jammasterjamie's review against another edition
5.0
Great big time travelling, reality hopping, universe spanning fun!!
jewbacca343's review against another edition
4.0
It's a fun Avengers romp that feel a little too X-Men as far as exposition goes at certain points. Also weirdly, you can tell it heavily inspired the Loki TV show
altlovesbooks's review against another edition
4.0
What in the world was this story? I mean that in all the right ways.
Anyway, tired of being hounded by the Time-Keepers for not doing his job right, Immortus finally decides to kill Rick Jones, evidently a catalyst for human's flight into space, but doesn't even do that right and Rick Jones is whisked away to safety by a variety of Avengers, past, present, and future, drawn together by Libra to balance the scales of something-or-other. The group splits up into smaller teams for reasons, they end up in different time periods, we get some delightful period-specific side stories, character drama from different periods, and some wibbly wobbly timeywimey stuff as they try to fix time problems.
So I'm not normally a huge fan of time travel in books or graphic novels, just because of how problematic it can be and how confusing things can get. This was really no exception, because things start a bit slow and confusingly while the Avengers try and figure out exactly wtf is going on. It really isn't until we start getting infodumps (and boy are they infodumps) about halfway through that I finally started to really catch onto what was going on. I also wouldn't recommend this to someone new to Marvel comics, because I spent an inordinate amount of time looking up unfamiliar characters.
But I mean, this was still great fun. The reveal of the Supreme-Cycle made me let out an audible "what the fuck lol", because I mean who wouldn't when you see. There was also a lot of character interplay across the generations that I really liked.
Spoiler
Immortus is sad. Immortus is tired. Immortus is the middle manager of time, directed to muck about to prevent humanity from progressing into space by the Time-Keepers, an alien race with a rather vested interest in seeing humans stuck planetside. Immortus also thinks he's hot (time) shit, when in actuality he does more groveling to his Time-Keeper overlords than anything else. He also kinda looks like Will Riker in a helmet drawn by this artist.Anyway, tired of being hounded by the Time-Keepers for not doing his job right, Immortus finally decides to kill Rick Jones, evidently a catalyst for human's flight into space, but doesn't even do that right and Rick Jones is whisked away to safety by a variety of Avengers, past, present, and future, drawn together by Libra to balance the scales of something-or-other. The group splits up into smaller teams for reasons, they end up in different time periods, we get some delightful period-specific side stories, character drama from different periods, and some wibbly wobbly timeywimey stuff as they try to fix time problems.
So I'm not normally a huge fan of time travel in books or graphic novels, just because of how problematic it can be and how confusing things can get. This was really no exception, because things start a bit slow and confusingly while the Avengers try and figure out exactly wtf is going on. It really isn't until we start getting infodumps (and boy are they infodumps) about halfway through that I finally started to really catch onto what was going on. I also wouldn't recommend this to someone new to Marvel comics, because I spent an inordinate amount of time looking up unfamiliar characters.
But I mean, this was still great fun. The reveal of the Supreme-Cycle made me let out an audible "what the fuck lol", because I mean who wouldn't when you see
Spoiler
The Supreme Intelligence plugged into the back of an amped up dune buggy Mad Max styledevinr's review
3.0
Avengers Forever is a superhero adventure story that spans the history of recorded time and a couple of theoretical dimensions, as well as nearly 40 years of Marvel Comics continuity. And with all that baggage, while it's really trying to soar, sometimes it gets held back. I really liked the idea of gathering 7 Avengers from throughout the team's history and trying to get them to work together. Having future members keeping secrets from past members, awkward interactions: the attention to the interpersonal details is the stuff of great comics. And Carlos Pacheco, one of my favourite current pencillers, does some really great fight scenes. The heroes look incredibly athletic, and their feats really do seem fantastic. And co-writers Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern do an AWESOME job of characterizing one of the most interesting and powerful villains in the Marvel Universe, Kang the Conqueror. After reading this, he's become one of my favourite villains.
