Welcome to my review of the Avengers Omnibus Volume 2. This one covers issues #31-58 and the annuls #1 and 2 of the silver age stuff by Stan Lee. The team coming into this one is Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Goliath (Ant-Man). Things start off with Goliath off in a far land trying to shrink down to normal size again, Black Widow becomes an Avenger, and the twins power diminishes so they returned to their home land.
Hercules, the God of Olympus gets banished and ends up living with the Avengers which is pretty wild, but I guess considering how Thor is part of Marvel its not too surprising to see other mythological characters show up. Around this time Black Widow also ends up being a double, double agent (triple agent?) working for Shield and the russians. Cap also decides to abruptly leave the team after several times feeling as if he is the only Avenger who doesn’t have a life outside the Avengers.
While Cap is away from the team he ends up finding out about the cosmic cube (first sign of an infinity stone in the marvel universe as far as I know). He warns the Avengers about it and they end up in a battle with Namor over it. It eventually falls through the earth and the Mole Man, one of the Fantastic Four villains stumbles across it, but thinks nothing of it.
Hank Pym, aka Goliath aka Ant-Man ends up obtaining the Dragon man that the fantastic four had previously fought. Diablo ends up bringing it back to life and captures Goliath and Wasp which was finally what convinced Hercules to join the Avengers. Diablo is able to hold the Avengers at bay until Captain America shows up and rejoins the team. After defeating Diablo the Avengers get a call asking them to help Black Widow as she is stuck behind the red curtain and working for S.H.I.E.L.D.
Hawkeye and Hercules are the first of the Avengers to go overseas and attempt to rescue Black Widow, we are then introduced to the Red Guardian who is basically Russia’s version of Captain America and also the Black Widows long estranged husband. Naturally, the Avengers win and save the day and destroy the Psychotron device which drives its occupants mad.
The first Avengers annual is in this omnibus and features most of the team reunite to take on the Mandarin and his gang of villains including the swordsman, the enchantress, power man, the executioner and the living laser. The Avengers split up to tackle the different foes and ultimately all meet up to take on the Mandarin in space, he uses a beam on them that makes them fight amongst themselves. Fortunately the Wasp fought with the Mandarin and ended up saving the day.
After that, Black Widow ends up retiring from Avenging, Goliath officially becomes the Ant-Man with a helmet that helps him command ants at his will. Pietro and Scarlet Witch end up getting recruited by Magneto to reform the Brotherhood of Evil mutants, they decline which leads to them being imprisoned by Magneto in the Black Knights castle. Magneto takes them to the UN to announce he wants to start a mutant country and stages Wanda being shot at in order to get Pietro on his side.
The Black Knight, who is actually the nephew of the original villain, ends up helping the Avengers/X-Men win the fight against Magneto. Meanwhile Hercules returns home to Olympus to find everyone is gone and that another God Typhon has banished everybody from Olympus. Hercules ends up defeating him, bringing the Gods back and leaving the Avengers to return home to Olympus.
Captain America ends up phoning to suggest the Black Panther be admitted as an Avenger. The Avengers happily take him on as per Cap’s recommendation. After the Grim reaper seemingly kills Ant-Man, Wasp and Hawkeye, its up to Black Panther to save the day and really make himself a concrete Avengers. Once Black Panther is on the team the big crossover between X-Men & Avengers takes place in X-Men #45 and Avengers #53. Angel reached out to the Avengers for help with Magneto and they staged a fight amongst the teams to trick Magneto and ultimately defeat him.
This omnibus also covers the first appearances of Ultron-5 an android who disguises himself as the Crimson Cowl and manipulates Jarvis, the Avengers butler into giving him security clearance to the Avengers Headquarters. He captured all the Avengers but was foiled by Jarvis escaping and getting help from the Black Knight who wants to redeem his uncles villainous ways.
The ever curious Captain America can’t help but feel as if his old partner Bucky Barnes is still alive, Hawkeye, Goliath, Black Panther and Cap go back in time through one of Dr. Dooms time machines that Reed Richards told Cap about. They witness the death of Bucky Barnes and return home to find the world is different than when they had left it.
This is where annual #2 begins and it seems the original Avengers team is all back at HQ when the time displaced team shows up. This reminded me a lot of the Civil War movie, where one group of the Avengers is fighting another group. On one side we had Cap, Hawkeye, Goliath, Wasp & Black Panther and on the other side we’ve got Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Goliath and Wasp. We end up finding out through a historical information machine that The Scarlet Centurion who is actually also Kang The Conquerer approached the Avengers of this timeline and made a deal with them to rid the world of famine, disease, poverty etc. In exchange for them taking out all the humans with abilities. The Avengers have to assemble the same time machine they used of Dr. Dooms in their original time line to get things back to normal, they end up tricking the Centurion and sending him into the future. At this point the Watcher showed up and explained to them the Centurion became Kang because of them sending him so far into the future. Following this there is only 2 issues remaining in the omnibus and they introduce us to one heck of an Avenger in Vision.
Vision shows up at the very beginning of issue #57 and is actually an android assassin sent by Ultron-5 to destroy the Avengers. He ends up shutting down when attacking the wasp and the Avengers gather to study him. Once they have all gathered he wakes up and ends up reasoning with the Avengers. He leads them to Ultrons lair where Vision was created and challenges Ultron 5 on behalf of the Avengers and wins. Vision becomes an official member of the team and the team goes to Goliaths lab for clues. They find that Vision has the memories and consciousness of Wonder Man placed into an android body. Oh and Black Widow also decided she is going to come out of retirement.
Thanks for reading! Until next time.