Avengers #7 Goes Old School. Seriously, It’s the Oldest School Imaginable.

The following originally ran in the Weekly Planet 9/5/18.

The Avengers are breaking new ground.

Or, rather, they’re breaking some very old ground we’ve never seen before.

The new AVENGERS series just wrapped up its first arc. It was a tight, rip-roaring adventure. The twists kept coming. Everything built to a stunning conclusion anyone who grew up watching Power Rangers just went gaga over. Writer Jason Aaron–the guy who has made the Thor series THE best on shelves for six years–has crafted one of the most purely fun Avengers books in a long while. If you’ve read his character-redefining work on his Thor books, you know that Aaron
is the contemporary master of telling epic, millenia-spanning tales that compel, dazzle, and thoroughly entertain in equal measure. And if you haven’t read his character-redefining work on his Thor books, what in the actual hell are you doing read this? Go. Go right now. They’re on our shelves. They’re the actual best.

During that first storyline of this AVENGERS, we saw glimpses of a Marvel history we’ve never seen: a Prehistoric Avengers. Odin, the Phoenix, the first Black Panther and Iron Fist, Agamotto himself. And this New Comic Book Day, we’re finally getting up close and personal with one of them. Meet the world’s first Ghost Rider.

He rides a mammoth. A flaming mammoth. Nothing I could say beyond this point could possibly sell you on AVENGERS #7 better than the skeleton riding a flaming mammoth on the cover could. But I will try.

Sara Pichelli (Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man) will illustrate this dynamic tale at the dawn of man. Pichelli is wonderful at grandiosity (like, say, a flaming woolly mammoth) and humanity (like, say, the Ghost Rider riding the flaming woolly mammoth) in equal measure. I’ve seen the previews and this is absolutely going to be an issue you want panels of on your wall. This is the kind of art that slacks your jaw into a dumb grin the whole time you’re reading it.

The Prehistoric Avengers have been perhaps the most intriguing aspect of what is shaping up to be a mighty run on AVENGERS from Aaron and Co. I almost wish we had a whole book about them, but alas. We’ll just have to savor these tastes we get like an entire issue devoted to a Ghost Rider on a flaming woolly mammoth.

AVENGERS #7 is on our stands now. Ghost Rider on a flaming woolly mammoth. Just had to get it in there one last time.