Some readers may remember reviled Avengers storyline "the Crossing," which included a mysterious time portal in the basement of Avengers Mansion. If you go further back, in
Avengers Annual #9, there was a leftover robot, Arsenal, that Howard Stark put into storage when he lived there. And in the future, we find...another time portal? The same one? From 1999,
A-Next #7, "After the Fall!" Plot and words by Tom DeFalco, plot and pencils by Ron Frenz, finishes by Al Milgrom.
This was set in the same future as
Spider-Girl, which ran for
over a hundred issues, but this only lasted twelve. Set after the Avengers had disappeared, a new team forms, with Ant-Man's daughter Stinger, Thunderstrike's son um...Thunderstrike, and Juggernaut's kid J-2. They also had mysterious armored Iron Man-type Mainframe, but some of the team weren't sure they could trust him. While a mysterious woman tasks newly created villain Ion Man with killing Dr. Cassandra Lang, Stinger's secret identity; Mainframe also has business with Cassandra, to reveal the truth about himself.
So he's there when Ion Man attacks, and is destroyed; with Stinger cheesed Mainframe sent a robot double to talk to her. But another Mainframe shows up...and gets destroyed...and another...
Meanwhile, Thunderstrike has a conversation with Edwin Jarvis, regarding the mysterious visions (small-v) in the basement, and the last days of the original team. A decade earlier, Captain America had gathered the team, to face "a menace that threatens our entire world," a threat that many or most of them might not survive. (It's a pretty full roster, but notably missing Thor.) Iron Man declined telling Jarvis what they were going to face, saying it had to remain classified, but he had made arrangements to make sure there would always be Avengers. The team goes into the basement portal...and not all of them would return. Hawkeye appeared badly hurt, Wasp and Hercules seem shell-shocked, and the Vision, Iron Man, and Scarlet Witch are likewise traumatized. Iron Man tells Jarvis, they were all that would be returning; but despite appearances, the Avengers had succeeded. While a new team would briefly form, Iron Man and Scarlet Witch would continue working on the portal, until eventually the Witch disappeared. Tony tells Jarvis that was also according to plan, and to please pack his stuff, he was leaving forever.
Atop a pile of his own fallen bodies, Mainframe manages to launch Ion Man's energy into space, then collapses: he finally tells Stinger he was only a program, "based on the encephalograms of Tony Stark." But he had burned through all his bodies there, and was crashing...Kinda feels like she should have maybe guessed that earlier. Still, some interesting mysteries set up here; but I'm not sure it was wrapped up in this series.
I wonder in another few more years' time if Marvel's going to revisit the universe of M2 since by then it'll be about 20 years since it first debuted. Someone's bound to be nostalgic for it, like they were for the world of 2099 and so on, so it's probably inevitable. I never personally bought any issues, but the concept & characters seemed well-designed & fleshed out enough to actually work, yet it didn't. Maybe had it come out during the Ultimate Universe era, it might've achieved better success or even replaced the UU altogether, Idk.
ReplyDeleteHow far deep into this did you manage to get?
I know it's universally panned, and for good reasons, but at the time I was a big fan of The Crossing storyline. The Mike Deodato Jr art definitely helped, but the IM heel turn was also unexpected...which led to Iron Lad 1.0 didn't it?
I know I had a couple of the Crossing issues with shiny covers--which are probably in quarter-bins around the country--but I'd never read any of the MC2 stuff before now, except maybe a Spider-Girl somewhere. (I wanna say Pat Oliffe on art there, for like a billion issues, and he was solid as hell; kinda in the Paul Ryan vein.)
ReplyDeleteI bought Spider-Girl, starting somewhere around issue 30, straight on to the end. I think Pat Olliffe drew maybe the first 60 issues, then Ron Frenz took over after that.
ReplyDeleteI think the issue with the MC2 verse was DeFalco was writing most of the books, so everything was very old school in style. There was an audience for that, but not large enough to support multiple titles.
I've only ever heard about The Crossing. I wasn't much into the Avengers in the '90s.