Synopsis / Summary / Plot
This issue pieces together the actions of the Forever Man that we have seen fragments of in earlier issues.
In 1502 Rome Leonardo da Vinci makes 1 of his many visits to Michelangelo Buonarroti to try to persuade him to join the Brotherhood Of The Shield. The sculptor, working on his statue of David with the finished Pietà in the background, turns him down again. (And later on we also see a statue of Ikaris of the Eternals.) Leonardo tries to beguile him with hints of the important work the Brotherhood does and the secret history of marvels they know about (like attacks by the Brood and a Celestial (both v1#1) and a Kree Sentry (SHIELD: Infinity)). But Michelangelo professes to know all about this, and more that da Vinci is ignorant of.
In 1960 civil war rages among the Brotherhood in the Immortal City beneath Rome. Leonardo has come to the future to oppose the immortal Isaac Newton, and the Brotherhood has split between them. Young Leonid watches the conflict with the glowing Forever Man who tells him not to intervene again (see v1#6). The situation will play itself out if he but waits.
Now a flashback to the Deviant capital Ashomia in Japan in 1630. It is in flames and a mob is storming the house of Deviant Morda because her mate Newton has stolen their holy knowledge and left (v1#3). Morda barricades her door to protect herself and her baby when the Forever Man appears and offers to take the child to safety. She asks him to keep the babe from his father but FM can't promise that. So she lets the stranger take the bairn as her people break in to kill her.
Forever Man takes the baby to the Sinkhole in Bendy Time. They see a glowing white pigeon which is attracted to them. The boy is already manifesting the starscape in his skin that will often appear later. He touches the bird which transforms into an equally-glowing pale woman. FM tells her she must look after the child until a man who hurls lightning arrives who will love them both. He gives her a key to look after for that man. (We have seen in v1#1 that this child is Leonid and the man is Nikola Tesla/Night Machine who will adopt him. In SH:Inf she gives the key to Tesla, and in v1#1 Tesla gives the key to Leonid to open the door that leads him to Leonardo.)
In Rome in 1642 Newton kills Galileo Galilei the head of the Brotherhood, as we saw in v1#3. But this time we see the Forever Man witnessing the event. Newton draws a sword hilt and the sword self-assembles out of pieces as we have seen other Brotherhood weapons do (like the guns of Nathaniel Richards and Howard Stark in v1#1). But FM just looks at him and fades away.
Back in 1502 Rome Michelangelo mentions déjà vu and quantum mechanics, terms which don't exist in this era. Then he turns into the glowing Forever Man (which doesn't surprise *us* because FM told Leonid his identity at the end of v1#6) and touches Leonardo's forehead to impart knowledge of these subjects. He then claims that déjà vu is actually contact via quantum resonance (He may mean quantum entanglement, or this could be science beyond ours, or maybe it's just hand-waving gobbledygook) with a version of you in a parallel universe. And then multiple versions of the glowing man appear, saying "I am here now", "I have always been here" and "I will always be here".
Leonardo recovers his poise and asks "What now?". Michelangelo says "I knew you were going to ask that." The assembled Forever Men tell him it's his job to save the world. He must design the Immortal City and get it built beneath Rome. He must create a door (the 1 called Iter in v1#1) within that leads to a seeing place (the observatory that floats above Rome in v1#1), and a single key to that door (see above). As must save the Dynamo (Leonid) who he will meet at that place. As an afterthought they tell him that there is a god growing in the Sun (the Celestial baby whose development da Vinci followed in the previous series). And Michelangelo hands him a small ball he calls the Human Machine (see lots of last series for this too).
We next see FM with Nostradamus in Paris in 1645, continuing his visit from v1#4 where he gave the man a view of the future which informed his prophecies, and the 'prophet' agreed to suffer centuries of imprisonment by Newton. Nostradamus is drawing symbols on his skin which we have seen in later appearances. Now FM tells him that (I think because of his ideas of parallel worlds) while Nostradamus will endure captivity he will simultaneously be free.
Back in the 'present' of 1960 the war still rages in the Immortal City. The schism is because Newton believes that mankind's end is fated (in 2060), while Leonardo believes man can choose his own future. Michelangelo/FM says they are both wrong and both right. Leonid has been looking for a 3rd way and FM is here to tell him that time isn't linear. "There is no great cause and effect. There is no final destiny. We must live our lives in between."
