Comic Review: Avengers: No Road Home (2019-) #1

Avengers: No Road Home #1

Marvel Comics

Writers: Mark Waid, Al Ewing, & Jim Zub

Artist: Paco Medina

Avengers: No Surrender is a 16-issue event originally released in early 2018. All the separate Avengers teams had to join forces to fight foes no single team could withstand. It’s a pretty good event in my opinion. Now, nearly a year later, we have the first of a 10-part sequel, Avengers: No Road Home.

What starts as a normal day in the Marvel Universe turns dark. Literally. In an instant night descends cross all of Earth, and the rest of the galaxy. Voyager, knowing what is going on, assembles a team of Avengers to combat this newest threat.

I’m not sure how but this series took me by surprise. I barely found out it was coming out a week before its actual release. Because of that, I had no idea what this story would be about, just that it’s a sequel to last years Avengers: No Surrender. This is a pretty strong start for the story though. I can’t really get into the finer details of the overall plot without spoiling it, but I like the direction I think it’ll be heading. What I can say is that the bulk of this issue is setting up who the main characters are, and what they’re up to.

I’m a fan of the roster of Avengers that are being used in the story. We’ve got Hercules, Rocket Raccoon, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, The Hulk, Spectrum, and The Vision. They’re all being assembled by Voyager, whose first appearance was in No Surrender. Besides Hawkeye and Rocket, these characters have all pretty much been M.I.A. for the last year. I like the updates we get on them. With that though, as much as I like the characters and the small details of the overarching plot that we get, this issue is mainly just the assembling of the heroes. I’m a bit of an Avengers fanboy, so I like it and don’t mind, but I know that’s something that people can see as negative or boring.

Paco Medina isn’t a stranger to the Avengers, recently working on some of the early issues of the main Avengers title. But credit where it’s due, Medina’s art, in combination with Juan Vlasco (inks) and Jesus Arbutov (colors) this is a really good looking comic. The character designs are great. The colors and the shading and lighting are all fantastic. The few action scenes we get are also pretty dynamic looking. There’s not much, if any, motion lines or anything like that in use. I can’t say anything bad about the art in this issue. It works and it looks good while it does it.

Despite my complete non-awareness of this comic’s existence, I’m not surprised that it’s as good as it is. Even with the overall plot not taking center stage yet, the writing team behind this alone is enough to be excited about. But on top of that we also get some really great art. If you’re an Avengers fan, you should read this. Even if you’re not, you should still read this.