Avengers #19 – Review

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

The Story: Captain Marvel is captured by the builders as the Avengers and the Galactic Council rest after their battle, tending to their wounded. All the while, a traitor is in their midst…

The Review: It’s an usual and unfortunate thing that event comics drag some other titles in their large plot. It doesn’t always mean it’s a bad thing, but plenty of titles have seen their momentum being a bit lost as several elements of a story that isn’t integral to their own plot and subplots gets shoved in the way. This can destroy the flow and sometime even mean that the readers shall suffer through some plug-ins of other characters and elements alien to their book, which makes it much less enjoyable for those that don’t want anything from those events to begin with.
There are also those that are integral to the story structure, those that actually add something to the whole event or use them in ways that feel organic to the whole narrative. Those are rare, to be sure, but much appreciated, like Journey Into Mystery for Matt Fraction’s Fear Itself or Guardians of the Galaxy for War of Kings. Instead of having to contend with these elements, those stories included them naturally, making them that much stronger for the duration of the event.

What Jonathan Hickman has done with Avengers is even more rare, as he has built up a whole lot of plot points and conflicts throughout his tenure on the title, resulting in an event comics, Infinity. The event, having its own book, is split up in two fronts which are covered by the same author with each of them being in one of the two books. This has caused the main Avengers book to receive a much-needed shot in the arm after what was basically seventeen issues of foreshadowing as Hickman shows full cosmic actions in this title.

Continuing where the last issues of Avengers and Infinity left off, the team is divided in two as those with Captain Marvel are in captivity while the rest are with the Galactic Council. While the comic switch from two perspectives, it juggles very well with both plots at it manage to connect the two together. The pacing is good as there are multiple events in this comic, with many great development brought to the forefront as well as some good character moments.

Avengers #19 – Review

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

The Story: Now that Fear Itself is over, it’s time for a new Avengers line-up.

Five Things: 

1. Really enjoy Acuna’s art.  It took me a long time to warm up to Acuna’s artistic style (or maybe he just got better).  Of course, his art looks very different than different than most artists because I don’t think he’s inking in the traditional sense.  I’m not sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me to know this was 100% digital art where he’s doing as much creation of the art with color as with lines.  It makes for a lovely way to lay out a page because he’s mastering all the light sources.  Misuse of light is something the human eye is very good as seeing even IF we can’t quite verbalize what is wrong with a panel.  For me, the only thing holding Acuna back is that his characters’ heads sometimes look strangely attached to the body.  It’s not in every panel that this pops up, but it does happen.

2. Interesting to have a new team.  This is always fun.  One of the neat dynamics of these team books is, “Who’s going to join?”  “Who’s going to leave?”  Granted, this has been watered down a little with there being SOOOOOOO many Avengers, but it’s still kinda enjoyable to see who Cap thinks is “worthy” of getting called up to the Major Leagues.

3. Character returns out of the blue.  I feel kinda bad complaining about this, because I’d probably complain if Marvel released a 5-issue miniseries called, “Return of ______” and it would be similarly tedious if Bendis just made the return of this character consume an entire 6-issue arc.  So, maybe Bendis and Brevoort made the proper choice, but the return of _______ still felt entirely out of left field (in a bad way).