However, it's not all interdimensional hijinks and kicks to the face. There is a LOT of exposition in this book: explaining who some characters are in great detail, retelling old Avengers adventures from the past, retconning certain character developments. It's hard to read an issue when about 3/4 of it feels like it is footnotes. Add to that the fact that the story seemed really convoluted. Long-time Avengers readers probably ate it up, but even with the amount of exposition I sometimes felt overwhelmed by the continuity. The inks on Pacheco's pencils seemed a little thin; I would have liked to have seen a stronger line on some of the characters, particularly when they were in the foreground. Also, the dialogue seemed a little trite sometimes. I think that was probably Stern's influence more than Busiek, but I felt sometimes like it was hackneyed dialogued lifted right from the Bronze age that seemed out of place in this book. (Note: nothing wrong with the Bronze Age, per se. Just...well, the dialogue wasn't always the most plausible.)
Overall I thought that this book was high adventure that was a little too bogged down. Long-time Marvel and Avengers fans would definitely like it, but the casual reader such as myself might feel overwhelmed, despite the book's strengths.
However, it's not all interdimensional hijinks and kicks to the face. There is a LOT of exposition in this book: explaining who some characters are in great detail, retelling old Avengers adventures from the past, retconning certain character developments. It's hard to read an issue when about 3/4 of it feels like it is footnotes. Add to that the fact that the story seemed really convoluted. Long-time Avengers readers probably ate it up, but even with the amount of exposition I sometimes felt overwhelmed by the continuity. The inks on Pacheco's pencils seemed a little thin; I would have liked to have seen a stronger line on some of the characters, particularly when they were in the foreground. Also, the dialogue seemed a little trite sometimes. I think that was probably Stern's influence more than Busiek, but I felt sometimes like it was hackneyed dialogued lifted right from the Bronze age that seemed out of place in this book. (Note: nothing wrong with the Bronze Age, per se. Just...well, the dialogue wasn't always the most plausible.)
Overall I thought that this book was high adventure that was a little too bogged down. Long-time Marvel and Avengers fans would definitely like it, but the casual reader such as myself might feel overwhelmed, despite the book's strengths.
mark_cc's review against another edition
3.0
The second and fourth quarters are pretty fun and weird, and likely what drive calling this one of the best Avengers stories ever. But it starts off kind of confusing (why these specific characters? you can't think of anyone more emblematic of the Avengers than Songbird and Genis?) and issues 7 & 8 (I think) are nothing but captioned explanations of capital-C Continuity for Kang and Immortus and it really really gets tedious.
I LOVED the notes in the back telling me where every alternate universe Avenger was from. I just might have to go read New Warriors #11 (spoiler: I am not going to read New Warriors #11)!
I LOVED the notes in the back telling me where every alternate universe Avenger was from. I just might have to go read New Warriors #11 (spoiler: I am not going to read New Warriors #11)!
bookwormkara's review against another edition
1.0
I wouldn't have finished it but I knew needed to read it to setup events leading to Civil War, which is my goal. Ugh.
cammerman's review
2.0
So disappointed. Strives for ultimate epicness but ends up feeling like self-parody. It's a retcon-a-palooza, to start. Full of paradoxes, MacGuffins, dues ex machina, and inexplicable blind spots. The visuals are all dramatic poses and explosions. The dialog is already hit-you-over-the-head expository, and then it has to tell what the visuals aren't showing, on top of it. It was a slog, and doesn't make me want to continue exploring the marvel lire.
booknooknoggin's review against another edition
3.0
Time-fuckery & shenanigans lead to the concept of the Avengers never dying and even possibly leading to problematic future timelines. What is so damn special about Rick Jones? I find his character so annoying...ugh.
useriv's review
5.0
As I re read his I couldn't figure why I thought it was so awesome. In issue 6 things pick up and Busiek ties up neatly a lot of Avengers history. The art by Pacheco is beatiful.
