Avengers Arena #1 – Review

By: Dennis Hopeless (story), Kev Walker (art), Frank Martin (colors)

The Story: The young heroes of the Marvel U learn there are worse places than high school.

The Review: Since my fellow reviewers have all this Marvel NOW! stuff pretty much covered, I really haven’t had a chance to get in on the fun or make comment about it.  While it’s pretty clear that this whole move is a direct response to the success of the DC relaunch, Marvel’s strategy for revitalizing their line is fascinating because it’s generated a sense of revitalization without actually having to do much reviving.

From what I’ve read, it seems like Marvel is hardly abandoning their overall emphasis on popular brands and titles; nearly all the fresh batch of titles revolve around the Avengers or X-Men (plus the Fantastic Four).  What makes them groundbreaking from the old guard of Avengers and X-series is Marvel has attached their most interesting creative teams to the books and allowed them to execute some very unusual premises.

Avengers Academy #14 – Review

By: Christos Gage (writer), Sean Chen (penciller), Scott Hanna (inker), Jeromy Cox (colorist), John Denning (assistant editor), Bill Rosemann (editor)

The Story: Electro attacks France’s main science institute while most of the full-fledged Avengers are away. The kids need a chance to prove themselves and Electro isn’t the baddest guy in town. When they get there, though, it turns out he ain’t alone. The kids don’t do too bad, though, all things considered.

What’s Good: Gage did one thing every great writer must do. He made the heroes active. They wanted something. They wanted it bad, and we the reader can sympathize: they want to prove themselves. They’re not asking for a free lunch. Just put me in the game coach. I like them already. This situation also creates a lot of tension, because when has any battle plan survived contact with the enemy? I love how well the trainees do against the Sinister Six and I have to say, I really like the ending. For a while, when I saw how they got the bad press and all, I was thinking “Oh great. Another thin persecution story. Seen it.” But Gage tricked me. That wasn’t the end. The end was about stepping up to the plate morally that was the big climax of the book. The fight, for all that it was a great superhero donnybrook, was really just a plot device to get to the personal growth made by a surprising number of people at the end. What am I saying about the writing? Gage was right on target.

And, I have to say, after my first exposure to the Chen-Hanna-Cox team, I’m loving the art. The fine lines leave a lot of room to fill the panels with detail, which I love. The credit page is a pretty good example of this. From top to bottom, the big panel is brimming with the external accoutrements of the Avengers Mansion, the backgrounded and framing characters, the tight line of those arguing, with some intense Giant-Man action thrown in as background. That is visual storytelling! And Cox’ colors are beautiful and clear, with the bright spots attracting the eye to the important parts of the page. I also enjoyed Chen’s slanting camera angles and overlaid panels. His layouts and choices of borders (or not) kept the pages from ever feeling the same. Chen and team made it feel like there was so much action going on that it could only be layered. And a PS: I loved the texture of Reptile and Rhino when they slapped down.