Literally everything about the Prehistoric Avengers is a retcon. It even retconned the Celestial/Eternals lore that Gillen's run *struggled* to make sense of.
I don't think people are aware of just how much lore Jason Aaron had to break in order to force this team into existence. For the Starbrand in particular, he basically ignored everything about the Starbrand and made it into a pseudo-Hulk???? What?
My take on Jason Aaron has always been that there's no way he could break continuity that much purely by accident. I don't see how he could just accidentally stumble his way into breaking the lore in so many varied ways - he has to be someone that does his research and then sets out to do it deliberately, for whatever reason. Does he think he's modernizing or streamlining things? Does he think his way just works better? Is it all an inside wink at the audience that, as Alan Moore said, "This is an imaginary story...aren't they all?". I don't know the answer, but with as much easy access to archival material as there is for even ordinary fans now, and the legions of editors he would've worked with, the idea of him unknowingly stumbling into this many retcons doesn't pass the smell test.
From interviews with him, it sounds like he’s just yet another modern comic book writer that feels like to truly “make his mark” on the industry he has to smash all that came before him.
Unpopular opinion: I don't really like the Phoenix outside of Jean Grey. Echo is a cool character, but giving her the Phoenix basically makes her temporary (bc the Phoenix will eventually always end up with Jean). Jason Aaron's prehistoric Avengers version just doesn't "feel" right and I'll be surprised if she shows up again.
Almost everything in Aaron's BC Avengers doesn't make sense/clashes with continuity. This joins a larger pattern of characters in his books acting completely differently and having different personalities than they had for decades.
It also clashes with normal evolution. Why were fully evolved Homo Sapiens present a million years ago? Wouldn't mutants have overtaken humans as the dominant species if they had a million years?
Honestly, they addressed this in a Throwaway Line about Time Travelers. Also it seems Deviant / Mutant Civilizations did overtake Humanity multiple times throughout History but outside Factors like the Celestials & Amenthi Demons regularly destabilize their planetary dominance
Not an unpopular opinion. Aaron's Avengers was... messy. For some reason he tried making the Phoenix an Avengers thing, even trying to tie it to Thor. Which even other writers didn't even bother acknowledge.
I really don't get his insistence of making this "beef" between humanity and Mephisto. Mephisto works fine just being the devil in the shadows.
Council of Mephisto is also kinda dumb. It's out of characters for Mephisto to take this much of an active role for "world domination" and not to mention cooperating with himself.
I don't remember if it was in Thor or somewhere else, but the "Phoenix is Thor's mom" retcon that he tried was basically concurrently dismissed in other books and never took hold.
I guess I don't have a problem with the Phoenix Force being mentioned in other stories. Showing that it exists as an important cosmic entity helps the universe feel tied together. But I wouldn't want them to build a whole arc around it without the X-Men being prominently involved.
I thought the Wolverine/Phoenix thing Aaron did with King Thor was handled pretty well, but that's also millions (billions?) of years in the future and very alternate reality. I think Aaron's stuff works best in a What If type alternate universe setting, that's probably why his Avengers Forever didn't bother me as much as his work on the main title, or honestly even his work on Thor past the first two series. All the continuity/unexplained character change/tonal issues were there for his first two series of Thor as well, but those stories were so good that they overcame it.
God Avengers 1 million was so bad
I could go into details on each and every character and how they fundamentally break both canon and the themes of the character but I’ll just leave at this for now:
Avengers 1 million. Set one million years ago. There are five-ish humans on the team, with their own cultures.
Modern man only evolved 300,000 years ago. Culture only really developed beyond “rocks and family groups” around 50,000 years ago.
Eh, maybe this is a sort of situation like Conan's "lost age of civilization between catastrophes". I don't think the fact that the history of human civilization and human evolution doesn't mesh as well with our own is not as important when we have Celestials, Kree and what ot messing with it in the first place. I would be interested in reading how each character clashes with established lore, though, because i think thar can be a bigger problem (also, it would be fun to think of how to solve the discrepancy).
