New Avengers #6 – Review

By: Jonathan Hickman (Writer), Steve Epting, Rick Magyar (Artists), Frank D’Armata (Colorist)

The Story: Another Earth is set to collide on the main Marvel Earth, appearing above Latveria. The Illuminati, in the domain of Doom, needs to act against this new type of intrusion to their universe.

The Review: If there’s one thing that Jonathan Hickman knows how to do, it’s building up a conflict or a situation in a way that can makes us readers feel invested. The stakes are getting higher, the many elements are explained to us in ways that feel expensive and full of potentials, it’s great. However, as much as building can be great, it is another matter entirely to properly capitalize on what was constructed.

New Avengers #5 – Review

Jonathan Hickman (Writer), Steve Epting, Rick Magyar (Artists), Frank D’Armata (Colorist)

The Story: The Illuminati returns from the colliding Earth as they recruits Black Swan, who proceeds to explain a lot of things about just what may be happening with the multiversal problem.

The Review: Here we are, back at the incredibly dense and tense read that is New Avengers, a book that focus on the much darker side on the type of conflicts superheroes must deal with. Universes dying, being destroyed one against another as the group cannot seem to trust one another, yet must in order to make sure their universe survives, that is the kind of thing superheroes exists for, yet nothing is so simple.

This should probably be the very motto for this book in general, as Jonathan Hickman goes very far in the conceptual end of the comic stories spectrum, where most of the things explained here could be further developed with years of stories. In many ways, this issue does something that should not work at all, bombarding us with tons of information, giving us lengthy scenes of heavy exposition while the characters merely talk to each other, giving us mostly a ‘’talking head’’ issue. It should not work, yet the ideas thrown here are so interesting and shown in such a dynamic way that it kinds of transcend the potential problem it may cause and gives us something to ponder about instead. Here, we are given a big great hint toward the true cause behind the multiversal imbalance; just who and what are the Black Swans, what the team might be able to do to save their universe and so on. It’s griping stuff and it makes the exposition truly enjoyable.

However, there is another reason why the comic is so enjoyable and that would be the characters themselves. Hickman seems to get just how they act and most of their history together, creating some kind of tensions between each others. There are sub-groups within the Illuminati, like Black Panther and Reed Richards, or Namor and Doctor Strange, which shows that the history between each of these characters shall be referenced and even become important to the plot. How characters react to the tale told by Black Swan, a fascinating character in her own right, is spot-on, like Namor telling her not to beat around the bush with tales, or how T’Challa and his distrust of many things she says. It’s pretty interesting to see how even in the face of such radical things being explained to each other, these men still have their own quirks coming out from time to time to peppers the plot a bit.