Dark Avengers #180 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (story), Neil Edwards (pencils), Terry Pallot (inks), Chris Sotomayor (colors)

The Story: Boss Cage better hope there’s a generous retirement package waiting for him.

The Review: I’ve made it kind of a maxim here that it doesn’t matter so much what the story is; it’s all about the execution.  I guess I neglected to mention that the story still matters; if you’re working off of weak material, the execution will suffer proportionately.  Parker’s work ever since this title became Dark Avengers must be the first time I’m experiencing a case where his execution is solid, but he’s just not telling a story worth hearing.

Even looking just at the Thunderbolts issues I reviewed, you felt a stronger investment there than here.  Part of the reason was at the time, Parker only had to write these time-traveling two-issue arcs, so he didn’t really have any loftier aim than to have fun and entertain.  Then, too, we had a tighter cast to focus on, so we had more time to listen to them argue and banter, again all for the sake of fun and entertainment.

Dark Avengers #179 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (story), Gabriel Hernandez Walta & Kev Walker (art), Frank Martin Jr. (colors)

The Story: The Thunderbolts find a future not worth fighting for.

The Review: Lately, I’ve started to notice that this title is getting to be one of the harder ones to review week after week.  On the one hand, Parker always manages to deliver a technically solid issue with plenty of stuff going on, and he never writes anything that’s outright bad.  On the other hand, he doesn’t write anything all that remarkable either.  Sometimes I’ll read an entire issue of Dark Avengers (formerly Thunderbolts) and enjoy it, but forget all about it afterwards.

Maybe it has something to do with the cast of mostly C-listers, but I tend not to think so.  After all, Secret Six was composed entirely on nobodies, yet I followed their adventures with total devotion every month, while I sort of just breeze through this series.  No, I think what’s really missing from the book is a total dearth of character arcs.  To date, I still haven’t gotten a sense of change or growth from any of the Thunderbolts.  They proceed through all their adventures with a lot of enthusiasm, but they don’t come out of them any different than they started.

Dark Avengers #178 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (story), Kev Walker & Declan Shalvey (art), Frank Martin Jr. (colors)

The Story: Invasion of the Dark Avengers!  The Future of the Thunderbolts!

The Review: You have to wonder why, of all the titles Marvel puts out, Dark Avengers now gets a twice monthly release.  It may be a solid series, but it’s not as if there was a huge demographic of readers demanding a double dose of it.  More likely than not, this schedule will keep on so long as the team itself continues to be split in two, requiring two issues to give a month’s worth of sufficient coverage to their exploits.

And while I don’t have any problem with that as a rule, it does feel a bit irritating having to divide your attention between two completely separate plotlines that have seemingly nothing to do with each other.  You really come away from the issue feeling like you’re reading two different titles in one—namely, a respectable Thunderbolts adventure and a just-slightly-north-of-dull Dark Avengers mission.