Avengers [2018] #1 - Marvel Comics

AVENGERS No. 1, July 2018

Printed as part of “Marvel Comics” “revamping [of] its entire publishing line in 2018”, this Jason Aaron reboot sold an impressive 131,450 copies upon its release and certainly seemed to deliver on the Alabama-born writer’s double promise of it featuring “the biggest characters” and going “to the coolest, most exotic locations around the Marvel Universe.” Indeed, it’s arguably hard to think of a broader scope to a story than the one contained within Issue One of “Avengers” as the “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” bravely battle both a downpour of “giant dead bodies falling from the sky… all over the globe” and a robotic arachnid army “miles below the surface” where “the pressure here would crush me into a puddle of goo and then the air would set that goo on fire.”

Alongside “Marvel’s big three Avengers”, the thirty-two page periodical even features “the popular stars of last year’s massive Marvel Legacy one-shot: the Avengers of 1,000,000 B.C.”, utilising the “group of powerful beings assembled at the dawn of man” as a sense-shattering springboard into its modern-day tale of the Final Host of Dark Celestials arriving to destroy the Earth. Such a massive cast admittedly means that few characters obtain much in the way of ‘screen time’, but even so the interplay between Doctor Strange and T’Challa deep beneath the Earth’s crust, as well as Roberto Reyes’ almost antagonistic relationship with “his demon-possessed car” genuinely must have made this book’s readers wanting to see more.

Unfortunately however, perhaps as a result of being so ‘super-sized’ this “fresh start” does sag in its story-telling from time to time, most notably when it focuses upon Tony Stark’s grating doubts as to the validity of reassembling the Avengers alongside “Hydra Cap” and “The Unworthy Thor”. It’s clear that having returned from “suddenly being clinically dead”, the genius engineer has his doubts about hurling his body back into the fray so soon, yet surely the American author didn’t need to spend quite so many panels, intermixed throughout this comic, laboriously depicting the business magnate’s negative view-point; “In the beginning it just happened. It wasn’t us. It was actually more Loki than us. And who says it has to be the three of us anymore at the --”

Rather agreeably though, Ed McGuinness’ clean-lined pencilling imbues even these boring bar room scenes with some semblance of energic urgency, through his clever use of Thor Odinson as an increasingly enraged advocate of the team embracing its ideals. In addition, the American artist also provides plenty of jaw-dropping visuals for the rest of this tome’s ensemble, such as the somewhat surreal, face-hugger egg-sack infested catacombs uncovered by the Black Panther, or the significantly sized “2,000 feet long” Celestials crashing amidst the world’s most populated civilisations.

Writer: Jason Aaron, Penciller: Ed McGuinness, and Inker: Mark Morales