Avengers: The Initiative Annual #1

History

Written by the regular series creative team of Dan Slott and Christos Gage, the annual was released December 5, 2007 (cover-dated January 2008), slotting into the ongoing Initiative narrative while also carrying a Secret Invasion banner — an early signal of the crossover event then being seeded across Marvel's line. The issue deployed a rotating stable of artists across its five stories, with Jim Cheung providing the cover, a production approach that allowed each short-form origin to carry its own distinct visual register while keeping both writers' voices consistent throughout.

Trivia · 9 facts

• First appearance of the Liberteens, Pennsylvania's Fifty State Initiative team: members include Blue Eagle, Ms. America, Iceberg, Whiz Kid, Hope, 2-D, and the Revolutionary (who is secretly a Skrull).
• First appearance of Dr. Burke, Armory's counselor, who is later revealed to report back to Henry Peter Gyrich.
• Origin of the Gauntlet (Sgt. Joseph Green) revealed: his alien gauntlet was recovered from a crash site in Sudan during a firefight with Hydra; once donned, the gauntlet could not be removed — the title 'Second Best' refers to Green arriving second at the site.
• The MVP origin story establishes that MVP's great-grandfather is Dr. Abraham Erskine, whose legacy was a rigorous regimen of diet and exercise rather than a super-soldier serum — connecting the Initiative's most capable 'naturally human' recruit directly to the Captain America mythology.
• Taskmaster is depicted assisting Baron Von Blitzschlag and a Skrull posing as Yellowjacket (Criti Noll) in transferring MVP's skills into his clones via a specialized system.
• The 'State of Readiness' story functions as a direct prologue to Secret Invasion, showing the Skrull-disguised Revolutionary reporting to a Skrull at Initiative HQ about the success of infiltrating the team — an in-story confirmation of the 'Skrull in every state' plot.
• Heinz Kruger and Steve Rogers appear in flashback within the MVP/Erskine origin segment, placing the Initiative's founding mythology in explicit dialogue with World War II-era Captain America history.
• The issue was reprinted in Avengers: The Initiative – The Complete Collection Vol. 1 (Marvel, 2017) and in the French anthology Marvel Heroes (Panini France, 2007 series) #12 (October 2008); the 'State of Readiness' story was also reprinted in Secret Invasion: The Infiltration (2008) and Secret Invasion: Rise of the Skrulls (2018).
• Written entirely by Dan Slott and Christos Gage with a Jim Cheung cover; interior art handled by a rotating team including Patrick Scherberger, Salvador Larroca, Steve Uy, Clayton Henry, Carmine Di Giandomenico, and others.

Cast · 7 characters

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Variants (1)