markk's review
4.0
Years ago one of the shopping malls in my area had a Virgin Megastore nestled smack in the middle of it. I didn't go to that mall often, but when I did I gravitated to that store and perused the shelves to see what was on offer. At that time I hadn't read comic books in years and the collections that were increasingly available offered a convenient way of getting caught up on what I had missed, so when one caught my eye I skimmed it and got a crash course on what had transpired in the worlds I hadn't visited in a long time. Three of these stand out in my memory today; Jeph Loeb's brilliant [b:Superman: Emperor Joker|71618|Superman Emperor Joker|Jeph Loeb|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1308011989s/71618.jpg|69353], and two Avengers titles from the late 1990s; [b:The Kang Dynasty|703725|Avengers The Kang Dynasty (Avengers)|Kurt Busiek|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1177439053s/703725.jpg|690016] and Avengers Forever.
The two Avengers collections had a few things in common. Both featured Kang the Conqueror, who is one of my all-time favorite Marvel villains even if he had never been employed as well as he could have been (Kang Dynasty is the one that did it best). The other is that they were both written or co-written by Kurt Busiek, who may not enjoy the reputation of legendary superhero comic book writers like Alan Moore or the modern-day fame of a Brian Michael Bendis of a Geoff Johns, but who wrote some of the best stuff Marvel had going in the 1990s.
The best way of describing Avengers Forever is that it's the ultimate fan service for longtime readers of the series. The plot itself is so complicated so as to defy easy explanation, but it involves two time-traveling villains engaged in a struggle over the fate of humanity, with a team of Avengers pulled from various eras to save it from being eradicated from existence. The beauty of the series is threefold: the pulling together of an eclectic collection of people (including two different versions of the same character), the interweaving of their storyline into classic adventures, and an effort to resolve longstanding continuity errors by setting them as episodes in a longer conflict. The last requires long stretches of exposition and flashback; from a narrative perspective these are the weakest parts of the story and they don't always work, but Busiek does an impressive job with what he has, and his effort is more successful than one might expect.
Some people have referred to as a useful introduction to the Avengers comics. Yet the opposite is true; this is a collection that readers ought to turn to only after they are familiar with the classic run of the Avengers, something that is easier to do than ever thanks to the proliferation of bound collections and digital comics. While people new to the Marvel universe might still enjoy Busiek's tale, only those with a good command of the history of the Avengers can appreciate the genius of his effort, one that treats fans and the superhero team they love with respect. That's an achievement that is far more rare in comic books series than it should be.
The two Avengers collections had a few things in common. Both featured Kang the Conqueror, who is one of my all-time favorite Marvel villains even if he had never been employed as well as he could have been (Kang Dynasty is the one that did it best). The other is that they were both written or co-written by Kurt Busiek, who may not enjoy the reputation of legendary superhero comic book writers like Alan Moore or the modern-day fame of a Brian Michael Bendis of a Geoff Johns, but who wrote some of the best stuff Marvel had going in the 1990s.
The best way of describing Avengers Forever is that it's the ultimate fan service for longtime readers of the series. The plot itself is so complicated so as to defy easy explanation, but it involves two time-traveling villains engaged in a struggle over the fate of humanity, with a team of Avengers pulled from various eras to save it from being eradicated from existence. The beauty of the series is threefold: the pulling together of an eclectic collection of people (including two different versions of the same character), the interweaving of their storyline into classic adventures, and an effort to resolve longstanding continuity errors by setting them as episodes in a longer conflict. The last requires long stretches of exposition and flashback; from a narrative perspective these are the weakest parts of the story and they don't always work, but Busiek does an impressive job with what he has, and his effort is more successful than one might expect.
Some people have referred to as a useful introduction to the Avengers comics. Yet the opposite is true; this is a collection that readers ought to turn to only after they are familiar with the classic run of the Avengers, something that is easier to do than ever thanks to the proliferation of bound collections and digital comics. While people new to the Marvel universe might still enjoy Busiek's tale, only those with a good command of the history of the Avengers can appreciate the genius of his effort, one that treats fans and the superhero team they love with respect. That's an achievement that is far more rare in comic books series than it should be.