matkrenz's Avengers Arena #3 - Earth Girls Aren't Easy review

    Avatar image for matkrenz

    She's no Earth girl, she's a space girl.

    So after Superior Spider-Man this is the most controversial ongoing series at Marvel for obvious reasons. Some hate the idea of these teens (and Darkhawk) being killed because we know these characters and we want great things to be written with them in the future (with the exceptions of 6 characters that Hopeless created) and others don't know these characters and just want to read a good story.

    I fall in the middle, I am very familiar with the Runways as they are my all time favorite team (and Chase and Nico are my favorite members of the team), I read the entirety of X-23 series, I read Academy until issue #28 and stopped because I found the writing to be sub par to what Gage can do. I read Annihilation so I know who Cammi is and the only odd one out for me is Darkhawk and Juston and yet im still reading this series out of necessity and morbid curiosity, not in the car crash sort of way but I don't know any other versions of morbid curiosity so ill leave it at that.

    And honestly I like this series. I find that Hopeless is crafting a long term series with tons of possibilities in the vein of all the other properties the covers are homages/parodies of. And really this issue is where the series is starting to jell together for me. This is issue is centered around Cammi in order to explain who she is to new readers and to explain what happened to her after Annihilation and it also establishes that there is an unknown force attacking people during the night.

    Yous see I like to makeup comic stories I would write if I had the chance and in reading this issue I saw that Hopeless and I must be thinking on the same wave lengths because Cammi is shown as hardened survivor in space, is mistrustful of everybody, resourceful with her environment and hates being back on Earth. A place where she spent so much in the middle of nowhere in Alaska with a drunk mom. It's such a great characterization that makes so much sense after all shes been through. And her sense of self improvement is so impressive because she realizes if she wants to survive Arcades game she has to keep getting better.

    But the detail I loved most comes near the end of the issue where we see Cammi doing push ups without her space suit on, she wearing a short sleeved shirt and we see part of her shoulder where she has tattoos similar to those on Drax. SHE HAS DRAX TATTOOS, THE ONLY PERSON WHO WAS A POSITIVE INFLUENCE IN HER LIFE, THE GREEN DESTROYER WHO TOOK HER AWAY FROM HER CRAPPY LIFE. I love this so much, she misses Drax, who is ostensibly her father, he is the only person she cares for. It's such an interesting dynamic that I hope with all my heart that when this series ends she appears in Guardians of the Galaxy, I would kill for that to happen.

    And there is another thing that you can't take away from this series and that is Walker's art. He has a great sense of atmosphere and he displays a great variety of facial expressions within the first 3 issue that I doubt will go away. One thing tho is that I found the fight between Cammi, Juston and his Sentinel to be kinda confusing, was the Sentinel only moving or was he attacking ? Again im not sure but oh well.

    Verdict: I loved this issue, I love what Hopeless is doing with Cammi and I hope she survives this so she can be reunited with Drax. The mystery that is introduced is extremely interesting and I hope Hopeless continues providing such excellent characterization in future issues and with Walker we at least know it will be beautifully drawn.

    Other reviews for Avengers Arena #3 - Earth Girls Aren't Easy

      Stupid.Weak.Slow 0

      After two weak issues, Hopelles finally nails down a good story, mostly because it focused more on the characters and not Arcade's evil plan or meaniest game he's ever played. Sure, the plot continues to be about a bunch of young heroes, trapped in a murder world, where only one of them can be left alive, meaning they have to kill one another. Despite the whole Hunger Games look alike (a copy), even an "homage" by Horn's cover, I really liked this issue because it was about a new character to me...

      5 out of 5 found this review helpful.

      It's Cold Outside 0

      The biggest complaint I see about this series is the trivilization of character death. Many people claim that characters are being killed off without creating emotional attachment for the sake of a brawl capitalizing on the recent success of The Hunger Games. But most of these people already have a fondness for the characters, these are a big group of fan favorites with dedicated fanbases. I am not part of any of those groups. I know absolutely zero about every single character save X-23 coming ...

      2 out of 3 found this review helpful.

    This edit will also create new pages on Comic Vine for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

    Comment and Save

    Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Comic Vine users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.