Avengers #19 – Review

by Jonathan Hickman (Writer), Leinil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan (Artists), Sunny Gho (Colorist)

The Story: Captain Marvel is captured by the builders as the Avengers and the Galactic Council rest after their battle, tending to their wounded. All the while, a traitor is in their midst…

The Review: It’s an usual and unfortunate thing that event comics drag some other titles in their large plot. It doesn’t always mean it’s a bad thing, but plenty of titles have seen their momentum being a bit lost as several elements of a story that isn’t integral to their own plot and subplots gets shoved in the way. This can destroy the flow and sometime even mean that the readers shall suffer through some plug-ins of other characters and elements alien to their book, which makes it much less enjoyable for those that don’t want anything from those events to begin with.
There are also those that are integral to the story structure, those that actually add something to the whole event or use them in ways that feel organic to the whole narrative. Those are rare, to be sure, but much appreciated, like Journey Into Mystery for Matt Fraction’s Fear Itself or Guardians of the Galaxy for War of Kings. Instead of having to contend with these elements, those stories included them naturally, making them that much stronger for the duration of the event.

What Jonathan Hickman has done with Avengers is even more rare, as he has built up a whole lot of plot points and conflicts throughout his tenure on the title, resulting in an event comics, Infinity. The event, having its own book, is split up in two fronts which are covered by the same author with each of them being in one of the two books. This has caused the main Avengers book to receive a much-needed shot in the arm after what was basically seventeen issues of foreshadowing as Hickman shows full cosmic actions in this title.

Continuing where the last issues of Avengers and Infinity left off, the team is divided in two as those with Captain Marvel are in captivity while the rest are with the Galactic Council. While the comic switch from two perspectives, it juggles very well with both plots at it manage to connect the two together. The pacing is good as there are multiple events in this comic, with many great development brought to the forefront as well as some good character moments.

Guardians of the Galaxy #3 – Review

By: Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Steve McNiven, Sara Pichelli, John Dell (Artists), Justin Ponsor (Colorist)

The Story: As J-Son, king of Spartax and father to Peter Quill, is acting like a royal jerk, the team has to be rescued from captivity.

The Review: I had my doubts about this series. Being a huge fan of the previous volume, I just didn’t know if Bendis could pull the big cosmic ideas that Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning threw in each and every issues. Worse yet, he had changed a couple of elements that I loved from the previous iteration in favour of adding some elements that were most probably due to editorial demands more than anything. It’s easier to sell the book if Tony Stark is in it after all, with the character being one of the breakout stars from the movie universe they had created. I had tons of reasons to be wary of such a move on a property I loved.

Now, I’d like to tell you that this issue blew me away, that my fears were silly and that Bendis has a brilliant future ahead on this title, but that would be partly true. I am mitigated after reading the conclusion to the first arc, as there are several elements that work and some that just don’t. It’s a mixed bag of quality with some pretty nice things and some that just felt wrong to me.

Guardians of the Galaxy #1 – Review

By: Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Steve McNiven, John Dell (Artists), Justin Ponsor (Colorist)

The Story: Peter Quill meets his father and has an argument with him. After, he meets Iron Man and fights some Badoon.

The Review: Take a good look at the ‘’Story’’ section up above. This may sound like a very brief summary of what happens in this issue, which this section usually serves for, but unfortunately this is pretty much spot on what happens here, without spoiling the ending.

Indeed, one of the major flaws of this first issue would be the decompressed nature of the story, as Bendis really takes its time with a lot of things. Decompression isn’t necessarily a bad thing in comics, as some storylines can be enhanced by a longer structure and some emphasis on reaction from the core cast of the book. However, decompression can also seems like a cheap attempt at making a story that could be told in two to three issues longer, to fill out a trade, something that we also call ‘’writing for the trade’’. Now, this would be much too soon to properly classify in which category GotG will fall in, but judging from this issue, it would seem that the latter would be the correct answer.