Avengers Forever is a comic book series by Jason Aaron and Aaron Kuder.
A multiversal Masters of Evil have been travelling across realities, wrecking world after world, killing all who stand in their path. The only ones who can stop them are multiversal Avengers.
There is a trailer here
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Tropes:
- All for Nothing: Issue #6 looks at T'Challa being sent away from Wakanda to protect him from an alternate Killmonger who's hunted and killed many alternate versions of him, but even with his years of training and vibranium armor he still can't defeat Killmonger one-on-one.
- Alliance of Alternates: In issue #3 it turns out that the Black Skull has reached out to other versions of himself across the multiverse. The Masters of Evil each have an alternate ready to take their place should any of them die. All except Doom, who plucks his counterparts from the timeline before the abortion of the Heroic Age erases them from existence. Doom then tortures them with his uncovered face and the story of how he acquired his power until they break and swear eternal servitude to him.
- They're eventually countered by the heroes gathering variants of each hero into squadrons. There's a prison of Steve Rogers working together to escape, and an entire Helicarrier of Carol Danvers amassing.
- The Tony Stark Ant Man does this with a twist, he forms an Alcoholic Anonymous group with his addled variants.
- Almost Dead Guy: The story begins with the ruins of Earth-818, where the villains have already been, seen and killed, with only a battered Odin left, trying to reach Mjolnir. He fails.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Cyclops and Wolverine have such a scene in the trailer.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: One Thor variant is one who never became worthy to lift Mjolnir, yet the hammer still follows him around. He makes his way to K'un Lun and practices martial arts, using Mjolnir as a punching bag, eventually becoming so strong that it begins dodging his blows, which only improves his training.
- Big Damn Heroes: Thor's granddaughters quite literally crash-land on a fight between the resistance of Earth-818 and the various Skulls. They help turn the fight in the good guys' favor.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Thor's granddaughters from Aaron's run on Thor return. They're trying to navigate the treacherous space between universes to go where their grandfather's book says they went during this crisis.
- The Doom Above All's headquarters is Doom the Living Planet, introduced in Jason Aaron's Wolverine / Spider-Man miniseries.
- Canon Immigrant: The cover features Peggy Carter's Captain America, seen in the What If...? animated series.
- The Chosen One: Robbie Reyes is the "All-Rider", whom other Ghost Riders can recognize and are awed at on sight.
- Cold-Blooded Torture:
- Tony Stark of Earth-818 was initially reluctant to 'assist' Black Skull in making tech for him. Then the Black Skull tortured him for a long time.
- Robbie Reyes is subjected to this for a long time by Black Skull. It gets so bad he starts forgetting who he is.
- Composite Character:
- The Ant-Man of Earth-818, who is actually Tony Stark. He has an Iron Man red-and-gold palette robotic ant as his main companion.
- Promotional materials describe the Vibranium Man, a T'Challa that made a suit of powered armor out of Vibranium. Played with when he debuts, as he is introduced using his armor to shoot webbing in the style of Spider-Man. It's some time afterwards that his armor has rocket jets and lasers like Iron Man. When the heroes find him, he has evolved into a Superman Substitute.
- One Thor never became worthy of Mjolnir, but with training from K'un Lun becomes the next Iron Fist.
- Crapsack World: Any Earth whose Age of Heroes is neutered by the Masters is turned into a horrific hellscape.
- Cross Through: With The Avengers (Jason Aaron) run.
- Dead Alternate Counterpart:
- On learning who Robbie Reyes is, the Black Skull and Ghost Goblin go looking for all the alternates of him they can find, drive them mad and lock them in a room together. Robbie is the only one to get out alive.
- How the Doom Above All got started. After murdering his reality's Fantastic Four, he sought out more power, but the only way to do that was sacrifice something he loved, and Doom had already sacrificed everything else he cared about... so he hoped realities and found that world's Doom...
- Earth That Was: Any Earth the Masters get their hands on is screwed.
- Everyone Has Standards: The young Thanos, though a thoroughly sadistic vivisector, is quite put out at watching Doom take a bite out of a giant eyeball like an apple (and possibly Doom's unmasked face as well).
- For Want Of A Nail: Initially, Earth-818's history was that Thor died in childbirth, and in response Odin decided to focus his attention on mankind to compensate. Then the villains rolled through, killed him, and enslaved the entire planet.
- High Turnover Rate: After the Black Skull is deposed as the ruler of Earth-818, a bunch of other Red Skull variants (including more Black Skulls) show up to replace him, only to be defeated with the help of the Goddesses of Thunder. Later, when the Multiversal Masters of Evil are shown arguing over who gets to rule Earth-91, King Killmonger reveals that the Black Skull that is with them is yet another one, brought on to replace the original, when he mockingly says, "The last Skull couldn't hold the worlds he'd been given."
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: "Hope" is used as a substitute for various curses like "Hell" or "bitch" on Earth-818, just another way in which that Earth is messed up beyond belief.
- Ingesting Knowledge: Doctor Doom takes a bite out of the Watcher's eye that was extracted from the Orb like an apple. This is presumably to glean some knowledge he wanted. Then it is left to Mephisto, in the form of a hellhound, who moves to swallow the whole thing.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite Earth-818 having been ruled by the Black Skull for fifty thousand years, there's still a few versions of the usual Marvel heroes on it, like Tony Stark, Ben Grimm, Wonder Man and the Vision.
- Legion of Doom: The Multiversal Masters of Evil, a group of supervillains assembled by a Doctor Doom on a suggestion from Earth-616's Mephisto. Issue #3 suggests that the "legion" part is pretty applicable, and they've recruited alternate versions of themselves as well.
- Limited Animation: The trailer makes a limited animation of some scenes that were already published. For example, Avengers #50 has Dr. Doom on the cover with the floating heads of the Avengers around him, the video moves them closer.
- Mythology Gag: The Doom Above All states to Doom-Thing that some Dooms have tiny scars that they use their metal masks to cover, a reference to how different artists and different writers have been inconsistent on whether or not Doom really is horribly scarred, or it's a minor scar that his vanity causes him to overexaggerate. For 616 Doom at least, Secret Wars (2015) unambiguously confirmed that, yes, his face really is that messed up.
- Only the Chosen May Wield: The hammer of Odin of Earth-818, which has been lying unclaimed since he died, for about a million years. The key distinction is that it grants the power of vengeance. Tony Stark almost manages to lift it.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: One timeline is a world where all humanoids are giant sized but seemingly everything else is the same.
- Planet Eater: There is a variant of Tony Stark that uploaded his mind into a Humongous Mecha so big that it slurps down gas giants like bottles of alcohol.
- Self-Inflicted Hell: While seeking an alternate Tony Stark to join the team, one of the Starks visited has apparently spent years working on his armors in the cave where he was captured. Even though his captors are all dead and his armors seem perfectly usable, this alt-Tony is so terrified of going out that he has apparently convinced himself that his enemies are still out there and he needs the armor to be "perfect" to face them.
- Shout-Out: In the Splash Panel showcasing the Council of Red, one Mephisto looks like Pennywise, one looks like Mr. Mxyzptlk, one looks like Ursula, and one looks like a devilish Godzilla.
- Stealth Pun: The universe of giant sized humanoids is a Giant-Sized Marvel universe.
- Tongue Trauma: As part of their 'initiation', all Dooms who swear loyalty to the Doom Above All cut out their own tongues.
- World in the Sky: In a direct contrast to the world that introduced the variant of Thor, the Vibranium Man is introduced in a city in the upper atmosphere of its planet. There the food is sparse and the breathable air even moreso.
