Not vengeful enough yet
TDK reviews - Acts of Vengeance
Reviews. I haven't reviewed in while but I have decided to get back to it. I have no idea if there is anyone left on the website who even reads reviews anymore, but I will do it for myself. I will be doing a series of reviews as I am going through more important comic books which I am reading through my spare time. Acts of Vengeance is the first one to go.
Acts of Vengeance is a classic Marvel crossover which I have been meaning to go through for quite a while and reading The Spectacular SPider-Man(1976) finally made me make a stop on it. It's beginning is here in Avengers Spotlight which if you take your time to consider it is a strange place to start such a big event/crossover. One would think that since it's a crossover which mainly concerns the Avengers that it would start off in the main Avengers book and then spread out across the Marvel titles. However, that is not the case.
The crossover is merely in its beginning as this issue serves only as a prelude but is indeed the point where things are kicked off. As the Wizard is welcomed into the Vault a breakout occurs and the first ones to respond are Iron Man and Hawkeye. Both Avengers start off with a bad atittude toward one another because of the previous breakout which happened which was all Iron Man's fault. However, they manage to work together at the end... with no success, though. THe premise is simple and in a way doesn't bring anything interesting to the table. The plot is pretty generic, however, it tries to connect many threads going around and it falls short of telling an actual story. Many time jumps happen which no one explains why it happens. Many scenes are rather pointless and can be cut off as most of them just catch the characters talking to themselves explaining to the readers what they are actually doing. All of this results to McDuffie trying to tell the story withing the page limit but lacking the coherency.
With an average plot which, if written in a better manner, can result to becoming a pretty enjoyable action-packed issue, McDuffie manages to screw up things with taking too much time giving characters pointless inner monologue. At an age in comic books where characters still explained their actions via word bubbles, Avengers Spotlight manages to take us even further back in time with a ludicrous ammount of explanations. Having read many comic books at that certain period, Avengers Spotlight really does take it too far with those type of moments which just take the joy away from the story. Not only this, but the cheesy dialogue leads me, the reader, to become detatched from the story and feel annoyed with the characters hwne in the end of the day are characters and Avengers members which I really enjoy reading about.
A big problem about the issue is not just the dialogue and the pacing of the story but the severe cuts and the abrupt breakout and end of the issue. It may have been done purposefuly or because of the page limit that McDuffie was given but it did take a lot out of the joy from the issue.
All in all, the issue was a good start to the crossover if we look over the fact that the dialogue was a bit dodgy and the writing decisions which were considered along the line. The story wasn't coherent enought but it did set the stage for the upcoming crossover while leaving the door open for another prelude issue or even a several.
