Avengers Undercover #8 – Review

By: Dennis Hopeless (Writer), Tigh Walker (Penciller), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (Color Artist), VC’s Joe Caramagna (Letterer), Francesco Mattina (Cover Artist)

The Story: The best-laid plans of teenage heroes often go ka-blooey.

The Review: The best praise I can give Avengers Undercover is how it keeps the reader guessing. This lends a narrative momentum that’s unmatched in most of today’s comics, and it’s what helps make for some powerful storytelling, too, as stakes are raised for characters, the plot has surprising twists, and there’s a palpable atmosphere of impending doom.

This issue follows the pattern of using a singular character for our point of view, and this time it’s Hazmat’s turn. Unfortunately, this issue’s attempt at point of view is probably the weakest element of the storytelling, actually. The first few pages have the bulk of narration, with a montage of various characters and no way to distinguish whose voice we’re hearing, and I had to mentally cycle through the characters on panel until the story settled into Hazmat and Anachronism’s portrayal. Often, we get a little symbol or some colors to help us out, not to mention some key poses of the narrator, but all of those are missing here. What’s more, it doesn’t really pay off as the remainder of the issue becomes a pretty standard third-person kind of view. I’d even argue that the key phrase of the narration, “I dunno, not much” is a cool idea, but placed awkwardly. Because the writer wants to save it for the punchline at the end, it makes the previous stuff a bit confusing.

One of the strengths of this comic, of course, is the way characters change, and often in unexpected ways. Having Hazmat and Anachronism as focal characters shows this brilliantly, since both have found themselves in places that are really quite different from the start, and most definitely quite different from the start of Avengers Arena. The narrative skips three months from the events of last issue, which in comicbook-storytelling-time has to be like five years of publishing or something. So it’s no wonder. But these changers are purposeful. They allow for new interactions and impact on other characters, too.

And not all these changes might be welcome by fans. Deathlocket has changed, too, after all, but has embraced the idea of being a part of the Masters of Evil, but you have to give readers what they need, not what they want, and this important development now means that that the whole plot is nearly off the rails, and everyone’s fate is still up in the air.

Also, this all means that there are plenty of costume changes, too. Both Hazmat’s and Anachronism are effective in treading that line between superhero costume and streetwear, which is quite contemporary but also misses the point on visually showing that they are supposedly becoming master villains. Deathlocket, on the other hand, has spiky hair and a costume with spikes, studded belt, halter-top, and mettalic padding– nearly 90s in its aesthetic. It’s no wonder she’s making bad choices, then. (And once again it feels like she’s drawn a bit too bombshell-y, three months of development or not).