Avengers Assemble is a 2022-2023 Bat Family Crossover between The Avengers (Jason Aaron) and Avengers Forever (2021). It serves as the Grand Finale of Aaron's run.
Since the events of The Final Host in 2018, the Avengers have gradually become aware of a secret legacy involving the team's history. The very first Avengers team ever assembled was not them against the shenanigans of Loki or the Hulk years ago, but rather by Odin Allfather one million years ago. Odin's team consisted of many pre-history forerunners to familiar contemporary heroes (ex. Black Panther, Iron Fist, Doctor Strange, the Phoenix, etc.).
These proto-Avengers defended the Earth from ancient threats before ultimately falling in battle to the Dark Celestials. One such threat was the demon Mephisto, who menaced and tempted each individual proto-Avenger over the years. In fact, it turns out that the demon has been secretly meddling in Avengers history across all their iterations — and it's not just one Mephisto. He's been working with an alliance of hundreds of other Mephistos from parallel realities - a 'Council of Red' if you will...
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of World War She-Hulk, Robbie Reyes and Deathlok have discovered that something — or someone — has been targeting parallel Earths where alternate versions of the Avengers emerged — or were supposed to emerge before their histories were altered. The culprits were eventually revealed to be a multiversal incarnation of the Masters of Evil, who are being led by the all-powerful Doom Supreme — and who have their own ties to the Council of Red. To stop them, Robbie and Deathlok have been recruiting a team made up of analogues of familiar core Avengers from across the infinitude.
Now, the threats of Mephisto, Doom Supreme, and their respective cabals are all finally coming to a head simultaneously. The Earth-616 Avengers will have to join forces with the Avengers Forever and the Prehistoric Avengers if they're to save all of space and all of time from the greatest threat in Avengers history.
Main Storyline
- Avengers Assemble Alpha #1
- Avengers (Vol. 8) #63-66
- Avengers Forever (Vol. 2) #12-15
- Avengers Assemble Omega #1
Tropes:
- The Atoner: The backstory of Loki/Avenger Prime, as revealed in Avengers #65. His attempt to rid his Earth of Avengers instead set off a chain of events that ultimately destroyed all life in his universe. Thanks to the punishment of the God Quarry, he now serves as Avenger Prime to atone for his role and to ensure such a catastrophe never happens again.
- Avengers Assemble: All three Avengers teams Aaron has been building throughout his run finally meet and join forces.
- Back from the Dead: Old Man Phoenix was reassembled by Thor's granddaughters after Dark Phoenix (Mystique) killed and dismembered him.
- Badass Army: In theory, it'd be the army full of Mephistos and Dr. Dooms but they got hit by Conservation of Ninjutsu. The real badass army are the Universal Avengers, which is the name of the alliance of all the various Avenger teams and the various allied forces - including Deathlok Sentinel and the temporary membership for Galactus.
- Bat Family Crossover: Between Avengers and Avengers Forever.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Loki/Avenger Prime's backstory in a nutshell. Loki sought to create a world without Avengers. He got it...and in a world without Avengers, Earth and Asgard immediately fell to the existential threats the team usually handles.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Mephisto and Doom Supreme.
- Bitter Sweet Ending: The Multiversal Masters of Evil and the Council of Red are destroyed and the worlds conquered by the Multiversal Masters have been healed. But it took the sacrifice of Firehair and Starbrand (Brandy) to do it. Robbie Reyes sacrificed himself to close the flood from the God Quarry but is revealed to be alive and slowly putting his ride back together again. Loki/Prime Avenger is seen as a full-fledged hero and is now friend and commander to a massive Avengers force that includes Deathlok Celestial as their new base in the God Quarry, while the mainline Avengers end up losing Avengers Mountain as a result.
- Body Horror: The Prehistoric Starbrand's death at the hands of Doom Supreme in the Alpha prologue.
- The Bus Came Back: Avengers #66 sees the return of Ka-Zar and Gorilla Man for the first time since World War She-Hulk). Old Man Phoenix also returns from Aaron's run on Thor. The final issue of the story sees the return of the Orb, in ghost form after his death in Avengers #50.
- Call-Back: The big reveal of Avengers Forever #13 calls back to Aaron's very first story The Final Host. 616-Loki argued he was the greatest Avenger of them all by virtue of being the one to first bring the team together (and then again and again over the years). Avenger Prime, revealed now to be another Loki, echoes that same sentiment: You can't have the Avengers without Loki bringing them all together.
- Character Witness: During the first with the Prehistoric Avengers, Steve tries to defuse the situation by demanding their Ghost Rider use the Penance Stare on him. Unfortunately he's already using it on Namor and is taking everything he needs to know from that.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Avengers #65 has
Loki/Avenger Prime lamenting that this is one of the constants among all his variants across the Multiverse. - Conservation of Ninjutsu: An army of Mephisto variants and then Doom variants storm the God Quarry. Despite every one of the former group being an immensely powerful demon lord and each of the latter being a highly-skilled supervillain, they get mowed down with ease by the Avengers present.
