A boy arrives at Avengers Mansion and insists that the Avengers help cure him of his immortality. When the heroes fail to take him seriously, he commits suicide. After the Avengers watch his body disintegrate and re-form, the boy explains that he has been reincarnated across millennia. He notes that in a recent life he was Captain America’s foe, Morgan MacNeil Hardy, and that a mishap involving an invention of his not only killed him, but also caused him upon reincarnation to recall all his past lives for the fi rst time. The Avengers spend days analyzing “Forever-Man’s” condition, but the desperate boy gets impatient and hops a train to Cape Canaveral. He steals aboard an unmanned spacecraft designed for solar orbit and reprograms it to plunge into the sun. The boy’s suicide attempt fails and he transforms into a solar-powered creature. Driven insane by his anguish, the creature returns to New York and wreaks havoc. The Avengers fi ght him, and when Forever-Man threatens to go nova, Thor propels him into space to explode safely. Before the heroes’ eyes, the deceased being once again reincarnates into a boy, but now his memories of past lives are gone.
Morgan MacNeil Hardy is killed when his plot to restructure reality goes awry (Cap #264, ’81). As a boy, Hardy awakens in the ruins of the 1906 San Francisco Fire (SW #33, ’80 fb). Forever-Man lives innumerable, reincarnated lives throughout time.
Iron Man notes that Forever-Man (a name coined by Captain America) may be the world’s fi rst mutant. Andy and Tepper are drawn to look like comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The unique properties of Cap’s steel/Vibranium shield are shown to disrupt the solar creature’s molecular structure. The inkers are credited as “Embellishers Assembled.”