Then he points to something which (in contradiction to what he's just said?) he claims "has always been coming". A globe of force appears, and when it dissipates it reveals Leonid's adoptive father Nikola Tesla and his pigeon companion along with Nathaniel Richards and Howard Stark (all of whom have just returned from the future way beyond 2060 as seen in v1#5-6).
There are 2 appendices to make things clearer (maybe) to new readers, and they also contain stuff that old readers don't know.
The 1st appendix is 4 pages illustrated by Kevin Mellon and written I presume by Jonathan Hickman.
"Galileo's Gift" describes Galileo's Creation Engine which is the machine he, with help from the Forever Man, created and used in v1#3 to repel Galactus by creating a new world for him to eat. It says that Newton couldn't find the Engine or its plans after he killed Galileo, but it has been used 7 times since then. (Creation of various versions of Counter-Earth? What else?)
The term Creation Engine wasn't used in v1#3. But in Secret Warriors #24, which was published between then and this issue, Red Webo is introduced with the portable Creation Engine he has built from Galileo's plans, which looks very similar to the machine here and in v1#3. But he and it are destroyed in the same issue.
The machine is a combination of linked golden spheres. FM talks about them using terms mentioned in v1#1 describing the Human Machine. And the golden globe that FM gives Leonardo is called the Human Machine here and elsewhere. So is it 1 of the globes from the Creation Engine?
"The Key" says that the door Iter and its key were made of Thin Space. In some later New Avengers issues, eg #32, Hickman will write that Thin Space lies between universes.
"The Death Of Morda" just says that the Deviants cooked and ate her.
"The Forever Man" tells us the Michelangelo 'ascended' in his late teens and now exists everywhen.
The 2nd appendix is a set of Marvel Handbook-style character sheets for characters in this series using the Dustin Weaver variant covers for v1. The text is by Roger Ott, Rob London, Jeff Christiansen and Mike O'Sullivan.
Leonardo da Vinci became head of the Brotherhood of the Shield and created the Immortal City. He noted the anomaly in the Sun, built the 1st spacesuit and travelled forward in time to 1956 to fetch the baby Celestial to Earth. Then he challenged Newton's leadership, leading to the civil war here. In passing it mentions a new bit of info, that before leaving the past he created a Life Model Decoy to live out the rest of his life. (This LMD was found in Secret Warriors #25 but not identified as Galileo's.)
Isaac Newton joined the Brotherhood, went to Ashomia and mated with Morda to steal the Deviants' secret science. He gained immortality from the Elixir of Life and used a dilute version to bribe the Brotherhood to make him their master. He also killed Leibnitz (and several other rival scientists/philosophers) as seen in issue Infinity. He didn't know Morda's child survived but recruited Leonid into the Brotherhood in 1953 (presumably because of his powers). Then Leonardo turned up.
Nostradamus wrote his prophecies and Newton came to him demanding particular knowledge of the future. He refused and Newton kidnapped him and held him chained in a dungeon (which contained the Well of the Elixir Of Life) below the Immortal City. Newton periodically injected him with a dilute Elixir which kept him alive for centuries but with his mind and body deteriorating. Leonid freed him after Leonardo arrived.
Zhang Heng belonged to the Eastern branch known as the Brotherhood of the Spear. In 114 AD he met a pregnant Celestial. To prevent the birth destroying the Earth he persuaded her to leave her infant in the Sun to grow.
Nathaniel Richards and Howard Stark were recruited by the Brotherhood in 1951. They were sent to find Nikola Tesla and his (adopted) son Leonid. They accidentally killed Tesla (in 1955?) but he was taken out of time and restored to life by the Forever Man. Years(?) later (1953) they found Leonid and brought him to the Immortal City. In 1956 Tesla returned and fought them in the city. The battle sent them all into the future where they had to combine forces to get back (to 1960 and this issue).
Nikola Tesla disappeared in 1943, and the FM recruited him to raise Leonid in Bendy Time with the bird-woman. They returned to Earth where Richards and Stark found him, and he fought them in his electrical suit as Night Machine. FM saved him by bonding him with his suit with a new power source built in to his body. He came back (to give Leonid the key to Iter) and fought R&S again and they all went 600,000 years into the future. The only new bit here is that Tesla was earlier a member of the Brotherhood.