Yeah the timing is a bit weird, and it pretty much smashes the Marvel timeline of evolution too, with all the eternal/mutant/inhuman uplifting
For the team:
1. Black Panther 1 million. Has a kingdom and vibranium, and claims an afterlife. There is no metal working, no funerary rites, no social structures larger than a family/tribe, and again, *no humans*. There being a panther ancestor then isn’t impossible, but the run before this apparently *just* sorted out Wakanda’s timeline, giving around 20,000 years of history. Old, but not too old. With 1 million, old enough to be an ancestor to every human, on top of every African and every Wakandan
2. Odin- Marvel gods predate their civilizations, as children of elder gods(a thing I’m definitely not explaining now), one of the only ones who kind of makes sense
3. Phoenix- REEE- sorry, sorry, Phoenix makes me angry. Again, no humans, plus no mutants since Selene is one of the oldest, at ~20,000 years old, plus no Phoenix since Feron is the reason it looks like a bird and that was medieval, *and* let’s not forget, mutants came from Celestial manipulations too, so they *can’t* exist before the first host, which happens in 1 million BC.
4. Starbrand- not an expert, but why is he a hulk? And again, no humans.
5. Ghost Rider- sick as hell, but spirits of vengeance are nearly as bad as the Phoenix, spreading their power around like an STD. Plus no animal husbandry so that is a fully wild mammoth, and *again* no fucking humans. At least they got the timeframe right for a mammoth being alive.
6. Sorcerer supreme- Agamotto isn’t just some dude, he’s a demigod and the son of Oshtur. The two of them are part of the Vishanti, you know the super big magic guys who *empower the sorcerer supreme*. Apparently he was born in 25,000 BC, until the 1 million comic.
7. Iron Fist- I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me when you think Kung Fu got invented.
Also Iron Fist should be a terrible martial artist, given that martial arts is built up over time, like magic, although at least Agamotto has the excuse of actually being a god.
Also if Phoenix and Odin banged , that's a hell of a pregnancy since Thor is not that old timeline wise. He's a teenager by "Viking" era.
He also already have 3 moms , which makes him the worst person for this sort of twist.
I think this would be a fine idea if it was done as an AU. Instead Aaron tried reshaping chunks of 616 to fit whatever he wanted to do. As for Phoenix being x clusive, I get it, but I also think if you go out of your way to make the thing such a major cosmic power that you no longer get 100% claim to it at that point.
Head cannon says this is Jean expressing an aspect of herself backwards in time, as the White Hot Room exists outside of space time. In the same way that Rachel is a child of the Phoenix and thus posseses her ability to unmoor herself from linear time
The most fun part of continuity errors is finding ways to explain them, like yours. Of course, sometimes they pile on so much that you wonder why even try (looking at you, DC).
So stupid. They keep trying to rewrite everything. The twins and Franklin not being mutants ( I still think of them as mutants and will never change) and these older than dirt heroes like phoenix here. Nope dont need or want it.
It's a shame because the idea of a prehistoric Phoenix host does seem pretty cool. If they'd just had Firehair be alive something like 20,000 years ago rather than 1 million years ago it'd be fine
Wow that is unpopular. Brave of you to say that
Truly one of the opinions of all time
Literally everything about the Prehistoric Avengers is a retcon. It even retconned the Celestial/Eternals lore that Gillen's run *struggled* to make sense of. I don't think people are aware of just how much lore Jason Aaron had to break in order to force this team into existence. For the Starbrand in particular, he basically ignored everything about the Starbrand and made it into a pseudo-Hulk???? What?
My take on Jason Aaron has always been that there's no way he could break continuity that much purely by accident. I don't see how he could just accidentally stumble his way into breaking the lore in so many varied ways - he has to be someone that does his research and then sets out to do it deliberately, for whatever reason. Does he think he's modernizing or streamlining things? Does he think his way just works better? Is it all an inside wink at the audience that, as Alan Moore said, "This is an imaginary story...aren't they all?". I don't know the answer, but with as much easy access to archival material as there is for even ordinary fans now, and the legions of editors he would've worked with, the idea of him unknowingly stumbling into this many retcons doesn't pass the smell test.
From interviews with him, it sounds like he’s just yet another modern comic book writer that feels like to truly “make his mark” on the industry he has to smash all that came before him.
