So What Are We Waiting For
My review of Avengers The Origin #1 called out the slow pace which was begot of the need to reintroduce the younger incarnations of the Avengers and set up the story of the entire volume. Here things are much improved as the writers take the original source material and insert an extra scene or two to provide some much needed action. At the same time these heroes that are meeting for the first time start to talk to each other, to share tactics and secrets and these character interactions are both really well written and profoundly interesting.
Plot wise we pick right up with the Mexican stand off between our not yet Avengers and the teen squad, re-imagined here as a hacker group. Diplomacy wins the day just about and our heroes decide to start tracking down the Hulk who has gone to ground after the locomotive mishap. The writers took a smart step and utilised Loki’s trickery to insert a fairly horrific action scene into the middle of the comic. It’s a really good change of pace and sets up Thor’s departure from the group to seek the truth of Loki’s involvement. Honestly what makes this comic quite wonderful is everything after that in which the future Avengers chat and learn about one and other. The wonder of Ant-Man as he walks into one of Stark’s labs is something wonderful, as is the group's incredulity about whether Thor really is a bonafide god of thunder.
There are a couple of small artistic moments that Noto does a wonderful job on that raise the quality of the book above the first in the volume. Firstly Noto clearly has a great eye for action, he paints a beautiful albeit brief clash between The Hulk and Thor. Besides that the dream Hulk’s rampage on the hackers and Iron Man is a wonderful piece of almost macabre horror; The dream Iron Man in particular meets a fate that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Game of Thrones. There’s a little less details in the backgrounds which is a shame, but the darker tone birthed of the night time setting of the comic seems to suit the artist more and his style seems much better here than it did in the first issue. Finally the cover of this issue is wonderful, Iron Man is just taking a real knock out blow, pieces of his armour are scattering as his helmet caves in. It’s a really good vivid tease of the dream sequence within and I think Noto nailed this moment in time.
All in all this comic is a substantial improvement on it’s forebear as it begins to demonstrate quite why a team up comic is so appealing. We get some wonderful conversations between all of our heroes and heroines along with a great action scene that helps break up the calmer action scenes. It’s well written the art looks really good and it never once drags in it’s 22 pages. This is a great comic and a really worthwhile read even if you can’t track down issue one of the volume.
“There’s Still Three Of Us.” “It’ll Be Enough”
Iron Man / Ant-Man