Dark Avengers #186 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (Writer), Mirco Pierfederici, Neil Edwards, (Artists), Chris Sotomayor (Colorist)

The Story: More shenanigans happen in this dark version of Manhattan as John Walker and the rest of the Dark Avengers gets up to speed on the situation.

The Review: It seems to me that Jeff Parker had pretty much the same problems on both of his Marvel titles lately, namely Red She-Hulk and Dark Avengers. Both those series have some great artists and some terrific concepts backing them up, but the past issues were only building some setup for the series to actually jump onto, creating a situation without actually involving the main player in any significant way until later. Red She-Hulk latest issue had gotten out of that unfortunate problem, but did the latest issue of Dark Avengers achieve the same objective?

Dark Avengers #185 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (Writer) Neil Edwards (Artist), Chris Sotomayor (Colorist)

The Story: June Covington discovers more about the strange world she is in while this world’s version of Doctor Strange uses Moonstone and Skaar for his devious plans.

The Review: If there is one thing that Jeff Parker excels at, it’s writing smaller and lesser-known character, some of them unpopular and making them great. He’s done so during his run on Thunderbolts with various characters, but most prominently with General Thunderbolt Ross in Hulk. He can create wholly original stories set to those characters, making us root for them although there are several reasons why we shouldn’t in the first place. It is a pity however that he cannot seem to do the same with the Dark Avengers so far, as there is most assuredly potential here for him to work with. A bunch of unknown, almost blank slates characters just there for the grab, ready to be developed by someone with the talent and attitude to do so. The problem here, I do believe, lies in the pacing.