Previously
This is the part 13 in my continuing insane effort to try to read EVERY MARVEL COMIC EVER PUBLISHED and write about them. You can see previous posts using the tag "complete-marvel-run". This entry is will cover the Heroes Reborn events. Covering Heroes Reborn (1996) allows me to continue with my read-through of Iron Man/Captain America/Thor/Avengers adventures that I already started earlier in this series.
Heroes Reborn (1996)
At the end of the Onslaught crossover event, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers seemingly died to help defeat the titular villain. It turns out they were actually transported to a pocket universe created by Reed Richards' son Franklin. This was the premise behind Marvel cancelling the relevant long-running Fantastic Four and Avengers titles and relaunching them as four 12-issue series outsourced to Image founders Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. Liefeld's Extreme Studios covered Captain America and The Avengers, while Jim Lee's Wildstorm covered Fantastic Four and Iron Man.
Some notes about the event overall:
- The heroes (and villains) all have their origins retold.
- Liefeld's books sold terribly. Halfway through Captain America and The Avengers, starting with #7, Marvel gave up on Liefeld and shifted his books over to Jim Lee/Wildstorm.
- Issue #6 of each series was the "Industrial Revolution" story arc, where all the members get together to try to shut down a nuclear situation
- Issue #12 of each series is the "Heroes Reunited" crossover where the heroes of this world have to deal with Galactus.
- Each series was only supposed to last 12 issues, but they added a #13 to each series which was a crossover with the Wildstorm universe.
Captain America v3
13 issues (1996-1997)
Easily the worst series of this set. I was never a big fan of Rob Liefeld's art and reading this series reminded me why. It's not just his famous problems with feet or body proportions, but he always like drawing men with this particular face shape and gritted teeth expression and I don't like it. You can see examples of this problem (among others) in the cover shown below:
Captain America v2 cover. What is up with that free-floating face?!?
Note: The most infamous artwork from this era was of course Rob Liefeld's bulging chest Captain America. That image was actually used as promotional material for the Heroes Reborn event and was never used in an actual comic.
The story also seemed often incoherent; I had to go back and re-read some parts because it sometimes felt like characters would be talking about things that I don't remember happening or don't make sense, and maybe I missed something, but nope it was just a mess. Cap's background here is more similar to Winter Soldier; instead of being trapped in the ice after the war, SHIELD "deactivated" him for decades at a time until he was needed, mostly because he disagreed with using nukes to end the war.
The Avengers v2
13 issues (1996-1997)
Apparently Loki got shunted over to the pocket universe as well, and he spends most of his time annoying the Avengers. In the first issue they find a mysterious body frozen in a block of ice and discover it is Thor, the Asgardian God of Thunder. Thor doesn't even get his own book! Anyway, most of this series is Loki plaguing the Avengers with villains from the main universe. The initial roster before adding Thor is Cap/Scarlet Witch/Vision/Hawkeye/Swordsman/Hellcat. Later Vision malfunctions and this leads to the introduction of Henry Pym as Ant-Man who has to miniaturize to investigate Vision's innards.
This series wasn't especially bad, but kind of mediocre and mostly just re-treading old ground and not really telling us anything new.
Iron Man v2
13 issues (1996-1997)
Because Marvel budgeted only 4 series to cover the Heroes Reborn universe, Iron Man kind of shares his origin story with Hulk. Bruce Banner's gamma accident in the first issue forces Tony to don his experimental armor (which killed a friend of theirs some time ago) and the savage Hulk dubs him "Iron Man".
The art on this book is kind of a mess, and the story kind of forgettable as well. It doesn't help that Tony Stark here is portrayed as even more of a standoffish asshole capitalist than he usually is.
Fantastic Four v2
13 issues (1996-1997)
Because of the my "MCU order" approach, I am covering FF v2 before v1! Easily the best book of this bunch, mostly because it has the only decent art among them (c/o Jim Lee of course). The book covers the usual Fantastic Four stuff - Mole Man, Doom, Skrulls, Heralds of Galactus, etc. The story is mediocre, but at least it isn't confusing and the heroes are actually a bit likeable!
Heroes Reborn: The Return
4 issues (1997)
One of the Celestials manifests to Franklin Richards in the main universe to explain to him how he had shunted the other heroes into the pocket universe and that he had to choose one of the universes to survive. The heroes of the pocket universe simply build a ship and use it to travel back to the main universe where apparently their memories are all restored (and inconvenient events are retconned away somehow, see Avengers: The Crossing). It all felt like an anticlimactic way to get everyone back home (Doom fell back to the pocket universe though because he tried to steal Franklin's powers as they escaped lol.). In the end, Franklin convinces the Celestial (Ashema) to keep the pocket universe alive under her authority.
