Imitation To The Point Of Lamentation
If the aim here was to put out an issue in the style of comics from the sixties then the staff have exceeded themselves. If the aim was to put out an exceptional comic from the sixties then they have failed. This issue is almost indistinguishable from comics of the day featuring a vibrant art style very reminiscent of Kirby’s work with that long form writing that belongs all to Stan Lee. But in imitating the style of early Marvel they have fallen into many of the traps of comics of that era, and have failed to elevate their work to the heights of the best issues from the time.
The story on offer here is decent enough, but only when viewed in comparison to the comics of 1963. Comic book writing moved on a great deal in the three decades between the nineties and the sixties and I can only imagine that the story would have been very disappointing to readers in the nineties. I would have liked to see Roger Stern craft a more interesting narrative that explores more of the early problems the Avengers have and how they go about setting up their meeting place.
The story here is one of constant deceptions by Doctor Doom as he tries to destroy this new group of super heroes. There are some pleasant story twists in place made possible by the use of Dr Doom’s Doom Bots (which would technically be their first appearance in terms of canonical order?). I was quite disappointed by the treatment of The Wasp by the writer. Having her be captured first and freed last felt like a very dated throwback, even if that did enable her to communicate the positions of the other trapped heroes.
The art here is a very good recreation of Jack Kirby’s earlier work. There are a couple of things which give away the artist (other than looking at the credits). The eyes in particular are not evocative of the style Kirby used they are more cartoony, especially at close and mid distance. The backgrounds and colors used are pretty spot on though. It’s about as decent of an imitation as you could ask for.
I think my main problem with this comic is that it tries too hard to evoke the story beats of sixties narratives. They have not aged well. The very verbose inner monologues, while not quite present to the full ferocity of the original works kind of suck. They’re silly and they take away from what you can clearly see is happening on the panel. Comics moved on from this style of writing for a reason. I think the creators would have been better placed trying to evoke the art style that is so very Kirby with more modern storytelling methods. As this stands it imitates so well that it fails to stand out from other sixties comics, which is disappointing for a comic created so much later.
"For A Second I Thought --! How’d You Know He Was a Robot?” “Robot?”
Iron Man / Hulk
