Avengers: The Enemy Within #1 – Review

By: Kelly Sue DeConnick (story), Scott Hepburn (art), Jordie Bellaire (colors)

The Story: It’s a pretty sweet life when you can call upon a god for lizard control.

The Review: I always find it rather irritating when instead of continuing a storyline in its own title, from which it originated and where it rightfully belongs, it carries over into a different title or into a new series altogether.  Seems like a mean way to force a reader to fork over some extra money to buy into books he wouldn’t ordinarily ever consider getting.  It’s only ever worth it if the story is truly big and critical enough to require extra page-time elsewhere.

At this point, it doesn’t seem like DeConnick’s story of Captain Marvel’s latest crisis fits that bill.  This issue doesn’t have any significant difference from a typical issue of Captain Marvel, either in tone, substance, or structure.  It simply follows from the events of Captain Marvel #12 and does little to expand the scope of the plot any further.  In fact, there’s no reason for Marvel to split this story into a mini besides taking advantage of the Avengers brand to boost sales and attention to an ever-weakening property (Captain Marvel ranked #120 in March, compared to #42 when it first debuted in July 2012).