Avengers Vol. 3: Prelude to Infinity (Marvel NOW!) Review

Avengers Vol. 3: Prelude to Infinity (Marvel Now!)

Don't know who these are? Nope, you
sure don't.

Writers: Jonathan Hickman and Nick Spencer.

Artists: Mick Deodato and Stefano Caselli

Collects: Avengers #12-17

Background Information:

In the last two volumes of Avengers, Hickman introduced us to the Builders; the guys who... well, built the universe. Their minions, Ex Nihilo and Abyss, terraformed Mars and send devices to Earth to recreate it. That resulted in new races being born, and the coming of Starbrand and Nightmask.

Oh, and there also zebra skinned kids. Best remember that.

Review:

Marvel hates you.

And don't say "yeah, but movies...", Marvel unequivocally hates you.

I mean, why else would they put the two issues that aren't part of Infinity in book that is mostly part of Infinity?

Because... yes.

It's because Marvel, after draining completionists of upwards of fifty dollars, still expect you to pay Infinity trade, I was expecting maybe two or so issues of Infinity in Prelude to Infinity, but this felt ridiculous. And it's a shame, because it's actually an okay book.
twenty dollars for two issues you could get online for ten. As someone who bought the

So, in the first two issues, Hyperion has become a father of sorts to the zebrakids, and the High Evolutionary tries to kidnap them. So now Hyperion and a few Avengers have to get them back. I'm sure Hickman knew that he'd just be writing filler issues before Infinity started, but it's admittedly good filler. I like just how much he's trying to flesh out Hyperion's character beyond "meant to parody Superman", and his bromance with Thor somehow... works.

Then comes the part that bugs me. The main point of the story, which is the prelude to the Infinity event, sees some of the new races on earth attacking humans. After beating them, the Avengers decide that they need to get even bigger than what they already are, and they're pretty big.

YOU PUT HULK IN THROWAWAY VOLUME! SMASH!!!

Okay, gripes aside, there's some fun stuff here. The action is excellently done, which in this kind of story is what really matters, and the dialogue is witty. The problem is, though, is that both stories feel pointless. The battles are entertaining, but devoid of any sense of significance. I don't care what happens to the Avengers here, and that bodes poorly for Infinity.

This is pretty much the shortest review I've ever written, which is why Prelude to Infinity gets a two out of five zebra-children.

**

+ Hyperion is humanised.
- Marvel hates completionists.
- No reason to be invested in the action.

Alternate Option: Any X-Men book.

I'm really preferring the X-books to the A-books, and they need your support. All evidence considered, they haven't got Marvel's.

Avengers Vol.2: The Last White Event (Marvel NOW!) Review

Avengers Vol. 2: The Last White Event (Marvel NOW!)

Even The Adams Family gets a gritty
reboot.

Writer: Jonathan Hickman

Artists: Dustin Weaver and Mike Deodato

Collects: Avengers #7-11 (mmm… slurpies…)

Background:

In the last volume, the Avengers ran into Ex Nihilo, a naked guy with horns and a god-complex. He was busy sending machines called “origin bombs”- devices which change areas and their inhabitants into something more “advanced”. The team came back with Nihilo’s “Adam”, a man who calls himself Nightshade. Nightshade is convinced that something called “the system” is broken and that “the last white event” is coming to earth.

Yep, that’s a LOT of quotation marks.

Review:

While he was in the shower, the Avengers
stole his clothes.

The way I understand it, Hickman is known for telling long stories. The kind that take up multiple volumes and cross over more than one massive event. Heading all three major Avengers books, he’s kinda’ had total control of the Marvel universe since the beginning of Marvel NOW!. As such, The Last White Event reads very much like a cog in the machine- essentially useless on its own, but not something you’d want to read Avengers or the massive Infinity event without.

So the last white event hits earth and has granted someone the Starbrand- a tattoo that allows its bearer to destroy entire planets.

That someone is Kevin Conner- a relative nobody at his college thrust into the new planetary crisis. When that thrust comes from him accidently destroying said college and everyone in it.

It sounds like a simple story; but that’s something I have to admire about Hickman; he can take a plot that some writers would finish in five issue and add so much depth and detail to it that even though his version of the same story might be fifteen issues longer, it certainly doesn’t feel dragged out.

