Avengers

So my wife read 1602, and vetoed my decision to get rid of it.  And that’s the way it goes :)

The possibility that my state of wakefulness profoundly impacts my enjoyment of a comic greatly disturbs me.  Today’s issues were all decent, some considerably more.  Was it because I read them in the middle of the day?  (In between rounds of a Magic draft.  I went 1-2 with a red/white deck.  Some decent matches.)  Would I have been more bored late at night?  Not sure how to test for this, but it seems important as I continue this project.  

I also think I’m going to take a day each week to review the new comics that came out.  It’ll be a nice change of pace.  

Also, I’m typing this on my brand new Microsoft Surface laptop, where a left mouse button that works and enough memory that it won’t chug if I have more than 5 tabs open in my browser.  (My old one was ancient.  My wife, in her enduring wisdom, asked, “Hey, since it’s Black Friday, wouldn’t it be a good time to get a new laptop?”  Yes, sweetie, yes it would be.  She’s way smarter than me.)

Avengers 160

George Perez on pencils, still not resembling his DC work.  With all the artists who’ve come and gone on this title for the last 100 issues or so (many of whom would go on to do amazing and unique work), the style has remained faithfully homogeneous.  It’s the Marvel Way, I suppose.  

Avengers 166

John Byrne, looking decently Byrne-sy, draws an issue-long fight scene with Count Nefaria, and it’s a very well-done battle.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.  More on this later.

“Desperate need should preclude excess speech!”  Best Vision quote ever.  Though just twelve pages later, he manages to say the following in just six panels of battle: “How odd!  In his madness he desires that great masses precede him thru the portal of death...to better mark in history his passing?  Human foibles should not be new to me, and yet--It is as if I have forgotten them in my hiatus from life!  Still, is it not a human experience to awaken after a brush with death and see everything as if for the first time?  No time to ponder!  I must solidify--Plunge earthward with the fragments of this tower and reduce them to dust with the obliterating force-beam from my solar jewel, lest Nefaria’s quest for fellow victims finds quick success.  I have one clear advantage over Nefaria!  By altering my density I can fly, whereas he can only take prodigious leaps!  Thus if I strike him in the air, he must fall!”

He squeezes all that into less than one page of action.  

I'm going to be yelling this at the page a lot in the future, I suspect.

Avengers 185, 193

193’s Inferno was a cookie-cutter monster of the week.  Which made me wonder what made the issue less successful than the Nefaria battle in 166.  I’d like to study this in more detail.  I’ll make a note.

Avengers 213, 217

213.  The Hank Pym/Wasp domestic abuse issue.  It’s an event that’s engrained in Avengers history.  Yellowjacket’s descent is well-told.  His desperation and sense of inadequacy leap off the page, and I was engrossed for the duration.

I love Wasp’s growth from that “dingaling Jan, the airhead heiress” (her words) to the confidant, kickass Avenger in this year’s Unstoppable Wasp.  It’s particularly gratifying considering how ill-served most of the Avenger women were by the writers of that era.  Janet Van Dyne was always portrayed as flighty, shallow, and unintelligent, and while that would be fine if it was part of an intentional story arc, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case for her.  Especially disheartening is the way she viewed herself:

At least with the start of Wasp’s chairmanship of the Avengers, her writers begin to drop her ditziness and emphasize her strengths instead.