A lot happened in Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opena’s opening salvo on Avengers. Frankly, though, it didn’t feel like it. Rather, this felt like one long, establishing shot, with narration running over the whole thing intended to give it an epic feel.There was a lot invested in trying to give this issue an “epic” feel. It seems, in fact, to be the only thing Hickman was particularly focused on. As a result, the book itself plodded along, another written-for-the-trade first issue of a team book in which nothing much happens except that “something bad happens” and “we put a team together.”In this case, since they’re not starting the team from the ground up, there’s an establishing device where Iron Man and Captain America discuss the need to grow the Avengers, in order to cope with the ever-escalating threats faced by a Marvel Universe that has squared off against Skrulls, Asgardians and the Phoenix Force in what is, comic book time, probably only a year or so.It’s a sensible enough idea but it’s also been done. Done, in fact, by the only writer who seems to have the same kind of sweeping, self-indulgent, operatic aspirations for his blockbuster superhero team comics as Hickman does: Grant Morrison’s JLA did all of this. Setting up the the JV squad that would come in and save the day if the A-listers were taken down was the premise of at least one major storyline during Morrison’s JLA run — a story in which the team duked it out with Kirby-inspired godlike alien conquerors. But that series always had a bit of fun and heart to it, a bit of levity.There’s nothing of the sort in Hickman’s first issue of Avengers, just a lot of telling you how important the story is and promising that you’ll see how important it is soon.
Avengers #1 Review: Ponderous, Pretentious and Predictable
A lot happened in Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opena’s opening salvo on Avengers. Frankly, though, […]