Hickman also does an admirable job at handling such a massive cast of characters. The previous volume, Avengers World gave us a roster of 17 characters as opposed to the traditional 5-8 heroes. This should be a daunting task- it would be easy to make this book all about the movie roster and delegate the other 12 characters to the B-team. Somehow, though, Hickman avoids this; giving us a trade paperback that uses all characters to the point where none of them feel like they’re just there.

Therein, though, lies the problem with this trade; by being equally about everyone, it somehow ends up being about no one. Thanks to that, we have a story that’s event-driven rather than character-driven. You have to wonder, therefore, if this story couldn’t have been served equally well by the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Fantastic Four or even the X-Men (kidding, of course, Marvel doesn’t own the film rights to the last two). In fact, does Captain America need to be involved at all?

"My abs and I are here to dust your clock!"

A word of warning, also, to new readers; this isn’t a trade that you can read on its own. Not only do you need to read the first volume, but there won’t be a satisfactory end to the series unless you buy the Infinity collection (and that costs around $50 in paperback). So if you just want a taste of the Avengers, best not go to Hickman’s books.

Art here is great, though. Kevin Conner is drawn in a way that perfectly portrays the power contained in a body that looks so feeble otherwise. Weaver and Deodato also do a great job of portraying the strange events spiralling out of the origin bombs, which continue to become more and more interesting.

The Last White Event should not be read on its own, but taken with the whole, it’s an entertaining chapter in a larger saga. It gets a three and a half out of five quotation marks.

*** ½

+ Hickman shares the spotlight amongst characters.

+ Doesn’t feel dragged out.

- Hardly a character-driven story.

- Not recommended unless you want to commit to Avengers.

Alternate Option: Avengers: Avengers World

Start with this.

Avengers Vol. 1: Avengers World (Marvel NOW!) Review

Avengers Vol.1: Avengers World (Marvel NOW!)

Insert Queen's "We Will Rock You"

Writer: Jonathan Hickman

Artists: Jerome Opena and Adam Kubert

Collects: Avengers #1-6

Background Information:

So, apparently Avengers is a thing.

Yeah, who knew, right?

For years the Avengers, in multiple forms, was written by Brian Michael Bendis. Now that Bendis is working on the Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men titles. The Avengers books are now being taken by Jonathan Hickman, who used to write for Fantastic Four and FF. Whereas a lot of Bendis’ titles were based on fairly grounded local threats, Hickman’s more about the interstellar and the strange. So you can expect something a little different from what happened before.

Review:

Marvel NOW! is supposed to be about helping new readers into Marvel comics. Keywords are supposed to. I’m not sure that all of these titles are all that good for getting people’s feet wet. All-New X-Men and Uncanny Avengers require you to have read Avengers vs X-Men to really understand and if you want to get Superior Spider-Man, you’ll need to read Dying Wish.

Thankfully, Hickman’s adjectiveless Avengers doesn’t have the same problem. In fact, if you want to start reading Avengers books, Avengers World is a really good starting point.

PUNY HULK!!!

So the Avengers  have decided that they need to “get bigger”; meaning that the usual roster of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow aren’t going to be enough. The team expands the roster to include more Marvel heroes such as Spider-Man (the Superior one), Wolverine, Shan Chi and others. A roster of six becomes a roster of eighteen.

And a big Avengers is just what’s needed to face a big threat. That big threat comes in the form of a character called Ex Nihilo who’s a… uh… a… uh… it’s kinda’ hard to explain. All I can really say is that he’s trying to recreate the earth in preparation for what I can only assume is… something.

It sounds like I’m making fun of the collection, but I’m not; not really. See, Hickman has a habit, apparently, of writing insanely long story arcs- the kind that can’t fit into the rigid structure of “only 5-6 issues per trade” that Marvel seems desperate to stick to. And to be honest, the trade isn’t so much about the bad guys as it is about showcasing the twelve new avengers. Hickman does a pretty good job at this, giving the reasons for each character’s reason for joining the team and crafting a story that essentially gets most of the team out of the way so we can see the new guys in action. It’s fantastic to see that Hickman has this kind of confidence in the characters he writes. Considering the success of the Avengers on the big screen, I imagine it would have been all too easy to write a story focussing on the movie characters, but I’m glad we got something with a slightly different flavour to it.