- Cosmic Entity: Besides the various Phoenix Force avatars joining the Avengers, Galactus also temporarily joins long enough to devour Doom the Living Planet. Also Avengers Mountain is remade into a Celestial based on Deathlok and it joins the fight too.
- Cruel Mercy: The heroes decide to not kill Mephisto, as that's what he wants, and send him back to Hell, which has become torturous for him due to how long he's been running the place. He now sits on a throne he hates and is forced to listen to the Orb narrating everything the heroes are up to. And the Orb is dead, so he doesn't have to stop to breathe.
- Tony Stark gave one to the evil Howard Stark sparing his life after crushing Howard's hands and destroying the Iron Inquisitor armor. He then strands Howard in the prehistoric past, so the elder Stark will use up his near-immortal life doing The Slow Path to the present.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In the revelation of his origin as Avenger Prime, Loki reveals he took down every "Cthulhu" in his universe simultaneously. Too bad it cost all life other than himself.
- Didn't Think This Through: Avengers #65 reveals this was Loki/Avenger Prime's fateful, tragic mistake during his purge to rid his Earth of its Avengers. Loki was so focused on eliminating his potential enemies that he didn't stop to consider one of the key discoveries he'd made while on his multiversal sojourn: That a Loki was the most frequent catalyst for the assembling of Avengers, but he also wasn't the only one. There were other familiar and powerful threats (Galactus, Celestials, Thanos, et. al.) who'd served as that same catalyst, who all had designs on their Earths, and most importantly who were all opposed and stopped by their Avengers. So, with no Avengers left after Loki's purge, his Earth immediately gets overrun by said threats all at once.
- Dirty Coward: A number of Avengers felt this about Galactus when he bailed on them so soon, rather than help them stop the flood out of the God Quarry.
- Eye Scream: With most of the Avengers on both teams knocked out fighting each other, Agamotto fought Doom Supreme alone and lost. Doom then conjured a pair of miniature kunai to dig out Agamotto's eyes and he then ate them. Doom the Living Planet gets one when Star Panther flies in and yanks out one of his eyes.
- Fate Worse than Death:
- After Tony defeats the Masters' version of Howard Stark (each of them currently outside of their armor), Tony destroys Howard's armor and then crushes his hands, leaving Howard alone in a cave. Tony reasons that if Howard is as long-lived as he claims, he'll be reduced to watching as the world is formed to fit the Avengers' views rather than Howard shaping society to fit his own preconceptions, but at the very least he will be forced to watch the rest of the fight from the sidelines, his hands too crippled to work again.
- Since Mephisto was explicitly seeking to destroy the universe so that there would only be the peace of nothingness afterwards, the subsequent sentence inflicted on him by Agamotto not only traps Mephisto back in Hell, but condemns him to listen to the Orb talking about what he sees back on Earth, made even worse as now that the Orb is dead he doesn't even need to pause for breath but can just talk and talk as long as he wants.
- From Bad to Worse: The ending of Avengers #64. All three Avengers teams are already stretched thin and have sustained losses trying to hold the line against the Multiversal Masters of Evil and the Council of Red. And then it turns out they've got a new, worse problem: Unbeknownst to his allies, Doom Supreme has been secretly assembling his own literal Legion of Doom(s) from across the Multiverse.
- Gone Horribly Right: Avengers #65: Loki/Avenger Prime's purge of the Avengers of his world. Loki achieved his goal of a world without any Avengers...which then left his Earth without its mightiest heroes to battle the usual existential threats the team normally handles.
- Grand Finale: For Aaron's run and the Fresh Start-era Avengers. On a Meta level, Aaron's stated Assemble is also his swansong for work-for-hire comics for the immediate future (barring, of course, the still-ongoing Punisher (2022)).
- Killed Off for Real:
- The Prehistoric Starbrand is killed by Doom Supreme in the Alpha prologue. The Prehistoric Ghost Rider follows in Avengers #63.
- Omega then sees the deaths of both Starbrand and the Prehistoric Phoenix, who sacrifice their lives to restore all the Earths the Masters of Evil ravaged, without erasing the heroes born from those Earths.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Three during Omega. First, Robbie sacrifices himself to stop the flood from destroying all Earths. Then, Starbrand and the Prehistoric Phoenix sacrifice their lives to restore the Earths destroyed by the Masters of Evil. The final page shows Robbie still alive, trying to repair the Hell Charger so he can return home.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The punishment the God Quarry imposed on Loki/Avenger Prime. He proclaimed 'No More Avengers' and so his penance was to become an Avenger and form the Multiverse's Mightiest Heroes.
