Avengers #2 - Mobile Edition

Marvel Comics
Avengers #2
By Hervé St-Louis
June 27, 2010 - 12:42

Marvel Comics
Writer(s): Brian Michael Bendis
Penciller(s): John Romita Jr.
Inker(s): Klaus Janson
Colourist(s): Dean White
Letterer(s): Cory Petit
Cover Artist(s): John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson
$3.99 US

Iron man recruits the former Marvel Boy who now calls himself the Protector to get him to create a time and space machine that will allow the Avengers to look into the future and check if Kang’s claims about the future children of the Avengers killing the villain is real. But witnessing the future comes at incredible cost and somehow time has been broken through Kang and his alter ego Immortus’ interference.

This story will be a convoluted one in the best of the Avengers’ tradition. While doing some research to write this review, I read up on Kang and Immortus and found the character thoroughly confusing. For now, all we need to know is that Kang or Immortus is an Avengers’ villain that has come back time and time again to threaten the heroes. He’s also a time traveller. Apocalypse makes a grand entrance, Wonderman battles his former allies in the Avengers, and they see various future versions of their world. This story is already a mess. It’s one of those stories where the writer goes into motion and adventure but forgets to bring the characters’ personalities for the ride. There’s little character development here, everything is based on this cosmic story, but I’m not sure Bendis is good at doing cosmic stories. Here, he substitutes action and fights for a story that makes sense. He also uses many detours to stop the Avengers from finally going in the future and stop their kids from doing bad things. I will give Bendis credit for making this story as similar to old Avengers ones where they went through motion and impossible plots and cosmic level crises that when looking back makes no sense for a casual reader. I’m not sure if I ever liked those stories. Maybe that’s why all that rich history is barely reprinted today and why back then the Avengers were never as interesting as the Justice League.

I think Romita is tired. His work is becoming sloppy in these pages. All the good thing about his storytelling and the way he draws characters as massive statues becomes a caricature of himself in this story. There is no elegance in the posing of his character. It feels as if he’s delivering pages after pages mindlessly without taking proper care to compose good layout and something visually interesting. Romita is a great artist and I really like his style, but too much Romita without any control only shows his excesses which like everything consumed too much is bad for you.

Rating: 6.5/10