You want to see my creation? Come this way please — and I will show you everything!
— Phineas Horton, Marvel Comics #1
Avengers: No Road Home is a Marvel Comics mini-series starring The Avengers. It is the sequel to the lauded Avengers: No Surrender and starring many of the heroes from that event. The series is written by the No Surrender creative team of Mark Waid, Al Ewing and Jim Zub.
Voyager, the mysterious heroine at the center of the No Surrender event, has sought to recruit a team of Avengers to deal with a terrible threat - the powerful Queen of Night is stealing the light throughout the universe. Now Hawkeye, the Immortal Hulk, Hercules, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Spectrum and newest addition Rocket Raccoon must assemble to face this threat through space and... into the Hyborian Age?!
This series includes examples of:
- Arc Words: Hulk borrows the line from his own title, "the night is my time."
- As Long as There Is Evil: Nyx's dying words are that there will always be darkness trying to snuff out all light. Vision concedes that this is true, but the light will never stop fighting back.
- Badass Boast: Nyx gives one in the House of Ideas during issue 10 to Vision.
"I am mankind's first darkness. I am midnight and moonrise. I am a primal being, greater than gods."
- Big Bad: The Queen of Night, Nyx, who is powerful enough to slay gods.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nyx is destroyed and Vision is fixed, though not everything is hunky-dory. Spectrum has burnt off most of her excess power and is now pretty much back to her regular self, Hercules is off in space somewhere, Bruce Banner continues his solemn wandering and Challenger has broken free from his bonds. And based on the following Guardians series, Rocket becomes terminally ill almost immediately after.
- By the Eyes of the Blind: Wanda is blinded by Nyx in a sneak attack, but can now see where the shards of her soul are hidden. This is according to her plan, however, as Nyx is seeing through her eyes and can teleport wherever she is.
- Call-Back:
- When Nyx's night falls, Bruce freaks at the thought he's still in Hell, having just got out from there in Immortal Hulk, and hulks out.
- The Grandmaster's stealing Earth back in No Surrender is what's allowed the Queen of Night to break free from her imprisonment.
- Hulk still holds a grudge against Clint for going along with Bruce's suicide plan in Civil War II.
- Wanda's plan to fight Nyx has Monica form magical symbols using her powers, citing how Monica did the same fighting Shuma-Gorath back in Mighty Avengers.
- Canon Welding: This book brings back Conan the Barbarian into the Marvel Universe after Marvel regained the license from Dark Horse.
- Continuity Cavalcade: Vision actually weaponizes this in the final issue. Thanks to the House of Ideas, he summons numerous heroes from all points of history. Vision himself even transforms into his original incarnation, the Golden Age Human Torch.
- Continuity Nod:
- Wanda gives Clint a bunch of his old stuff, including a biography of Cap Hawkeye wrote in the days when he couldn't stand him, and some of the Pym Particles from his Goliath days.
- Vision quotes some Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, to be precise), noting his son had a preference for it.
- Rocket and Hulk are happy to see one another again. The opening of issue 3 has Rocket note how very different this current Hulk is from the Gentle Giant version he met.
- In the flashback to Nyx's origins, among the first examples of stories given are humans cowering from the Tiger God and a skald asking his tribe if they would like to hear more. The latter is even drawn and inked to resemble the art-style of Agent of Asgard.
- Monica repeats the line used to introduce her back in Al Ewing's Mighty Avengers when fighting Nyx.
- Continuity Overlap: For the Immortal Hulk. No Road Home begins shortly after the events of Hulk in Hell. Before his transformation triggers in the first issue, Bruce Banner is still twitchy and dealing with his PTSD from the experience below.
- Costume Evolution: After the House of Ideas reconstitutes Vision, he gains a new costume with light green highlights and cape.
- The Drag-Along: Rocket hadn't been planning on joining the others, but the Hulk had other ideas.
- Exact Words: Hulk makes it clear to Clint to never be alone or else he'll feel his wrath for following through on Banner's suicide plan. When Clint does end up alone Hulk arrives soon after and lifts him by the neck. Rocket shows up and anxiously asks Hulk to put him down, which he does because Clint isn't alone anymore, though he does take the moment to taunt him over his mortality.
- Freak Out: Bruce Banner, when night falls, thinking that he still hasn't escaped Hell.
- Full Set Bonus: Nyx's soul fragments are exponential, not additive. Every piece of power one gets makes them much more stronger than the last.
- Hellish Horse: Nightmare shows up on one, which is breathing green fire. Hulk later borrows it.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Not that "hero" is exactly the right word to describe the Immortal Hulk, but he's gotten the rap for the destruction of the town in Iowa he fought the Avengers in over in his own series (which was Iron Man, with a killsat).
- Horrifying the Horror: Hypnos is sent running from the Immortal Hulk, who has experience fighting and badly hurting gods.
- Innocently Insensitive: Vision maintains that being human means having to face the possibility of dying. Monica, being made of energy, asks if that means she is therefore less than human. Vision replies he had only been speaking of himself.
