The Avengers #1-6
Originally released in 2023
Written by Jed MacKay
Art by C.F. Villa (#1-4), Ivan Fiorelli (#5-6)
I'm changing up my order for this week, as I have a specific DC series planned for tomorrow. (Having learned my lesson from other days where I had a specific comic in mind only for it to not be available, I made sure to check that it was on the app and that it worked) Today, I'm covering the start of the ongoing Avengers run by Jed MacKay, which caught my eye when it was first announced for its great choice of line-up for the team.
Admittedly, it primarily consists of classic or mainstay Avengers - Iron Man and Thor founded the team, while Vision and Scarlet Witch were its faces for a while - but I don't know how often they're all on the team at the same time. The choice of Sam Wilson as Captain America feels meaningful given Sam's history with the team - in the 70s or so, he was only included by government mandate as a result of affirmative action and government meddling, making him feel bitter about the whole ordeal. Now, he's not only on the team as Captain America (both Steve and Sam share the mantle currently, similar to Jay, Barry, and Wally as the Flash), but as the first choice out of the Captain Americas (Captains America?) who were available.
Captain Marvel is the current chairperson of the Avengers; she's handling the recruiting this time around, and I like how the Avengers' mission statement is depicted at the start of this run:
When trying to stop an alien robot from devouring an artificial black hole, Carol is pulled into another dimension where she finds a dying version of Kang the Conqueror. After giving Carol a list of a thousand deaths that will happen in the next day which they can prevent, as a sign that he's telling the truth, he informs her about Tribulation Events, situations that pose an extinction-level threat if they're not stopped. He's not giving them this information for nothing, though; he wants revenge on a rival known as Myrddin (based on Kang's history, I'm fully expecting that Myrddin is another version of Kang) and his minions who are known collectively as the Twilight Court.
The first of these threats is the Ashen Combine, a group of city-killers, and their base, which is the sentient Impossible City. The Ashen Combine have solid designs, with Idol Alabaster looking like a boss from a Bayonetta game. (I could almost hear the boss music)
Each of them destroy cities in their own ways, targeting major Earth cities (though not New York City, which is a bit surprising given the nature of Marvel) and naturally, the Avengers split up to deal with them, traveling around the world thanks to the portals of the Scarlet Witch. Things aren't perfect when it comes to the Avengers' teamwork, though; Black Panther seems to have betrayed the team recently (it seems like it happened during Jason Aaron's run, which came before this), and there's still a bit of tension there.
Most of the team faces the Ashen Combine one-on-one, with parallels and contrasts highlighted before the battles begin. Meanwhile, Black Panther and Captain America infiltrate the Impossible City itself, which is less of a willing participant in the Ashen Combine's activities and more of a prisoner.
The rest of the arc largely plays out like a shonen action manga - a series of one-on-one fights where it seems like the heroes are up against impossible odds, only for them to turn the tides and beat the villains. (I suppose any action series follows a similar set-up, but the lay-out of this story arc reminds me of something out of One Piece or Naruto)
The Avengers take advantage of what they've seen of the villains' powers, or new tactics that they put into practice, in order to win. For example, one of the Ashen Combine raises all of the dead in the surrounding area, so Wanda teleports them to a place where there are very few dead people to raise. (I'm guessing that the zombies are no longer reanimated once the Combine member in question leaves the area)
Once the Ashen Combine are beaten and the Impossible City is freed, the city reveals that it was originally intended as the Combine's prison, only for them to break free and damage its memories to the point where it doesn't remember who created it. With its chains broken, the Impossible City decides that it wants to be an Avenger, which seemingly sets up for it to serve as their new base of operations in Earth's orbit.
I had a great time with these first six issues, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. As this is a recent series, I'm glad I got to go into it knowing very little about what's to come. For something like Frank Miller's Daredevil run, as great as it was to see it play out, it was a lot like playing Final Fantasy VII for me where I knew several major key plot points so they weren't as shocking for me as they would have originally been.
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