Review by Frank Plowright

Beyond using the title, the idea of messing with time, and obviously featuring the Avengers, this series has no connection with the well-received Avengers Forever of the 1990s. Jason Aaron, though, has used the idea of a form of Avengers throughout history since the start of his run. In The Death Hunters Deathlok arrived in the present day with a warning for the Avengers, and The Lords of Earthly Vengeance begins as he and Ghost Rider travel to alternate Earths changed when the Masters of Evil murdered the prehistoric equivalent of the Avengers. Here, Aaron uses alternate worlds and the two outsider heroes to inject further horror into the Avengers’ world.

This is a grim and unpleasant story over the first two chapters. Anyone powerful enough to cope with Ghost Rider and Deathlok isn’t likely to be the peace and flowers type, and the Black Skull certainly isn’t. He relishes a torture session, and for the sake of extending things over four chapters, Aaron indulges him, and in addition to being gratuitously unpleasant, it comes across as padding.

Were The Lords of Earthly Vengeance a little more compacted it would be a decent enough plot. There are teams of Avengers on all worlds, and on Earth 818 what’s left of them are run by Tony Stark, but as Ant-Man, which is an interesting difference to build a story around. Aaron Kuder does his part by designing other variations to add visual interest, but otherwise they’re not a compelling bunch. That’s odd because in the main Avengers series Aaron’s Avengers counterparts have largely been interesting.

Kuder draws just over two chapters, and Jim Towe two exactly, and both go for the big image. It’s par for the course when you have a visually distinctive character in Ghost Rider, but even with Kuder’s talent it becomes too much of the same.

That leaves a surprise guest appearance as the most fascinating aspect of the first four chapters, characters from another series Aaron worked on, and whom it might have been presumed he was finished with. Their part continues into The Pillars.

The final chapter is the pontifications of Doom, preening and boasting, and also indulging in a spot of torture. The impression given, though, is that this Doom doesn’t enjoy life too much, and needs a night out watching the Barbie movie. It’s dull stuff.

While the idea of alternate teams of Avengers will always have a fascination, Aaron makes hard work of the idea.