- Invisible Bowstring: The full-page spread of the Olympians fighting Nyx and her children prominently includes Artemis shooting at Apate... without a bowstring.
- In Their Own Image: Nyx's ultimate goal is to restructure the multiverse so that there is only ever night.
- Ironic Echo: Nyx repeats Hulk's arc words when she manages to wrest her power from Banner.
- Jerkass: Rocket, introduced shooting up a hardware store on Earth because they wouldn't serve him for being a racoon.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The House of Ideas, the One Above All's realm, is one giant exercise in this. For one, it's named after one of Marvel Comics's monikers. It manifests as a normal-looking house in Long Island, New Jersey (where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby used to live), and there's a car outside with the license plate "SML JKK" (Stanley Martin Lieber and Jack "King" Kirby). Inside, there's a white void calling to mind a blank sheet of paper. Vision manages to defeat Nyx by creating comic book panels from that void to bring in heroes from across Marvel's vast history. All this is unsurprising, since the One Above All has long been accepted as an Author Avatar for Marvel's writers.
- Mind Rape: Oizys inflicts crushing despair on anyone she gets her hands on.
- Momma's Boy: Hypnos. He's only evil because he does everything his mother says, and his last words are pleading for her to save him from the Hulk.
- Mystical Pregnancy: Nyx's children were conceived parthenogenically, literally born from the feelings she had as she dreamt. Hypnos from slumber at peace, Apate and Dolos from resentment at the other Olympians and Oizys from the misery of her imprisonment.
- Neck Snap:
- How Nyx does Zeus in.
- Immortal Hulk kills Hypnos with one.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Nyx's powerset is not very well-defined, as she keeps using new abilities whenever she feels like it, including blinding Wanda and seeing through her eyes, telepathy, summoning shadowy minions, and creating portals.
- The Night That Never Ends: The series open with night falling everywhere. Not just on Earth, but apparently every planet in the known universe.
- No-Sell:
- Oizys tries using her powers on Hercules in issue 5, but crushing despair doesn't work on someone who's already lost everything.
- Monica's powers don't do much against Nyx. A being of the night isn't going to be bothered by starlight when her domain includes all the stars in the sky.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The sentient planet of Euphoria, who otherwise had been willing to find some way to grant all the other characters' desires, emphatically denies Hulk's.
"No... no, I will not. I will not end your world."
- Possession Implies Mastery: Subverted, when the Queen of Night actually gets her hands on one of the shards of night, and has no idea how she's supposed to get the power out of it. Hulk, meanwhile, manages to get the power out. It's then double subverted, since he doesn't have actual control like she does and merely gets a power boost. She exploits that by denying him her night, forcing him back to Bruce, who can't handle the power.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Queen of Night has her family: Hypnos, Oizys, Apate & Dolos.
- Ragtag Band of Misfits: Even more so than No Surrender - Hawkeye, Hercules, the Scarlet Witch, Vision and Spectrum are one thing, but the Immortal Hulk, who trounced the No Surrender team when he showed up, and Rocket Raccoon, who's never been an Avenger, complicate things. Then you toss in friggin' Conan the Barbarian and that's also on top of Voyager being the big leader of the group.
- Secret Test of Character: It's implied that what Hulk really wanted was for Hawkeye to stand up for himself and prove he was better than everyone claims.
- Sequel Hook: Hoo, boy. The Gods of Olympus have been reborn in new incarnations, the Challenger has broken free of his bonds and Conan is stranded in the Savage Land.
- Soul Fragment: The macguffins of the plot are three shards of Nyx's soul Zeus had hidden in various places to weaken and imprison her.
- Speak of the Devil: Athena urges Hercules not to mention the Queen of Night, lest she appear. Unfortunately, the others do mention her, and... well.
- Spotting the Thread: Rocket notes something's off with the apparent nightmares he, Hulk and Hawkeye have wound up in, and points it out to Nightmare.
- The Stars Are Going Out: When Nyx gains two fragments of her power back she starts blinking out all the stars in the universe.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Nightmare uses his powers to give Rocket a scare. As he says, it's because he's Nightmare - he's always right behind you.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Hulk and Hawkeye are on the team. The Hulk is bitter at Hawkeye for going along with Banner's suicide plan instead of getting him help, and warns him to be careful not to be alone with him.
- Tempting Fate: As Vision and Monica try to fix Vision's energy problems, Toni Ho says everything should be fine, so long as the sun doesn't immediately vanish. The sun then immediately vanishes.
- Time Skip: The very last scene, which jumps a year ahead to feature a Nova Corpsman being assisted by Hercules, now a little older and wiser.
- Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Apate and Dolos, twin gods of lies, have slightly yellowed sclera.
- You Remind Me of X: Conan sees Devil Hulk in his dreams or a vision and makes a clear parallel between Devil Hulk and his Jerkass god Crom. He even believes that Devil Hulk is a servant/avatar of Crom because Devil Hulk despises weakness, is a great destroyer, and is only helping against Nyx for himself and would gladly let humanity be destroyed.
