Chaos War: Dead Avengers #3 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Tom Grummett (pencils), Cory Hamscher & Terry Pallot (inks), Andy Troy & Matt Milla (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: Will the Dead Avengers be able to withstand the final assault by the Grim Reaper and save the Comatose Avengers.

What’s Good: This has been the best of the Chaos War tie-ins by a long way.  It has felt very connected with the main Chaos War story and it also just makes sense as a story.  The credit for that (I assume) goes to writer, Fred Van Lente.  Mr. Van Lente is also writing Chaos War proper (thus the congruence with the main event) and generally hasn’t written a bad story in quite a while.  I’m always impressed by his ability to make just about any comic scenario interesting.

This issue has a high degree of difficulty too.  The general premise is that since “death” has been destroyed by the Chaos King (and all mortal humans have been tossed into a coma), some Dead Avengers are back and take it upon themselves to make sure that some Dead Villains (notably The Grim Reaper) don’t kill Spidey, Bucky Cap, Spiderwoman, et al while they’re flopped out on the floor.  The trouble for Van Lente is that he needs to have most of his toys put away by the end of this issue because you just know that the end result of Chaos War isn’t going to be that all the Dead Avengers are alive again.  Maybe one or two, but not all.  So, Van Lente sets about writing an entertaining and well-paced story under this constraint.  Most of the toys are put away by the end of the issue and a few others look to have roles to play in the finale of Chaos War proper.

Inkers make a big difference.  I should know better since I collect original comic art, but I often gloss over inkers in doing reviews because it is just hard to distinguish (at least for me) how much is inker and how much is penciler.  What we get in this issue is still some very classic Tom Grummett super-heroes, but the fact that we have two inkers on this issue allows me to appreciate inker Cory Hamscher too.  A lot of that classic goodness in the past couple issues of Dead Avengers was his work.  Let me also take a minute to talk about an artistic subject that has been bugging me recently: Noses!  There is a current trend with some of our younger artists (many of whom I LOVE) to shade noses such that it looks like they have a Breathe-Right Nasal Strip on their snout.  I think that some of these younger artists (who have worked largely in the B&W world previously) are used to letting colorist highlight that nose for you.  I draw your attention to how Grummett and Hamscher draw noses on the Vision in this book.  Perfect!  No weird shading!  Young artists should take note of this!

Chaos War: Dead Avengers #2 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Tom Grummett (pencils), Cory Hamscher (inks), Andy Troy & Sotocolor (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: The Dead Avengers continue in an attempt to protect the current/living/comatose Avengers from a “back from the dead” Grim Reaper.

What’s Good: This is a great little tie-in series to the Chaos War event for a few reasons, a) it makes sense with the overall story and doesn’t seem forced, b) it is not essential to your enjoyment of Chaos War proper, c) it adds to your enjoyment of the overall event if you read it and d) it is not causing any continuity problems.

The basic story is that the Chaos King has put all mortal humans on Earth into a coma and brought all of the dead back to life.  Only, they aren’t ghoulish zombies…. they’re just who they were before they died, with all their memories, motives, etc. intact.  Oh, and the bad guys seem to be really powered up.  So, when a group of Dead Avengers is revived and finds current Avengers flopped around comatose with a revived Grim Reaper trying to kill them, they leap into action.

What is great is that writer Van Lente is spending a little bit of time showing the back story of each of the Dead Avengers.  That’s appreciated because some of these characters have been out of comics for a long time.  He also gives each of them a unique voice and motivation for wanting to help out.  And, in true Van Lente fashion, there are a couple of “panels of the week candidates” that make you snicker as you read (loved the Swordsman coming on to Yellowjacket and explaining that he can’t help it because he is French).  Van Lente is one of the real stars at Marvel and why they haven’t locked him up with an “exclusive” deal is beyond me.  His comics are always entertaining and even when I don’t think I’ll enjoy the subject matter (i.e. Dead Avengers) I find myself having a great time reading.  I think his secret is that he’s using just the right about of continuity to “matter” but not so much that the story is bogged down.

Grummett’s pencils are also really sweet.  He’s a veteran of comic art and for some reason his style has kinda fallen out of favor, but I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is because his characters look like they conform to more of a “house style” and artists today have to be individuals?  But, this is just flat out nice artwork in a very throwback way (i.e. is faithful to human muscle groups).  And, for this type of story, dealing with mortal danger, this sort of classic, super-hero art is more appropriate than a more cartooning style.  Also kudos to the rest of the art team.  Nice inks, pretty colors and even some creative lettering.

Chaos War: Dead Avengers #1 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Tom Grummett (pencils), Cory Hamscher (inks), Andy Troy (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: The Chaos King has struck all living mortal heroes dead/comatose, so it falls upon a group of dead Avengers to save innocent civilians and the helpless Avengers.

What’s Good: How many truly interesting superhero characters actually stay dead for very long?  The answer is “not many”, so if you want to do a “dead heroes” issue like this one, you have a challenge as a writer because the only dead heroes are so boring that no one has tried to bring them back. This was a problem that killed the X-Necrosha event last year: Who cared about these dead mutants?  We were glad they were dead and didn’t like being reminded of them!

So Van Lente faced a big obstacle to making this an interesting book.  But the cool thing is that I would totally read an ongoing series written by Van Lente featuring these characters: Vision, Yellowjacket, Swordsman, Dr. Druid, Mar-Vell & Deathcry.  That in itself should make you appreciate what a nice job of writing this is!  Van Lente does a solid job of laying out the scenario that these “dead Avengers” face, who they are and what they can do (coupled with a few origin style flashbacks).  The storytelling is nice and tight and leaves us with a satisfying cliffhanger that makes one anticipate next month’s issue.