Avengers Arena #4 – Review

By: Dennis Hopeless (story), Alessandro Vitti (art), Frank Martin (colors)

The Story: The kids reap the fruit of their actions.

The Review: The more I read this series, the more I appreciate what Hopeless is trying to do, but the less interested I become in wanting to read it.  It’s a strange conflict, for sure.  Look—given that Hopeless wants to write a story about kids trained to be superheroes and pitting their survival instincts against their ethics, you can hardly complain that there are casualties involved.  But you do have a right to protest how those casualties come about and their overall value.

I particularly hated the deaths of Mettle and Red Raven because I found them casual and pointless.  And while Juston and Darkhawk aren’t necessarily dead (as Hopeless points out on the recap page with some glaring question marks on their faces), you didn’t get to know both of them very well before they got taken down either.  Hopeless continues the pattern of attacking the less prominent characters first, which makes this series a bit of a sordid popularity contest.