Avengers Forever #10: Review

Nov 2022

Jason Aaron, Jim Towe

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Story Name:

The pillars, part 5: Stark repair

Review & Comments

Rating:

Avengers Forever #10 Review by Rob Johnson (November 4, 2022)

So this issue completes the set of 'original' Avengers with Captain America and Thor joined by someone who is Iron Man and Ant-Man combined (of course ignoring Hulk and Wasp). Including Black Panther and Captain Marvel among the Pillars seems more a nod to the current Avengers team (or the Cinematic Universe) than to the historical Avengers.

Next issue supposedly completes Robbie Reyes transition from Ghost Rider to All-Rider before they join with the Earth-616 Avengers series for the final battle with Mephisto and the Multiversal Masters Of Evil.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Avengers Forever #10 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

A member of Avenger Prime's Army of Deathloks and Ant-Man (Tony Stark) from Earth-818 are accompanying Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes) in his Hell Charger car in a journey across the multiverse seeking allies in versions of iconic Avengers members (what the titles of this subseries call the Pillars) to oppose the Multiversal Masters Of Evil who are systematically conquering universes (or at least Earths).

Now Stark is having a long drink of alcohol while they have a rest. Deathlok urges them to continue but Tony objects that they've already collected the set. (In the past 4 issues) they recruited the Star Panther (#6), Thor God Of Fists (#8), the Howling Commandos consisting of various Steve Rogers (#7), and the multiversal Carol Corps (#9). But DL says they still need an Iron Man.

Their 1st Iron Man is a Tony Stark who's a drunkard like Ant-Man, who they see die when he crashlands the iron suit into a petrol station. Our Tony is ready to give up straight away but GR claims that the team won't hold together without him.

Their next is a Tony in a post-apocalyptic world who built things out of stuff in a junkyard. But the local people thought he was a witch and killed him.

Next up is a Stark who's transferred his consciousness into a robot much bigger than worlds and roams the cosmos satisfying his addiction by consuming gas giant planets.

We skip over various Starks who use their Iron Man suits as robot bartenders, others who have flown into the Sun, and others who have just gone mad.

We do spend time with an old Tony in a cave obsessively building improved Iron Man suits trying to achieve the perfect 1 that will allow him to escape his captors. But actually those captors are long-dead. They leave him but AM says he'll give it 1 more shot and then he's going to come back and stay in this cave.

The next shot is an even-older Tony who's dying in bed. He's spent his life fixing things for people but now his bad heart is giving out. Our Tony offers him a drink but the fixer says he never touches the stuff. He imparts his secret to fixing broken things - it takes 1 to know 1. He hopes our broken Tony is here to take his place. And then he dies ...

... and our Tony gets rid of all his booze. After a couple of days of detox he does return to the cave but only to bring that Stark out into the light. Then we see them in a support group of other recovering Tony's. It seems that Ant-Man is the Tony Stark the team needed all along, and he suspects that was always DL and GR's plan.

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