Avengers #18 – Review

Jonathan Hickman (Writer), Leinil Francis Yu,Gerry Alanguilan (Artists), Sunny Gho (Colorist)

The Story: Many of the empire and civilization of the entire Marvel universe gathers together, Avengers included, to prepare the battle against the builders.

The Review: Infinity is finally here, with the build up to it being behind us as 17 issues of Avengers were needed in order to prepare for its arrival. Now that the event has started, though, does it mean that the book has gotten the shot in the arm that it needed most of the time?

The answer, thankfully, is a resounding yes as this issue brings many interesting concepts and do something that the series hasn’t done for quite a while: go big in a very explicit way. While the earlier concepts of that title always hinted at big things, those were mostly teasing or hint at what was to come. Now that the very event has arrived, the comic benefit as it brings us many new elements into play while using some of the older one.
The first one and best, in my own humble opinion, would be the very cosmic tone of the story as the scope of the story gets incredibly bigger. It’s no secret that I have a particular fondness for stories set in space, yet this one really bring a lot of the best of what these stories are about, as Hickman use the galactic council created by Bendis to great effects, showing a cohesion of the major empires to vanquish a greater threat. Many of the cosmic favourites are present, as the Shi’ar, Brood, Kree are present as well as characters like Ronan, Gladiator and Annihilus.

Another race that Hickman plays really well with are the Skrull, who gets a welcome reintegration to the larger Marvel universe as the writer use both what happened in Annihilation and Secret Invasion to build up from there, showing us a race that is on the brink or death, yet fight will all of its might to survive and stay relevant. The scene featuring Kl’rt, another fan-favourite, and the other warlord as they try to fight the builders shows a human side to these aliens as well as some nobility that really heighten the whole race. I sure do hope that Hickman will continue writing them during the tie-ins, as the rejuvenation of these aliens and the cosmic aspect makes for some interesting comics.

Avengers #18 – Review

By: Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Daniel Acuna (art/colors), Cory Petit (letters), Lauren Sankovitch (associate editor) & Tom Brevoort (editor)

The Story: In the wake of Fear Itself, a new/old threat emerges.

Five things: 

1.  Love, love, LOVE Acuna’s art!  Acuna is another of those guys who is coloring his own work and it gives it such a unique look because it ceases to be pencils + inks + colors and just becomes “art”.  Reminding me of the saying that “there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip”, there’s a LOT that can go awry when there are multiple handoffs on the way to finished art and even then it doesn’t look like what Acuna does where isn’t much inking in the traditional sense.  On top of that, he has a great handle on how to frame these scenes.  He gets a few characters who start to look like bobble heads in a couple of places, but other than that, no art complaints at all.  Lovely work and he’s an artist who has really grown a LOT over the last couple of years to the point where he’s a name that makes me want to buy the comic book.

2.  Also love the clever lab tech.  We’re so used to seeing the only threats to our heroes coming from super-villains that it’s refreshing to have a new threat: A lab tech who has gathered a lot of genetic information on the heroes.  When you think about this, it totally makes sense.  How many janitors and maids just invisibly pass through a hero’s life?  And they all have access to things like genetic information or other stuff.  For example, who brings in the Avengers snail mail and why don’t they steal some of that information for identity theft purposes?  Anyway, watching this meek lab tech just going around at key events in the Avengers recent past and palming samples was pretty cool.

3.  Not much happens in this issue.  I’m getting really sick of this kind of story pacing.  As much as I enjoyed the issue, we don’t get much new stuff.  Literally the first third of the issue shows the tech stealing specimens from various moments in the past.  And the issue only really shows who she intends to give those samples to.  For $3.99, a comic needs to do more and this comic is paced about half as fast as it should be.