Roger Stern Avengers, Crisis on Earth-X

Avengers 241-244

More of the same.  Vision continues to work towards some sort of ultimate scheme, smiling way too much as he does so.  

Not creepy at all.

The Avengers get zapped away by the Beyonder to take part in the Secret War, which was a nice reminder.  I hope that it’s aged well when I eventually get to it.  

I wonder if my tepid reaction to the Stern Avengers has to do with the target audience.  I have a suspicion that this would have played like gangbusters to the ten-year old me.  But comic writing has shifted towards an older audience in the thirty years since then, and I’m finding it difficult to shift back.  

I haven’t talked about Al Milgrom’s art at all yet.  I have nothing nice to say.  It’s a weak display of the Marvel house style.  His poses are awkward and lack both power and conviction.  His anatomy and faces are inconsistent.  It’s unfortunately not worthy of one of Marvel’s premiere teams.

Finally:

"I'm just a married woman.  This isn't awkward at all."

Crisis on Earth-X

Moving on to something that was way better.  This year’s DC CW crossover was pure bliss.  It started off with one of the best episodes ever - Barry Allen and Iris West’s wedding is interrupted by Nazis from Earth-X, with the cast of Supergirl, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow in attendance.  Fighting ensues.  So much fun, and everyone gets a chance to shine.  Huge smile on my face the whole time, with multiple yelps of joy.  

Best part of the crossover was the unexpected but welcome hookup between White Canary and Alex Danvers.  Even better was the aftermath.  The morning-after meetup of shame (for Alex.  Sara was unfazed) was one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen all year.  (In a year when Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place have been phenomenal.)  The writers also made it a point to have the two of them pair up in most of their fight scenes, and they work so well together.  (The Prometheus fight was so well done.  Though to be honest, the action sequences for all the heroes across the board were top notch.)  And they had some emotional beats that were sweet as well.

As always, there were a number of plot contortions that have to be forgiven.  The “random McGuffin to explain why this too-powerful hero has to be offscreen for a while” explanations are to be expected.  Even the “if only too-powerful hero who somehow wasn’t written to be offscreen used his/her powers in this way, everything would be fine” moments can be excused.  But the one that had me screaming at the screen was the “there’s no need to blow up the Nazi Waverider, you’ve taken control of it” scene.  Sure you had to destroy it while it was killing civilians, but once you cleared it of Nazis, why not keep it?  A fresh coat of paint to cover the swastikas and you have two Waveriders!  How is that not better???  I call this the “we have to get rid of the Pegasus because we don’t want to deal with two Battlestars” solution.  

Must watch again.