I'm Rick Jones Bitch! or the wonders of Busiek/Pacheo

So the other day I heard that Carlos Pacheco will be joining Kurt Busiek on Superman after this current storyline of "Up, Up, and Away" is done. Almost simultaneously my upstairs neighbor (who has two decades worth of comic collecting on me) introduced me to a little twelve-part series called "Avengers Forever". I have no idea how the comic was received during its run, although I can understand if people didn't dig it. This was one of those "and then he separated vision from human torch but then went back in time and stopped himself and instead put the body in a grave...so A goes into B but it doesn't matter because you're going to be confused anyway" time traveling stories.

However, if you sweep all that stuff aside and just look at the characters you get some actually great interaction. Disillusioned Cap, two Hank Pyms from different stages of his life, the son of Captain Marvel, Hawkeye as he switched from giant to archer and so on. Each served a purpose in the comic; each did his or her part. We know this because Busiek let us know how each character was needed. It was just done really well. Add to it Pacheco's splash pages and clean lines and you have an unbeatable team. I, for one, look forward to their upcoming work with Big Blue. Hopefully, we'll get something like this.

Can't you just see Jimmy Olsen in the driver's seat instead of Rick Jones? I know I can. Especially if he is "down, dirty an' loaded to bear".

Does anyone hear an echo?