I just read the newest issue of Mighty Avengers. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t particularly good, either. I’d say it falls into the middle of the road category. The art’s promising and I bet it’ll improve as Pham gets into a rhythm. Some of the pages look better than others and it does seem like he’s trying his best to engage the reader with his layouts. I respect that.
The writing was about what I’d expect from Slott. Not as good as his She-Hulk or Thing, but probably better than that Avengers: Initiative nonsense. The plotting is clearly just a lousy excuse to bring together a group of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to fight a foe that a single hero could not withstand. The stuff that brings them together is pretty '90s-ish, in a Secret Defenders sort of way. Some of the team members seem haphazard, and the transitions between the scenes when they get brought together aren’t very smooth.
The dialogue is mostly serviceable, with a few bits of the humor Slott’s capable of (specifically the scenes with Hercules, Amadeus Cho, and Jarvis) but there’s also a buncha tripe in there. I can’t stand that lame device where characters speak out loud when they are alone just so they can provide needless exposition. Come on, at least use thought balloons or narration captions or something! Speaking of captions, there were a few too many unnecessary “scene setting” captions as well. Very Claremontesque in a non-ironic manner, and basically the sort of thing I’d expect modern comics to have grown out of by this point in time.
And the brief scene where the New Avengers appeared was marred with lousy dialogue as well. The way each character had to say another character’s name (as though the average Mighty Avengers reader wouldn’t know by now) actually made me laugh, and I don’t think that was intended to be humorous.
If Slott were trying to make this book new reader-friendly, why not provide exposition on some of the characters that get recruited to make the team? Like Jocasta, or the Hulk, or even this villain (whom I’m not sure if I am supposed to recognize or not)? Instead we get recaps and flashbacks of how the original Avengers were founded, which really isn’t relevant to the plot of THIS story.
Such flashbacks and recaps would be relevant in explaining the rich history of the Avengers, but I didn’t get the sense that was central to the plotting of this issue. It simply feels like padding, or, if I’m being extremely cynical, it feels like Slott wanted to give a shout-out to the Avengers’ origin so readers would think that this new team somehow echoes the creation of the original (Iron Man, Wasp, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man). Sure, the new Mighty Avengers sort of does reflect how the original team came together, but only because a shallow plot (complete with cliches explaining why all the other heroes are helpless and can’t get involved) forces this particular team together.
This issue is a mess of lazy storytelling. I suppose if you have a high tolerance for '80s and '90s style superhero comics, you will enjoy this.
Damn, I can’t believe I wrote this much about one issue.