All the same, the story seems to go largely unresolved. I’m not the kind who demands that every loose end be tied up by the end of the first trade, but you’d think Hickman would at least tie up one of them. The point of this volume, unfortunately, seems to be only to set up the next and that never ends up being truly satisfying.

That helmet, for the record, looks stupid.

Art here, though is great. Between Opena and Kubert we get some fantastic depictions of characters. Hulk returns to his ape-like form and while that can sometimes look a little goofy, it really works in terms of showing us the vast difference between Bruce Banner and the less-than-jolly green giant. The real credit though, has to go to the colour artists, who are too numerous to mention here. The paints in Avengers World just do so much to capture the grandeur of the situation and really helps to add gravitas to the story.

Avengers World is great fun to read, and excellent as a jumping-on point. It gets a four out of five… somethings.

****

+ Good jumping-on point.

+ More focus on the characters you didn’t see in the movie.

+ Art looks phenomenal.

- NO loose ends resolved.

New Avengers Vol. 1: Everything Dies (Marvel NOW!) Review

New Avengers Vol. 1: Everything Dies

So... wanna form a boy band?... Guys...
GUYS?!?

Writer: Jonathan Hickman

Artist: Steve Epting

Collecting: New Avengers #1-6

Background Information:

The New Avengers, contrary to what the title may suggest, are not a set of replacement Avengers, rather, they represent Marvel’s Illuminati. Here, that’s not group with a strange obsession for conveniently-placed triangles. Here, they’re a group that rule the world in secret made up of Black Bolt, Namor, Reed Richards, Iron Man, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Black Panther and formerly Professor Xavier. Six of them possess one of the infinity gems each. These gems are important because together they form the infinity gauntlet- one of the most powerful tools in the galaxy.

Review:

What was wrong with calling this book, The Illuminati? This team, despite featuring both Captain America and Iron Man, is about as far from the Avengers as can be fathomed. It’s still a great team and it’s still a great book, but be aware that these are not the Avengers in any sense of the word.

So the Illuminati are called together with the kind of insanely massive crisis that you would expect to be worthy of gathering the world’s rulers; the multiverse is falling apart, causing multiple versions of earth to crash into each other. This presents the Illuminati with a bit of a moral quandary; these other earths are also populated, so the choice becomes one of destroying your own world or destroying someone else’s. It’s a great question that gets fairly well explored, with the ultimate answer being that sometimes tough decisions need to be made.

While  Everything Dies presents some great moral questions, the answer isn’t really satisfactory. These people are meant to be heroes, they are meant to be able to save someone against incredible odds, but that doesn’t happen. Isntead, Everything Dies reads like the first part of a two-part story. This is something that has been bugging me about Marvel NOW!’s trade paperbacks; so many of them feel unfinished; the majority of them collect about five issues. Compare that to DC’s 6-10 issues on average per trade and it’s clear which one is the better value for money. I like what I’m reading in Everything Dies, but I can hardly say that I’m satisfied with what I’ve read.

But that’s a small problem as what really seems to be on display here is the relationship between these characters. There is some great headbutting between Captain America, Black Panther and the rest of the Illuminati. My real problem here, though, is that none of these characters seem really likeable. They’re intriguing, they’re not people you can find yourself supporting. I mentioned before that this team are the furthest thing from the Avengers that you can imagine- that’s because thse characters just aren’t heroic. In fact, the only heroic character in the team gets removed from it fairly quickly. The result is a bad feeling in your stomach as you read.

That said though, there is some excellent action here, the pinnacle of which has to be the fight between Dr. Doom and a group called the Map Makers. If you want to know how big a claim that is, this is following a fight between the Illuminati and a servant of Galaktus- the big dude who eats planets. Let that sink in for a while.

The art here is fantastic. Epting manages to use a colour palette that allows him more detail than David Aja, yet still manages to feel minimal in its use. The result is a book where in multiple pages you sometimes have to pay attention to realise that Epting is using more than one colour. It’s not a criticism, though, it helps to book to have a kind of consistency that is very pretty to look at. The character designs in Everything Dies are also brilliant- Captain America looks better here than in his own book, and even ridiculous costumes like Black Bolt’s looks good.

Everything Dies is not a book about heroes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a passable yarn. It get three out of five conveniently-placed triangles.

***

+ Engaging morality tale

+ Art is great

+ Some awesome action scenes

- Characters are profoundly un-heroic

- Unsatisfying ending

Alternate Option: All-New X-Men

One of the best NOW! books I’ve read- you need to check this out.

Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates, Vol 1

Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates, Volume 1

RUN! Run away from the giant Captain
America!

Writer: Jonathan Hickman

Artist: Esad Ribic

Read as trade paperback

Background Information:

By the time the 21^st century rolled around, Marvel was in trouble. The 90s had not been kind the publishing house and the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. It sounds ridiculous now to think that the comic company that produced The Avengers would ever have been in such dire straits, but that was the reality of things. Marvel needed something big to bring in new readers.

That something big turned out to be Marvel’s Ultimate universe; a reboot of select Marvel titles specifically geared at reaching a new audience. It was a successful venture; Ultimate Spiderman was by far the star of the new universe and Ultimate X-Men started strong (even if it did tail out after the death of Magneto). When it came time to give readers an Ultimate Avengers, Marvel decided to shorten the title and call the entire team The Ultimates.

Fast forward into 2012, and it came time to retcon the Ultimate universe. It became Ultimate comics and featured, among other things, a black Hispanic Spiderman. Hence why I’m now reviewing a comic with the confusing title of Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates.

Review:

The first volume of The Ultimates opens with a group known as the Children of Tomorrow collectively deciding to venture out of the mechanical dome in which they have lived for generations. Here, this means taking over large sections of Europe. In doing so, the group discover Thor, who has joined the likes of Captain Britain on an attack on their city, and there things start to get complicated.

Those looking for the full Avengers cast as seen in the 2012 film are going to be disappointed. It’s really only Iron Man and Thor make a real appearance in this volume. Captain America makes a brief enough appearance to say he’s not joining the party, Black widow says some words, and Hawkeye lets some arrows loose once in a while. As such, The Ultimates really feels like it should have been titled Thor and Iron Man are the Best of Friends.

But Hickman does a really good job of that. Early on in the book, Yggdrasil, the life tree from which Thor draws his powers is destroyed, leaving him without his godly powers. Tony, being the good friend that he is, provides Thor with a suit that gives him a sort of synthetic version of his powers, which allows him to continue the fight. This is a nice moment; Thor shouldn’t try to take on the Children of Tomorrow  in his state, and Tony seems to know it, but he gives Thor the suit anyway. Considering how the Hollywood Avengers made Iron Man little more than a one-liner spitting mongrel, it was nice to see Tony Stark be the kind of guy who could actually be a friend.

But really, the star of this volume is Thor. Thor witnesses a lot that tears his world apart. Asgard is ransacked. The other gods are killed. Thor’s own son is destroyed inside the Yggdrasil tree. This pushes Thor over the edge. The god wants revenge and he doesn’t care if he dies in the process.

My biggest issue with the story is the way that Hickman writes the villains. I’m not really convinced that the Children of Tomorrow are the bad guys. They are the ones who are initially “attacked” by Captain Britain. Everything else they do seems more reactionary. They don’t seem to be seeking to destroy anyone, excluding the gods who they seem more to be counter-attacking than actually plotting to destroy. Their expansion into Europe doesn’t seem to cost the lives of anyone who isn’t already trying to fight them. Hickman writes them as sinister, yet I don’t really see it in the group’s actions. It’s a problem that’s only compounded by the non-existence of an ending to this volume. I personally buy collected editions to avoid cliffhanger non-endings that I would otherwise get in single issues, and that made this all the more disappointing.

Esad Ribic’s artwork is phenomenal. I’m picking up vibes of Alex Ross in much of the paints on each page. Though Ribic’s art is significantly more simple, he still manages to instil that visual awe that Ross was able in titles such as DC’s Justice. Tony Stark looks a little too slim for my liking and Hawkeye looks like a reject from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy but otherwise Ribic draws each character fairly well.  

By far the best thing about this book, at least is visual terms, is the cover art by Kaare Andrews. Andrew’s does these beautiful pieces that highlight characters more than events in the book. They are packed full of detail and a joy to look at.

Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates, Vol 1 is great to look at, but the story is (hopefully) not Hickman’s best work. I’m interested to see what he does with The Avengers in Marvel Now, but I hope his storytelling is a step up from what I saw here. The Ultimates gets a three out of five best friends.

***

+ Beautiful Art

+ Iron Man and Thor play off well together.

- The Villains don’t strike you as particularly evil.

- That awful cliffhanger non-ending.