Avengers Assemble #17 – Review

By: Kelly Sue DeConnick (story), Matteo Buffagni/Pepe Larraz (art), Nolen Woodard (colors)

The Story: The enemy within is revealed and the Avengers battle him/her on several fronts.

The Review: It can be frustrating and inconvenient to follow multi-part crossovers, particularly when chapters of the story appear in a title that you don’t normally read.  Despite my affection for the character, I dropped Captain Marvel almost a year ago because the time-traveling Thelma and Louise storyline just didn’t hold my interest.  It hasn’t helped that the Captain Marvel title in which this story would have started disappeared from the shelves for 2 issues, then was resurrected for an issue and will have the concluding chapter of this story. Between this nonsense and the ridiculous “death” of Peter Parker, Marvel is doing everything is can to drive fans nuts. I understand the effort is to sell comic books, but it seems disrespectful.

Despite being one of the most three dimensional heroines in the Marvel universe, the current Avengers Assemble doesn’t carve out any new character edges for Carol Danvers. As Ms. Marvel, Carol was an enormously powerful, capable and at times ferocious fighter as well as a charismatic and effective tactician and team leader. In this story arc her powers are seriously curtailed, yet she remains a tough and resilient warrior. An ancient enemy that Carol believes dead has returned to use her in order to conquer earth and destroy her in the process. The Avengers meet the global threat, but this is Carol’s story.

The penultimate chapter of the story arc is all action. Each member of the Avengers is dispatched to suppress the rise of an untold number of sleeper Kree robot soldiers and despite each hero’s best efforts, the odds are just too great and the enemy within completes his ultimate weapon, crippling and disabling Captain Marvel in the process. Things look extremely bleak for our heroes virtually guaranteeing my purchase of the Captain Marvel title that will wrap up the story.

Avengers Assemble #15 – Review

By: Al Ewing (Writer), Butch Guice (Penciler), Tom Palmer with Rick Magyar (Inkers), Frank D’Armata (Colorist), VC’s Clayton Cowles (Letterer)

Review: Jesus, is Age of Ultron still going on? Feels weird to think so sometimes…and I’ve been reviewing each and every issue. The thing is, it lacks a sense of importance; and some of that can be put down to the lack of tie-ins. Sure, there are many justifiable grievances held against Marvel’s usual approach to tie-in culture (gumming up the flow of our favourite series mid-run etc.) but one thing’s for sure: in the case of Secret Invasion, Siege et al, you at least felt like the events of those books were dramatically affecting the breadth of shared continuity. Not so much with AoU and the feint corona of books that illuminate it.

Avengers Assemble #14 – Review

By: Al Ewing (Writer), Butch Guice (Penciler), Tom Palmer (Inker), Frank D’Armata (Colorist), VC’s Clayton Cowles

Review: For better or worse I’ve reserved myself a copy of every tie-in issue allied to the Age of Ultron event. Not done that for a while, maybe not since Secret Invasion…and that was a buttload of (mostly interminable) comics. Still, AoU has a wallet-pleasingly small amount of titles attached, and most are done-in-ones which purport to shed light on interesting bits of backstory tied to the main book which I was keen to see addressed. This is especially true of Avengers Assemble #14 which deals solely with Black Widow.

Avengers Assemble is a title I’ve shied away from so far. It’s not had the worst of creative teams but its all-ages remit coupled with its perceived existence outside of regular Avengers continuity combined to make it an easy omission from my Pull List. However, this does make the series a prime candidate for the repository of stand-alone tales; I can’t see this issue fitting in anywhere near as well with any of Hickman’s Avengers titles, for instance.