Avengers Forever #1

History

The series came into being through an indirect route: Marvel had originally contracted writer Kurt Busiek and penciler Carlos Pacheco to produce a different project called Avengers: World in Chains, but the company canceled it as too similar to another in-development project (believed to be Mutant X). With both creators still under contract, Busiek and Pacheco redirected their energy into Avengers Forever, which Busiek also wanted to exist largely outside the monthly Avengers continuity he was simultaneously writing with George Pérez. Busiek collaborated on the plot with longtime Avengers writer Roger Stern — himself responsible for acclaimed runs on the main title — while Pacheco was joined by inker Jesús Merino, a pairing that would develop into a long creative partnership. Edited by Tom Brevoort under editor-in-chief Bob Harras, the issue went on sale October 21, 1998, with a cover date of December 1998.

Trivia · 7 facts

• Written by Kurt Busiek (script and plot) and Roger Stern (plot); penciled by Carlos Pacheco; inked by Jesús Merino; colored by Steve Oliff; lettered by Richard Starkings/Comicraft; edited by Tom Brevoort.
• Cover pencils by Carlos Pacheco, with inks by George Pérez — one of the few places Pérez contributed to this series while simultaneously working with Busiek on the main Avengers title.
• First appearance of Songbird (Melissa Gold) as an Avenger, drawn from an alternate future timeline; her inclusion signaled Busiek's plans for the character, whom he was concurrently writing in Thunderbolts.
• The seven time-displaced Avengers assembled in this issue are: Captain America (pulled from his post-Secret Empire nadir), Hawkeye (from just after the Kree-Skrull War), Yellowjacket (an unstable early incarnation of Hank Pym), Giant-Man and Wasp (from the then-present), and Captain Marvel (Genis-Vell) and Songbird (both from the future).
• The issue introduces the Time-Keepers (Ast, Vorth, Zanth) as villains acting behind Immortus, and features the Destiny Force — Rick Jones's latent power first used in Avengers #97 — as the mechanism that summons the time-lost team.
• The present-day events of the issue are set between Avengers (vol. 3) #9 and #10, placing it squarely within Busiek's concurrent monthly run; according to annotations published in issue #4, the creative team supplied in-issue source notes cross-referencing every continuity callback.
• The complete twelve-issue series was first collected in trade paperback as Avengers Legends Vol. 1: Avengers Forever (January 2001), later reprinted in hardcover (2009), and has been continually repackaged including in Hachette's Ultimate Graphic Novels Collection and within the broader Busiek/Pérez Avengers omnibus.

Cast · 37 characters

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