Avengers #23 – Review

by Jonathan Hickman (Writer), Leinil Francis Yu (Artist), Sunny Gho, Paul Mounts (Colorists)

The Story: The Galactic Council gives one last push for the Avengers to reach Earth and save it as the titular team needs to save the day.

The Review: It’s always a bit disheartening to see something done wonderfully in one aspect, yet somewhat fails in another one. Enjoying anything is to accept its strengths and weaknesses, letting both get together for a cohesive experience. However, when there are two extremes, it leaves for a somewhat confusing experience, neither knowing it was superb, weak or simply acceptable.

This is pretty much what happens in this issue of Avengers, as it pretty much close to the bigger cosmic parts of the storyline attached to Infinity, doing it in a way that does feel satisfactory.

Giving one final focus on those cosmic characters for this event, Hickman present how these characters have evolved during this storyline, with one last hurrah given to them. With a few choice lines said by them and a particularly memorable action scene near the very end of the issue, Hickman does more with those beloved characters than most did with them in the last two years. Those that really liked the Giffen and DnA era of cosmic Marvel will be pleased to see Gladiator, Ronan and Kl’rt being so preeminent and awesome here.

New Avengers #10 – Review

by Jonathan Hickman (Writer), Mike Deodato (Artist), Frank Martin (Colorist)

The Story: Black Bolt reunites the Illuminati and reveals the existence and potential location of Thanos son. Meanwhile, Thanos and his Black Order makes their move.

The Review: Last month, we were unfortunately the spectators of one of the downside of huge events: tie-ins that bring the story flow to a lesser quality. While the latest issue of New Avengers wasn’t terrible by any means, it was far off from the brilliance it could attain as Hickman made the conflict on Earth the sole focus as he set some stuff for his longer stakes. However, the Infinity train isn’t losing any steam as the story continues in this month’s issue. Can Hickman return to some of the better aspects of this series while juggling with the big event comic of his own?

As it turns out he can, as he manages to play with both the previously established elements while playing with the new ones, as the political and power plays with the Illuminati continues while Thanos and his Black Order brings chaos to Earth. Bringing the Illuminati back together instead of skipping from scenes to scenes with each of them, Hickman focus his narrative in a much more solid manner, as the interactions with each members is brought back to show the potential of this cast.

New Avengers #9 – Review

Jonathan Hickman (Writer), Mike Deodato (Artist), Frank Martin (Colorist)

The Story: The Black Order arrives to Earth as each member of the Illuminati tries to deal with them in their own way.

The Review: With Infinity still in its debut, we have already seen most of what the Builders are doing as we have seen a bit of what threat looms over Earth with the Black Order and Thanos. Since there are multiple threats and the other title by Hickman covers what happens in space, this one covers the Earth as the big response team is gone. Does this title uses this big threat in an original and entertaining way, though?

For the most part, it does show the scope and the motivation behind the attack as the Black Order is shown in action. Considering they are all new characters, Hickman does well in showing their capacities in action as each of them try to attack a member of the Illuminati, with Black Dwarf against Black Panther, The Ebony Maw against Doctor Strange and so on. We get the kind of threat they can be, yet they are still mysterious in some ways as to pique the interest of the readers. However, we don’t get nearly enough characterization for them to be compelling just yet as it is an area where they are mostly vague. Perhaps they’ll become incredibly memorable after this event, yet for now they are much more a threat than actual characters.

Part of this problem comes out of another issue the book has: pacing. It is by no mean a jarring and devastating problem, yet the issue jumps from scene to scene quite rapidly, leaving some of them without much room to breathe and develop. An obvious one would be the Wakandian conflict with Black Dwarf as Black Panther deals with the intruder, showing him as competent and full of bravado against a foe so large. However, the next scene we see shows the foe beaten and retreating, leaving the readers to wonder just how T’Challa did vanquish him. There are some other scenes which have that kind of trouble, setting up some the conflicts between other characters yet does not continue it, making sure there would be something left for the other issues tying into the event. It is fun to see what might happen, yet it only hurt the pacing to see two pages of Doctor Strange without us seeing any payoff or the character again for the rest of the issue.