Avengers Forever #6: Review

Yellowjacket says that whenever a Space Phantom impersonates someone, that person is shunted to Limbo, only to reappear next to the Space Phantom when the impersonation ends. This is what happened in the first appearance of a Space Phantom in Avengers #2, and what happened to Songbird here. He suggests that a Space Phantom can impersonate a dead person without any Limbo-shuffling. This is why no-one appeared last issue when a Space Phantom stopped impersonating the dead Kid Cassidy. But this means that Reno Jones and Black Rider, who were also exposed as Space Phantom's last issue, must be dead as well as Kid Cassidy. The death of Reno Jones, and also of Kid Cassidy, is contraindicated by the 1885-set Blaze of Glory later limited series. But internal evidence suggests that this is a parallel timeline where the main Marvel timeline events exist in dime novels. Black Rider later gets one modern appearance in the Strange Westerns one-shot. But I don't know when this is set, so I don't know if it fits with Avengers Forever. Apart from the marriage of Jocasta and Machine Man, most of the other images Rick sees are of events that will be referenced in later issues. The odd one out is the meeting of two versions of Vance Astro(vik). This meeting caused young Vance to grow up to be the Avenger Justice in the main timeline, and rendered the Guardians of the Galaxy's timeline an alternate reality. Presumably this was one of Immortus's manipulations.

The Killraven adventure shows Immortus manipulating the timeline to keep humans from space. It doesn't specifically show him using the Forever Crystal, but he would need it to stop his actions just causing a divergent timeline. I'm not sure what was the point of including the Western adventure in Avengers Forever, but I have a theory. In #4 Giant-Man and Yellowjacket detected evidence of 3 similar activities by Immortus. The 50's Avengers and Killraven events involved the Forever Crystal, so presumably the Western adventure did too. I propose that Immortus in Avengers #141-143 used the Crystal to ensure that version of Kang died without leaving an alternate reality version who didn't. (But we will see in #9 that this particular Kang didn't actually die.) Wakanda's version of vibranium was introduced in Fantastic Four #53. It absorbs energy and vibrations, and is a component of Captain America's shield. Mourning Prey is another character seen in the original alternate future War of the Worlds in Amazing Adventures, and now included in this alternate alternate future. Kid Colt, Rawhide Kid and Two-Gun Kid we have already met in #4. Ringo Kid began in Wild Western #26 in 1953 but never made it out of the 50's. Night Rider is Carter Slade, who debuted in the 60's as Ghost Rider in his own series. For reprints and later appearances the name was changed to avoid confusion with his supernatural namesake, first to Night Rider and later to Phantom Rider. Several other Western and modern-day heroes also used this identity, and it is complicated to work out which ones were actually known by which names.