- Legion of Doom: Two — Mephisto's Council of Red and Doom Supreme's Multiversal Masters of Evil. Avengers #64 subsequently reveals there's a third villainous faction on the field. Doom Supreme has recruited his variants from across the Multiverse. In other words, he's forged a literal Legion of Doom.
- Let's You and Him Fight: In classic Marvel tradition, the very first meeting of the 616 Avengers and the Prehistoric Avengers. Also doubles as a Call-Back to when Tony encountered them after being flung into the distant past earlier in Aaron's run. Lamented by Agamotto as something extremely foolish that only makes things easier for the villains.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Tony Stark directly quotes this when he confronts the version of Howard Stark who joined the Muliversal Masters.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In issue #65, it's revealed that after the Loki who would become Avenger Prime prevented the Avengers of his Earth from assembling, he realized too late that this left Earth vulnerable to all the calamitous forces the Avengers normally fight back. However, this Loki pushed his magic skills "to levels beyond anything [he]'d ever imagined" and won. This includes powerhouses such as Galactus, Thanos, and the Celestials. It came with a price though, like with all magic: the death of everyone in his universe except him.
- Origins Episode: Avengers #65 tells the backstory of Avenger Prime and how a Loki could possibly have become the greatest Avenger across all of space and time.
- Prophecy Twist: A variation (with some Self-Fulfilling Prophecy mixed in) in Avengers #65. During his travels, Loki/Avenger Prime learned that Lokis were usually responsible for bringing the Avengers together — and most importantly, the Lokis always lost. Loki/Avenger Prime sought to prevent this by purging the potential Avengers from his Earth. He succeeded...only for Earth to be overrun and destroyed by all the existential threats the team usually handles. In triumphing over the Avengers, Loki still ultimately lost — an irony which the God of Lies is bitterly aware of and acknowledges.
- The Purge: Avengers #65 reveals Loki/Avenger Prime did this to the Avengers of his Earth upon returning home from his multiversal sojourn. While the Avengers hadn't yet formed (and ultimately may not have), Loki wasn't taking any chances. Using the knowledge he'd gleaned from visiting parallel universes, Loki took out all the potential threats (ex. chaining Mjolnir with unbreakable chains, locating Steve Rogers' body in the ice, locking Tony Stark in Asgard's dungeons and keeping him perpetually drunk, burning Wakanda to the ground, etc.).
- Ret-Gone: Doom Supreme's goal for Earth-616's Genesis Point. Claiming it will allow him to erase this world's Avengers from history (as he has done on countless worlds across the Multiverse).
- The Reveal: Avengers Forever #13 finally reveals the long-teased identity of Avenger Prime. It's Loki.
- Seal the Breach: Mephisto succeeds in breaking through the God Quarry, behind which is the remains of the First Firmament. Essentially an endless ocean of pure entropy, the heroes have to scramble to seal it before it erases the entire multiverse, with only the Phoenixes able to temporarily hold the floodwaters back. Robbie at first plugs it up with a reconstituted Doom the Living Planet, but realizes the breach can only be closed from the other side, and rides his Hell Charger through to do so.
- Status Quo Is God: At the story's conclusion, Echo is no longer the Phoenix and Avengers Mountain stays behind in the God Quarry.
- Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: The Mephisto of 616 isn't planning on breaching the God Quarry for power, but because he's grown tired of running Hell and wants to unleash a flood of pure entropy and erase himself along with the multiverse as the only sure way to be free of it.
- The Worf Effect: With so many Dr. Dooms and Mephistos running around, they end up getting made into mooks who are easily killed. For example Captain. Carter kills a Mephisto simply by giving him a Neck Snap, normally Mephisto is far too strong to die like that to someone who's barely superhuman.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: Avengers focuses on the team and their prehistoric counterparts' attempts to stop Doom Supreme and the Multiversal Masters of Evil from claiming Earth-616's Genesis Point. Avengers Forever focuses on Robbie Reyes and his team's attempts to protect Avenger Prime's Watchtower at the end of Infinity from Mephisto and the Council of Red. As of the ending of Avengers #65, this is finally coming to a close as Loki summons the 616 Avengers and Prehistoric Avengers from Earth to join the siege at the God Quarry.
- Victory Is Boring: Avengers #65 reveals the Loki that became Avenger Prime felt the same way in his backstory (following the unexpected death of his Thor and his Odin's abdication.)
- What Have I Done: After learning that he caused the death of every living thing in his universe, Loki/Avenger Prime is horrified and emotionally broken that he knelt and started praying because he couldn't think of anything else he could do. This led to him being transported to the God Quarry to start his penance.
