Uncanny Avengers #22 Review: Avenged, But Not Forgotten

Rick Remender isn’t the only writer playing the long game in super hero comics today, but he’s been doing one of the most impressive jobs while telling a grand epic in the pages of Uncanny Avengers. Except for the first few issues which featured the team coming together to face the threat of the Red Skull — and even that story is headed to a pay-off when Avengers & X-Men: AXIS hits this fall — the whole series has essentially been one long arc that has had a little something for everyone: a huge cast of characters, old and new heroes, bickering heroes forced to come together, and enough multiple timelines to give anyone a headache.

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The final chapter has finally arrived in the form of Uncanny Avengers #22, and it feels good to say that Remender and Daniel Acuna wrap things up in a satisfying conclusion. It’s no small task, given everything they’ve been juggling, but the “Avenge the Earth” finale delivers several pivotal showdowns, some tough choices for our heroes (and Havok in particular) and several momentum swings that made the final battle feel something like the way a pro wrestling title match is scripted.

That’s not to say that everything is tied up neatly in a bow by the final page. With Kang and time travel involved, it would have been easy for Remender to have everything basically back to normal by the end except for some fresh mental scars on the psyches of the Avengers Unity Squad, but this is a tale that really does appear to have a few lasting consequences. One in particular you might be able to guess if you’ve stuck with the arc since the beginning, but a few are results of the last stand (for now) against Kang.

Still, I can’t discuss any of them until you agree to proceed past the …

SPOILER ALERT (FROM MULTIPLE FUTURES)!

Surprise! Kang couldn’t be trusted after all. And while the Avengers Unity Squad only cooperated with him because he seemed like the least of all the evils, he was making a play for absolute dominance of the only possible timeline the whole time.

While several Avengers try in vain to convince Kang’s helpers they are on the wrong side (poor Tony Stark can’t even persuade his own relative he’s in the wrong!), Havok, Sunfire and Thor are left to stand against Kang, who’s juiced up on the power of a fallen Celestial. Bad times, as Thor is easily swatted away, but Havok and Sunfire figure what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or whatever the equivalent of that saying would be when it comes to super heroes and their villains.

Ultimately, the battle turns on two moments. Havok decides that while Kang is holding the fate of his daughter Katie over his head, he’s probably got as good a chance of seeing her again whether he fights or surrenders. He fights, and manages to hold his own thanks to his Celestial-boosted power.

Alex is still headed for a loss until the second moment occurs. Sunfire looks like he’s been blown apart, but he’s actually transcended physical form thanks to his power-up, and he returns to swing the battle in the favor of the good guys. Kang is bloodied, but he lives to fight another day by vanishing back into the timestream along with his minions. How you feel about that probably depends on how big your tolerance is for the whole, “This isn’t over!” type of deal.

The Sentry agrees to push the body of the dead Celestial into deep space, but not before delivering a very logical warning, which is that the rest of the Celestials are probably going to be pretty irked when they find out what happened. Thanks Thor!

Really, the only thing that didn’t sit so well with this reviewer is that the Apocalypse Twins, who were in the forefront of the story for issues at a time, are so easily killed off. They’re literally disposed of in the course of about six panels, and they stand out as the one element with which Remender seems like he wrote himself into a corner. I also didn’t understand why the Infinity Watch were outside the purview of Kang’s ability to see the future, but maybe I just need to go back and re-read some of the prior issues.

Oh, and about those lasting effects. Sunfire has no body, Havok looks like Jonah Hex or Two-Face and his marriage to Wasp might be a Kang-arranged sham, and Rogue might be stuck with Wonder Man inside his head. And Katie Summers? Let’s just say she suffered the same fate as most Marvel super hero babies before her. On the bright side, Scarlet Witch and Rogue were ready to kill each other at the beginning of the series and are now BFFs, so there’s that.

Acuna killed it on the art side coming down the stretch, and while his style strikes me as one that you either love or hate, he’s proven he can handle the scale of stories like this just fine. The cover, which is an homage to one done by the King, Jack Kirby, is simply awesome.

Now there’s only one question: where does the series head from here?

Favorite moment: In another pro wrestling parallel, Kang and Havok engage in the time-honored test of strength. Is it possible Remender or Acuna are wrestling fans?

Final thought: Sticking the landing is the hardest part of long arcs like this one, and Remender managed it with only the slightest of bobbles, if that. Yes, that was a gymnastics metaphor.

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