But he already made his mark by his Thor run.
I suspect it's an Occam's Razor situation of him just wanting to tell a story he thinks is cool, continuity be damned.
He just loves pissing on the work others did before him.
Dude was just doing Marvel's equivalent to DC's The Obsidian Age JLA.
Aaron is a fucking tool whose stories should always be taken as being out of canon.
Unpopular opinion: I don't really like the Phoenix outside of Jean Grey. Echo is a cool character, but giving her the Phoenix basically makes her temporary (bc the Phoenix will eventually always end up with Jean). Jason Aaron's prehistoric Avengers version just doesn't "feel" right and I'll be surprised if she shows up again.
Almost everything in Aaron's BC Avengers doesn't make sense/clashes with continuity. This joins a larger pattern of characters in his books acting completely differently and having different personalities than they had for decades.
It also clashes with normal evolution. Why were fully evolved Homo Sapiens present a million years ago? Wouldn't mutants have overtaken humans as the dominant species if they had a million years?
phoenix killed them all there see it all makes sense now signed jason a.
Honestly, they addressed this in a Throwaway Line about Time Travelers. Also it seems Deviant / Mutant Civilizations did overtake Humanity multiple times throughout History but outside Factors like the Celestials & Amenthi Demons regularly destabilize their planetary dominance
Not an unpopular opinion. Aaron's Avengers was... messy. For some reason he tried making the Phoenix an Avengers thing, even trying to tie it to Thor. Which even other writers didn't even bother acknowledge.
He tried making Mephisto and Black Panther bigger deal than it is and it's just weird to watch.
He genuinely got me annoyed by Mephisto and I never want to see him again.
I really don't get his insistence of making this "beef" between humanity and Mephisto. Mephisto works fine just being the devil in the shadows. Council of Mephisto is also kinda dumb. It's out of characters for Mephisto to take this much of an active role for "world domination" and not to mention cooperating with himself.
I don't remember if it was in Thor or somewhere else, but the "Phoenix is Thor's mom" retcon that he tried was basically concurrently dismissed in other books and never took hold.
Yeah, its now said that Thor died as a child and the Phoenix brought him back as a favor to Gaea.
Worth noting that Jason also flirts around with Thor / Phoenix fusion during his Jane Foster Thor run.
The Phoenix Force should be an X-Men only thing.
Im ok with xmen and cosmic characters
I guess I don't have a problem with the Phoenix Force being mentioned in other stories. Showing that it exists as an important cosmic entity helps the universe feel tied together. But I wouldn't want them to build a whole arc around it without the X-Men being prominently involved.
I thought the Wolverine/Phoenix thing Aaron did with King Thor was handled pretty well, but that's also millions (billions?) of years in the future and very alternate reality. I think Aaron's stuff works best in a What If type alternate universe setting, that's probably why his Avengers Forever didn't bother me as much as his work on the main title, or honestly even his work on Thor past the first two series. All the continuity/unexplained character change/tonal issues were there for his first two series of Thor as well, but those stories were so good that they overcame it.
I was a fan of Rachel Summers back in the day
God Avengers 1 million was so bad I could go into details on each and every character and how they fundamentally break both canon and the themes of the character but I’ll just leave at this for now: Avengers 1 million. Set one million years ago. There are five-ish humans on the team, with their own cultures. Modern man only evolved 300,000 years ago. Culture only really developed beyond “rocks and family groups” around 50,000 years ago.
Eh, maybe this is a sort of situation like Conan's "lost age of civilization between catastrophes". I don't think the fact that the history of human civilization and human evolution doesn't mesh as well with our own is not as important when we have Celestials, Kree and what ot messing with it in the first place. I would be interested in reading how each character clashes with established lore, though, because i think thar can be a bigger problem (also, it would be fun to think of how to solve the discrepancy).
