All throughout December, we will be examining comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked.

Today we feature the third of three "Abandoned An' Forsaked" installments where the story in question was "overturned" during Avengers Forever...

Enjoy!

During the Avengers crossover known as "The Crossing," not only does Iron Man turn on the rest of the Avengers, but it is revealed that Iron Man had been manipulated by Kang for years. In Avengers #395, however, we discover that Iron Man was not Kang's original target. Instead, he tried to turn Hank Pym, instead, but Hank resisted, with the result being that Hank's mental state suffered greatly, leading to the notable series of mental breakdowns that Hank had over his time as an Avenger (Hank did not take kindly to learning the truth)...

However, in Avengers Forever #8, we discover that the Kang in that storyline was really Immortus in disguise. The entirety of The Crossing was designed just to occupy the Avengers' time until the events of Onslaught took them out of the picture for the foreseeable future (it was all part of a plan by Immortus to keep the Avengers from becoming too powerful of an organization, which they have apparently always been destined to become - and the more powerful they become, the more despotic they become).

Which is fair enough, but what about the mental breakdown stuff? Hank asks about that...

One of the difficulties Kurt Busiek had with trying to reconcile away a lot of weird Avengers stories is that he had to go to "Yeah, we just did it for kicks" as an explanation for a few of them, which can sound pretty funny. "Yeah, we made you think that - no real reason, it just amused us."