Warning: contains spoilers for Avengers: Forever #5!
A new team of Prehistoric Avengers are also variants of Marvel's bizarre, horror-inspired creature.
The Man-Thing was conceived by some of Marvel's greatest writers, Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, and Roy Thomas, along with artist Gray Morrow, and debuted in 1971 in the black-and-white adventure fantasy magazine Savage Tales. Ted Sallis was a biochemistry professor who worked on a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. project to develop a Curse of the Man-Thing, issued to celebrate the character's 50th anniversary in 2021, saw Man-Thing teaming up with Marvel's flagship heroes such as the Avengers, Spider-Man, and the X-Men in an effort to prevent samples of its body being used to end all animal life on Earth.
Doom Supreme and his Multiversal Masters of Evil have set about the mission of conquering countless Earths across the Multiverse, killing their prehistoric protectors to rewrite history and stop the Age of Heroes from ever coming to be. In Avengers: Forever #5 - from Jason Aaron, Jim Towe, and Guru-eFX - they take on an Avengers roster made up exclusively of Man-Things, including versions of the swamp monster who have the powers of the Phoenix, the Sorcerer Supreme, the Iron Fist, and the Starbrand. Considering the Man-Thing's already bountiful powers - including dimensional traversal, plant-control, and the ability to manipulate its own form - these enhancements may make the heroes shown the most powerful Avengers roster ever assembled.
Besides its ability to incinerate anything that feels fear, Man-Thing is practically immortal and near indestructible, capable of regenerating its body from plant and vegetable matter, as well as growing or shrinking depending on its needs. It has also shown the ability to send others and/or itself to other dimensions and even to combine dimensional planes as a form of attack, e.g. by introducing threats from one world into another. The combination of Man-Thing's unique abilities and the cosmic-level powers of this Avengers team means there's very little they should be unable to accomplish.
Sadly, the Man-Thing Avengers are quickly defeated by the Multiversal Masters of Evil, but this doesn't necessarily strip them of their title. The Multiversal Masters of Evil are powerful world-conquering villains drawn from different realities throughout the multiverse, and have yet to meet any single Avengers team they can't kill with a combination of incredible power and grim experience. Even then, it's shocking they're able to go toe-to-toe with the unusual Avengers fans see in this issue, and this issue makes it clear that even the natural world combining with cosmic forces that can warp reality won't stand in their way.
The Man-Thing Avengers have sadly been relegated to a footnote in the Masters of Evil's brutal tale of conquest of the Multiverse, showing just how all-powerful this terrifying group of villains actually are. However, in a multiverse of infinite worlds often separated by only slight differences, it's likely that some version of the Man-Thing Avengers still exists, and that fans might get to see this uber-powerful team actually explore the limits of their power in future stories.
Avengers: Forever #5 is available from Marvel Comics now.