One-Shots
- Heroes Reborn Ashema #1
- Heroes Reborn Doom #1
- Heroes Reborn Doomsday #1
- Heroes Reborn Masters of Evil #1
- Heroes Reborn Rebel #1
- Heroes Reborn Remnants #1
- Heroes Reborn Young Allies #1
In 2000, Marvel published a set of one-shots that show us what has happened to the pocket universe after the heroes left it. Most of the posts I've read about this set claim you can read them in any order but that isn't really true!
At the very least you should read Doomsday, Ashema and Doom in that order. These 3 books comprise the "main plot" of these one-shots in my view: Doom trying to solve this world's problems and eventually managing to transport the entire world back into the main universe as a "Counter-Earth". The story of this "Counter-Earth" continues in Fantastic Four v3 apparently; I will get there someday!
The rest of the one-shots are kind of inconsequential and honestly kind of uninteresting because we have no real investment in any of these characters other than Doom himself.
Heroes Reborn (2021)
- Heroes Reborn #1-7
- Heroes Return #1
- Heroes Reborn: American Knights #1
- Heroes Reborn: Hyperion & the Imperial Guard #1
- Heroes Reborn: Magneto & the Mutant Force #1
- Heroes Reborn: Marvel Double Action #1
- Heroes Reborn: Night-Gwen #1
- Heroes Reborn: Peter Parker, The Amazing Shutterbug #1
- Heroes Reborn: Siege Society #1
- Heroes Reborn: Squadron Savage #1
- Heroes Reborn: Young Squadron #1
- Heroes Reborn: Weapon X & Final Flight #1
This 2021 event is not related to the 1996 one at all. This is an event that spins out of Jason Aaron's Avengers run from 2018. It explores an alternate universe where the Avengers were never assembled and the premiere super hero team is the Squadron Supreme of America, controlled by President Phil Coulson. Blade wakes up in this world and is the only one who remembers the Avengers and the previous world.
Heroes Reborn (2021) #1 cover
Each issue of the main series focuses on one member of the SSA, while the backup story involves Blade hunting down the other Avengers and restoring their memories. I haven't read a lot of Squadron Supreme, but this series is the best, most detailed take on them I've seen so far.
The tie-in one-shots all feature the other denizens of this universe and how they are different from the mainstream one. For example, in this universe Peter Parker is a normal newspaper photojournalist, the Jimmy Olsen to Hyperion's Superman (at least, he sees himself that way!) The worldbuilding in the one-shots is pretty good, and because these are all alternate versions of main universe characters, it's much more interesting than the 2000 Heroes Reborn one-shots which were mostly about characters we didn't care about.
As the main series progresses, it is revealed that this is all Mephisto's doing; unsurprising as he was THE big bad of Aaron's Avengers run. Mephisto had given Coulson a Pandemonium Cube that he then used to create this alternate reality. Everything culminated in Heroes Return where the reunited Avengers confront the Squadron Supreme of America with the truth and destroy Coulson's Pandemonium Cube, restoring the main reality. The SSA survive the transition with the knowledge that they had been living in a false reality all this time.
Overall, this event was fine, an interesting enough alternate universe. Also a fun thing about these issues is that there is an overlying conceit of an entire alternate Marvel comics line and continuity built around the SSA, and even the editorial notes will call out references to past "fake" issues that were never really published by Marvel.
Progress Bar
Total issues covered in this post: 81.
Total number of titles/volumes covered in this post: 24. (Lots of one-shots!)
Total issues covered so far: 4,608 + 81 = 4,689
Current total (released) according to the reference reading order: 34,896 (+43 from the previous post.)
Progress: 13.43% (13.22% last post)
The past couple of posts have been a bit light. The progress rate is a bit slow for my taste, gaining just around 0.2% per post, so we are likely to end the year at around 15% at this rate. We are also exactly two years out from when I started this series so the current rate is around 6.5% a year which isn't great and means we're likely to finish around 2037 lol. I think the current rate of posts might be better than the "every 3 months or so" rate from before, but I'm gonna see if I can include more issues in succeeding posts to match the coverage throughput.
Up Next
Now that I've covered Heroes Reborn, I can continue with the Iron Man/Thor/Captain America stuff! I am also considering interspersing them with some posts covering some more modern comics, starting with some X-Men related lines, so that I am not reading/writing about old comics all the time. We shall see how that goes.