Orb of Truth and the young prince’s fate hanging in the balance, the heroes stand at the threshold of their greatest trial—ready to face the Dreadlord’s might. Written by Len Kaminski and brought to life by Oscar Jimenez, Javier Saltares, Eduardo Alpuente, and Joe Rosas, with letters by Paul Tutrone and a cover by Jimenez and Alpuente, this 2000 issue delivers a mythic journey across shifting lands, all leading to a moment of high stakes and uncertain resolve.
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Writer Len Kaminski and penciller Óscar Jiménez conceived the series as a twelve-issue project transplanting established Marvel characters into a sword-and-sorcery setting, but Marvel's financial difficulties at the turn of the millennium made that scope untenable. The creative team — also including penciller Javier Saltares and inkers Eduardo Alpuente, Walden Wong, and Chris Ivy — instead compressed the concept into a three-issue prologue in an attempt to generate enough reader interest to justify a longer run; that longer run never materialized. Issue #2 was released on September 7, 2000, with an October 2000 cover date, and the art duties across the mini-series appear to have shifted between Jiménez and Saltares, with inker assignments also varying — a production fluidity that the Marvel Appendix has noted was characteristic of the whole series.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Issue #2 ('Wild Kingdoms') was released September 7, 2000, with an October 2000 cover date; it is part 2 of the 3-issue mini-series written by Len Kaminski and pencilled by Óscar Jiménez and Javier Saltares.
- This issue contains the first appearances of the Dreadlord (Zymo, Eurth's Baron Zemo), the Goblin King (Eurth's Green Goblin), and the Six Most Sinister — Huntsman (Kraven), Jolt (Electro), Mysterium (Mysterio), Sandstorm (Sandman), Talon (Vulture), and Tentaclus (Doctor Octopus) — as confirmed by the Marvel Database.
- Simon Magnus (Eurth's Magneto) and his Brotherhood-analog faction — Aura (Unus the Untouchable), Hop-Friend (Toad), Humongous (Blob), and Illusio (Mastermind) — also make their first appearances in this issue.
- The X'Changling analogs of the original X-Men — Seer (Professor X), Redeye (Cyclops), Brutus (Beast), Icemaker (Iceman), Whitehawk (Angel), and Psyche (Marvel Girl/Jean Grey) — debut here, as does Ironheart (Eurth's Iron Man analog), who is a Champions of the Realm member with armor-derived abilities.
- The Four Fates — Eurth's Fantastic Four, comprising Count Crag (Thing), Lady Aqua (Invisible Woman), Lord Nimbus (Mr. Fantastic), and Prince Morningstar (Human Torch) — appear for the first time, along with their 'father' St. Nathaniel (Eurth's Nathaniel Richards), who exposed his children to eldritch rays that granted them elemental powers.
- The issue's narrative follows Captain Avalon leading a rescue party — Witchfire, Blackthorn, Bloodraven, Nighthowl, and Idol — through the Webwood, where they encounter Webslinger (Eurth's Spider-Man), whose origin is recounted as a flashback: gifted with spider-powers by the Widow of the Web, he broke his vow not to use them for personal gain and was cursed to serve as the outcast guardian of Webwood.
- Two Eurth characters — Captain Avalon and Greenskyn Smashtroll — later appeared as playable characters in the 2017 video game Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, representing the only adaptation of the Avataars property in another medium.
- The series was intended as a twelve-issue saga but was truncated to three issues due to Marvel's financial difficulties at the time; the three issues function as a prologue to a larger story that was never published.
Cast · 40 characters
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Key issues in Avataars: Covenant of the Shield
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