Uncanny Avengers #14: Review

Rogue and Sunfire race down a corridor lined with statues. Rick Remender has said that these are all Apocalypses. We recognise En Sabah Nur and Archangel. We can see 2 other names, and Remender has claimed that Gorsvil was a Neanderthal Apocalypse and Kelby Tak is from the era of the Eternals and Deviants. Rogue gets bone claws from Wolverine not metal ones because only the bone claws are his power, the metal ones are grafted on. Wonder Man died at the beginning of the Force Works series, his ionic energy body blown apart. But his love for Scarlet Witch caused him to reintegrate in the early part of the 1998 Avengers series.

Be that as it may, the characters Kang saves all come from futures we know about. Stryfe is an evil clone of Cable who was initially based in the future in The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. 3806 was the end of his time there, after which he travelled back to the current era to become a general X-villain in New Mutants #86. He is seen here with Sumo, Tempo, Wildside and Zero, members of the Mutant Liberation Front he formed when he arrived in our time. Unfortunately I don't think they were ever with him in the future. This Dr Doom had his own series Doom 2099 as well as many apps in other titles in the 2099 set. He arrived in 2099 via time travel, but it is questionable whether he is really the current Dr Doom. Ahab is taken from the future of Red Skull's mutant concentration camps, as seen in #8, #8AU and #12. He is presumably a variant of the Ahab seen in the camps in the Days of Future Present crossover, which didn't involve Red Skull. This is the 1st time Kang has claimed that Ahab was his agent. Iron Man 2020 is named Arno Stark like the brother Tony Stark recently discovered he has. But this future Arno was the son of Tony's cousin Morgan, in a future in Machine Man (1984) and his own Graphic Novel. It would be difficult for this timeline to be a future diverging from now because Morgan Stark doesn't *have* a son. Destroying this future may also simplify the existence of the current Arno Stark. In Earth X May Parker, daughter of Spider-Man, became Venom rather than Spider-Girl (as in another alternate universe). But Earth X can't really be a future of the main Marvel timeline because too much of its past is different. Magistrate Braddock is an alternate future Betsy Braddock (Psylocke) from Rick Remender's run on Uncanny X-Force (the Final Execution story arc). I'm guessing the Deathlok future is from earlier in the same series (Deathlok Nation), s future where all(?) superhumans have been turned into cyborgs. Allegedly this particular 'Deat

I've tried to shove too much into 1 comment box. The last sentences of the next box should be:- Allegedly this particular 'Deathlok' is a cyborged Abomination.

We see 7 disintegrating futures, and I guess these tie back to some references in previous issues. In #6 we had Kang's cryptic comment "The 7 must be 1". In #9 Immortus said that a mysterious event at this time would split the prime reality into 7 equally prime ones. However the Apocalypse Twins will destroy the Earth and all 7 timelines. Also in #9 Uriel said that these 7 timelines determined the choice of the 4 Horsemen (Banshee, Daken, Grim Reaper and Sentry). Presumably the 7 futures we see are are the 7 prime timelines. It is difficult to connect what's going on here with the other multiverse-shaking events going on elsewhere in Avengers-land. Is the destruction of timelines related to the incursions in New Avengers? Is the critical event the White Event in Avengers #7? Or is it the fracturing of spacetime in Age of Ultron which connected the main timeline to some others, including the 2099 one?

Steve McNiven takes over as penciller for the remaining 4 issues of the Ragnarok Now story arc. This is a dramatic high point of the storyline, with the carefully choreographed mayhem leading to multiple deaths. But of course those deaths of important characters suggest that this whole thing will be wiped out by temporal manipulation in the end (by Kang and/or Immortus), relegating it to an alternate timeline.