Collects issues 1-12 of the Avengers Forever series.
Writers: Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern
Artist: Carlos Pacheco and Jesus Merino
Publisher: Marvel
Rick Jones is critically ill and the Avengers travel to the Moon to get help from the Kree Supreme Intelligence. The Intelligence agrees to help him. For Rick and seven Avengers picked from different places in the Avengers time line, this is the start of an awesome adventure through time and different realities, and through Avengers’ history.
The seven Avengers are: the Wasp and the Giant-Man from the then current Avengers continuity: the Wasp is the leader of the group and takes command naturally. Three from the past: Hawkeye from the time just after the Kree-Skrull war and Yellowjacket at the eve of his and Janet’s wedding, when he is out of his mind. A super-strong Captain America who has just witnessed his beloved government at its lowest point and is demoralized. And two from the future who hadn’t joined the Avengers yet: Songbird the former criminal and a bitter Captain Marvel, the son of the original. The latter two are pretty much unknowns and Yellowjacket brings in a lot of conflict, so the team is quite interesting to follow and not too united.
Circumstances force the team to ally themselves with their old enemy: Kang the Conqueror who is searching for a way to avoid becoming Immortus, whom Kang despises. During their travels, the Avengers witness how, and eventually why, Immortus has manipulated the team pretty much from the start. Busiek and Stern explain the various inconsistencies in some of the team history, including the origin of the Vision and the various versions of Kang, and my hat is off to them for even attempting it.
This is aimed at the team’s old fans who know the back story and have read it, and those of us who love alternate histories and futures. I really enjoyed this one and it’s probably my favorite Busiek Avengers story. Kang is one of my favorites and here he gets a whole issue to himself to clear up his history and to see things from his perspective. The collection even has a handy guide at the back: a list of comics from where all the references are from.
Definitely not the place to start reading Avengers!
Mervi's Book reviews 
January 11, 2013 at 11:22 am
The “fix” in Avengers Forever for The Crossing totally doesn’t work because Space Phantoms were only able to assume subjects that already existed!
So if all the newly introduced characters were Space Phantoms who were they templates of?
Another conceit of their powers was that when they return to Limbo they always materialise exactly where their subject was specifically shunted to there but this definitely wasn’t shown for any of the characters they were supposedly masquerading as during either story.