Read All the Comics!: Busiek/Perez Avengers, Geoff Johns Avengers

Another doubleheader after not writing last night. These things really keep me up. (Though let’s be honest, I’d be up anyway, just doing something less productive.)

Avengers 19-22

Ultron Unlimited. The generally accepted pinnacle of the Busiek/Perez Avengers collaboration. Number 86 on CBR's Top 100 Storylines of All Time. (Yes, I counted how many of them I’ve read. 75.) I’d agree on the pinnacle part, not so much its place in the Top 100. (I’m pretty sure that by the end of this project, there will be 100 storylines that got better than a “Pretty Good” rating.)

It’s certainly a fine story, and the exhaustion of the Avengers as they fight without relief is well conveyed by both the writing and the art. And let’s not kid ourselves, it has one of the best moments in Avengers history:

But for all of that, it lacks a sense of peril or consequence; There’s no doubt that the Avengers will emerge victorious, and Busiek flubs his attempt at creating emotional stakes for the battle; Ultron exterminates an entire country, and does it through three pages of news reports. He holds the genocide at a distance, and keeps it from feeling as horrific as it should.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty Good

Avengers 38-39

Looks like I got sick of the writing and stopped buying for a while, because it sure wasn’t because of the the art. Guessing I picked it back up because of the “bold new direction!” Same Busiek writing, new Alan Davis art. Beautiful, and you can see exactly where Bryan Hitch got his inspiration from:

Davis

Hitch

Of course, then I looked at the cover of issue 39, and thought it was John Byrne for a second.

Davis

Byrne. Influences everywhere.

Not a bad story - the Avengers get more proactive about attacking potential threats instead of reacting to events. (And yet this story arc doesn’t really get going until the team responds to a riot (of a town’s worth of Hulks) that they were completely unaware of until it was well under way.) I wouldn’t have minded reading more, but don’t feel like I’m missing out on too much.

So determined.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine

Avengers 57

I had no idea Rick Remender was an artist as well as a writer, but here he is, sharing artist duties with Kieron Dwyer.

Geoff Johns starts his run on the title. It gets off to a good start, with a WHOA of a cliffhanger - the UN calls on the Avengers to lead the world?? I’m intrigued, but the art isn’t strong enough for me to seek out the rest of the arc.

Back during the Siege of Avengers Mansion.

208 issues later, Cap gets his rejoinder.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? No

Rating: Fine

Avengers 65-71

Red Zone. Wowwww. This was amazing. I was hooked from the beginning, and tore through it in short order. A red cloud of necrotizing fasciitis is slowing expanding out from Mount Rushmore, killing everything in its path. The Avengers start out on damage control, powerless to fight the creeping death and reduced to evacuation duties. Johns and Olivier Coipel do a phenomenal job here, and succeed in a way that Busiek did not with Ultron Unlimited - There’s a real sense of dread that permeates throughout. Despair peeks through the heroic front that these heroes put up as they struggle to keep people safe from a danger that they can’t punch. There’s fear in their voices, true fear that they can’t beat this one.

The mood is enhanced by excellent pacing. Coipel use multiple panels to establish the eeriness of the red mist hanging over silent towns emptied of their inhabitants.

And Johns is a master of punctuating his pages with moments that make me say, “Damn, that was sweet!”

Everything is done so well that it feels disappointingly pedestrian when the Red Skull is the baddie revealed to be behind it all. After a story so unlike any other, it’s a let down to mix in something so conventional. But Johns still manages to put in both a scary observation about America and a would-be-corny-if-it-weren’t-Cap line into it.

Vision is suffering from an acute case of the Worf Effect. This is the third time he’s been ripped in half because he’s an android and it won’t kill him.
Did Olivier Coipel, Jim Cheung, and Travis Charest go to the same school?