Review of "Avengers Forever"

May 25, 2001 - © Jeffrey Lyles

Scarlet Witch and Vision wouldn't have worked in this series.

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IV. The downside

1. If you're not a big Avengers fan and have no clue of their fabled history, this is not the trade you want to pick up for your first dose of "Avengers Assembling." An index is enclosed for reader, but it's not very helpful since it only has the exact issue in which events referred to in the story originally took place. It's not practical to think that every fan has access to these titles. It's more like footnotes when you're reading a history book. You're not really going to check the references, are you?

2. No Thor, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch or Vision. How can a big time Avengers storyline truly have an epic feel without the big guns?

3. Was the world really clamoring for two Hank Pyms? Yellowjacket manages to rub everyone the wrong way while Giant Man is just....dull. Yellowjacket adds a lot to the story, while Giant Man is just kinda there.

4. It's a Marvel trade, so it's $24.95, slightly higher than their Distinguished Competition's average trade price. Course, it's still cheaper than buying each of the issue's separately. Besides a new cover and an introduction by Busiek, this trade doesn't have anything that the original series didn't have. I found the introduction particularly interesting though, as Busiek explains his original plan for the series and why Stern was worked into the picture.

5. The final battle is a tad anti-climatic. After such a wild ride, it lets the reader down a bit with a finale that has the Avengers basically

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V. Bottom Line

"Avengers Forever" is a great Avengers story, but non-fans will have a hard time really appreciating the complexities of the story. It's a must-buy for fans that are familiar with the characters with a novel idea and cool plot twists. If you don't know too much about the Avengers, you'd probably be better off starting with an Essential Avengers trade and slowly catching up. As an Avenger fan myself, I really enjoyed the trade, much more so than when I was trying to read the storyline over the course of a year. It's definitely one of the trades that highlight the format since it gets confusing reading it spaced out over the course of 30 days.

Rating: 8.5 (out of 10)

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Thanks Jeffery.

Until next week, have a great Memorial Day weekend and God bless.

Robert

The copyright of the article Review of "Avengers Forever" in Comic Books is owned by Jeffrey Lyles. Permission to republish Review of "Avengers Forever" in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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