Avengers Undercover #1 – Review

by Dennis Hopeless (Writer), Kev Walker (Artist), Jean-François Beaulieu (Colorist)

The Story: I suppose life must be hard after you become a celebrity due to the fact that you almost killed people on an island and that everyone knows about it.

The Review: Taking chances can sometime be rewarding. When Avengers Arena had been announced in the first wave of Marvel Now!, I was particularly unimpressed, even a bit disgusted by the very idea of a book so incredibly obvious in its premise and what it promised. This was a title that offered teenagers fighting each other to the death while isolated on an island, with most of them being established and well-loved characters. With no intents to read that book, I simply skipped and dared not even interest myself on what it tried to tell.

However, when the book was over, one of the employees of the local comic shop I go through (the same that recommended I read this) convinced me to give it a try. Skeptical, I was nonetheless very much entertained by the book in the end, reading through all three trades to get the full story. With an ending that promised a lot of storytelling possibilities, I was anxious to see where this book and those characters could go. Now that the next step in this huge story is here, does Denis Hopeless match the tone of the previous story as well as offer a proper continuation?

The answer, unfortunately, is a bit of a mix with a penchant on a more negative side. While what is offered here is certainly making a good use of the very impressive ending to Avengers Arena, there isn’t much offered beside a continuation of what was previously established. The problem, however, lies in the way things are presented more than anything.