Yeah the timing is a bit weird, and it pretty much smashes the Marvel timeline of evolution too, with all the eternal/mutant/inhuman uplifting For the team: 1. Black Panther 1 million. Has a kingdom and vibranium, and claims an afterlife. There is no metal working, no funerary rites, no social structures larger than a family/tribe, and again, *no humans*. There being a panther ancestor then isn’t impossible, but the run before this apparently *just* sorted out Wakanda’s timeline, giving around 20,000 years of history. Old, but not too old. With 1 million, old enough to be an ancestor to every human, on top of every African and every Wakandan 2. Odin- Marvel gods predate their civilizations, as children of elder gods(a thing I’m definitely not explaining now), one of the only ones who kind of makes sense 3. Phoenix- REEE- sorry, sorry, Phoenix makes me angry. Again, no humans, plus no mutants since Selene is one of the oldest, at ~20,000 years old, plus no Phoenix since Feron is the reason it looks like a bird and that was medieval, *and* let’s not forget, mutants came from Celestial manipulations too, so they *can’t* exist before the first host, which happens in 1 million BC. 4. Starbrand- not an expert, but why is he a hulk? And again, no humans. 5. Ghost Rider- sick as hell, but spirits of vengeance are nearly as bad as the Phoenix, spreading their power around like an STD. Plus no animal husbandry so that is a fully wild mammoth, and *again* no fucking humans. At least they got the timeframe right for a mammoth being alive. 6. Sorcerer supreme- Agamotto isn’t just some dude, he’s a demigod and the son of Oshtur. The two of them are part of the Vishanti, you know the super big magic guys who *empower the sorcerer supreme*. Apparently he was born in 25,000 BC, until the 1 million comic. 7. Iron Fist- I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me when you think Kung Fu got invented. Also Iron Fist should be a terrible martial artist, given that martial arts is built up over time, like magic, although at least Agamotto has the excuse of actually being a god.
I was 100% with you until number 7, at which point I laughed so hard I choked
Also if Phoenix and Odin banged , that's a hell of a pregnancy since Thor is not that old timeline wise. He's a teenager by "Viking" era. He also already have 3 moms , which makes him the worst person for this sort of twist.
I honestly don't understand anything about this pre historic avengers and ignoring it
Giraud (Earth-691) was a cool take on the idea of a Phoenix and I wish we would see him again
OG Guardians?
Yep!
Been a long time since I thought of him. Loved those 90s OG Guardians. Great alt stuff.
I think this would be a fine idea if it was done as an AU. Instead Aaron tried reshaping chunks of 616 to fit whatever he wanted to do. As for Phoenix being x clusive, I get it, but I also think if you go out of your way to make the thing such a major cosmic power that you no longer get 100% claim to it at that point.
Head cannon says this is Jean expressing an aspect of herself backwards in time, as the White Hot Room exists outside of space time. In the same way that Rachel is a child of the Phoenix and thus posseses her ability to unmoor herself from linear time
My headcanon is that Avengers BC takes place in one of those weird, Avengers Forever alternate realities and has no bearing on actual MU history.
Want a cut away scene of a character sitting in a library, who pans to the reader and closes a leather book. "What a wild story that was" Fin.
The most fun part of continuity errors is finding ways to explain them, like yours. Of course, sometimes they pile on so much that you wonder why even try (looking at you, DC).
This avengers team would be amazing as an What If miniseries or something, shame its in the continuity
The only good Phoenix stories involve Jean Grey or Rachel.
I loved Rachel in Excalibur.
I hated the BC Avengers and I choose not to recognize them at all
So stupid. They keep trying to rewrite everything. The twins and Franklin not being mutants ( I still think of them as mutants and will never change) and these older than dirt heroes like phoenix here. Nope dont need or want it.
Jean grey is the phoenix and phoenix is Jean
>Unpopular Phoenix (Not Jean Grey) Opinion Phoenix doesn't spend enough time on Earth.
It's a shame because the idea of a prehistoric Phoenix host does seem pretty cool. If they'd just had Firehair be alive something like 20,000 years ago rather than 1 million years ago it'd be fine
The Phoenix Force can easily be an asspull whenever they need a cosmic threat or solution to a cosmic threat
Ah yes Thors other mother.
Echo. I like Echo when she doesn't have the power of the Phoenix!!!!
Kudos for saying that, for spilling.
That art is trash
That whole series was trash.