Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have been around for a long time...even if they weren’t always called the Avengers. Even in the Lower Paleolithic Era, there were precursors to a team that first emerged on the comics page a few months before the assassination of JFK. Writer Jason Aaron explores an early incarnation of the team in Avengers 1,000,000 B.C. Artist Kev Walker commits the story to the page with the aid of colorist Dean White. A very early era of Marvel’s heroes is a fun place to visit, but it DOES rob the more powerful elements in the Marvel Universe of a bit of magnitude and mystery in the process.

It was a different time. Odin had led a team of powerful beings against the forces of the Frost Giant Laufey and his lover from the Negative Zone. The battle was over. Odin felt love for the Phoenix. It was a love that was not requited. The Phoenix was upset, so it left the earth. Years later, Odin had impregnated Gaea. Its birth was met with a group of Frost Giants looking for revenge. Things were suitably violent on the day that child was born. They’ve been pretty complicated for Thor ever since.

Aaron ties together a great many aspects of the Marvel multiverse that don’t really NEED to be tied together. Still, it IS cool to see the Ghost Rider spirit of Vengeance riding along on the back of a mammoth. It’s fun to see the Star Brand hanging out all Hulk-like one million years before Mark Gruenwald decided that it would be cool for it to emigrate from the New Universe. The ineffable power of things like the Star Brand and the Phoenix Force and the Sorcerers Supreme and so on...it cheapens it all a bit to have it bound to a single earth under the guise of a single team, but it’s a fun little exercise. 

Walker’s art carries some of the weight of the power of the Marvel Universe of the Upper Paleolithic. At its best, there’s a primeval power in the way that Walker binds the story to the page. The basic human element of passions and dramas will weigh down the impact of the higher end of the powers being presented in the story. White does a respectable job of bringing the glow of heat and magic to the page, but even the most dazzling color can’t make up for the intangibles that are missing from some of the strongest elements of power in the Marvel multiverse.

In another era, Marvel might have tried a whole line of comics set in the world of the Upper Paleolithic. Given the right angle, it could have turned into a very primal look at the heart of the conflicts that have come to define the heroes on pages, panels, and screens of various sizes over the past eighty years or so. A single issue telling the story of Thor’s birth just seems kind of...weird. There’s so much more they could do with the era.

Grade: C+